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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, v5
+#5 in our series by Edward Gibbon
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+Title: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5
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+Author: Edward Gibbon
+
+Release Date: November, 1996  [EBook #735]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, v5 ***
+
+
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+This eBook was produced by David Reed  <Haradda@aol.com>
+with additional work by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+If you find any errors please feel free to notify me of them.
+I want to make this the best etext edition possible for both
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+email address for now.  Please feel free to send me your
+comments and I hope you enjoy this.
+
+David Reed
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+Edward Gibbon, Esq.
+
+With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman
+
+Vol. 5
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
+
+
+Part I.
+
+     Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images. - Revolt
+Of Italy And Rome. - Temporal Dominion Of The Popes. - Conquest
+Of Italy By The Franks. - Establishment Of Images. - Character
+And Coronation Of Charlemagne. - Restoration And Decay Of The
+Roman Empire In The West. - Independence Of Italy. - Constitution
+Of The Germanic Body.
+
+In the connection of the church and state, I have considered
+the former as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a
+salutary maxim, if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever
+been held sacred.  The Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the
+dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange
+transformation of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of
+Christ's body, ^1 I have purposely abandoned to the curiosity of
+speculative divines.  But I have reviewed, with diligence and
+pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
+decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected,
+the propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic
+church, the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the
+mysterious controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation.
+At the head of this class, we may justly rank the worship of
+images, so fiercely disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries;
+since a question of popular superstition produced the revolt of
+Italy, the temporal power of the popes, and the restoration of
+the Roman empire in the West.
+
+[Footnote 1: The learned Selden has given the history of
+transubstantiation in a comprehensive and pithy sentence: "This
+opinion is only rhetoric turned into logic," (his Works, vol.
+iii. p. 2037, in his Table-Talk.)]
+
+The primitive Christians were possessed with an
+unconquerable repugnance to the use and abuse of images; and this
+aversion may be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, and
+their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely
+proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that precept was
+firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen
+people.  The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against
+the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their
+own hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had they been
+endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather from
+the pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist. ^2
+Perhaps some recent and imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe
+might crown the statues of Christ and St. Paul with the profane
+honors which they paid to those of Aristotle and Pythagoras; ^3
+but the public religion of the Catholics was uniformly simple and
+spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in the
+censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after
+the Christian aera.  Under the successors of Constantine, in the
+peace and luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent
+bishops condescended to indulge a visible superstition, for the
+benefit of the multitude; and, after the ruin of Paganism, they
+were no longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious
+parallel.  The first introduction of a symbolic worship was in
+the veneration of the cross, and of relics.  The saints and
+martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were seated on the
+right hand if God; but the gracious and often supernatural
+favors, which, in the popular belief, were showered round their
+tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims,
+who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the
+memorials of their merits and sufferings. ^4 But a memorial, more
+interesting than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy,
+is the faithful copy of his person and features, delineated by
+the arts of painting or sculpture.  In every age, such copies, so
+congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of
+private friendship, or public esteem: the images of the Roman
+emperors were adored with civil, and almost religious, honors; a
+reverence less ostentatious, but more sincere, was applied to the
+statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues, these
+splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who
+had died for their celestial and everlasting country.  At first,
+the experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the
+venerable pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the
+ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of
+the heathen proselytes.  By a slow though inevitable progression,
+the honors of the original were transferred to the copy: the
+devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the
+Pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense, again stole
+into the Catholic church.  The scruples of reason, or piety, were
+silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the
+pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a
+divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of
+religious adoration.  The most audacious pencil might tremble in
+the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite
+Spirit, the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the
+universe. ^5 But the superstitious mind was more easily
+reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and, above all,
+the Son of God, under the human shape, which, on earth, they have
+condescended to assume.  The second person of the Trinity had
+been clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body had
+ascended into heaven: and, had not some similitude been presented
+to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ
+might have been obliterated by the visible relics and
+representations of the saints.  A similar indulgence was
+requisite and propitious for the Virgin Mary: the place of her
+burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul and body into
+heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins.
+The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly established
+before the end of the sixth century: they were fondly cherished
+by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics: the Pantheon
+and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition;
+but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the
+rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the West.  The bolder
+forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled the temples
+of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or conscience of the
+Christian Greeks: and a smooth surface of colors has ever been
+esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of imitation. ^6
+
+[Footnote 2: Nec intelligunt homines ineptissimi, quod si sentire
+simulacra et moveri possent, adoratura hominem fuissent a quo
+sunt expolita.  (Divin. Institut. l. ii. c. 2.) Lactantius is the
+last, as well as the most eloquent, of the Latin apologists.
+Their raillery of idols attacks not only the object, but the form
+and matter.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Augustin, (Basnage,
+Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. p. 1313.) This Gnostic
+practice has a singular affinity with the private worship of
+Alexander Severus, (Lampridius, c. 29. Lardner, Heathen
+Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 34.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: See this History, vol. ii. p. 261; vol. ii. p. 434;
+vol. iii. p. 158 - 163.]
+
+[Footnote 5: (Concilium Nicenum, ii. in Collect. Labb. tom. viii.
+p. 1025, edit. Venet.) Il seroit peut-etre a-propos de ne point
+souffrir d'images de la Trinite ou de la Divinite; les defenseurs
+les plus zeles des images ayant condamne celles-ci, et le concile
+de Trente ne parlant que des images de Jesus Christ et des
+Saints, (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 154.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: This general history of images is drawn from the
+xxiid book of the Hist. des Eglises Reformees of Basnage, tom.
+ii. p. 1310 - 1337.  He was a Protestant, but of a manly spirit;
+and on this head the Protestants are so notoriously in the right,
+that they can venture to be impartial. See the perplexity of poor
+Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p. 42.]
+
+The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance
+with the original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of
+the genuine features of the Son of God, his mother, and his
+apostles: the statue of Christ at Paneas in Palestine ^7 was more
+probably that of some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their
+profane monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian
+artists could only be guided by the clandestine imitation of some
+heathen model.  In this distress, a bold and dexterous invention
+assured at once the likeness of the image and the innocence of
+the worship.  A new super structure of fable was raised on the
+popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ
+and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly
+deserted by our modern advocates.  The bishop of Caesarea ^8
+records the epistle, ^9 but he most strangely forgets the picture
+of Christ; ^10 the perfect impression of his face on a linen,
+with which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had
+invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa
+to protect him against the malice of the Jews.  The ignorance of
+the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the
+image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of
+five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and
+seasonably presented to the devotion of the times.  Its first and
+most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the
+arms of Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge
+of the divine promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a
+foreign enemy. It is true, indeed, that the text of Procopius
+ascribes the double deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valor
+of her citizens, who purchased the absence and repelled the
+assaults of the Persian monarch.  He was ignorant, the profane
+historian, of the testimony which he is compelled to deliver in
+the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium was
+exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been
+sprinkled on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel
+to the flames of the besieged.  After this important service, the
+image of Edessa was preserved with respect and gratitude; and if
+the Armenians rejected the legend, the more credulous Greeks
+adored the similitude, which was not the work of any mortal
+pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine original. The
+style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far
+their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry.  "How can
+we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial
+splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold?  He who
+dwells in heaven, condescends this day to visit us by his
+venerable image; He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this
+day by a picture, which the Father has delineated with his
+immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and
+which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love." Before the
+end of the sixth century, these images, made without hands, (in
+Greek it is a single word, ^11) were propagated in the camps and
+cities of the Eastern empire: ^12 they were the objects of
+worship, and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of
+danger or tumult, their venerable presence could revive the hope,
+rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions.
+Of these pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a
+human pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and
+improper title: but there were some of higher descent, who
+derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with the
+original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and
+prolific virtue.  The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a
+fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the
+veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his
+agony and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to a
+holy matron.  The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to
+the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs.  In the church of
+Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God ^13
+were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have
+been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who
+was perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the
+occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the
+primitive Christians. The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of
+Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind
+with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly
+and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy
+of taste and genius. ^14
+
+[Footnote 7: After removing some rubbish of miracle and
+inconsistency, it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300,
+Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze statue,
+representing a grave personage wrapped in a cloak, with a
+grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an
+inscription was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal.  By the
+Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder
+and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb.
+vii. 18, Philostorg. vii. 3, &c.) M. de Beausobre more reasonably
+conjectures the philosopher Apollonius, or the emperor Vespasian:
+in the latter supposition, the female is a city, a province, or
+perhaps the queen Berenice, (Bibliotheque Germanique, tom. xiii.
+p. 1 - 92.)]
+
+[Footnote 8: Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 13.  The learned
+Assemannus has brought up the collateral aid of three Syrians,
+St. Ephrem, Josua Stylites, and James bishop of Sarug; but I do
+not find any notice of the Syriac original or the archives of
+Edessa, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 318, 420, 554;) their vague
+belief is probably derived from the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The evidence for these epistles is stated and
+rejected by the candid Lardner, (Heathen Testimonies, vol. i. p.
+297 - 309.) Among the herd of bigots who are forcibly driven from
+this convenient, but untenable, post, I am ashamed, with the
+Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts, &c., to discover Mr. Addison, an
+English gentleman, (his Works, vol. i. p. 528, Baskerville's
+edition;) but his superficial tract on the Christian religion
+owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested
+applause of our clergy.]
+
+[Footnote 10: From the silence of James of Sarug, (Asseman.
+Bibliot. Orient. p. 289, 318,) and the testimony of Evagrius,
+(Hist. Eccles. l. iv. c. 27,) I conclude that this fable was
+invented between the years 521 and 594, most probably after the
+siege of Edessa in 540, (Asseman. tom. i. p. 416. Procopius, de
+Bell. Persic. l. ii.) It is the sword and buckler of, Gregory
+II., (in Epist. i. ad. Leon. Isaur. Concil. tom. viii. p. 656,
+657,) of John Damascenus, (Opera, tom. i. p. 281, edit. Lequien,)
+and of the second Nicene Council, (Actio v. p. 1030.) The most
+perfect edition may be found in Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 175 -
+178.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: See Ducange, in Gloss. Graec. et Lat.  The subject
+is treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser,
+(Syntagma de Imaginibus non Manu factis, ad calcem Codini de
+Officiis, p. 289 - 330,) the ass, or rather the fox, of
+Ingoldstadt, (see the Scaligerana;) with equal reason and wit by
+the Protestant Beausobre, in the ironical controversy which he
+has spread through many volumes of the Bibliotheque Germanique,
+(tom. xviii. p. 1 - 50, xx. p. 27 - 68, xxv. p. 1 - 36, xxvii. p.
+85 - 118, xxviii. p. 1 - 33, xxxi. p. 111 - 148, xxxii. p. 75 -
+107, xxxiv. p. 67 - 96.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: Theophylact Simocatta (l. ii. c. 3, p. 34, l. iii.
+c. 1, p. 63) celebrates it; yet it was no more than a copy, since
+he adds (of Edessa). See Pagi, tom. ii. A.D. 588 No. 11.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See, in the genuine or supposed works of John
+Damascenus, two passages on the Virgin and St. Luke, which have
+not been noticed by Gretser, nor consequently by Beausobre,
+(Opera Joh. Damascen. tom. i. p. 618, 631.)]
+
+[Footnote 14: "Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the
+canvass: they are as bad as a group of statues!" It was thus that
+the ignorance and bigotry of a Greek priest applauded the
+pictures of Titian, which he had ordered, and refused to accept.]
+
+The worship of images had stolen into the church by
+insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the
+superstitious mind, as productive of comfort, and innocent of
+sin.  But in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full
+magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by
+an apprehension, that under the mask of Christianity, they had
+restored the religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief
+and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of
+the Jews and Mahometans, ^15 who derived from the Law and the
+Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative
+worship.  The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and
+depreciate their authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who
+reigned at Damascus, and threatened Constantinople, cast into the
+scale of reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory.
+The cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had been fortified with
+the images of Christ, his mother, and his saints; and each city
+presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous defence. In a rapid
+conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those cities and these
+images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts pronounced a
+decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these
+mute and inanimate idols. ^* For a while Edessa had braved the
+Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was
+involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became
+the slave and trophy of the infidels.  After a servitude of three
+hundred years, the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of
+Constantinople, for a ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver,
+the redemption of two hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce
+for the territory of Edessa. ^16 In this season of distress and
+dismay, the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence
+of images; and they attempted to prove, that the sin and schism
+of the greatest part of the Orientals had forfeited the favor,
+and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols.  But they
+were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational
+Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and
+of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of
+the church.  As the worship of images had never been established
+by any general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern
+empire had been retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of
+men and manners, the local degrees of refinement, and the
+personal characters of the bishops.  The splendid devotion was
+fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the inventive
+genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and remote
+districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred
+luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians
+maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship which had
+preceded their separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike
+subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to
+the sight of images. ^17 These various denominations of men
+afforded a fund of prejudice and aversion, of small account in
+the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune of
+a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with
+the powers of the church and state.
+
+[Footnote 15: By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the
+origin of the Aconoclcasts is imprinted to the caliph Yezid and
+two Jews, who promised the empire to Leo; and the reproaches of
+these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for
+restoring the purity of the Christian worship, (see Spanheim,
+Hist. Imag. c. 2.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Yezid, ninth caliph of the race of the Ommiadae,
+caused all the images in Syria to be destroyed about the year
+719; hence the orthodox reproaches the sectaries with following
+the example of the Saracens and the Jews Fragm. Mon. Johan.
+Jerosylym.  Script. Byzant. vol. xvi. p. 235. Hist. des Repub.
+Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i. p. 126. - G.]
+
+[Footnote 16: See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,)
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.
+264,), and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The
+prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of
+Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is
+inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no longer
+famous or fashionable.]
+
+[Footnote 17: (Nicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are
+still content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p.
+148;) but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the
+superstition of the Germans of the xiith century.]
+
+Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo
+the Third, ^18 who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the
+throne of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane
+letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse
+with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a
+hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to
+impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience.  But
+in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and
+danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before
+the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
+the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal.  In the
+reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and
+cautious: he assembled a great council of senators and bishops,
+and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should be
+removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the
+churches where they might be visible to the eyes, and
+inaccessible to the superstition, of the people.  But it was
+impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse
+impulse of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position,
+the sacred images still edified their votaries, and reproached
+the tyrant.  He was himself provoked by resistance and invective;
+and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his
+duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king,
+who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple.
+By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as well as the use
+of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople and the
+provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
+Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of
+plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice.  The sect of
+the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six
+emperors, and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict
+of one hundred and twenty years.  It was the design of Leo the
+Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images as an article of
+faith, and by the authority of a general council: but the
+convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son
+Constantine; ^19 and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
+bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
+mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The
+debates and decrees of many provincial synods introduced the
+summons of the general council which met in the suburbs of
+Constantinople, and was composed of the respectable number of
+three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia;
+for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of
+the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of
+Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
+Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh
+general council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six
+preceding assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure
+of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six
+months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and
+subscribed a unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of
+Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or
+heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of Christianity
+and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry
+should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to
+deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
+disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.
+In their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits
+of their temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they
+intrusted the execution of their spiritual censures.  At
+Constantinople, as in the former councils, the will of the prince
+was the rule of episcopal faith; but on this occasion, I am
+inclined to suspect that a large majority of the prelates
+sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of hope and
+fear.  In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
+wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it
+easy for them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of
+the labyrinth.  The worship of images was inseparably blended, at
+least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints
+and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a cloud of
+miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and
+scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief.
+Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to
+doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics, ^20 but
+they were deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his
+bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a secret
+horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
+to the honor of his celestial patrons.  In the reformation of the
+sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the
+faculties of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the
+reverence of antiquity; and the vigor of Europe could disdain
+those phantoms which terrified the sickly and servile weakness of
+the Greeks.
+
+[Footnote 18: Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the
+Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom.
+viii. and ix. Collect. Labbe, edit. Venet. and the historical
+writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonoras,
+&c.  Of the modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander,
+(Hist. Eccles. Seculum viii. and ix.,) and Maimbourg, (Hist. des
+Iconoclasts,) have treated the subject with learning, passion,
+and credulity.  The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim
+(Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des
+Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339 - 1385) are cast
+into the Iconoclast scale.  With this mutual aid, and opposite
+tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic
+indifference.
+
+Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender
+Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of research and
+impartiality - M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Some flowers of rhetoric.  By Damascenus is styled
+(Opera, tom. i. p. 623.) Spanheim's Apology for the Synod of
+Constantinople (p. 171, &c.) is worked up with truth and
+ingenuity, from such materials as he could find in the Nicene
+Acts, (p. 1046, &c.) The witty John of Damascus converts it into
+slaves of their belly, &c.  Opera, tom. i. p. 806]
+
+[Footnote 20: He is accused of proscribing the title of saint;
+styling the Virgin, Mother of Christ; comparing her after her
+delivery to an empty purse of Arianism, Nestorianism, &c.  In his
+defence, Spanheim (c. iv. p. 207) is somewhat embarrassed between
+the interest of a Protestant and the duty of an orthodox divine.]
+
+The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to
+the people by the blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the
+most ignorant can perceive, the most torpid must feel, the
+profanation and downfall of their visible deities.  The first
+hostilities of Leo were directed against a lofty Christ on the
+vestibule, and above the gate, of the palace.  A ladder had been
+planted for the assault, but it was furiously shaken by a crowd
+of zealots and women: they beheld, with pious transport, the
+ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed against
+the pavement: and the honors of the ancient martyrs were
+prostituted to these criminals, who justly suffered for murder
+and rebellion. ^21 The execution of the Imperial edicts was
+resisted by frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces:
+the person of Leo was endangered, his officers were massacred,
+and the popular enthusiasm was quelled by the strongest efforts
+of the civil and military power.  Of the Archipelago, or Holy
+Sea, the numerous islands were filled with images and monks:
+their votaries abjured, without scruple, the enemy of Christ, his
+mother, and the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and galleys,
+displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the
+harbor of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite
+of God and the people.  They depended on the succor of a miracle:
+but their miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and,
+after the defeat and conflagration of the fleet, the naked
+islands were abandoned to the clemency or justice of the
+conqueror.  The son of Leo, in the first year of his reign, had
+undertaken an expedition against the Saracens: during his
+absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple, were occupied
+by his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox
+faith. The worship of images was triumphantly restored: the
+patriarch renounced his dissimulation, or dissembled his
+sentiments and the righteous claims of the usurper was
+acknowledged, both in the new, and in ancient, Rome. Constantine
+flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended at
+the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final
+victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics.  His
+long reign was distracted with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and
+mutual hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images
+was the motive or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they
+missed a temporal diadem, they were rewarded by the Greeks with
+the crown of martyrdom.  In every act of open and clandestine
+treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving enmity of the monks,
+the faithful slaves of the superstition to which they owed their
+riches and influence.  They prayed, they preached, they absolved,
+they inflamed, they conspired; the solitude of Palestine poured
+forth a torrent of invective; and the pen of St. John Damascenus,
+^22 the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant's head,
+both in this world and the next. ^23 ^* I am not at leisure to
+examine how far the monks provoked, nor how much they have
+exaggerated, their real and pretended sufferings, nor how many
+lost their lives or limbs, their eyes or their beards, by the
+cruelty of the emperor. ^! From the chastisement of individuals,
+he proceeded to the abolition of the order; and, as it was
+wealthy and useless, his resentment might be stimulated by
+avarice, and justified by patriotism. The formidable name and
+mission of the Dragon, ^24 his visitor-general, excited the
+terror and abhorrence of the black nation: the religious
+communities were dissolved, the buildings were converted into
+magazines, or bar racks; the lands, movables, and cattle were
+confiscated; and our modern precedents will support the charge,
+that much wanton or malicious havoc was exercised against the
+relics, and even the books of the monasteries.  With the habit
+and profession of monks, the public and private worship of images
+was rigorously proscribed; and it should seem, that a solemn
+abjuration of idolatry was exacted from the subjects, or at least
+from the clergy, of the Eastern empire. ^25
+
+[Footnote 21: The holy confessor Theophanes approves the
+principle of their rebellion, (p. 339.) Gregory II. (in Epist. i.
+ad Imp. Leon. Concil. tom. viii. p. 661, 664) applauds the zeal
+of the Byzantine women who killed the Imperial officers.]
+
+[Footnote 22: John, or Mansur, was a noble Christian of Damascus,
+who held a considerable office in the service of the caliph.  His
+zeal in the cause of images exposed him to the resentment and
+treachery of the Greek emperor; and on the suspicion of a
+treasonable correspondence, he was deprived of his right hand,
+which was miraculously restored by the Virgin.  After this
+deliverance, he resigned his office, distributed his wealth, and
+buried himself in the monastery of St. Sabas, between Jerusalem
+and the Dead Sea. The legend is famous; but his learned editor,
+Father Lequien, has a unluckily proved that St. John Damascenus
+was already a monk before the Iconoclast dispute, (Opera, tom. i.
+Vit. St. Joan. Damascen. p. 10 - 13, et Notas ad loc.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: After sending Leo to the devil, he introduces his
+heir, (Opera, Damascen. tom. i. p. 625.) If the authenticity of
+this piece be suspicious, we are sure that in other works, no
+longer extant, Damascenus bestowed on Constantine the titles.
+(tom. i. p. 306.)]
+
+[Footnote *: The patriarch Anastasius, an Iconoclast under Leo,
+an image worshipper under Artavasdes, was scourged, led through
+the streets on an ass, with his face to the tail; and, reinvested
+in his dignity, became again the obsequious minister of
+Constantine in his Iconoclastic persecutions.  See Schlosser p.
+211. - M.]
+
+[Footnote !: Compare Schlosser, p. 228 - 234. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 24: In the narrative of this persecution from
+Theophanes and Cedreves, Spanheim (p. 235 - 238) is happy to
+compare the Draco of Leo with the dragoons (Dracones) of Louis
+XIV.; and highly solaces himself with the controversial pun.]
+
+[Footnote 25: (Damascen.  Op. tom. i. p. 625.) This oath and
+subscription I do not remember to have seen in any modern
+compilation]
+
+The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred
+images; they were fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by
+the independent zeal of the Italians.  In ecclesiastical rank and
+jurisdiction, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope of
+Rome were nearly equal.  But the Greek prelate was a domestic
+slave under the eye of his master, at whose nod he alternately
+passed from the convent to the throne, and from the throne to the
+convent.  A distant and dangerous station, amidst the Barbarians
+of the West, excited the spirit and freedom of the Latin bishops.
+
+Their popular election endeared them to the Romans: the public
+and private indigence was relieved by their ample revenue; and
+the weakness or neglect of the emperors compelled them to
+consult, both in peace and war, the temporal safety of the city.
+In the school of adversity the priest insensibly imbibed the
+virtues and the ambition of a prince; the same character was
+assumed, the same policy was adopted, by the Italian, the Greek,
+or the Syrian, who ascended the chair of St. Peter; and, after
+the loss of her legions and provinces, the genius and fortune of
+the popes again restored the supremacy of Rome.  It is agreed,
+that in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on
+rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced, and justified, by
+the heresy of the Iconoclasts; but the conduct of the second and
+third Gregory, in this memorable contest, is variously
+interpreted by the wishes of their friends and enemies.  The
+Byzantine writers unanimously declare, that, after a fruitless
+admonition, they pronounced the separation of the East and West,
+and deprived the sacrilegious tyrant of the revenue and
+sovereignty of Italy.  Their excommunication is still more
+clearly expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of
+the papal triumphs; and as they are more strongly attached to
+their religion than to their country, they praise, instead of
+blaming, the zeal and orthodoxy of these apostolical men. ^26 The
+modern champions of Rome are eager to accept the praise and the
+precedent: this great and glorious example of the deposition of
+royal heretics is celebrated by the cardinals Baronius and
+Bellarmine; ^27 and if they are asked, why the same thunders were
+not hurled against the Neros and Julians of antiquity, they
+reply, that the weakness of the primitive church was the sole
+cause of her patient loyalty. ^28 On this occasion the effects of
+love and hatred are the same; and the zealous Protestants, who
+seek to kindle the indignation, and to alarm the fears, of
+princes and magistrates, expatiate on the insolence and treason
+of the two Gregories against their lawful sovereign. ^29 They are
+defended only by the moderate Catholics, for the most part, of
+the Gallican church, ^30 who respect the saint, without approving
+the sin.  These common advocates of the crown and the mitre
+circumscribe the truth of facts by the rule of equity, Scripture,
+and tradition, and appeal to the evidence of the Latins, ^31 and
+the lives ^32 and epistles of the popes themselves.
+
+[Footnote 26: Theophanes. (Chronograph. p. 343.) For this Gregory
+is styled by Cedrenus . (p. 450.) Zonaras specifies the thunder,
+(tom. ii. l. xv. p. 104, 105.) It may be observed, that the
+Greeks are apt to confound the times and actions of two
+Gregories.]
+
+[Footnote 27: See Baronius, Annal.  Eccles. A.D. 730, No. 4, 5;
+dignum exemplum!  Bellarmin. de Romano Pontifice, l. v. c. 8:
+mulctavit eum parte imperii.  Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iii.
+Opera, tom. ii. p. 169.  Yet such is the change of Italy, that
+Sigonius is corrected by the editor of Milan, Philipus Argelatus,
+a Bolognese, and subject of the pope.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Quod si Christiani olim non deposuerunt Neronem aut
+Julianum, id fuit quia deerant vires temporales Christianis,
+(honest Bellarmine, de Rom. Pont. l. v. c. 7.) Cardinal Perron
+adds a distinction more honorable to the first Christians, but
+not more satisfactory to modern princes - the treason of heretics
+and apostates, who break their oath, belie their coin, and
+renounce their allegiance to Christ and his vicar, (Perroniana,
+p. 89.)]
+
+[Footnote 29: Take, as a specimen, the cautious Basnage (Hist.
+d'Eglise, p. 1350, 1351) and the vehement Spanheim, (Hist.
+Imaginum,) who, with a hundred more, tread in the footsteps of
+the centuriators of Magdeburgh.]
+
+[Footnote 30: See Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. epist. vii. 7,
+p. 456 - 474,) Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Nov. Testamenti, secul.
+viii. dissert. i. p. 92 - 98,) Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 215,
+216,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile Napoli, tom. i. p. 317 -
+320,) a disciple of the Gallican school In the field of
+controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the
+open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.]
+
+[Footnote 31: They appeal to Paul Warnefrid, or Diaconus, (de
+Gestis Langobard. l. vi. c. 49, p. 506, 507, in Script. Ital.
+Muratori, tom. i. pars i.,) and the nominal Anastasius, (de Vit.
+Pont. in Muratori, tom. iii. pars i. Gregorius II. p. 154.
+Gregorius III. p. 158.  Zacharias, p. 161. Stephanus III. p. 165.
+
+Paulus, p. 172.  Stephanus IV. p. 174.  Hadrianus, p. 179.  Leo
+III. p. 195.) Yet I may remark, that the true Anastasius (Hist.
+Eccles. p. 134, edit. Reg.) and the Historia Miscella, (l. xxi.
+p. 151, in tom. i. Script.  Ital.,) both of the ixth century,
+translate and approve the Greek text of Theophanes.]
+
+[Footnote 32: With some minute difference, the most learned
+critics, Lucas Holstenius, Schelestrate, Ciampini, Bianchini,
+Muratori, (Prolegomena ad tom. iii. pars i.,) are agreed that the
+Liber Pontificalis was composed and continued by the apostolic
+librarians and notaries of the viiith and ixth centuries; and
+that the last and smallest part is the work of Anastasius, whose
+name it bears.  The style is barbarous, the narrative partial,
+the details are trifling - yet it must be read as a curious and
+authentic record of the times.  The epistles of the popes are
+dispersed in the volumes of Councils.]
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
+
+Part II.
+
+Two original epistles, from Gregory the Second to the
+emperor Leo, are still extant; ^33 and if they cannot be praised
+as the most perfect models of eloquence and logic, they exhibit
+the portrait, or at least the mask, of the founder of the papal
+monarchy.  "During ten pure and fortunate years," says Gregory to
+the emperor, "we have tasted the annual comfort of your royal
+letters, subscribed in purple ink, with your own hand, the sacred
+pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our fathers.
+How deplorable is the change!  how tremendous the scandal!  You
+now accuse the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the accusation, you
+betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are
+compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments: the
+first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion;
+and were you to enter a grammar-school, and avow yourself the
+enemy of our worship, the simple and pious children would be
+provoked to cast their horn-books at your head." After this
+decent salutation, the pope attempts the usual distinction
+between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images. The
+former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or daemons,
+at a time when the true God had not manifested his person in any
+visible likeness.  The latter are the genuine forms of Christ,
+his mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of
+miracles, the innocence and merit of this relative worship.  He
+must indeed have trusted to the ignorance of Leo, since he could
+assert the perpetual use of images, from the apostolic age, and
+their venerable presence in the six synods of the Catholic
+church.  A more specious argument is drawn from present
+possession and recent practice the harmony of the Christian world
+supersedes the demand of a general council; and Gregory frankly
+confesses, than such assemblies can only be useful under the
+reign of an orthodox prince.  To the impudent and inhuman Leo,
+more guilty than a heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and
+implicit obedience to his spiritual guides of Constantinople and
+Rome.  The limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers are defined
+by the pontiff.  To the former he appropriates the body; to the
+latter, the soul: the sword of justice is in the hands of the
+magistrate: the more formidable weapon of excommunication is
+intrusted to the clergy; and in the exercise of their divine
+commission a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the
+successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the
+earth.  "You assault us, O tyrant!  with a carnal and military
+hand: unarmed and naked we can only implore the Christ, the
+prince of the heavenly host, that he will send unto you a devil,
+for the destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul.
+You declare, with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to
+Rome: I will break in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory,
+like his predecessor Martin, shall be transported in chains, and
+in exile, to the foot of the Imperial throne.  Would to God that
+I might be permitted to tread in the footsteps of the holy
+Martin!  but may the fate of Constans serve as a warning to the
+persecutors of the church!  After his just condemnation by the
+bishops of Sicily, the tyrant was cut off, in the fullness of his
+sins, by a domestic servant: the saint is still adored by the
+nations of Scythia, among whom he ended his banishment and his
+life. But it is our duty to live for the edification and support
+of the faithful people; nor are we reduced to risk our safety on
+the event of a combat. Incapable as you are of defending your
+Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps
+expose it to your depredation but we can remove to the distance
+of four-and-twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards,
+and then - you may pursue the winds.  Are you ignorant that the
+popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the
+East and West?  The eyes of the nations are fixed on our
+humility; and they revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle St.
+Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. ^35 The remote and
+interior kingdoms of the West present their homage to Christ and
+his vicegerent; and we now prepare to visit one of their most
+powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from our hands the
+sacrament of baptism. ^36 The Barbarians have submitted to the
+yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the
+shepherd. These pious Barbarians are kindled into rage: they
+thirst to avenge the persecution of the East.  Abandon your rash
+and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent.  If you
+persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the
+contest; may it fall on your own head!"
+
+[Footnote 33: The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved
+in the Acta of the Nicene Council, (tom. viii. p. 651 - 674.)
+They are without a date, which is variously fixed, by Baronius in
+the year 726, by Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 120) in
+729, and by Pagi in 730.  Such is the force of prejudice, that
+some papists have praised the good sense and moderation of these
+letters.]
+
+[Footnote 34: (Epist. i. p. 664.) This proximity of the Lombards
+is hard of digestion.  Camillo Pellegrini (Dissert. iv. de Ducatu
+Beneventi, in the Script. Ital. tom. v. p. 172, 173) forcibly
+reckons the xxivth stadia, not from Rome, but from the limits of
+the Roman duchy, to the first fortress, perhaps Sora, of the
+Lombards.  I rather believe that Gregory, with the pedantry of
+the age, employs stadia for miles, without much inquiry into the
+genuine measure.]
+
+[Footnote 35: {Greek}]
+
+[Footnote 36: (p. 665.) The pope appears to have imposed on the
+ignorance of the Greeks: he lived and died in the Lateran; and in
+his time all the kingdoms of the West had embraced Christianity.
+May not this unknown Septetus have some reference to the chief of
+the Saxon Heptarchy, to Ina king of Wessex, who, in the
+pontificate of Gregory the Second, visited Rome for the purpose,
+not of baptism, but of pilgrimage!  Pagi. A., 89, No. 2. A.D.
+726, No. 15.)]
+
+The first assault of Leo against the images of
+Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from
+Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the
+sacrilege of the emperor.  But on the reception of his
+proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic deities: the
+images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and
+saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong
+alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as
+the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty
+of his disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to
+hesitate; and the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the
+emperor displays his confidence in the truth of his doctrine or
+the powers of resistance.  Without depending on prayers or
+miracles, he boldly armed against the public enemy, and his
+pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and
+their duty. ^37 At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities
+of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of
+religion; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the
+most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal
+was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore
+to live and die in the defence of the pope and the holy images;
+the Roman people was devoted to their father, and even the
+Lombards were ambitious to share the merit and advantage of this
+holy war.  The most treasonable act, but the most obvious
+revenge, was the destruction of the statues of Leo himself: the
+most effectual and pleasing measure of rebellion, was the
+withholding the tribute of Italy, and depriving him of a power
+which he had recently abused by the imposition of a new
+capitation. ^38 A form of administration was preserved by the
+election of magistrates and governors; and so high was the public
+indignation, that the Italians were prepared to create an
+orthodox emperor, and to conduct him with a fleet and army to the
+palace of Constantinople.  In that palace, the Roman bishops, the
+second and third Gregory, were condemned as the authors of the
+revolt, and every attempt was made, either by fraud or force, to
+seize their persons, and to strike at their lives.  The city was
+repeatedly visited or assaulted by captains of the guards, and
+dukes and exarchs of high dignity or secret trust; they landed
+with foreign troops, they obtained some domestic aid, and the
+superstition of Naples may blush that her fathers were attached
+to the cause of heresy.  But these clandestine or open attacks
+were repelled by the courage and vigilance of the Romans; the
+Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an
+ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy,
+refused to intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna, ^39
+the several quarters of the city had long exercised a bloody and
+hereditary feud; in religious controversy they found a new
+aliment of faction: but the votaries of images were superior in
+numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted to stem the
+torrent, lost his life in a popular sedition.  To punish this
+flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor
+sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic Gulf.  After suffering
+from the winds and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made
+their descent in the neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to
+depopulate the guilty capital, and to imitate, perhaps to
+surpass, the example of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a
+former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the
+principal inhabitants.  The women and clergy, in sackcloth and
+ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms for the
+defence of their country; the common danger had united the
+factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow
+miseries of a siege.  In a hard-fought day, as the two armies
+alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was
+heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory.
+The strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous
+sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po
+were so deeply infected with blood, that during six years the
+public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the
+institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images,
+and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant.  Amidst the triumph of
+the Catholic arms, the Roman pontiff convened a synod of
+ninety-three bishops against the heresy of the Iconoclasts.  With
+their consent, he pronounced a general excommunication against
+all who by word or deed should attack the tradition of the
+fathers and the images of the saints: in this sentence the
+emperor was tacitly involved, ^40 but the vote of a last and
+hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet
+suspended over his guilty head.  No sooner had they confirmed
+their own safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome
+and Italy, than the popes appear to have relaxed of their
+severity, and to have spared the relics of the Byzantine
+dominion.  Their moderate councils delayed and prevented the
+election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not to
+separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch was
+permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather
+than a master; and till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne,
+the government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the
+successors of Constantine. ^41
+
+[Footnote 37: I shall transcribe the important and decisive
+passage of the Liber Pontificalis.  Respiciens ergo pius vir
+profanam principis jussionem, jam contra Imperatorem quasi contra
+hostem se armavit, renuens haeresim ejus, scribens ubique se
+cavere Christianos, eo quod orta fuisset impietas talis. Igitur
+permoti omnes Pentapolenses, atque Venetiarum exercitus contra
+Imperatoris jussionem restiterunt; dicentes se nunquam in ejusdem
+pontificis condescendere necem, sed pro ejus magis defensione
+viriliter decertare, (p. 156.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: A census, or capitation, says Anastasius, (p. 156;)
+a most cruel tax, unknown to the Saracens themselves, exclaims
+the zealous Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclastes, l. i.,) and
+Theophanes, (p. 344,) who talks of Pharaoh's numbering the male
+children of Israel.  This mode of taxation was familiar to the
+Saracens; and, most unluckily for the historians, it was imposed
+a few years afterwards in France by his patron Louis XIV.]
+
+[Footnote 39: See the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus, (in the
+Scriptores Rerum Italicarum of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i.,) whose
+deeper shade of barbarism marks the difference between Rome and
+Ravenna.  Yet we are indebted to him for some curious and
+domestic facts - the quarters and factions of Ravenna, (p. 154,)
+the revenge of Justinian II, (p. 160, 161,) the defeat of the
+Greeks, (p. 170, 171,) &c.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Yet Leo was undoubtedly comprised in the si quis
+.... imaginum sacrarum .... destructor .... extiterit, sit
+extorris a cor pore D. N. Jesu Christi vel totius ecclesiae
+unitate.  The canonists may decide whether the guilt or the name
+constitutes the excommunication; and the decision is of the last
+importance to their safety, since, according to the oracle
+(Gratian, Caus. xxiii. q. 5, 47, apud Spanheim, Hist. Imag. p.
+112) homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos trucidant.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Compescuit tale consilium Pontifex, sperans
+conversionem principis, (Anastas. p. 156.) Sed ne desisterent ab
+amore et fide R. J. admonebat, (p. 157.) The popes style Leo and
+Constantine Copronymus, Imperatores et Domini, with the strange
+epithet of Piissimi.  A famous Mosaic of the Lateran (A.D. 798)
+represents Christ, who delivers the keys to St. Peter and the
+banner to Constantine V. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p.
+337.)]
+
+The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms
+and arts of Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty
+years of servitude, from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian.  By
+the Caesars, the triumphs of the consuls had been annihilated: in
+the decline and fall of the empire, the god Terminus, the sacred
+boundary, had insensibly receded from the ocean, the Rhine, the
+Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to her ancient
+territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth
+of the Tyber. ^42 When the kings were banished, the republic
+reposed on the firm basis which had been founded by their wisdom
+and virtue.  Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between two
+annual magistrates: the senate continued to exercise the powers
+of administration and counsel; and the legislative authority was
+distributed in the assemblies of the people, by a
+well-proportioned scale of property and service.  Ignorant of the
+arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of
+government and war: the will of the community was absolute: the
+rights of individuals were sacred: one hundred and thirty
+thousand citizens were armed for defence or conquest; and a band
+of robbers and outlaws was moulded into a nation deserving of
+freedom and ambitious of glory. ^43 When the sovereignty of the
+Greek emperors was extinguished, the ruins of Rome presented the
+sad image of depopulation and decay: her slavery was a habit, her
+liberty an accident; the effect of superstition, and the object
+of her own amazement and terror.  The last vestige of the
+substance, or even the forms, of the constitution, was
+obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans; and they
+were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to build the fabric of
+a commonwealth.  Their scanty remnant, the offspring of slaves
+and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious
+Barbarians. As often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their
+most bitter contempt of a foe, they called him a Roman; "and in
+this name," says the bishop Liutprand, "we include whatever is
+base, whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the extremes
+of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can prostitute the
+dignity of human nature." ^44 ^* By the necessity of their
+situation, the inhabitants of Rome were cast into the rough model
+of a republican government: they were compelled to elect some
+judges in peace, and some leaders in war: the nobles assembled to
+deliberate, and their resolves could not be executed without the
+union and consent of the multitude.  The style of the Roman
+senate and people was revived, ^45 but the spirit was fled; and
+their new independence was disgraced by the tumultuous conflict
+of vicentiousness and oppression.  The want of laws could only be
+supplied by the influence of religion, and their foreign and
+domestic counsels were moderated by the authority of the bishop.
+His alms, his sermons, his correspondence with the kings and
+prelates of the West, his recent services, their gratitude, and
+oath, accustomed the Romans to consider him as the first
+magistrate or prince of the city.  The Christian humility of the
+popes was not offended by the name of Dominus, or Lord; and their
+face and inscription are still apparent on the most ancient
+coins. ^46 Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by the
+reverence of a thousand years; and their noblest title is the
+free choice of a people, whom they had redeemed from slavery.
+
+[Footnote 42: I have traced the Roman duchy according to the
+maps, and the maps according to the excellent dissertation of
+father Beretti, (de Chorographia Italiae Medii Aevi, sect. xx. p.
+216-232.) Yet I must nicely observe, that Viterbo is of Lombard
+foundation, (p. 211,) and that Terracina was usurped by the
+Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 43: On the extent, population, &c., of the Roman
+kingdom, the reader may peruse, with pleasure, the Discours
+Preliminaire to the Republique Romaine of M. de Beaufort, (tom.
+i.,) who will not be accused of too much credulity for the early
+ages of Rome.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Quos (Romanos) nos, Longobardi scilicet, Saxones,
+Franci, Locharingi, Bajoarii, Suevi, Burgundiones, tanto
+dedignamur ut inimicos nostros commoti, nil aliud contumeliarum
+nisi Romane, dicamus: hoc solo, id est Romanorum nomine, quicquid
+ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis, quicquid avaritiae, quicquid
+luxuriae, quicquid mendacii, immo quicquid vitiorum est
+comprehendentes, (Liutprand, in Legat Script. Ital. tom. ii. para
+i. p. 481.) For the sins of Cato or Tully Minos might have
+imposed as a fit penance the daily perusal of this barbarous
+passage.]
+
+[Footnote *: Yet this contumelious sentence, quoted by Robertson
+(Charles V note 2) as well as Gibbon, was applied by the angry
+bishop to the Byzantine Romans, whom, indeed, he admits to be the
+genuine descendants of Romulus. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Pipino regi Francorum, omnis senatus, atque
+universa populi generalitas a Deo servatae Romanae urbis. Codex
+Carolin. epist. 36, in Script. Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 160.
+The names of senatus and senator were never totally extinct,
+(Dissert. Chorograph. p. 216, 217;) but in the middle ages they
+signified little more than nobiles, optimates, &c., (Ducange,
+Gloss. Latin.)]
+
+[Footnote 46: See Muratori, Antiquit. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom.
+ii. Dissertat xxvii. p. 548.  On one of these coins we read
+Hadrianus Papa (A.D. 772;) on the reverse, Vict. Ddnn. with the
+word Conob, which the Pere Joubert (Science des Medailles, tom.
+ii. p. 42) explains by Constantinopoli Officina B (secunda.)]
+
+In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis
+enjoyed a perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and
+in the exercise of the Olympic games. ^47 Happy would it have
+been for the Romans, if a similar privilege had guarded the
+patrimony of St. Peter from the calamities of war; if the
+Christians, who visited the holy threshold, would have sheathed
+their swords in the presence of the apostle and his successor.
+But this mystic circle could have been traced only by the wand of
+a legislator and a sage: this pacific system was incompatible
+with the zeal and ambition of the popes the Romans were not
+addicted, like the inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent and
+placid labors of agriculture; and the Barbarians of Italy, though
+softened by the climate, were far below the Grecian states in the
+institutions of public and private life.  A memorable example of
+repentance and piety was exhibited by Liutprand, king of the
+Lombards.  In arms, at the gate of the Vatican, the conqueror
+listened to the voice of Gregory the Second, ^48 withdrew his
+troops, resigned his conquests, respectfully visited the church
+of St. Peter, and after performing his devotions, offered his
+sword and dagger, his cuirass and mantle, his silver cross, and
+his crown of gold, on the tomb of the apostle.  But this
+religious fervor was the illusion, perhaps the artifice, of the
+moment; the sense of interest is strong and lasting; the love of
+arms and rapine was congenial to the Lombards; and both the
+prince and people were irresistibly tempted by the disorders of
+Italy, the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike profession of her
+new chief.  On the first edicts of the emperor, they declared
+themselves the champions of the holy images: Liutprand invaded
+the province of Romagna, which had already assumed that
+distinctive appellation; the Catholics of the Exarchate yielded
+without reluctance to his civil and military power; and a foreign
+enemy was introduced for the first time into the impregnable
+fortress of Ravenna.  That city and fortress were speedily
+recovered by the active diligence and maritime forces of the
+Venetians; and those faithful subjects obeyed the exhortation of
+Gregory himself, in separating the personal guilt of Leo from the
+general cause of the Roman empire. ^49 The Greeks were less
+mindful of the service, than the Lombards of the injury: the two
+nations, hostile in their faith, were reconciled in a dangerous
+and unnatural alliance: the king and the exarch marched to the
+conquest of Spoleto and Rome: the storm evaporated without
+effect, but the policy of Liutprand alarmed Italy with a
+vexatious alternative of hostility and truce.  His successor
+Astolphus declared himself the equal enemy of the emperor and the
+pope: Ravenna was subdued by force or treachery, ^50 and this
+final conquest extinguished the series of the exarchs, who had
+reigned with a subordinate power since the time of Justinian and
+the ruin of the Gothic kingdom.  Rome was summoned to acknowledge
+the victorious Lombard as her lawful sovereign; the annual
+tribute of a piece of gold was fixed as the ransom of each
+citizen, and the sword of destruction was unsheathed to exact the
+penalty of her disobedience.  The Romans hesitated; they
+entreated; they complained; and the threatening Barbarians were
+checked by arms and negotiations, till the popes had engaged the
+friendship of an ally and avenger beyond the Alps. ^51
+
+[Footnote 47: See West's Dissertation on the Olympic Games,
+(Pindar. vol. ii. p. 32-36, edition in 12mo.,) and the judicious
+reflections of Polybius (tom. i. l. iv. p. 466, edit Gronov.)]
+
+[Footnote 48: The speech of Gregory to the Lombard is finely
+composed by Sigonius, (de Regno Italiae, l. iii. Opera, tom. ii.
+p. 173,) who imitates the license and the spirit of Sallust or
+Livy.]
+
+[Footnote 49: The Venetian historians, John Sagorninus, (Chron.
+Venet. p. 13,) and the doge Andrew Dandolo, (Scriptores Rer.
+Ital. tom. xii. p. 135,) have preserved this epistle of Gregory.
+The loss and recovery of Ravenna are mentioned by Paulus
+Diaconus, (de Gest. Langobard, l. vi. c. 42, 54, in Script. Ital.
+tom. i. pars i. p. 506, 508;) but our chronologists, Pagi,
+Muratori, &c., cannot ascertain the date or circumstances]
+
+[Footnote 50: The option will depend on the various readings of
+the Mss. of Anastasius - deceperat, or decerpserat, (Script.
+Ital. tom. iii. pars i. p. 167.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: The Codex Carolinus is a collection of the epistles
+of the popes to Charles Martel, (whom they style Subregulus,)
+Pepin, and Charlemagne, as far as the year 791, when it was
+formed by the last of these princes.  His original and authentic
+Ms. (Bibliothecae Cubicularis) is now in the Imperial library of
+Vienna, and has been published by Lambecius and Muratori,
+(Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 75, &c.)]
+
+In his distress, the first ^* Gregory had implored the aid
+of the hero of the age, of Charles Martel, who governed the
+French monarchy with the humble title of mayor or duke; and who,
+by his signal victory over the Saracens, had saved his country,
+and perhaps Europe, from the Mahometan yoke.  The ambassadors of
+the pope were received by Charles with decent reverence; but the
+greatness of his occupations, and the shortness of his life,
+prevented his interference in the affairs of Italy, except by a
+friendly and ineffectual mediation.  His son Pepin, the heir of
+his power and virtues, assumed the office of champion of the
+Roman church; and the zeal of the French prince appears to have
+been prompted by the love of glory and religion.  But the danger
+was on the banks of the Tyber, the succor on those of the Seine,
+and our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
+Amidst the tears of the city, Stephen the Third embraced the
+generous resolution of visiting in person the courts of Lombardy
+and France, to deprecate the injustice of his enemy, or to excite
+the pity and indignation of his friend.  After soothing the
+public despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this
+laborious journey with the ambassadors of the French monarch and
+the Greek emperor.  The king of the Lombards was inexorable; but
+his threats could not silence the complaints, nor retard the
+speed of the Roman pontiff, who traversed the Pennine Alps,
+reposed in the abbey of St. Maurice, and hastened to grasp the
+right hand of his protector; a hand which was never lifted in
+vain, either in war or friendship.  Stephen was entertained as
+the visible successor of the apostle; at the next assembly, the
+field of March or of May, his injuries were exposed to a devout
+and warlike nation, and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant,
+but as a conqueror, at the head of a French army, which was led
+by the king in person.  The Lombards, after a weak resistance,
+obtained an ignominious peace, and swore to restore the
+possessions, and to respect the sanctity, of the Roman church.
+But no sooner was Astolphus delivered from the presence of the
+French arms, than he forgot his promise and resented his
+disgrace.  Rome was again encompassed by his arms; and Stephen,
+apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his Transalpine allies
+enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the
+name and person of St. Peter himself. ^52 The apostle assures his
+adopted sons, the king, the clergy, and the nobles of France,
+that, dead in the flesh, he is still alive in the spirit; that
+they now hear, and must obey, the voice of the founder and
+guardian of the Roman church; that the Virgin, the angels, the
+saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven, unanimously
+urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches,
+victory, and paradise, will crown their pious enterprise, and
+that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if
+they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people, to fall into
+the hands of the perfidious Lombards.  The second expedition of
+Pepin was not less rapid and fortunate than the first: St. Peter
+was satisfied, Rome was again saved, and Astolphus was taught the
+lessons of justice and sincerity by the scourge of a foreign
+master.  After this double chastisement, the Lombards languished
+about twenty years in a state of languor and decay.  But their
+minds were not yet humbled to their condition; and instead of
+affecting the pacific virtues of the feeble, they peevishly
+harassed the Romans with a repetition of claims, evasions, and
+inroads, which they undertook without reflection, and terminated
+without glory.  On either side, their expiring monarchy was
+pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian the First, the
+genius, the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne, the son of
+Pepin; these heroes of the church and state were united in public
+and domestic friendship, and while they trampled on the
+prostrate, they varnished their proceedings with the fairest
+colors of equity and moderation. ^53 The passes of the Alps, and
+the walls of Pavia, were the only defence of the Lombards; the
+former were surprised, the latter were invested, by the son of
+Pepin; and after a blockade of two years, ^* Desiderius, the last
+of their native princes, surrendered his sceptre and his capital.
+
+Under the dominion of a foreign king, but in the possession of
+their national laws, the Lombards became the brethren, rather
+than the subjects, of the Franks; who derived their blood, and
+manners, and language, from the same Germanic origin. ^54
+
+[Footnote *: Gregory I. had been dead above a century; read
+Gregory III. - M]
+
+[Footnote 52: See this most extraordinary letter in the Codex
+Carolinus, epist iii. p. 92.  The enemies of the popes have
+charged them with fraud and blasphemy; yet they surely meant to
+persuade rather than deceive.  This introduction of the dead, or
+of immortals, was familiar to the ancient orators, though it is
+executed on this occasion in the rude fashion of the age.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Except in the divorce of the daughter of
+Desiderius, whom Charlemagne repudiated sine aliquo crimine.
+Pope Stephen IV. had most furiously opposed the alliance of a
+noble Frank - cum perfida, horrida nec dicenda, foetentissima
+natione Longobardorum - to whom he imputes the first stain of
+leprosy, (Cod. Carolin. epist. 45, p. 178, 179.) Another reason
+against the marriage was the existence of a first wife,
+(Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 232, 233, 236, 237.) But
+Charlemagne indulged himself in the freedom of polygamy or
+concubinage.]
+
+[Footnote *: Of fifteen months.  James, Life of Charlemagne, p.
+187. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 54: See the Annali d'Italia of Muratori, tom. vi., and
+the three first Dissertations of his Antiquitates Italiae Medii
+Aevi, tom. i.]
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
+
+Part III.
+
+The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian
+family form the important link of ancient and modern, of civil
+and ecclesiastical, history. In the conquest of Italy, the
+champions of the Roman church obtained a favorable occasion, a
+specious title, the wishes of the people, the prayers and
+intrigues of the clergy.  But the most essential gifts of the
+popes to the Carlovingian race were the dignities of king of
+France, ^55 and of patrician of Rome.  I.  Under the sacerdotal
+monarchy of St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice
+of seeking, on the banks of the Tyber, their kings, their laws,
+and the oracles of their fate.  The Franks were perplexed between
+the name and substance of their government. All the powers of
+royalty were exercised by Pepin, mayor of the palace; and
+nothing, except the regal title, was wanting to his ambition.
+His enemies were crushed by his valor; his friends were
+multiplied by his liberality; his father had been the savior of
+Christendom; and the claims of personal merit were repeated and
+ennobled in a descent of four generations.  The name and image of
+royalty was still preserved in the last descendant of Clovis, the
+feeble Childeric; but his obsolete right could only be used as an
+instrument of sedition: the nation was desirous of restoring the
+simplicity of the constitution; and Pepin, a subject and a
+prince, was ambitious to ascertain his own rank and the fortune
+of his family.  The mayor and the nobles were bound, by an oath
+of fidelity, to the royal phantom: the blood of Clovis was pure
+and sacred in their eyes; and their common ambassadors addressed
+the Roman pontiff, to dispel their scruples, or to absolve their
+promise.  The interest of Pope Zachary, the successor of the two
+Gregories, prompted him to decide, and to decide in their favor:
+he pronounced that the nation might lawfully unite in the same
+person the title and authority of king; and that the unfortunate
+Childeric, a victim of the public safety, should be degraded,
+shaved, and confined in a monastery for the remainder of his
+days.  An answer so agreeable to their wishes was accepted by the
+Franks as the opinion of a casuist, the sentence of a judge, or
+the oracle of a prophet: the Merovingian race disappeared from
+the earth; and Pepin was exalted on a buckler by the suffrage of
+a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and to march under his
+standard. His coronation was twice performed, with the sanction
+of the popes, by their most faithful servant St. Boniface, the
+apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the
+Third, who, in the monastery of St. Denys placed the diadem on
+the head of his benefactor.  The royal unction of the kings of
+Israel was dexterously applied: ^56 the successor of St. Peter
+assumed the character of a divine ambassador: a German chieftain
+was transformed into the Lord's anointed; and this Jewish rite
+has been diffused and maintained by the superstition and vanity
+of modern Europe. The Franks were absolved from their ancient
+oath; but a dire anathema was thundered against them and their
+posterity, if they should dare to renew the same freedom of
+choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious
+race of the Carlovingian princes.  Without apprehending the
+future danger, these princes gloried in their present security:
+the secretary of Charlemagne affirms, that the French sceptre was
+transferred by the authority of the popes; ^57 and in their
+boldest enterprises, they insist, with confidence, on this signal
+and successful act of temporal jurisdiction.
+
+[Footnote 55: Besides the common historians, three French
+critics, Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. l. vii. epist. 9, p.
+477-487,) Pagi, (Critica, A.D. 751, No. 1-6, A.D. 752, No. 1-10,)
+and Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Novi Testamenti, dissertat, ii. p.
+96-107,) have treated this subject of the deposition of Childeric
+with learning and attention, but with a strong bias to save the
+independence of the crown.  Yet they are hard pressed by the
+texts which they produce of Eginhard, Theophanes, and the old
+annals, Laureshamenses, Fuldenses, Loisielani]
+
+[Footnote 56: Not absolutely for the first time.  On a less
+conspicuous theatre it had been used, in the vith and viith
+centuries, by the provincial bishops of Britain and Spain.  The
+royal unction of Constantinople was borrowed from the Latins in
+the last age of the empire. Constantine Manasses mentions that of
+Charlemagne as a foreign, Jewish, incomprehensible ceremony. See
+Selden's Titles of Honor, in his Works, vol. iii. part i. p.
+234-249.]
+
+[Footnote 57: See Eginhard, in Vita Caroli Magni, c. i. p. 9,
+&c., c. iii. p. 24.  Childeric was deposed - jussu, the
+Carlovingians were established - auctoritate, Pontificis Romani.
+Launoy, &c., pretend that these strong words are susceptible of a
+very soft interpretation.  Be it so; yet Eginhard understood the
+world, the court, and the Latin language.]
+
+II.  In the change of manners and language the patricians of
+Rome ^58 were far removed from the senate of Romulus, on the
+palace of Constantine, from the free nobles of the republic, or
+the fictitious parents of the emperor.  After the recovery of
+Italy and Africa by the arms of Justinian, the importance and
+danger of those remote provinces required the presence of a
+supreme magistrate; he was indifferently styled the exarch or the
+patrician; and these governors of Ravenna, who fill their place
+in the chronology of princes, extended their jurisdiction over
+the Roman city. Since the revolt of Italy and the loss of the
+Exarchate, the distress of the Romans had exacted some sacrifice
+of their independence.  Yet, even in this act, they exercised the
+right of disposing of themselves; and the decrees of the senate
+and people successively invested Charles Martel and his posterity
+with the honors of patrician of Rome.  The leaders of a powerful
+nation would have disdained a servile title and subordinate
+office; but the reign of the Greek emperors was suspended; and,
+in the vacancy of the empire, they derived a more glorious
+commission from the pope and the republic.  The Roman ambassadors
+presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine of St.
+Peter, as a pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner
+which it was their right and duty to unfurl in the defence of the
+church and city. ^59 In the time of Charles Martel and of Pepin,
+the interposition of the Lombard kingdom covered the freedom,
+while it threatened the safety, of Rome; and the patriciate
+represented only the title, the service, the alliance, of these
+distant protectors. The power and policy of Charlemagne
+annihilated an enemy, and imposed a master.  In his first visit
+to the capital, he was received with all the honors which had
+formerly been paid to the exarch, the representative of the
+emperor; and these honors obtained some new decorations from the
+joy and gratitude of Pope Adrian the First. ^60 No sooner was he
+informed of the sudden approach of the monarch, than he
+despatched the magistrates and nobles of Rome to meet him, with
+the banner, about thirty miles from the city.  At the distance of
+one mile, the Flaminian way was lined with the schools, or
+national communities, of Greeks, Lombards, Saxons, &c.: the Roman
+youth were under arms; and the children of a more tender age,
+with palms and olive branches in their hands, chanted the praises
+of their great deliverer.  At the aspect of the holy crosses, and
+ensigns of the saints, he dismounted from his horse, led the
+procession of his nobles to the Vatican, and, as he ascended the
+stairs, devoutly kissed each step of the threshold of the
+apostles.  In the portico, Adrian expected him at the head of his
+clergy: they embraced, as friends and equals; but in their march
+to the altar, the king or patrician assumed the right hand of the
+pope.  Nor was the Frank content with these vain and empty
+demonstrations of respect. In the twenty-six years that elapsed
+between the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation,
+Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his
+own, to the sceptre of Charlemagne.  The people swore allegiance
+to his person and family: in his name money was coined, and
+justice was administered; and the election of the popes was
+examined and confirmed by his authority.  Except an original and
+self-inherent claim of sovereignty, there was not any prerogative
+remaining, which the title of emperor could add to the patrician
+of Rome. ^61
+
+[Footnote 58: For the title and powers of patrician of Rome, see
+Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 149-151,) Pagi, (Critica, A.D.
+740, No. 6-11,) Muratori, (Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 308-329,)
+and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique d'Italie, tom. i. p.
+379-382.) Of these the Franciscan Pagi is the most disposed to
+make the patrician a lieutenant of the church, rather than of the
+empire.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The papal advocates can soften the symbolic meaning
+of the banner and the keys; but the style of ad regnum dimisimus,
+or direximus, (Codex Carolin. epist. i. tom. iii. pars ii. p.
+76,) seems to allow of no palliation or escape.  In the Ms. of
+the Vienna library, they read, instead of regnum, rogum, prayer
+or request (see Ducange;) and the royalty of Charles Martel is
+subverted by this important correction, (Catalani, in his
+Critical Prefaces, Annali d'Italia, tom. xvii. p. 95-99.)]
+
+[Footnote 60: In the authentic narrative of this reception, the
+Liber Pontificalis observes - obviam illi ejus sanctitas dirigens
+venerabiles cruces, id est signa; sicut mos est ad exarchum, aut
+patricium suscipiendum, sum cum ingenti honore suscipi fecit,
+(tom. iii. pars i. p. 185.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: Paulus Diaconus, who wrote before the empire of
+Charlemagne describes Rome as his subject city - vestrae
+civitates (ad Pompeium Festum) suis addidit sceptris, (de
+Metensis Ecclesiae Episcopis.) Some Carlovingian medals, struck
+at Rome, have engaged Le Blanc to write an elaborate, though
+partial, dissertation on their authority at Rome, both as
+patricians and emperors, (Amsterdam, 1692, in 4to.)]
+
+The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these
+obligations, and their names are consecrated, as the saviors and
+benefactors of the Roman church.  Her ancient patrimony of farms
+and houses was transformed by their bounty into the temporal
+dominion of cities and provinces; and the donation of the
+Exarchate was the first-fruits of the conquests of Pepin. ^62
+Astolphus with a sigh relinquished his prey; the keys and the
+hostages of the principal cities were delivered to the French
+ambassador; and, in his master's name, he presented them before
+the tomb of St. Peter.  The ample measure of the Exarchate ^63
+might comprise all the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the
+emperor and his vicegerent; but its strict and proper limits were
+included in the territories of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara: its
+inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis, which stretched along
+the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona, and advanced into the
+midland- country as far as the ridges of the Apennine. In this
+transaction, the ambition and avarice of the popes have been
+severely condemned.  Perhaps the humility of a Christian priest
+should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which it was not easy
+for him to govern without renouncing the virtues of his
+profession.  Perhaps a faithful subject, or even a generous
+enemy, would have been less impatient to divide the spoils of the
+Barbarian; and if the emperor had intrusted Stephen to solicit in
+his name the restitution of the Exarchate, I will not absolve the
+pope from the reproach of treachery and falsehood.  But in the
+rigid interpretation of the laws, every one may accept, without
+injury, whatever his benefactor can bestow without injustice.
+The Greek emperor had abdicated, or forfeited, his right to the
+Exarchate; and the sword of Astolphus was broken by the stronger
+sword of the Carlovingian.  It was not in the cause of the
+Iconoclast that Pepin has exposed his person and army in a double
+expedition beyond the Alps: he possessed, and might lawfully
+alienate, his conquests: and to the importunities of the Greeks
+he piously replied that no human consideration should tempt him
+to resume the gift which he had conferred on the Roman Pontiff
+for the remission of his sins, and the salvation of his soul.
+The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute
+dominion, and the world beheld for the first time a Christian
+bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the
+choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of
+taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna.  In the
+dissolution of the Lombard kingdom, the inhabitants of the duchy
+of Spoleto ^64 sought a refuge from the storm, shaved their heads
+after the Roman fashion, declared themselves the servants and
+subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by this voluntary
+surrender, the present circle of the ecclesiastical state.  That
+mysterious circle was enlarged to an indefinite extent, by the
+verbal or written donation of Charlemagne, ^65 who, in the first
+transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek
+emperor of the cities and islands which had formerly been annexed
+to the Exarchate.  But, in the cooler moments of absence and
+reflection, he viewed, with an eye of jealousy and envy, the
+recent greatness of his ecclesiastical ally.  The execution of
+his own and his father's promises was respectfully eluded: the
+king of the Franks and Lombards asserted the inalienable rights
+of the empire; and, in his life and death, Ravenna, ^66 as well
+as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities.
+The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the
+popes; they found in the archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and
+domestic rival: ^67 the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a
+priest; and in the disorders of the times, they could only retain
+the memory of an ancient claim, which, in a more prosperous age,
+they have revived and realized.
+
+[Footnote 62: Mosheim (Institution, Hist. Eccles. p. 263) weighs
+this donation with fair and deliberate prudence.  The original
+act has never been produced; but the Liber Pontificalis
+represents, (p. 171,) and the Codex Carolinus supposes, this
+ample gift.  Both are contemporary records and the latter is the
+more authentic, since it has been preserved, not in the Papal,
+but the Imperial, library.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Between the exorbitant claims, and narrow
+concessions, of interest and prejudice, from which even Muratori
+(Antiquitat. tom. i. p. 63-68) is not exempt, I have been guided,
+in the limits of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, by the Dissertatio
+Chorographica Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. x. p. 160-180.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Spoletini deprecati sunt, ut eos in servitio B.
+Petri receperet et more Romanorum tonsurari faceret, (Anastasius,
+p. 185.) Yet it may be a question whether they gave their own
+persons or their country.]
+
+[Footnote 65: The policy and donations of Charlemagne are
+carefully examined by St. Marc, (Abrege, tom. i. p. 390-408,) who
+has well studied the Codex Carolinus.  I believe, with him, that
+they were only verbal.  The most ancient act of donation that
+pretends to be extant, is that of the emperor Lewis the Pious,
+(Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opera, tom. ii. p. 267-270.)
+Its authenticity, or at least its integrity, are much questioned,
+(Pagi, A.D. 817, No. 7, &c.  Muratori, Annali, tom. vi. p. 432,
+&c.  Dissertat. Chorographica, p. 33, 34;) but I see no
+reasonable objection to these princes so freely disposing of what
+was not their own.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Charlemagne solicited and obtained from the
+proprietor, Hadrian I., the mosaics of the palace of Ravenna, for
+the decoration of Aix-la-Chapelle, (Cod. Carolin. epist. 67, p.
+223.)]
+
+[Footnote 67: The popes often complain of the usurpations of Leo
+of Ravenna, (Codex Carolin, epist. 51, 52, 53, p. 200-205.) Sir
+corpus St. Andreae fratris germani St. Petri hic humasset,
+nequaquam nos Romani pontifices sic subjugassent, (Agnellus,
+Liber Pontificalis, in Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. ii. pars. i.
+p. 107.)]
+
+Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the
+strong, though ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net
+of sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and
+manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or
+concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or
+suspicious, acts, as they tended to promote the interest of the
+Roman church.  Before the end of the eighth century, some
+apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious Isidore, composed the
+decretals, and the donation of Constantine, the two magic pillars
+of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.  This
+memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of
+Adrian the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the
+liberality, and revive the name, of the great Constantine. ^68
+According to the legend, the first of the Christian emperors was
+healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism, by
+St. Silvester, the Roman bishop; and never was physician more
+gloriously recompensed.  His royal proselyte withdrew from the
+seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his resolution of
+founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes the
+free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces
+of the West. ^69 This fiction was productive of the most
+beneficial effects.  The Greek princes were convicted of the
+guilt of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of
+his lawful inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt
+of gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no
+more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty
+portion of the ecclesiastical state.  The sovereignty of Rome no
+longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the
+successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the
+purple and prerogatives of the Caesars.  So deep was the
+ignorance and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of
+fables was received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in
+France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law.
+^70 The emperors, and the Romans, were incapable of discerning a
+forgery, that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only
+opposition proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which, in the
+beginning of the twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity
+of the donation of Constantine. ^71 In the revival of letters and
+liberty, this fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen of
+Laurentius Valla, the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman
+patriot. ^72 His contemporaries of the fifteenth century were
+astonished at his sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent
+and irresistible progress of reason, that, before the end of the
+next age, the fable was rejected by the contempt of historians
+^73 and poets, ^74 and the tacit or modest censure of the
+advocates of the Roman church. ^75 The popes themselves have
+indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; ^76 but a false
+and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the same
+fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline
+oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have
+been undermined.
+
+[Footnote 68: Piissimo Constantino magno, per ejus largitatem S.
+R. Ecclesia elevata et exaltata est, et potestatem in his
+Hesperiae partibus largiri olignatus est .... Quia ecce novus
+Constantinus his temporibus, &c., (Codex Carolin. epist. 49, in
+tom. iii. part ii. p. 195.) Pagi (Critica, A.D. 324, No. 16)
+ascribes them to an impostor of the viiith century, who borrowed
+the name of St. Isidore: his humble title of Peccator was
+ignorantly, but aptly, turned into Mercator: his merchandise was
+indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold for much
+wealth and power.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 4-7) has
+enumerated the several editions of this Act, in Greek and Latin.
+The copy which Laurentius Valla recites and refutes, appears to
+be taken either from the spurious Acts of St. Silvester or from
+Gratian's Decree, to which, according to him and others, it has
+been surreptitiously tacked.]
+
+[Footnote 70: In the year 1059, it was believed (was it
+believed?) by Pope Leo IX. Cardinal Peter Damianus, &c.  Muratori
+places (Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 23, 24) the fictitious
+donations of Lewis the Pious, the Othos, &c., de Donatione
+Constantini.  See a Dissertation of Natalis Alexander, seculum
+iv. diss. 25, p. 335-350.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See a large account of the controversy (A.D. 1105)
+which arose from a private lawsuit, in the Chronicon Farsense,
+(Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 637, &c.,) a
+copious extract from the archives of that Benedictine abbey.
+They were formerly accessible to curious foreigners, (Le Blanc
+and Mabillon,) and would have enriched the first volume of the
+Historia Monastica Italiae of Quirini.  But they are now
+imprisoned (Muratori, Scriptores R. I. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 269)
+by the timid policy of the court of Rome; and the future cardinal
+yielded to the voice of authority and the whispers of ambition,
+(Quirini, Comment. pars ii. p. 123-136.)]
+
+[Footnote 72: I have read in the collection of Schardius (de
+Potestate Imperiali Ecclesiastica, p. 734-780) this animated
+discourse, which was composed by the author, A.D. 1440, six years
+after the flight of Pope Eugenius IV.  It is a most vehement
+party pamphlet: Valla justifies and animates the revolt of the
+Romans, and would even approve the use of a dagger against their
+sacerdotal tyrant.  Such a critic might expect the persecution of
+the clergy; yet he made his peace, and is buried in the Lateran,
+(Bayle, Dictionnaire Critique, Valla; Vossius, de Historicis
+Latinis, p. 580.)]
+
+[Footnote 73: See Guicciardini, a servant of the popes, in that
+long and valuable digression, which has resumed its place in the
+last edition, correctly published from the author's Ms. and
+printed in four volumes in quarto, under the name of Friburgo,
+1775, (Istoria d'Italia, tom. i. p. 385-395.)]
+
+[Footnote 74: The Paladin Astolpho found it in the moon, among
+the things that were lost upon earth, (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv.
+80.)
+
+Di vari fiore ad un grand monte passa,
+Ch'ebbe gia buono odore, or puzza forte:
+Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece)
+Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.
+
+Yet this incomparable poem has been approved by a bull of Leo X.]
+
+[Footnote 75: See Baronius, A.D. 324, No. 117-123, A.D. 1191, No.
+51, &c. The cardinal wishes to suppose that Rome was offered by
+Constantine, and refused by Silvester.  The act of donation he
+considers strangely enough, as a forgery of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Baronius n'en dit guerres contre; encore en a-t'il
+trop dit, et l'on vouloit sans moi, (Cardinal du Perron,) qui
+l'empechai, censurer cette partie de son histoire.  J'en devisai
+un jour avec le Pape, et il ne me repondit autre chose "che
+volete?  i Canonici la tengono," il le disoit en riant,
+(Perroniana, p. 77.)]
+
+While the popes established in Italy their freedom and
+dominion, the images, the first cause of their revolt, were
+restored in the Eastern empire. ^77 Under the reign of
+Constantine the Fifth, the union of civil and ecclesiastical
+power had overthrown the tree, without extirpating the root, of
+superstition.  The idols (for such they were now held) were
+secretly cherished by the order and the sex most prone to
+devotion; and the fond alliance of the monks and females obtained
+a final victory over the reason and authority of man.  Leo the
+Fourth maintained with less rigor the religion of his father and
+grandfather; but his wife, the fair and ambitious Irene, had
+imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the heirs of the Idolatry,
+rather than the philosophy, of their ancestors.  During the life
+of her husband, these sentiments were inflamed by danger and
+dissimulation, and she could only labor to protect and promote
+some favorite monks whom she drew from their caverns, and seated
+on the metropolitan thrones of the East.  But as soon as she
+reigned in her own name and that of her son, Irene more seriously
+undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts; and the first step of her
+future persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience.
+
+In the restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed
+to the public veneration; a thousand legends were inverted of
+their sufferings and miracles.  By the opportunities of death or
+removal, the episcopal seats were judiciously filled the most
+eager competitors for earthly or celestial favor anticipated and
+flattered the judgment of their sovereign; and the promotion of
+her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of
+Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church.  But the
+decrees of a general council could only be repealed by a similar
+assembly: ^78 the Iconoclasts whom she convened were bold in
+possession, and averse to debate; and the feeble voice of the
+bishops was reechoed by the more formidable clamor of the
+soldiers and people of Constantinople. The delay and intrigues of
+a year, the separation of the disaffected troops, and the choice
+of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these obstacles; and
+the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek fashion, in
+the hands of the prince.  No more than eighteen days were allowed
+for the consummation of this important work: the Iconoclasts
+appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents: the scene
+was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian and the Eastern
+patriarchs, ^79 the decrees were framed by the president
+Taracius, and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of
+three hundred and fifty bishops.  They unanimously pronounced,
+that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason,
+to the fathers and councils of the church: but they hesitate
+whether that worship be relative or direct; whether the Godhead,
+and the figure of Christ, be entitled to the same mode of
+adoration.  Of this second Nicene council the acts are still
+extant; a curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of
+falsehood and folly.  I shall only notice the judgment of the
+bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality.
+A monk had concluded a truce with the daemon of fornication, on
+condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a picture that
+hung in his cell.  His scruples prompted him to consult the
+abbot.  "Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his Mother
+in their holy images, it would be better for you," replied the
+casuist, "to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in
+the city." ^80 For the honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy
+of the Roman church, it is somewhat unfortunate, that the two
+princes who convened the two councils of Nice are both stained
+with the blood of their sons.  The second of these assemblies was
+approved and rigorously executed by the despotism of Irene, and
+she refused her adversaries the toleration which at first she had
+granted to her friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a
+period of thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with
+unabated rage and various success, between the worshippers and
+the breakers of the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with
+minute diligence the repetition of the same events. Nicephorus
+allowed a general liberty of speech and practice; and the only
+virtue of his reign is accused by the monks as the cause of his
+temporal and eternal perdition.  Superstition and weakness formed
+the character of Michael the First, but the saints and images
+were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne.  In the
+purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an
+Armenian; and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were
+condemned to a second exile.  Their applause would have
+sanctified the murder of an impious tyrant, but his assassin and
+successor, the second Michael, was tainted from his birth with
+the Phrygian heresies: he attempted to mediate between the
+contending parties; and the intractable spirit of the Catholics
+insensibly cast him into the opposite scale.  His moderation was
+guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike ignorant of
+fear and pity, was the last and most cruel of the Iconoclasts.
+The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against them; and the
+emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by
+the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus, the final
+victory of the images was achieved by a second female, his widow
+Theodora, whom he left the guardian of the empire.  Her measures
+were bold and decisive.  The fiction of a tardy repentance
+absolved the fame and the soul of her deceased husband; the
+sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch was commuted from the loss
+of his eyes to a whipping of two hundred lashes: the bishops
+trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy
+preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images.  A
+single question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any
+proper and inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of
+the eleventh century; ^81 and as this opinion has the strongest
+recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it was not more
+explicitly decided in the affirmative.  In the West, Pope Adrian
+the First accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene
+assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in
+rank of the general councils.  Rome and Italy were docile to the
+voice of their father; but the greatest part of the Latin
+Christians were far behind in the race of superstition.  The
+churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle
+course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which
+they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but
+as lively and useful memorials of faith and history.  An angry
+book of controversy was composed and published in the name of
+Charlemagne: ^82 under his authority a synod of three hundred
+bishops was assembled at Frankfort: ^83 they blamed the fury of
+the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure
+against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their
+pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of
+the West. ^84 Among them the worship of images advanced with a
+silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for
+their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages
+which precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in
+Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of
+superstition.
+
+[Footnote 77: The remaining history of images, from Irene to
+Theodora, is collected, for the Catholics, by Baronius and Pagi,
+(A.D. 780-840.) Natalis Alexander, (Hist. N. T. seculum viii.
+Panoplia adversus Haereticos p. 118- 178,) and Dupin, (Bibliot.
+Eccles. tom. vi. p. 136-154;) for the Protestants, by Spanheim,
+(Hist. Imag. p. 305-639.) Basnage, (Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p.
+556-572, tom. ii. p. 1362-1385,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
+Eccles. secul. viii. et ix.) The Protestants, except Mosheim, are
+soured with controversy; but the Catholics, except Dupin, are
+inflamed by the fury and superstition of the monks; and even Le
+Beau, (Hist. du Bas Empire,) a gentleman and a scholar, is
+infected by the odious contagion.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See the Acts, in Greek and Latin, of the second
+Council of Nice, with a number of relative pieces, in the viiith
+volume of the Councils, p. 645-1600.  A faithful version, with
+some critical notes, would provoke, in different readers, a sigh
+or a smile.]
+
+[Footnote 79: The pope's legates were casual messengers, two
+priests without any special commission, and who were disavowed on
+their return. Some vagabond monks were persuaded by the Catholics
+to represent the Oriental patriarchs. This curious anecdote is
+revealed by Theodore Studites, (epist. i. 38, in Sirmond. Opp.
+tom. v. p. 1319,) one of the warmest Iconoclasts of the age.]
+
+[Footnote 80: These visits could not be innocent since the daemon
+of fornication, &c. Actio iv. p. 901, Actio v. p. 1081]
+
+[Footnote 81: See an account of this controversy in the Alexius
+of Anna Compena, (l. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
+Eccles. p. 371, 372.)]
+
+[Footnote 82: The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443 - 529,)
+composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at
+Worms, A.D. 790, and sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who
+answered them by a grandis et verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom.
+vii. p. 1553.) The Carolines propose 120 objections against the
+Nicene synod and such words as these are the flowers of their
+rhetoric - Dementiam .... priscae Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem
+.... argumenta insanissima et absurdissima .... derisione dignas
+naenias, &c., &c.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as
+well as ecclesiastical; and the three hundred members, (Nat.
+Alexander, sec. viii. p. 53,) who sat and voted at Frankfort,
+must include not only the bishops, but the abbots, and even the
+principal laymen.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et
+sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes
+contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom.
+ix. p. 101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be
+hard-hearted indeed, who does not pity the efforts of Baronius,
+Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c., to elude this unlucky sentence.]
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
+
+Part IV.
+
+It was after the Nycene synod, and under the reign of the
+pious Irene, that the popes consummated the separation of Rome
+and Italy, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox
+Charlemagne.  They were compelled to choose between the rival
+nations: religion was not the sole motive of their choice; and
+while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld,
+with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their
+foes.  The difference of language and manners had perpetuated the
+enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from each
+other by the hostile opposition of seventy years.  In that schism
+the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty:
+their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a
+jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the
+impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court.  The
+Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored
+the Calabrian estates ^85 and the Illyrian diocese, ^86 which the
+Iconociasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter; and
+Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication
+unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy. ^87 The Greeks
+were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the
+breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious;
+but a discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion,
+from the use, to the adoration, of images.  The name of
+Charlemagne was stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes;
+but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper of a
+statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy.  In his
+four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes
+in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb,
+and consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined,
+without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman
+liturgy.  Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to
+renounce their benefactor?  Had they a right to alienate his gift
+of the Exarchate? Had they power to abolish his government of
+Rome?  The title of patrician was below the merit and greatness
+of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the Western empire
+that they could pay their obligations or secure their
+establishment.  By this decisive measure they would finally
+eradicate the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a
+provincial town, the majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin
+Christians would be united, under a supreme head, in their
+ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of the West would receive
+their crown from the successors of St. Peter.  The Roman church
+would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and, under the
+shadow of the Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with
+honor and safety, the government of the city. ^88
+
+[Footnote 85: Theophanes (p. 343) specifies those of Sicily and
+Calabria, which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a
+half of gold, (perhaps 7000l. sterling.) Liutprand more pompously
+enumerates the patrimonies of the Roman church in Greece, Judaea,
+Persia, Mesopotamia Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya, which were
+detained by the injustice of the Greek emperor, (Legat. ad
+Nicephorum, in Script. Rerum Italica rum, tom. ii. pars i. p.
+481.)]
+
+[Footnote 86: The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with
+Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, (Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise,
+tom. i. p. 145: ) by the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch
+of Constantinople had detached from Rome the metropolitans of
+Thessalonica, Athens Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patrae, (Luc.
+Holsten. Geograph. Sacra, p. 22) and his spiritual conquests
+extended to Naples and Amalphi (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i.
+p. 517-524, Pagi, A. D 780, No. 11.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore
+reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant
+errore .... de diocessi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum
+increpantes commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticum
+eum pro hujusmodi errore perseverantia decernemus, (Epist.
+Hadrian.  Papae ad Carolum Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p.
+1598;) to which he adds a reason, most directly opposite to his
+conduct, that he preferred the salvation of souls and rule of
+faith to the goods of this transitory world.]
+
+[Footnote 88: Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than
+the advocates of the church, (advocatus et defensor S. R. E.  See
+Ducange, Gloss Lat. tom. i. p. 297.) His antagonist Muratori
+reduces the popes to be no more than the exarchs of the emperor.
+In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles.
+p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under the empire as the most
+honorable species of fief or benefice - premuntur nocte
+caliginosa!]
+
+Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a
+wealthy bishopric had often been productive of tumult and
+bloodshed.  The people was less numerous, but the times were more
+savage, the prize more important, and the chair of St. Peter was
+fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the
+rank of sovereign.  The reign of Adrian the First ^89 surpasses
+the measure of past or succeeding ages; ^90 the walls of Rome,
+the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the
+friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he
+secretly edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a
+narrow space the virtues of a great prince.  His memory was
+revered; but in the next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo
+the Third, was preferred to the nephew and the favorite of
+Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first dignities of the
+church.  Their acquiescence or repentance disguised, above four
+years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
+procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the
+unarmed multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred
+person of the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty
+was disappointed, perhaps by their own confusion and remorse.
+Leo was left for dead on the ground: on his revival from the
+swoon, the effect of his loss of blood, he recovered his speech
+and sight; and this natural event was improved to the miraculous
+restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had been
+deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins. ^91 From
+his prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto
+hastened to his rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury,
+and in his camp of Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or
+solicited, a visit from the Roman pontiff.  Leo repassed the Alps
+with a commission of counts and bishops, the guards of his safety
+and the judges of his innocence; and it was not without
+reluctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
+ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office.  In his
+fourth and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due
+honors of king and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself
+by oath of the crimes imputed to his charge: his enemies were
+silenced, and the sacrilegious attempt against his life was
+punished by the mild and insufficient penalty of exile.  On the
+festival of Christmas, the last year of the eighth century,
+Charlemagne appeared in the church of St. Peter; and, to gratify
+the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the simple dress of his
+country for the habit of a patrician. ^92 After the celebration
+of the holy mysteries, Leo suddenly placed a precious crown on
+his head, ^93 and the dome resounded with the acclamations of the
+people, "Long life and victory to Charles, the most pious
+Augustus, crowned by God the great and pacific emperor of the
+Romans!" The head and body of Charlemagne were consecrated by the
+royal unction: after the example of the Caesars, he was saluted
+or adored by the pontiff: his coronation oath represents a
+promise to maintain the faith and privileges of the church; and
+the first-fruits were paid in his rich offerings to the shrine of
+his apostle.  In his familiar conversation, the emperor protested
+the ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have
+disappointed by his absence on that memorable day.  But the
+preparations of the ceremony must have disclosed the secret; and
+the journey of Charlemagne reveals his knowledge and expectation:
+he had acknowledged that the Imperial title was the object of his
+ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced, that it was the only
+adequate reward of his merit and services. ^94
+
+[Footnote 89: His merits and hopes are summed up in an epitaph of
+thirty-eight-verses, of which Charlemagne declares himself the
+author, (Concil. tom. viii. p. 520.)
+
+Post patrem lacrymans Carolus haec carmina scripsi.
+Tu mihi dulcis amor, te modo plango pater ...
+Nomina jungo simul titulis, clarissime, nostra
+Adrianus, Carolus, rex ego, tuque pater.
+
+The poetry might be supplied by Alcuin; but the tears, the most
+glorious tribute, can only belong to Charlemagne.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Every new pope is admonished - "Sancte Pater, non
+videbis annos Petri," twenty-five years.  On the whole series the
+average is about eight years - a short hope for an ambitious
+cardinal.]
+
+[Footnote 91: The assurance of Anastasius (tom. iii. pars i. p.
+197, 198) is supported by the credulity of some French annalists;
+but Eginhard, and other writers of the same age, are more natural
+and sincere.  "Unus ei oculus paullulum est laesus," says John
+the deacon of Naples, (Vit. Episcop. Napol. in Scriptores
+Muratori, tom. i. pars ii. p. 312.) Theodolphus, a contemporary
+bishop of Orleans, observes with prudence (l. iii. carm. 3.)
+
+Reddita sunt?  mirum est: mirum est auferre nequtsse.
+
+Est tamen in dubio, hinc mirer an inde magis.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Twice, at the request of Hadrian and Leo, he
+appeared at Rome, - longa tunica et chlamyde amictus, et
+calceamentis quoque Romano more formatis. Eginhard (c. xxiii. p.
+109 - 113) describes, like Suetonius the simplicity of his dress,
+so popular in the nation, that when Charles the Bald returned to
+France in a foreign habit, the patriotic dogs barked at the
+apostate, (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, tom. iv. p. 109.)]
+
+[Footnote 93: See Anastasius (p. 199) and Eginhard, (c.xxviii. p.
+124 - 128.) The unction is mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 399,) the
+oath by Sigonius, (from the Ordo Romanus,) and the Pope's
+adoration more antiquorum principum, by the Annales Bertiniani,
+(Script. Murator. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 505.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: This great event of the translation or restoration
+of the empire is related and discussed by Natalis Alexander,
+(secul. ix. dissert. i. p. 390 - 397,) Pagi, (tom. iii. p. 418,)
+Muratori, (Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 339 - 352,) Sigonius, (de
+Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opp. tom. ii. p. 247 - 251,) Spanheim, (de
+ficta Translatione Imperii,) Giannone, (tom. i. p. 395 - 405,)
+St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p. 438 - 450,) Gaillard,
+(Hist. de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 386 - 446.) Almost all these
+moderns have some religious or national bias.]
+
+The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and
+sometimes deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose
+favor the title has been indissolubly blended with the name.
+That name, with the addition of saint, is inserted in the Roman
+calendar; and the saint, by a rare felicity, is crowned with the
+praises of the historians and philosophers of an enlightened age.
+^95 His real merit is doubtless enhanced by the barbarism of the
+nation and the times from which he emerged: but the apparent
+magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged by an unequal
+comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendor
+from the nakedness of the surrounding desert.  Without injustice
+to his fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and
+greatness of the restorer of the Western empire.  Of his moral
+virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous: ^96 but the public
+happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or
+concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient
+amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the
+church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his
+daughters, ^97 whom the father was suspected of loving with too
+fond a passion. ^* I shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the
+ambition of a conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution, the
+sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of
+Aquitain, and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were
+beheaded on the same spot, would have something to allege against
+the justice and humanity of Charlemagne.  His treatment of the
+vanquished Saxons ^98 was an abuse of the right of conquest; his
+laws were not less sanguinary than his arms, and in the
+discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry
+must be imputed to temper.  The sedentary reader is amazed by his
+incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies
+were not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment
+when they believed him at the most distant extremity of the
+empire; neither peace nor war, nor summer nor winter, were a
+season of repose; and our fancy cannot easily reconcile the
+annals of his reign with the geography of his expeditions. ^! But
+this activity was a national, rather than a personal, virtue; the
+vagrant life of a Frank was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in
+military adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne were
+distinguished only by a more numerous train and a more important
+purpose. His military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his
+troops, his enemies, and his actions. Alexander conquered with
+the arms of Philip, but the two heroes who preceded Charlemagne
+bequeathed him their name, their examples, and the companions of
+their victories.  At the head of his veteran and superior armies,
+he oppressed the savage or degenerate nations, who were incapable
+of confederating for their common safety: nor did he ever
+encounter an equal antagonist in numbers, in discipline, or in
+arms The science of war has been lost and revived with the arts
+of peace; but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or
+battle of singular difficulty and success; and he might behold,
+with envy, the Saracen trophies of his grandfather.  After the
+Spanish expedition, his rear-guard was defeated in the Pyrenaean
+mountains; and the soldiers, whose situation was irretrievable,
+and whose valor was useless, might accuse, with their last
+breath, the want of skill or caution of their general. ^99 I
+touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded
+by a respectable judge.  They compose not a system, but a series,
+of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses,
+the reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of
+his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs.  He wished to improve
+the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts,
+however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the
+inveterate evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his
+government; ^100 but in his institutions I can seldom discover
+the general views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who
+survives himself for the benefit of posterity.  The union and
+stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man: he
+imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among
+his sons; and after his numerous diets, the whole constitution
+was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and
+despotism.  His esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy
+tempted him to intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion
+and civil jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped
+and degraded by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the
+imprudence of his father. His laws enforced the imposition of
+tithes, because the daemons had proclaimed in the air that the
+default of payment had been the cause of the last scarcity. ^101
+The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the foundation
+of schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were
+published in his name, and his familiar connection with the
+subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate
+both the prince and people. His own studies were tardy,
+laborious, and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and understood
+Greek, he derived the rudiments of knowledge from conversation,
+rather than from books; and, in his mature age, the emperor
+strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant
+now learns in his infancy. ^102 The grammar and logic, the music
+and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the
+handmaids of superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind
+must ultimately tend to its improvement, and the encouragement of
+learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the
+character of Charlemagne. ^103 The dignity of his person, ^104
+the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigor of
+his government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish
+him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new aera from his
+restoration of the Western empire.
+
+[Footnote 95: By Mably, (Observations sur l'Histoire de France,)
+Voltaire, (Histoire Generale,) Robertson, (History of Charles
+V.,) and Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 18.) In the
+year 1782, M. Gaillard published his Histoire de Charlemagne, (in
+4 vols. in 12mo.,) which I have freely and profitably used.  The
+author is a man of sense and humanity; and his work is labored
+with industry and elegance.  But I have likewise examined the
+original monuments of the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne, in the
+5th volume of the Historians of France.]
+
+[Footnote 96: The vision of Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven
+years after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory,
+with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member,
+while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound
+and perfect, (see Gaillard tom. ii. p. 317 - 360.)]
+
+[Footnote 97: The marriage of Eginhard with Imma, daughter of
+Charlemagne, is, in my opinion, sufficiently refuted by the
+probum and suspicio that sullied these fair damsels, without
+excepting his own wife, (c. xix. p. 98 - 100, cum Notis
+Schmincke.) The husband must have been too strong for the
+historian.]
+
+[Footnote *: This charge of incest, as Mr. Hallam justly
+observes, "seems to have originated in a misinterpreted passage
+of Eginhard." Hallam's Middle Ages, vol.i. p. 16. - M.
+
+[Footnote 98: Besides the massacres and transmigrations, the pain
+of death was pronounced against the following crimes: 1. The
+refusal of baptism.  2. The false pretence of baptism.  3. A
+relapse to idolatry.  4. The murder of a priest or bishop.  5.
+Human sacrifices.  6. Eating meat in Lent.  But every crime might
+be expiated by baptism or penance, (Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 241 -
+247;) and the Christian Saxons became the friends and equals of
+the Franks, (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p.133.)]
+
+[Footnote !: M. Guizot (Cours d'Histoire Moderne, p. 270, 273)
+has compiled the following statement of Charlemagne's military
+campaigns: -
+
+1. Against the Aquitanians.
+
+18.   "    the Saxons.
+
+5.    "    the Lombards.
+
+7.    "    the Arabs in Spain.
+
+1.    "    the Thuringians.
+
+4.    "    the Avars.
+
+2.    "    the Bretons.
+
+1.    "    the Bavarians.
+
+4.    "    the Slaves beyond the Elbe
+
+5.    "    the Saracens in Italy.
+
+3.    "    the Danes.
+
+2.    "    the Greeks.
+    ___
+
+53 total. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 99: In this action the famous Rutland, Rolando,
+Orlando, was slain - cum compluribus aliis.  See the truth in
+Eginhard, (c. 9, p. 51 - 56,) and the fable in an ingenious
+Supplement of M. Gaillard, (tom. iii. p. 474.) The Spaniards are
+too proud of a victory, which history ascribes to the Gascons,
+and romance to the Saracens.
+
+Note: In fact, it was a sudden onset of the Gascons,
+assisted by the Beaure mountaineers, and possibly a few
+Navarrese. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Yet Schmidt, from the best authorities, represents
+the interior disorders and oppression of his reign, (Hist. des
+Allemands, tom. ii. p. 45 - 49.)]
+
+[Footnote 101: Omnis homo ex sua proprietate legitimam decimam ad
+ecclesiam conferat.  Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo
+illa valida fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a daemonibus
+devoratas, et voces exprobationis auditas.  Such is the decree
+and assertion of the great Council of Frankfort, (canon xxv. tom.
+ix. p. 105.) Both Selden (Hist. of Tithes; Works, vol. iii. part
+ii. p. 1146) and Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 12)
+represent Charlemagne as the first legal author of tithes.  Such
+obligations have country gentlemen to his memory!]
+
+[Footnote 102: Eginhard (c. 25, p. 119) clearly affirms, tentabat
+et scribere ... sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus
+et sero inchoatus.  The moderns have perverted and corrected this
+obvious meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard's dissertation
+(tom. iii. p. 247 - 260) betrays his partiality.
+
+Note: This point has been contested; but Mr. Hallam and
+Monsieur Sismondl concur with Gibbon.  See Middle Ages, iii. 330
+Histoire de Francais, tom. ii. p. 318.  The sensible observations
+of the latter are quoted in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii. p.
+451.  Fleury, I may add, quotes from Mabillon a remarkable
+evidence that Charlemagne "had a mark to himself like an honest,
+plain-dealing man." Ibid. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 103: See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138 - 176, and Schmidt,
+tom. ii. p. 121 - 129.]
+
+[Footnote 104: M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372) fixes the true
+stature of Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad
+calcem Eginhart, p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French,
+about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure.  The
+romance writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant
+was endowed with matchless strength and appetite: at a single
+stroke of his good sword Joyeuse, he cut asunder a horseman and
+his horse; at a single repast, he devoured a goose, two fowls, a
+quarter of mutton, &c.]
+
+That empire was not unworthy of its title; ^105 and some of
+the fairest kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of
+a prince, who reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy,
+Germany, and Hungary. ^106 I.  The Roman province of Gaul had
+been transformed into the name and monarchy of France; but, in
+the decay of the Merovingian line, its limits were contracted by
+the independence of the Britons and the revolt of Aquitain.
+Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the shores of
+the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language
+are so different from the French, was chastised by the imposition
+of tribute, hostages, and peace.  After a long and evasive
+contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by
+the forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives.
+
+Harsh and rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious
+governors, who had too faithfully copied the mayors of the
+palace.  But a recent discovery ^107 has proved that these
+unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and
+sceptre of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of
+Dagobert, of the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was
+reduced to the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and
+Armagnac, at the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated
+till the beginning of the sixteenth century; and after surviving
+their Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved to feel the
+injustice, or the favors, of a third dynasty.  By the reunion of
+Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present boundaries, with the
+additions of the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine.  II.
+
+The Saracens had been expelled from France by the grandfather and
+father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the greatest part
+of Spain, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees.  Amidst
+their civil divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored his
+protection in the diet of Paderborn.  Charlemagne undertook the
+expedition, restored the emir, and, without distinction of faith,
+impartially crushed the resistance of the Christians, and
+rewarded the obedience and services of the Mahometans.  In his
+absence he instituted the Spanish march, ^108 which extended from
+the Pyrenees to the River Ebro: Barcelona was the residence of
+the French governor: he possessed the counties of Rousillon and
+Catalonia; and the infant kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon were
+subject to his jurisdiction.  III.  As king of the Lombards, and
+patrician of Rome, he reigned over the greatest part of Italy,
+^109 a tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders of
+Calabria.  The duchy of Beneventum, a Lombard fief, had spread,
+at the expense of the Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples.
+But Arrechis, the reigning duke, refused to be included in the
+slavery of his country; assumed the independent title of prince;
+and opposed his sword to the Carlovingian monarchy.  His defence
+was firm, his submission was not inglorious, and the emperor was
+content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his fortresses,
+and the acknowledgement, on his coins, of a supreme lord. The
+artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of
+father, but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and Benventum
+insensibly escaped from the French yoke. ^110 IV.  Charlemagne
+was the first who united Germany under the same sceptre.  The
+name of Oriental France is preserved in the circle of Franconia;
+and the people of Hesse and Thuringia were recently incorporated
+with the victors, by the conformity of religion and government.
+The Alemanni, so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful
+vassals and confederates of the Franks; and their country was
+inscribed within the modern limits of Alsace, Swabia, and
+Switzerland.  The Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their
+laws and manners, were less patient of a master: the repeated
+treasons of Tasillo justified the abolition of their hereditary
+dukes; and their power was shared among the counts, who judged
+and guarded that important frontier.  But the north of Germany,
+from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still hostile and Pagan;
+nor was it till after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons
+bowed under the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne.  The idols and
+their votaries were extirpated: the foundation of eight
+bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of
+Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt, define, on either
+side of the Weser, the bounds of ancient Saxony these episcopal
+seats were the first schools and cities of that savage land; and
+the religion and humanity of the children atoned, in some degree,
+for the massacre of the parents.  Beyond the Elbe, the Slavi, or
+Sclavonians, of similar manners and various denominations,
+overspread the modern dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia,
+and some transient marks of obedience have tempted the French
+historian to extend the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula.
+The conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more recent
+age; but the first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be
+justly ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne.  V.  He retaliated on
+the Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they
+had inflicted on the nations. Their rings, the wooden
+fortifications which encircled their districts and villages, were
+broken down by the triple effort of a French army, that was
+poured into their country by land and water, through the
+Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the Danube.  After a
+bloody conflict of eight years, the loss of some French generals
+was avenged by the slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics
+of the nation submitted the royal residence of the chagan was
+left desolate and unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two
+hundred and fifty years, enriched the victorious troops, or
+decorated the churches of Italy and Gaul. ^111 After the
+reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne was bounded only
+by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the
+provinces of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though
+unprofitable, accession; and it was an effect of his moderation,
+that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal
+sovereignty of the Greeks.  But these distant possessions added
+more to the reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor;
+nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the
+Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some
+canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the
+Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. ^112
+Their execution would have vivified the empire; and more cost and
+labor were often wasted in the structure of a cathedral. ^*
+
+[Footnote 105: See the concise, but correct and original, work of
+D'Anville, (Etats Formes en Europe apres la Chute de l'Empire
+Romain en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.,) whose map includes the
+empire of Charlemagne; the different parts are illustrated, by
+Valesius (Notitia Galliacum) for France, Beretti (Dissertatio
+Chorographica) for Italy, De Marca (Marca Hispanica) for Spain.
+For the middle geography of Germany, I confess myself poor and
+destitute.]
+
+[Footnote 106: After a brief relation of his wars and conquests,
+(Vit. Carol. c. 5 - 14,) Eginhard recapitulates, in a few words,
+(c. 15,) the countries subject to his empire.  Struvius, (Corpus
+Hist. German. p. 118 - 149) was inserted in his Notes the texts
+of the old Chronicles.]
+
+[Footnote 107: On a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon
+(A.D. 845) by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal
+pedigree.  I doubt whether some subsequent links of the ixth and
+xth centuries are equally firm; yet the whole is approved and
+defended by M. Gaillard, (tom. ii. p.60 - 81, 203 - 206,) who
+affirms that the family of Montesquiou (not of the President de
+Montesquieu) is descended, in the female line, from Clotaire and
+Clovis - an innocent pretension!]
+
+[Footnote 108: The governors or counts of the Spanish march
+revolted from Charles the Simple about the year 900; and a poor
+pittance, the Rousillon, has been recovered in 1642 by the kings
+of France, (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom i. p. 220 -
+222.) Yet the Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and annually
+pays 2,600,000 livres, (Necker, Administration des Finances, tom.
+i. p. 278, 279;) more people, perhaps, and doubtless more money
+than the march of Charlemagne.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 200,
+&c.]
+
+[Footnote 110: See Giannone, tom. i. p 374, 375, and the Annals
+of Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Quot praelia in eo gesta!  quantum sanguinis
+effusum sit! Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus
+in quo regia Cagani fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem
+humanae habitationis appareat.  Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum
+nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis pecunia et congesti
+ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt.  Eginhard, cxiii.]
+
+[Footnote 112: The junction of the Rhine and Danube was
+undertaken only for the service of the Pannonian war, (Gaillard,
+Vie de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 312-315.) The canal, which would
+have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces
+are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains,
+military avocations, and superstitious fears, (Schaepflin, Hist.
+de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 256.  Molimina
+fluviorum, &c., jungendorum, p. 59-62.)]
+
+[Footnote *: I should doubt this in the time of Charlemagne, even
+if the term "expended" were substituted for "wasted." - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
+
+Part V.
+
+If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it
+will be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east
+and west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north
+and south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the
+perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal and
+political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress
+and division of the rest of Europe.  The islands of Great Britain
+and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or
+Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian and
+Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
+range of the Asturian mountains.  These petty sovereigns revered
+the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the
+honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common
+parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. ^113 He
+maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al
+Rashid, ^114 whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and
+accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant,
+and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre.  It is not easy to conceive
+the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
+to each other's person, and language, and religion: but their
+public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote
+situation left no room for a competition of interest.  Two thirds
+of the Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and
+the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the
+inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany.  But in the choice
+of his enemies, ^* we may be reasonably surprised that he so
+often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the
+south.  The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in
+the woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert
+the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from
+Italy and the Saracens from Spain.  The weakness of the Greeks
+would have insured an easy victory; and the holy crusade against
+the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and
+loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his
+expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his
+monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies
+of civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future
+emigrations.  But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light
+of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could
+be universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a
+larger sphere of hostility. ^115 The subjugation of Germany
+withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or
+islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened
+the torpid courage of their barbarous natives.  The fiercest of
+the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their
+brethren of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered
+with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh
+the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than
+seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 113: See Eginhard, c. 16, and Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361
+- 385, who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of
+Charlemagne and Egbert, the emperor's gift of his own sword, and
+the modest answer of his Saxon disciple.  The anecdote, if
+genuine, would have adorned our English histories.]
+
+[Footnote 114: The correspondence is mentioned only in the French
+annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph's friendship
+for the Christian dog - a polite appellation, which Harun bestows
+on the emperor of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote *: Had he the choice?  M. Guizot has eloquently
+described the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons.  Il y
+fit face par le conquete; la guerre defensive prit la forme
+offensive: il transporta la lutte sur le territoire des peuples
+qui voulaient envahir le sien: il travailla a asservir les races
+etrangeres, et extirper les croyances ennemies.  De la son mode
+de gouvernement et la fondation de son empire: la guerre
+offensive et la conquete voulaient cette vaste et redoutable
+unite.  Compare observations in the Quarterly Review, vol.
+xlviii., and James's Life of Charlemagne. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361 - 365, 471 - 476, 492.
+I have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne's plan of
+conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the
+first and the second enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.)]
+
+Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive
+constitution, the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred
+on Charlemagne for the term of his life; and his successors, on
+each vacancy, must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit
+election.  But the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts
+the independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor
+seems on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent
+claims of the clergy.  The royal youth was commanded to take the
+crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his
+head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the
+nation. ^116 The same ceremony was repeated, though with less
+energy, in the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the
+Second: the Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to
+son in a lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of
+the popes was reduced to the empty honor of crowning and
+anointing these hereditary princes, who were already invested
+with their power and dominions.  The pious Lewis survived his
+brothers, and embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the
+nations and the nobles, his bishops and his children, quickly
+discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired by the
+same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre,
+while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war,
+or battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire
+was divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated
+every filial and fraternal duty.  The kingdoms of Germany and
+France were forever separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the
+Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with
+Italy, to the Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of
+his share, Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory
+kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis the
+Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the
+proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor.  On his death
+without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his
+uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the
+occasion of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and
+of bestowing on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the
+Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church.  The dregs of
+the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue
+or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the bard, the stammerer,
+the fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and uniform
+features of a crowd of kings alike deserving of oblivion.  By the
+failure of the collateral branches, the whole inheritance
+devolved to Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his
+insanity authorized the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France:
+he was deposed in a diet, and solicited his daily bread from the
+rebels by whose contempt his life and liberty had been spared.
+According to the measure of their force, the governors, the
+bishops, and the lords, usurped the fragments of the falling
+empire; and some preference was shown to the female or
+illegitimate blood of Charlemagne.  Of the greater part, the
+title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was
+adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions.  Those who
+could appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned
+emperors in the Vatican; but their modesty was more frequently
+satisfied with the appellation of kings of Italy: and the whole
+term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy, from the
+abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the
+First.
+
+[Footnote 116: Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this
+coronation: and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 813,
+No. 13, &c.  See Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508,) howsoever
+adverse to the claims of the popes.  For the series of the
+Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany;
+Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose
+pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]
+
+Otho ^117 was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and
+if he truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte
+of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted
+to reign over their conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was
+elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the
+kingdom of Germany.  Its limits ^118 were enlarged on every side
+by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos.  A portion of
+Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and
+the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and
+language it has been tinged since the time of Caesar and Tacitus.
+
+Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of
+Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of
+Burgundy and Arles.  In the North, Christianity was propagated by
+the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic
+nations of the Elbe and Oder: the marches of Brandenburgh and
+Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of
+Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves
+his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he
+passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
+pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation
+of Germany.  From that memorable aera, two maxims of public
+jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time.  I.
+That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired,
+from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome.  II.
+But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and
+Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the
+Roman pontiff. ^119
+
+[Footnote 117: He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in
+whose favor the Duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858.
+Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianae
+Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p. 679,) gives a splendid character
+of his family.  Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes
+nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener
+facile reperitur, (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216.)
+Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent
+from Witikind.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See the treatise of Conringius, (de Finibus
+Imperii Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to.: ) he rejects the
+extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian
+empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her
+vassals, and her neighbors.]
+
+[Footnote 119: The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I.
+and Henry I., the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which
+was never assumed by those kings of Germany.  The Italians,
+Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only
+reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome.]
+
+The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the
+East by the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his
+fathers, the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal
+and familiar appellation of brother. ^120 Perhaps in his
+connection with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his
+embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and
+friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that
+ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a
+mother.  The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of
+such a union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is
+impossible to conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins
+may teach us to suspect, that the report was invented by the
+enemies of Irene, to charge her with the guilt of betraying the
+church and state to the strangers of the West. ^121 The French
+ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly been the victims,
+of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national hatred.
+Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of
+ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends and
+bad neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to
+provoke a neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the
+church of St. Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation.
+After a tedious journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of
+Nicephorus found him in his camp, on the banks of the River Sala;
+and Charlemagne affected to confound their vanity by displaying,
+in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the
+Byzantine palace. ^122 The Greeks were successively led through
+four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to fall
+prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till
+he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or
+master of the horse, of the emperor.  The same mistake, and the
+same answer, were repeated in the apartments of the count
+palatine, the steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience
+was gradually heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber
+were thrown open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his
+throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and
+encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs.
+A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two
+empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the
+right of present possession.  But the Greeks ^123 soon forgot
+this humiliating equality, or remembered it only to hate the
+Barbarians by whom it was extorted.  During the short union of
+virtue and power, they respectfully saluted the august
+Charlemagne, with the acclamations of basileus, and emperor of
+the Romans.  As soon as these qualities were separated in the
+person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed,
+"To the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor of the Franks
+and Lombards." When both power and virtue were extinct, they
+despoiled Lewis the Second of his hereditary title, and with the
+barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the
+crowd of Latin princes. His reply ^124 is expressive of his
+weakness: he proves, with some learning, that, both in sacred and
+profane history, the name of king is synonymous with the Greek
+word basileus: if, at Constantinople, it were assumed in a more
+exclusive and imperial sense, he claims from his ancestors, and
+from the popes, a just participation of the honors of the Roman
+purple. The same controversy was revived in the reign of the
+Othos; and their ambassador describes, in lively colors, the
+insolence of the Byzantine court. ^125 The Greeks affected to
+despise the poverty and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and
+in their last decline refused to prostitute to the kings of
+Germany the title of Roman emperors.
+
+[Footnote 120: Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P.
+imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus) magna tulit patientia,
+vicitque eorum contumaciam ... mittendo ad eos crebras
+legationes, et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c.
+28, p. 128.  Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus,
+he affected some reluctance to receive the empire.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of
+Charles (Chronograph. p. 399,) and of his treaty of marriage with
+Irene, (p. 402,) which is unknown to the Latins.  Gaillard
+relates his transactions with the Greek empire, (tom. ii. p. 446
+- 468.)]
+
+[Footnote 122: Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant
+was a farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed
+represented in the presence, and for the benefit, of children of
+a larger growth.]
+
+[Footnote 123: Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi,
+(tom. iii. A.D. 812, No. 7, A.D. 824, No. 10, &c.,) the contrast
+of Charlemagne and his son; to the former the ambassadors of
+Michael (who were indeed disavowed) more suo, id est lingua
+Graeca laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et appellantes; to the
+latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 124: See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous
+writer of Salerno, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 243 - 254,
+c. 93 - 107,) whom Baronius (A.D. 871, No. 51 - 71) mistook for
+Erchempert, when he transcribed it in his Annals.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est sua lingua,
+sed ob indignationem, id est regem nostra vocabat, Liutprand, in
+Legat. in Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 479.  The pope had
+exhorted Nicephorus, emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with
+Otho, the august emperor of the Romans - quae inscriptio secundum
+Graecos peccatoria et temeraria ... imperatorem inquiunt,
+universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum, Nicephorum, (p.
+486.)]
+
+These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to
+exercise the powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and
+Grecian princes; and the importance of this prerogative increased
+with the temporal estate and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman
+church.  In the Christian aristocracy, the principal members of
+the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration,
+and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop.  Rome was divided into
+twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was governed by a cardinal
+priest, or presbyter, a title which, however common or modest in
+its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of kings.  Their
+number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of
+the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
+Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church.  This ecclesiastical
+senate was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman
+province, who were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia,
+Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines,
+than by their weekly service in the Lateran, and their superior
+share in the honors and authority of the apostolic see.  On the
+death of the pope, these bishops recommended a successor to the
+suffrage of the college of cardinals, ^126 and their choice was
+ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman
+people.  But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be
+legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church,
+had graciously signified his approbation and consent.  The royal
+commissioner examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the
+proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the
+qualifications of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of
+fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively
+enriched the patrimony of St. Peter.  In the frequent schisms,
+the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor;
+and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and
+to punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed
+a treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the
+candidate most acceptable to his majesty: ^127 his successors
+anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed the Roman
+benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their
+chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a
+Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition
+of foreign power.  These acts of prerogative were most speciously
+excused by the vices of a popular election.  The competitor who
+had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
+avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were
+stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises
+of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in
+a long and disgraceful servitude.  The Roman pontiffs, of the
+ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and
+murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence, after
+the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that
+they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise
+the charity of a priest. ^128 The influence of two sister
+prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth
+and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most
+strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and
+their reign ^129 may have suggested to the darker ages ^130 the
+fable ^131 of a female pope. ^132 The bastard son, the grandson,
+and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated
+in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen
+years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
+church. ^* His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion;
+and the nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges
+that were urged against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence
+of Otho the Great.  As John XII. had renounced the dress and
+decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be
+dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt,
+the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming
+and hunting.  His open simony might be the consequence of
+distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if
+it be true, could not possibly be serious.  But we read, with
+some surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in
+public adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace
+was turned into a school for prostitution, and that his rapes of
+virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting
+the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be
+violated by his successor. ^133 The Protestants have dwelt with
+malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a
+philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous
+than their virtues.  After a long series of scandal, the
+apostolic see was reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal
+of Gregory VII.  That ambitious monk devoted his life to the
+execution of two projects.  I.  To fix in the college of
+cardinals the freedom and independence of election, and forever
+to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors and the Roman
+people.  II.  To bestow and resume the Western empire as a fief
+or benefice ^134 of the church, and to extend his temporal
+dominion over the kings and kingdoms of the earth.  After a
+contest of fifty years, the first of these designs was
+accomplished by the firm support of the ecclesiastical order,
+whose liberty was connected with that of their chief.  But the
+second attempt, though it was crowned with some partial and
+apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular
+power, and finally extinguished by the improvement of human
+reason.
+
+[Footnote 126: The origin and progress of the title of cardinal
+may be found in Themassin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p.
+1261 - 1298,) Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. vi.
+Dissert. lxi. p. 159 - 182,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
+Eccles. p. 345 - 347,) who accurately remarks the form and
+changes of the election.  The cardinal-bishops so highly exalted
+by Peter Damianus, are sunk to a level with the rest of the
+sacred college.]
+
+[Footnote 127: Firmiter jurantes, nunquam se papam electuros aut
+audinaturos, praeter consensum et electionem Othonis et filii
+sui. (Liutprand, l. vi. c. 6, p. 472.) This important concession
+may either supply or confirm the decree of the clergy and people
+of Rome, so fiercely rejected by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori,
+(A.D. 964,) and so well defended and explained by St. Marc,
+(Abrege, tom. ii. p. 808 - 816, tom. iv. p. 1167 - 1185.) Consult
+the historical critic, and the Annals of Muratori, for for the
+election and confirmation of each pope.]
+
+[Footnote 128: The oppression and vices of the Roman church, in
+the xth century, are strongly painted in the history and legation
+of Liutprand, (see p. 440, 450, 471 - 476, 479, &c.;) and it is
+whimsical enough to observe Muratori tempering the invectives of
+Baronius against the popes. But these popes had been chosen, not
+by the cardinals, but by lay-patrons.]
+
+[Footnote 129: The time of Pope Joan (papissa Joanna) is placed
+somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of
+her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and
+Benedict III.  But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links
+the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict, (illico, mox, p.
+247;) and the accurate chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and
+Leibnitz, fixes both events to the year 857.]
+
+[Footnote 130: The advocates for Pope Joan produce one hundred
+and fifty witnesses, or rather echoes, of the xivth, xvth, and
+xvith centuries.  They bear testimony against themselves and the
+legend, by multiplying the proof that so curious a story must
+have been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was
+known.  On those of the ixth and xth centuries, the recent event
+would have flashed with a double force.  Would Photius have
+spared such a reproach?  Could Liutprand have missed such
+scandal?  It is scarcely worth while to discuss the various
+readings of Martinus Polonus, Sigeber of Gamblours, or even
+Marianus Scotus; but a most palpable forgery is the passage of
+Pope Joan, which has been foisted into some Mss. and editions of
+the Roman Anastasius.]
+
+[Footnote 131: As false, it deserves that name; but I would not
+pronounce it incredible.  Suppose a famous French chevalier of
+our own times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the
+church, instead of the army: her merit or fortune might have
+raised her to St. Peter's chair; her amours would have been
+natural: her delivery in the streets unlucky, but not
+improbable.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Till the reformation the tale was repeated and
+believed without offence: and Joan's female statue long occupied
+her place among the popes in the cathedral of Sienna, (Pagi,
+Critica, tom. iii. p. 624 - 626.) She has been annihilated by two
+learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique,
+Papesse, Polonus, Blondel;) but their brethren were scandalized
+by this equitable and generous criticism.  Spanheim and Lenfant
+attempt to save this poor engine of controversy, and even Mosheim
+condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion, (p. 289.)]
+
+[Footnote *: John XI. was the son of her husband Alberic, not of
+her lover, Pope Sergius III., as Muratori has distinctly proved,
+Ann. ad ann. 911, tom. p. 268.  Her grandson Octavian, otherwise
+called John XII., was pope; but a great-grandson cannot be
+discovered in any of the succeeding popes; nor does our historian
+himself, in his subsequent narration, (p. 202,) seem to know of
+one.  Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold, p. 309. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Lateranense palatium ... prostibulum meretricum
+... Testis omnium gentium, praeterquam Romanorum, absentia
+mulierum, quae sanctorum apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent
+visere, cum nonnullas ante dies paucos, hunc audierint
+conjugatas, viduas, virgines vi oppressisse, (Liutprand, Hist. l.
+vi. c. 6, p. 471.  See the whole affair of John XII., p. 471 -
+476.)]
+
+[Footnote 134: A new example of the mischief of equivocation is
+the beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope
+conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may
+signify either a legal fief, or a simple favor, an obligation,
+(we want the word bienfait.) (See Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands,
+tom. iii. p. 393 - 408.  Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique, tom. i.
+p. 229, 296, 317, 324, 420, 430, 500, 505, 509, &c.)]
+
+In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the
+bishop nor the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the
+provinces which were lost, as they had been won, by the chance of
+arms.  But the Romans were free to choose a master for
+themselves; and the powers which had been delegated to the
+patrician, were irrevocably granted to the French and Saxon
+emperors of the West.  The broken records of the times ^135
+preserve some remembrance of their palace, their mint, their
+tribunal, their edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late
+as the thirteenth century, was derived from Caesar to the
+praefect of the city. ^136 Between the arts of the popes and the
+violence of the people, this supremacy was crushed and
+annihilated.  Content with the titles of emperor and Augustus,
+the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert this local
+jurisdiction.  In the hour of prosperity, their ambition was
+diverted by more alluring objects; and in the decay and division
+of the empire, they were oppressed by the defence of their
+hereditary provinces. Amidst the ruins of Italy, the famous
+Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume the character of
+her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was introduced by
+her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St. Angelo,
+which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome.  Her
+son by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at
+the nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was
+chastised with a blow by his new father.  The blow was productive
+of a revolution.  "Romans," exclaimed the youth, "once you were
+the masters of the world, and these Burgundians the most abject
+of your slaves.  They now reign, these voracious and brutal
+savages, and my injury is the commencement of your servitude."
+^137 The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of the city:
+the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was
+imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI.,
+was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions.  With the
+title of prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the
+government of Rome; and he is said to have gratified the popular
+prejudice, by restoring the office, or at least the title, of
+consuls and tribunes.  His son and heir Octavian assumed, with
+the pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his predecessor, he
+was provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer for the
+church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded with
+the Imperial dignity.  But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans
+were impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by
+the secret conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho
+commanded his sword-bearer not to stir from his person, lest he
+should be assaulted and murdered at the foot of the altar. ^138
+Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor chastised the revolt of
+the people and the ingratitude of John XII.  The pope was
+degraded in a synod; the praefect was mounted on an ass, whipped
+through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most
+guilty were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this
+severe process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius
+and Justinian. The voice of fame has accused the second Otho of a
+perfidious and bloody act, the massacre of the senators, whom he
+had invited to his table under the fair semblance of hospitality
+and friendship. ^139 In the minority of his son Otho the Third,
+Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the
+consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic.  From the
+condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command
+of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and
+formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek
+emperors. ^* In the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an
+obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a
+promise of safety: his body was suspended on a gibbet, and his
+head was exposed on the battlements of the castle.  By a reverse
+of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops, was besieged three
+days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful escape saved
+him from the justice or fury of the Romans.  The senator Ptolemy
+was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
+enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a
+poison which she administered to her Imperial lover.  It was the
+design of Otho the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the
+North, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the
+institutions of the Roman monarchy.  But his successors only once
+in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tyber, to receive
+their crown in the Vatican. ^140 Their absence was contemptible,
+their presence odious and formidable. They descended from the
+Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
+enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of
+tumult and bloodshed. ^141 A faint remembrance of their ancestors
+still tormented the Romans; and they beheld with pious
+indignation the succession of Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and
+Bohemians, who usurped the purple and prerogatives of the
+Caesars.
+
+[Footnote 135: For the history of the emperors in Rome and Italy,
+see Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, Opp. tom. ii., with the Notes of
+Saxius, and the Annals of Muratori, who might refer more
+distinctly to the authors of his great collection.]
+
+[Footnote 136: See the Dissertations of Le Blanc at the end of
+his treatise des Monnoyes de France, in which he produces some
+Roman coins of the French emperors.]
+
+[Footnote 137: Romanorum aliquando servi, scilicet Burgundiones,
+Romanis imperent? .... Romanae urbis dignitas ad tantam est
+stultitiam ducta, ut meretricum etiam imperio pareat?
+(Liutprand, l. iii. c. 12, p. 450.) Sigonius (l. vi. p. 400)
+positively affirms the renovation of the consulship; but in the
+old writers Albericus is more frequently styled princeps
+Romanorum.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Ditmar, p. 354, apud Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 439.]
+
+[Footnote 139: This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse in
+the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p.
+436, 437,) who flourished towards the end of the xiith century,
+(Fabricius Bibliot. Latin. Med. et Infimi Aevi, tom. iii. p. 69,
+edit. Mansi;) but his evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is
+reasonably suspected by Muratori (Annali, tom. viii. p. 177.)]
+
+[Footnote *: The Marquis Maffei's gallery contained a medal with
+Imp. Caes August. P. P. Crescentius.  Hence Hobhouse infers that
+he affected the empire. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold,
+p. 252. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 140: The coronation of the emperor, and some original
+ceremonies of the xth century are preserved in the Panegyric on
+Berengarius, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 405 - 414,)
+illustrated by the Notes of Hadrian Valesius and Leibnitz.
+Sigonius has related the whole process of the Roman expedition,
+in good Latin, but with some errors of time and fact, (l. vii. p.
+441 - 446.)]
+
+[Footnote 141: In a quarrel at the coronation of Conrad II.
+Muratori takes leave to observe - doveano ben essere allora,
+indisciplinati, Barbari, e bestials Tedeschi.  Annal. tom. viii.
+p. 368.]
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
+
+Part VI.
+
+There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason
+than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations,
+in opposition to their inclination and interest.  A torrent of
+Barbarians may pass over the earth, but an extensive empire must
+be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the
+centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in
+resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts;
+fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular
+administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army
+to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair.  Far
+different was the situation of the German Caesars, who were
+ambitious to enslave the kingdom of Italy.  Their patrimonial
+estates were stretched along the Rhine, or scattered in the
+provinces; but this ample domain was alienated by the imprudence
+or distress of successive princes; and their revenue, from minute
+and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely sufficient for the
+maintenance of their household. Their troops were formed by the
+legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who passed
+the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
+disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the
+campaign.  Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential
+influence of the climate: the survivors brought back the bones of
+their princes and nobles, ^142 and the effects of their own
+intemperance were often imputed to the treachery and malice of
+the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the calamities of the
+Barbarians.  This irregular tyranny might contend on equal terms
+with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or the
+reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel.  But in
+the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the
+flame of industry and freedom; and the generous example was at
+length imitated by the republics of Tuscany. ^* In the Italian
+cities a municipal government had never been totally abolished;
+and their first privileges were granted by the favor and policy
+of the emperors, who were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier
+against the independence of the nobles.  But their rapid
+progress, the daily extension of their power and pretensions,
+were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising
+communities. ^143 Each city filled the measure of her diocese or
+district: the jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the
+marquises and counts, was banished from the land; and the
+proudest nobles were persuaded or compelled to desert their
+solitary castles, and to embrace the more honorable character of
+freemen and magistrates.  The legislative authority was inherent
+in the general assembly; but the executive powers were intrusted
+to three consuls, annually chosen from the three orders of
+captains, valvassors, ^144 and commons, into which the republic
+was divided.  Under the protection of equal law, the labors of
+agriculture and commerce were gradually revived; but the martial
+spirit of the Lombards was nourished by the presence of danger;
+and as often as the bell was rung, or the standard ^145 erected,
+the gates of the city poured forth a numerous and intrepid band,
+whose zeal in their own cause was soon guided by the use and
+discipline of arms.  At the foot of these popular ramparts, the
+pride of the Caesars was overthrown; and the invincible genius of
+liberty prevailed over the two Frederics, the greatest princes of
+the middle age; the first, superior perhaps in military prowess;
+the second, who undoubtedly excelled in the softer
+accomplishments of peace and learning.
+
+[Footnote 142: After boiling away the flesh.  The caldrons for
+that purpose were a necessary piece of travelling furniture; and
+a German who was using it for his brother, promised it to a
+friend, after it should have been employed for himself, (Schmidt,
+tom. iii. p. 423, 424.) The same author observes that the whole
+Saxon line was extinguished in Italy, (tom. ii. p. 440.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques
+Italiannes.  Hallam Middle Ages.  Raumer, Geschichte der
+Hohenstauffen.  Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, vol.
+iii. p. 19 with the authors quoted. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Otho, bishop of Frisingen, has left an important
+passage on the Italian cities, (l. ii. c. 13, in Script. Ital.
+tom. vi. p. 707 - 710: ) and the rise, progress, and government
+of these republics are perfectly illustrated by Muratori,
+(Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. iv. dissert xlv. - lii. p. 1
+- 675.  Annal. tom. viii. ix. x.)]
+
+[Footnote 144: For these titles, see Selden, (Titles of Honor,
+vol. iii. part 1 p. 488.) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p.
+140, tom. vi. p. 776,) and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom.
+ii. p. 719.)]
+
+[Footnote 145: The Lombards invented and used the carocium, a
+standard planted on a car or wagon, drawn by a team of oxen,
+(Ducange, tom. ii. p. 194, 195. Muratori Antiquitat tom. ii. dis.
+xxvi. p. 489 - 493.)]
+
+Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic
+the First invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a
+statesman, the valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant.
+The recent discovery of the Pandects had renewed a science most
+favorable to despotism; and his venal advocates proclaimed the
+emperor the absolute master of the lives and properties of his
+subjects.  His royal prerogatives, in a less odious sense, were
+acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of Italy
+was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, ^146 which were
+multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal
+officers.  The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the
+force of his arms: his captives were delivered to the
+executioner, or shot from his military engines; and. after the
+siege and surrender of Milan, the buildings of that stately
+capital were razed to the ground, three hundred hostages were
+sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were dispersed in four
+villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror. ^147 But
+Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
+cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope
+Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of
+oppression was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of
+Constance, Frederic subscribed, with some reservations, the
+freedom of four-and-twenty cities.  His grandson contended with
+their vigor and maturity; but Frederic the Second ^148 was
+endowed with some personal and peculiar advantages.  His birth
+and education recommended him to the Italians; and in the
+implacable discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were
+attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of
+liberty and the church.  The court of Rome had slumbered, when
+his father Henry the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire
+the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary
+realms the son derived an ample and ready supply of troops and
+treasure.  Yet Frederic the Second was finally oppressed by the
+arms of the Lombards and the thunders of the Vatican: his kingdom
+was given to a stranger, and the last of his family was beheaded
+at Naples on a public scaffold.  During sixty years, no emperor
+appeared in Italy, and the name was remembered only by the
+ignominious sale of the last relics of sovereignty.
+
+[Footnote 146: Gunther Ligurinus, l. viii. 584, et seq., apud
+Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 399.]
+
+[Footnote 147: Solus imperator faciem suam firmavit ut petram,
+(Burcard. de Excidio Mediolani, Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 917.)
+This volume of Muratori contains the originals of the history of
+Frederic the First, which must be compared with due regard to the
+circumstances and prejudices of each German or Lombard writer.
+
+Note: Von Raumer has traced the fortunes of the Swabian
+house in one of the ablest historical works of modern times.  He
+may be compared with the spirited and independent Sismondi. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 148: For the history of Frederic II. and the house of
+Swabia at Naples, see Giannone, Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xiv.
+- xix.]
+
+The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to
+decorate their chief with the title of emperor; but it was not
+their design to invest him with the despotism of Constantine and
+Justinian.  The persons of the Germans were free, their conquests
+were their own, and their national character was animated by a
+spirit which scorned the servile jurisprudence of the new or the
+ancient Rome. It would have been a vain and dangerous attempt to
+impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who were impatient of a
+magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the powerful,
+who aspired to command.  The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was
+distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the
+counts of the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches
+or frontiers, who all united the civil and military authority as
+it had been delegated to the lieutenants of the first Caesars.
+The Roman governors, who, for the most part, were soldiers of
+fortune, seduced their mercenary legions, assumed the Imperial
+purple, and either failed or succeeded in their revolt, without
+wounding the power and unity of government.  If the dukes,
+margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in their
+claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and
+pernicious to the state.  Instead of aiming at the supreme rank,
+they silently labored to establish and appropriate their
+provincial independence.  Their ambition was seconded by the
+weight of their estates and vassals, their mutual example and
+support, the common interest of the subordinate nobility, the
+change of princes and families, the minorities of Otho the Third
+and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the popes, and the vain
+pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome.  All the
+attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually
+usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace
+and war, of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign
+alliance and domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by
+violence, was ratified by favor or distress, was granted as the
+price of a doubtful vote or a voluntary service; whatever had
+been granted to one could not, without injury, be denied to his
+successor or equal; and every act of local or temporary
+possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the
+Germanic kingdom.  In every province, the visible presence of the
+duke or count was interposed between the throne and the nobles;
+the subjects of the law became the vassals of a private chief;
+and the standard which he received from his sovereign, was often
+raised against him in the field.  The temporal power of the
+clergy was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of
+the Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who blindly depended on
+their moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of Germany were
+made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and
+population, to the most ample states of the military order.  As
+long as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on
+every vacancy these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their
+cause was maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their
+friends and favorites. But in the quarrel of the investitures,
+they were deprived of their influence over the episcopal
+chapters; the freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign
+was reduced, by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the
+recommendation, once in his reign, to a single prebend in each
+church.  The secular governors, instead of being recalled at the
+will of a superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of
+their peers.  In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment
+of the son to the duchy or county of his father, was solicited as
+a favor; it was gradually obtained as a custom, and extorted as a
+right: the lineal succession was often extended to the collateral
+or female branches; the states of the empire (their popular, and
+at length their legal, appellation) were divided and alienated by
+testament and sale; and all idea of a public trust was lost in
+that of a private and perpetual inheritance.  The emperor could
+not even be enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and
+extinction: within the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose
+of the vacant fief; and, in the choice of the candidate, it was
+his duty to consult either the general or the provincial diet.
+
+After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a
+monster with a hundred heads.  A crowd of princes and prelates
+disputed the ruins of the empire: the lords of innumerable
+castles were less prone to obey, than to imitate, their
+superiors; and, according to the measure of their strength, their
+incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery.
+Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and
+manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were
+shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest.  But
+the Italian cities and the French vassals were divided and
+destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the
+name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic.  In
+the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a
+national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common
+legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges
+of the electors, the princes, and the free and Imperial cities of
+Germany.  I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were
+permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the
+exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these
+electors were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the
+margrave of Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and
+the three archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne.  II.
+The college of princes and prelates purged themselves of a
+promiscuous multitude: they reduced to four representative votes
+the long series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles or
+equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets,
+had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The
+pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely
+adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and,
+in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same
+aera into the national assemblies of France England, and Germany.
+
+The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the
+north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and
+intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities
+has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative
+still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of
+electors and princes. ^149
+
+[Footnote 149: In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of
+Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had
+rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a
+multitude of names and passages.  That guide is M. Pfeffel, the
+author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know
+of any country, (Nouvel Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire et du
+Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His
+learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts;
+his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space. His
+chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and
+an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads.
+To this work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was
+gratefully indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even
+the modern changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae
+Germanicae of Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more
+usefully, as that huge compilation is fortified in every page
+with the original texts.
+
+Note: For the rise and progress of the Hanseatic League,
+consult the authoritative history by Sartorius; Geschichte des
+Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen, 1802.  New and improved
+edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830.  The original Hanseatic
+League comprehended Cologne and many of the great cities in the
+Netherlands and on the Rhine. - M.]
+
+It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the
+strongest light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of
+Germany, which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine
+and Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine.  Their
+unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of
+Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor Henry the Seventh
+procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson
+Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and barbarous
+in the estimation of the Germans themselves. ^150 After the
+excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or
+promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the
+exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the
+earth.  The death of his competitors united the electoral
+college, and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans,
+and future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was
+prostituted to the Caesars of Germany and Greece.  The German
+emperor was no more than the elective and impotent magistrate of
+an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village that he
+might call his own.  His best prerogative was the right of
+presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was
+convened at his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less
+opulent than the adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat
+of his power and the richest source of his revenue.  The army
+with which he passed the Alps consisted of three hundred horse.
+In the cathedral of St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the
+iron crown, which tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy; but
+he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the gates of the city
+were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held a captive by
+the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of
+Milan.  In the Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown
+of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman
+emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
+within the walls of Rome.  The eloquent Petrarch, ^151 whose
+fancy revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and
+upbraids the ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his
+contemporaries could observe, that the sole exercise of his
+authority was in the lucrative sale of privileges and titles.
+The gold of Italy secured the election of his son; but such was
+the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was
+arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained
+in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his
+expenses.
+
+[Footnote 150: Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be
+considered as a Barbarian.  After his education at Paris, he
+recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the
+emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin,
+Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always
+represents him as a polite and learned prince.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Besides the German and Italian historians, the
+expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original
+colors in the curious Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii.
+p. 376 - 430, by the Abbe de Sade, whose prolixity has never been
+blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.]
+
+From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent
+majesty of the same Charles in the diets of the empire.  The
+golden bull, which fixes the Germanic constitution, is
+promulgated in the style of a sovereign and legislator.  A
+hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted their own
+dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their chief
+or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers,
+the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings,
+performed their solemn and domestic service of the palace.  The
+seals of the triple kingdom were borne in state by the
+archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, the perpetual
+arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles.  The great
+marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver
+measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately
+dismounted to regulate the order of the guests The great steward,
+the count palatine of the Rhine, place the dishes on the table.
+The great chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented,
+after the repast, the golden ewer and basin, to wash.  The king
+of Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor's
+brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession
+was closed by the great huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a
+stag, with a loud chorus of horns and hounds. ^152 Nor was the
+supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany alone: the
+hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the preeminence of his
+rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian princes, the
+temporal head of the great republic of the West: ^153 to his
+person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he
+disputed with the pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings
+and assembling councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned
+Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles the Fourth; and his school
+resounded with the doctrine, that the Roman emperor was the
+rightful sovereign of the earth, from the rising to the setting
+sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as
+a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, "And there went
+forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be
+taxed." ^154
+
+[Footnote 152: See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]
+
+[Footnote 153: The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor
+at its head, was never represented with more dignity than in the
+council of Constance.  See Lenfant's History of that assembly.]
+
+[Footnote 154: Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]
+
+If we annihilate the interval of time and space between
+Augustus and Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast
+between the two Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness
+under the mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his
+strength under the semblance of modesty.  At the head of his
+victorious legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the
+Nile and Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, Augustus professed
+himself the servant of the state and the equal of his
+fellow-citizens.  The conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed
+a popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune.
+His will was the law of mankind, but in the declaration of his
+laws he borrowed the voice of the senate and people; and from
+their decrees their master accepted and renewed his temporary
+commission to administer the republic.  In his dress, his
+domestics, ^155 his titles, in all the offices of social life,
+Augustus maintained the character of a private Roman; and his
+most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and
+perpetual monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 155: Six thousand urns have been discovered of the
+slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia.  So minute was the
+division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the
+wool which was spun by the empress's maids, another for the care
+of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini.  Extract
+of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His
+Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were
+of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of
+Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of the
+city.]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part I.
+
+Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. - Birth,
+Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet. - He Preaches At Mecca. -
+Flies To Medina. - Propagates His Religion By The Sword. -
+Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs. - His Death And
+Successors. - The Claims And Fortunes Of All And His Descendants.
+
+After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars
+of Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of
+Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy.  While
+the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was
+distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with
+the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his
+throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.  The genius of
+the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of
+his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the
+Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the
+most memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and
+lasting character on the nations of the globe. ^1
+
+[Footnote 1: As in this and the following chapter I shall display
+much Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the
+Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters,
+who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and
+English languages.  Their collections, versions, and histories, I
+shall occasionally notice.]
+
+In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and
+Aethiopia, the Arabian peninsula ^2 may be conceived as a
+triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions.  From the northern
+point of Beles ^3 on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred
+miles is terminated by the Straits of Bebelmandel and the land of
+frankincense.  About half this length may be allowed for the
+middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the
+Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. ^4 The sides of the triangle are
+gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a
+thousand miles to the Indian Ocean.  The entire surface of the
+peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or
+France; but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with
+the epithets of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of
+Tartary are decked, by the hand of nature, with lofty trees and
+luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of
+comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in
+the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is
+intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
+desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and
+intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes,
+the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious
+and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they
+alternately raise and scatter, are compared to the billows of the
+ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and
+buried in the whirlwind.  The common benefits of water are an
+object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood,
+that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element
+of fire.  Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which
+fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent
+regions: the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the
+thirsty earth: the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the
+acacia, that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are
+nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is
+collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are
+the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca, ^5
+after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of
+the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt.  Such
+is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia.  The
+experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
+enjoyments.  A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh
+water, are sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to
+the fortunate spots which can afford food and refreshment to
+themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry
+in the cultivation of the palmtree and the vine.  The high lands
+that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by their
+superior plenty of wood and water; the air is more temperate, the
+fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human race more
+numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the toil
+of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense ^6 and
+coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the
+world.  If it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this
+sequestered region may truly deserve the appellation of the
+happy; and the splendid coloring of fancy and fiction has been
+suggested by contrast, and countenanced by distance.  It was for
+this earthly paradise that Nature had reserved her choicest
+favors and her most curious workmanship: the incompatible
+blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the natives:
+the soil was impregnated with gold ^7 and gems, and both the land
+and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets.  This
+division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to
+the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and
+it is singular enough, that a country, whose language and
+inhabitants have ever been the same, should scarcely retain a
+vestige of its ancient geography.  The maritime districts of
+Bahrein and Oman are opposite to the realm of Persia.  The
+kingdom of Yemen displays the limits, or at least the situation,
+of Arabia Felix: the name of Neged is extended over the inland
+space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of
+Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea. ^8
+
+[Footnote 2: The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three
+classes: 1. The Greeks and Latins, whose progressive knowledge
+may be traced in Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, in Hudson,
+Geograph. Minor. tom. i.,) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. ii. p.
+159 - 167, l. iii. p. 211 - 216, edit. Wesseling,) Strabo, (l.
+xvi. p. 1112 - 1114, from Eratosthenes, p. 1122 - 1132, from
+Artemidorus,) Dionysius, (Periegesis, 927 - 969,) Pliny, (Hist.
+Natur. v. 12, vi. 32,) and Ptolemy, (Descript. et Tabulae Urbium,
+in Hudson, tom. iii.) 2. The Arabic writers, who have treated the
+subject with the zeal of patriotism or devotion: the extracts of
+Pocock (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 125 - 128) from the Geography
+of the Sherif al Edrissi, render us still more dissatisfied with
+the version or abridgment (p. 24 - 27, 44 - 56, 108, &c., 119,
+&c.) which the Maronites have published under the absurd title of
+Geographia Nubiensis, (Paris, 1619;) but the Latin and French
+translators, Greaves (in Hudson, tom. iii.) and Galland, (Voyage
+de la Palestine par La Roque, p. 265 - 346,) have opened to us
+the Arabia of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of
+the peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the
+Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim.
+3. The European travellers; among whom Shaw (p. 438 - 455) and
+Niebuhr (Description, 1773; Voyages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an
+honorable distinction: Busching (Geographie par Berenger, tom.
+viii. p. 416 - 510) has compiled with judgment, and D'Anville's
+Maps (Orbis Veteribus Notus, and 1re Partie de l'Asie) should lie
+before the reader, with his Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208
+- 231.
+
+Note: Of modern travellers may be mentioned the adventurer
+who called himself Ali Bey; but above all, the intelligent, the
+enterprising the accurate Burckhardt. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Abulfed. Descript. Arabiae, p. 1.  D'Anville,
+l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 19, 20.  It was in this place, the
+paradise or garden of a satrap, that Xenophon and the Greeks
+first passed the Euphrates, (Anabasis, l. i. c. 10, p. 29, edit.
+Wells.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning,
+
+1. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a
+part of the Mare Rubrum, which was extended to the indefinite
+space of the Indian Ocean.
+
+2. That the synonymous words, allude to the color of the
+blacks or negroes, (Dissert Miscell. tom. i. p. 59 - 117.)]
+
+[Footnote 5: In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and
+Mecca, there are fifteen destitute of good water.  See the route
+of the Hadjees, in Shaw's Travels, p. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense,
+of Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny.  Our great poet
+(Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors
+that are blown by the north- east wind from the Sabaean coast: -
+
+ - Many a league,
+Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles.
+(Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 42.)]
+
+[Footnote 7: Agatharcides affirms, that lumps of pure gold were
+found, from the size of an olive to that of a nut; that iron was
+twice, and silver ten times, the value of gold, (de Mari Rubro,
+p. 60.) These real or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no
+gold mines are at present known in Arabia, (Niebuhr, Description,
+p. 124.)
+
+Note: A brilliant passage in the geographical poem of
+Dionysius Periegetes embodies the notions of the ancients on the
+wealth and fertility of Yemen.  Greek mythology, and the
+traditions of the "gorgeous east," of India as well as Arabia,
+are mingled together in indiscriminate splendor. Compare on the
+southern coast of Arabia, the recent travels of Lieut. Wellsted -
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Hostoriae
+Arabum of Pocock, (Oxon. 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text
+and version are extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory
+Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards translated, (Oxon. 1663,
+in 4to.;) the three hundred and fifty- eight notes form a classic
+and original work on the Arabian antiquities.]
+
+The measure of population is regulated by the means of
+subsistence; and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be
+outnumbered by the subjects of a fertile and industrious
+province. Along the shores of the Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and
+even of the Red Sea, the Icthyophagi, ^9 or fish eaters,
+continued to wander in quest of their precarious food.  In this
+primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of
+society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without
+sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the
+animal creation.  Generations and ages might roll away in silent
+oblivion, and the helpless savage was restrained from multiplying
+his race by the wants and pursuits which confined his existence
+to the narrow margin of the seacoast.  But in an early period of
+antiquity the great body of the Arabs had emerged from this scene
+of misery; and as the naked wilderness could not maintain a
+people of hunters, they rose at once to the more secure and
+plentiful condition of the pastoral life.  The same life is
+uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the
+portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of
+their ancestors, ^10 who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt
+under similar tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and
+sheep, to the same springs and the same pastures.  Our toil is
+lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the
+useful animals; and the Arabian shepherd had acquired the
+absolute possession of a faithful friend and a laborious slave.
+^11 Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and
+original country of the horse; the climate most propitious, not
+indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that
+generous animal.  The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the
+English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: ^12
+the Bedoweens preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and
+the memory of the purest race: the males are sold at a high
+price, but the females are seldom alienated; and the birth of a
+noble foal was esteemed among the tribes, as a subject of joy and
+mutual congratulation.  These horses are educated in the tents,
+among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which
+trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment.  They are
+accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their sensations are not
+blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip: their
+powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit: but no
+sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than
+they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their
+friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop
+till he has recovered his seat.  In the sands of Africa and
+Arabia, the camel is a sacred and precious gift.  That strong and
+patient beast of burden can perform, without eating or drinking,
+a journey of several days; and a reservoir of fresh water is
+preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach of the animal, whose
+body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the larger breed
+is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds; and the
+dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the
+fleetest courser in the race.  Alive or dead, almost every part
+of the camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and
+nutritious: the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal: ^13
+a valuable salt is extracted from the urine: the dung supplies
+the deficiency of fuel; and the long hair, which falls each year
+and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the garments, the
+furniture, and the tents of the Bedoweens.  In the rainy seasons,
+they consume the rare and insufficient herbage of the desert:
+during the heats of summer and the scarcity of winter, they
+remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of Yemen, or
+the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the
+dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the
+villages of Syria and Palestine.  The life of a wandering Arab is
+a life of danger and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or
+exchange, he may appropriate the fruits of industry, a private
+citizen in Europe is in the possession of more solid and pleasing
+luxury than the proudest emir, who marches in the field at the
+head of ten thousand horse.
+
+[Footnote 9: Arrian remarks the Icthyophagi of the coast of
+Hejez, (Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 12,) and beyond Aden, (p.
+15.) It seems probable that the shores of the Red Sea (in the
+largest sense) were occupied by these savages in the time,
+perhaps, of Cyrus; but I can hardly believe that any cannibals
+were left among the savages in the reign of Justinian.  (Procop.
+de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19.)]
+
+[Footnote 10: See the Specimen Historiae Arabum of Pocock, p. 2,
+5, 86, &c. The journey of M. d'Arvieux, in 1664, to the camp of
+the emir of Mount Carmel, (Voyage de la Palestine, Amsterdam,
+1718,) exhibits a pleasing and original picture of the life of
+the Bedoweens, which may be illustrated from Niebuhr (Description
+de l'Arabie, p. 327 - 344) and Volney, (tom. i. p. 343 - 385,)
+the last and most judicious of our Syrian travellers.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Read (it is no unpleasing task) the incomparable
+articles of the Horse and the Camel, in the Natural History of M.
+de Buffon.]
+
+[Footnote 12: For the Arabian horses, see D'Arvieux (p. 159 -
+173) and Niebuhr, (p. 142 - 144.) At the end of the xiiith
+century, the horses of Neged were esteemed sure-footed, those of
+Yemen strong and serviceable, those of Hejaz most noble.  The
+horses of Europe, the tenth and last class, were generally
+despised as having too much body and too little spirit,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 339: ) their strength was
+requisite to bear the weight of the knight and his armor]
+
+[Footnote 13: Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces
+sunt, was the opinion of an Arabian physician, (Pocock, Specimen,
+p. 88.) Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow,
+and does not even mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and
+Medina was already more luxurious, (Gagnier Vie de Mahomet, tom.
+iii. p. 404.)]
+
+Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes
+of Scythia and the Arabian tribes; since many of the latter were
+collected into towns, and employed in the labors of trade and
+agriculture.  A part of their time and industry was still devoted
+to the management of their cattle: they mingled, in peace and
+war, with their brethren of the desert; and the Bedoweens derived
+from their useful intercourse some supply of their wants, and
+some rudiments of art and knowledge.  Among the forty-two cities
+of Arabia, ^14 enumerated by Abulfeda, the most ancient and
+populous were situate in the happy Yemen: the towers of Saana,
+^15 and the marvellous reservoir of Merab, ^16 were constructed
+by the kings of the Homerites; but their profane lustre was
+eclipsed by the prophetic glories of Medina ^17 and Mecca, ^18
+near the Red Sea, and at the distance from each other of two
+hundred and seventy miles. The last of these holy places was
+known to the Greeks under the name of Macoraba; and the
+termination of the word is expressive of its greatness, which has
+not, indeed, in the most flourishing period, exceeded the size
+and populousness of Marseilles.  Some latent motive, perhaps of
+superstition, must have impelled the founders, in the choice of a
+most unpromising situation. They erected their habitations of mud
+or stone, in a plain about two miles long and one mile broad, at
+the foot of three barren mountains: the soil is a rock; the water
+even of the holy well of Zemzem is bitter or brackish; the
+pastures are remote from the city; and grapes are transported
+above seventy miles from the gardens of Tayef.  The fame and
+spirit of the Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous
+among the Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the
+labors of agriculture, and their position was favorable to the
+enterprises of trade.  By the seaport of Gedda, at the distance
+only of forty miles, they maintained an easy correspondence with
+Abyssinia; and that Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge
+to the disciples of Mahomet.  The treasures of Africa were
+conveyed over the Peninsula to Gerrha or Katif, in the province
+of Bahrein, a city built, as it is said, of rock-salt, by the
+Chaldaean exiles; ^19 and from thence with the native pearls of
+the Persian Gulf, they were floated on rafts to the mouth of the
+Euphrates.  Mecca is placed almost at an equal distance, a
+month's journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on the
+left hand.  The former was the winter, the latter the summer,
+station of her caravans; and their seasonable arrival relieved
+the ships of India from the tedious and troublesome navigation of
+the Red Sea.  In the markets of Saana and Merab, in the harbors
+of Oman and Aden, the camels of the Koreishites were laden with a
+precious cargo of aromatics; a supply of corn and manufactures
+was purchased in the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; the lucrative
+exchange diffused plenty and riches in the streets of Mecca; and
+the noblest of her sons united the love of arms with the
+profession of merchandise. ^20
+
+[Footnote 14: Yet Marcian of Heraclea (in Periplo, p. 16, in tom.
+i. Hudson, Minor. Geograph.) reckons one hundred and sixty-four
+towns in Arabia Felix. The size of the towns might be small - the
+faith of the writer might be large.]
+
+[Footnote 15: It is compared by Abulfeda (in Hudson, tom. ii. p.
+54) to Damascus, and is still the residence of the Iman of Yemen,
+(Voyages de Niebuhr, tom. i. p. 331 - 342.) Saana is twenty-four
+parasangs from Dafar, (Abulfeda, p. 51,) and sixty-eight from
+Aden, (p. 53.)]
+
+[Footnote 16: Pocock, Specimen, p. 57.  Geograph. Nubiensis, p.
+52. Meriaba, or Merab, six miles in circumference, was destroyed
+by the legions of Augustus, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32,) and had
+not revived in the xivth century, (Abulfed. Descript. Arab. p.
+58.)
+
+Note: See note 2 to chap. i.  The destruction of Meriaba by
+the Romans is doubtful.  The town never recovered the inundation
+which took place from the bursting of a large reservoir of water
+- an event of great importance in the Arabian annals, and
+discussed at considerable length by modern Orientalists. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The name of city, Medina, was appropriated, to
+Yatreb. (the Iatrippa of the Greeks,) the seat of the prophet.
+The distances from Medina are reckoned by Abulfeda in stations,
+or days' journey of a caravan, (p. 15: ) to Bahrein, xv.; to
+Bassora, xviii.; to Cufah, xx.; to Damascus or Palestine, xx.; to
+Cairo, xxv.; to Mecca. x.; from Mecca to Saana, (p. 52,) or Aden,
+xxx.; to Cairo, xxxi. days, or 412 hours, (Shaw's Travels, p.
+477;) which, according to the estimate of D'Anville, (Mesures
+Itineraires, p. 99,) allows about twenty-five English miles for a
+day's journey.  From the land of frankincense (Hadramaut, in
+Yemen, between Aden and Cape Fartasch) to Gaza in Syria, Pliny
+(Hist. Nat. xii. 32) computes lxv. mansions of camels.  These
+measures may assist fancy and elucidate facts.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Our notions of Mecca must be drawn from the
+Arabians, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368 - 371.
+Pocock, Specimen, p. 125 - 128.  Abulfeda, p. 11 - 40.) As no
+unbeliever is permitted to enter the city, our travellers are
+silent; and the short hints of Thevenot (Voyages du Levant, part
+i. p. 490) are taken from the suspicious mouth of an African
+renegado. Some Persians counted 6000 houses, (Chardin. tom. iv.
+p. 167.)
+
+Note: Even in the time of Gibbon, Mecca had not been so
+inaccessible to Europeans.  It had been visited by Ludovico
+Barthema, and by one Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, who was taken
+prisoner by the Moors, and forcibly converted to Mahometanism.
+His volume is a curious, though plain, account of his sufferings
+and travels.  Since that time Mecca has been entered, and the
+ceremonies witnessed, by Dr. Seetzen, whose papers were
+unfortunately lost; by the Spaniard, who called himself Ali Bey;
+and, lastly, by Burckhardt, whose description leaves nothing
+wanting to satisfy the curiosity. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1110.  See one of these salt
+houses near Bassora, in D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Mirum dictu ex innumeris populis pars aequa in
+commerciis aut in latrociniis degit, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32.)
+See Sale's Koran, Sura. cvi. p. 503.  Pocock, Specimen, p. 2.
+D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 361. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet,
+p. 5.  Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 72, 120, 126, &c.]
+
+The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme
+of praise among strangers and natives; and the arts of
+controversy transform this singular event into a prophecy and a
+miracle, in favor of the posterity of Ismael. ^21 Some
+exceptions, that can neither be dismissed nor eluded, render this
+mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous; the kingdom
+of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the
+Persians, the sultans of Egypt, ^22 and the Turks; ^23 the holy
+cities of Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian
+tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia ^24 embraced the
+peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons must have
+pitched their tents in the face of their brethren.  Yet these
+exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the nation has
+escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of
+Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve
+the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks ^25
+may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced
+to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to
+provoke, and fruitless to attack.  The obvious causes of their
+freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs.
+Many ages before Mahomet, ^26 their intrepid valor had been
+severely felt by their neighbors in offensive and defensive war.
+The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed
+in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.  The care of the
+sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the
+martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on
+horseback, and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow,
+the javelin, and the cimeter.  The long memory of their
+independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity and
+succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and
+to maintain their inheritance.  Their domestic feuds are
+suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their last
+hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked
+and pillaged by fourscore thousand of the confederates. When they
+advance to battle, the hope of victory is in the front; in the
+rear, the assurance of a retreat.  Their horses and camels, who,
+in eight or ten days, can perform a march of four or five hundred
+miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret waters of the
+desert elude his search, and his victorious troops are consumed
+with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an invisible
+foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart of
+the burning solitude.  The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens are
+not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers
+also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are
+enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate.  The legions of
+Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude; ^27 and it is only
+by a naval power that the reduction of Yemen has been
+successfully attempted.  When Mahomet erected his holy standard,
+^28 that kingdom was a province of the Persian empire; yet seven
+princes of the Homerites still reigned in the mountains; and the
+vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his distant country
+and his unfortunate master.  The historians of the age of
+Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were
+divided by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East:
+the tribe of Gassan was allowed to encamp on the Syrian
+territory: the princes of Hira were permitted to form a city
+about forty miles to the southward of the ruins of Babylon.
+Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous; but their
+friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity
+capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these
+roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they
+learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of
+Rome and of Persia.  From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian
+tribes ^29 were confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the
+general appellation of Saracens, ^30 a name which every Christian
+mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and abhorrence.
+
+[Footnote 21: A nameless doctor (Universal Hist. vol. xx. octavo
+edition) has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by
+the independence of the Arabs.  A critic, besides the exceptions
+of fact, might dispute the meaning of the text (Gen. xvi. 12,)
+the extent of the application, and the foundation of the
+pedigree.
+
+Note: See note 3 to chap. xlvi.  The atter point is probably
+the least contestable of the three. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 22: It was subdued, A.D. 1173, by a brother of the
+great Saladin, who founded a dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites,
+(Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 425.  D'Herbelot, p. 477.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: By the lieutenant of Soliman I. (A.D. 1538) and
+Selim II., (1568.) See Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p.
+201, 221.  The pacha, who resided at Saana, commanded twenty-one
+beys; but no revenue was ever remitted to the Porte, (Marsigli,
+Stato Militare dell' Imperio Ottomanno, p. 124,) and the Turks
+were expelled about the year 1630, (Niebuhr, p. 167, 168.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and
+the third Palestine, the principal cities were Bostra and Petra,
+which dated their aera from the year 105, when they were subdued
+by Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, (Dion. Cassius, l. lxviii.)
+Petra was the capital of the Nabathaeans; whose name is derived
+from the eldest of the sons of Ismael, (Gen. xxv. 12, &c., with
+the Commentaries of Jerom, Le Clerc, and Calmet.) Justinian
+relinquished a palm country of ten days' journey to the south of
+Aelah, (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19,) and the Romans
+maintained a centurion and a custom-house, (Arrian in Periplo
+Maris Erythraei, p. 11, in Hudson, tom. i.,) at a place (Pagus
+Albus, Hawara) in the territory of Medina, (D'Anville, Memoire
+sur l'Egypte, p. 243.) These real possessions, and some naval
+inroads of Trajan, (Peripl. p. 14, 15,) are magnified by history
+and medals into the Roman conquest of Arabia.
+
+Note: On the ruins of Petra, see the travels of Messrs. Irby
+and Mangles, and of Leon de Laborde. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 302, 303, 329
+- 331) affords the most recent and authentic intelligence of the
+Turkish empire in Arabia.
+
+Note: Niebuhr's, notwithstanding the multitude of later
+travellers, maintains its ground, as the classical work on
+Arabia. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Diodorus Siculus (tom. ii. l. xix. p. 390 - 393,
+edit. Wesseling) has clearly exposed the freedom of the
+Nabathaean Arabs, who resisted the arms of Antigonus and his
+son.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1127 - 1129.  Plin. Hist. Natur.
+vi. 32. Aelius Gallus landed near Medina, and marched near a
+thousand miles into the part of Yemen between Mareb and the
+Ocean.  The non ante devictis Sabeae regibus, (Od. i. 29,) and
+the intacti Arabum thesanri (Od. iii. 24) of Horace, attest the
+virgin purity of Arabia.]
+
+[Footnote 28: See the imperfect history of Yemen in Pocock,
+Specimen, p. 55 - 66, of Hira, p. 66 - 74, of Gassan, p. 75 - 78,
+as far as it could be known or preserved in the time of
+ignorance.
+
+Note: Compare the Hist. Yemanae, published by Johannsen at
+Bonn 1880 particularly the translator's preface. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 29: They are described by Menander, (Excerpt. Legation
+p. 149,) Procopius, (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 17, 19, l. ii. c.
+10,) and, in the most lively colors, by Ammianus Marcellinus, (l.
+xiv. c. 4,) who had spoken of them as early as the reign of
+Marcus.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more
+confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been
+derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely
+from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly
+from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or
+Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7,
+8.  Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, 35.  Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom.
+iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies
+is refuted by Ptolemy, (Arabia, p. 2, 18, in Hudson, tom. iv.,)
+who expressly remarks the western and southern position of the
+Saracens, then an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt.  The
+appellation cannot therefore allude to any national character;
+and, since it was imposed by strangers, it must be found, not in
+the Arabic, but in a foreign language.
+
+Note: Dr. Clarke, (Travels, vol. ii. p. 491,) after
+expressing contemptuous pity for Gibbon's ignorance, derives the
+word from Zara, Zaara, Sara, the Desert, whence Saraceni, the
+children of the Desert.  De Marles adopts the derivation from
+Sarrik, a robber, (Hist. des Arabes, vol. i. p. 36, S.L. Martin
+from Scharkioun, or Sharkun, Eastern, vol. xi. p. 55. - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part II.
+
+The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their
+national independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he
+enjoys, in some degree, the benefits of society, without
+forfeiting the prerogatives of nature.  In every tribe,
+superstition, or gratitude, or fortune, has exalted a particular
+family above the heads of their equals.  The dignities of sheick
+and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but the order of
+succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or aged
+of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though
+important, office of composing disputes by their advice, and
+guiding valor by their example. Even a female of sense and spirit
+has been permitted to command the countrymen of Zenobia. ^31 The
+momentary junction of several tribes produces an army: their more
+lasting union constitutes a nation; and the supreme chief, the
+emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their head, may
+deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly name.
+
+If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly
+punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been
+accustomed to a mild and parental jurisdiction.  Their spirit is
+free, their steps are unconfined, the desert is open, and the
+tribes and families are held together by a mutual and voluntary
+compact.  The softer natives of Yemen supported the pomp and
+majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave his palace
+without endangering his life, ^32 the active powers of government
+must have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates.  The
+cities of Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the
+form, or rather the substance, of a commonwealth.  The
+grandfather of Mahomet, and his lineal ancestors, appear in
+foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of their
+country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or the Medici
+at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity; their
+influence was divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was
+transferred from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of
+the tribe of Koreish.  On solemn occasions they convened the
+assembly of the people; and, since mankind must be either
+compelled or persuaded to obey, the use and reputation of oratory
+among the ancient Arabs is the clearest evidence of public
+freedom. ^33 But their simple freedom was of a very different
+cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and
+Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided
+share of the civil and political rights of the community.  In the
+more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each
+of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master.
+His breast is fortified by the austere virtues of courage,
+patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to
+exercise the habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonor
+guards him from the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and
+of death.  The gravity and firmness of the mind is conspicuous in
+his outward demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and concise; he
+is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of
+stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the
+sense of his own importance teaches him to accost his equals
+without levity, and his superiors without awe. ^34 The liberty of
+the Saracens survived their conquests: the first caliphs indulged
+the bold and familiar language of their subjects; they ascended
+the pulpit to persuade and edify the congregation; nor was it
+before the seat of empire was removed to the Tigris, that the
+Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of the Persian
+and Byzantine courts.
+
+[Footnote 31: Saraceni ... mulieres aiunt in eos regnare,
+(Expositio totius Mundi, p. 3, in Hudson, tom. iii.) The reign of
+Mavia is famous in ecclesiastical story Pocock, Specimen, p. 69,
+83.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The report of Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 63,
+64, in Hudson, tom. i.) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. iii. c. 47,
+p. 215,) and Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1124.) But I much suspect that
+this is one of the popular tales, or extraordinary accidents,
+which the credulity of travellers so often transforms into a
+fact, a custom, and a law.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Non gloriabantur antiquitus Arabes, nisi gladio,
+hospite, et eloquentia (Sephadius apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 161,
+162.) This gift of speech they shared only with the Persians; and
+the sententious Arabs would probably have disdained the simple
+and sublime logic of Demosthenes.]
+
+[Footnote 34: I must remind the reader that D'Arvieux,
+D'Herbelot, and Niebuhr, represent, in the most lively colors,
+the manners and government of the Arabs, which are illustrated by
+many incidental passages in the Life of Mahomet.
+
+Note: See, likewise the curious romance of Antar, the most
+vivid and authentic picture of Arabian manners. - M.]
+
+In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes
+that render them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to
+narrow or enlarge, to mollify or exasperate, the social
+character.  The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind
+has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy;
+and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of
+jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present
+hour.  They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich
+and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the
+human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might
+recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which
+he had been unjustly deprived.  According to the remark of Pliny,
+the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise;
+the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged;
+and their neighbors, since the remote times of Job and Sesostris,
+^35 have been the victims of their rapacious spirit.  If a
+Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides
+furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, "Undress
+thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment." A ready
+submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the
+aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he
+presumes to shed in legitimate defence.  A single robber, or a
+few associates, are branded with their genuine name; but the
+exploits of a numerous band assume the character of lawful and
+honorable war.  The temper of a people thus armed against mankind
+was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine, murder,
+and revenge.  In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace
+and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a
+much smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with
+impunity and renown, might point his javelin against the life of
+his countrymen.  The union of the nation consisted only in a
+vague resemblance of language and manners; and in each community,
+the jurisdiction of the magistrate was mute and impotent.  Of the
+time of ignorance which preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred
+battles ^36 are recorded by tradition: hostility was imbittered
+with the rancor of civil faction; and the recital, in prose or
+verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient to rekindle the same
+passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes.  In private
+life every man, at least every family, was the judge and avenger
+of his own cause.  The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs
+the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
+quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their
+beards, is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a
+contemptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the
+offender; and such is their patient inveteracy, that they expect
+whole months and years the opportunity of revenge.  A fine or
+compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians of every
+age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to
+accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law
+of retaliation.  The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the
+head of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty
+person, and transfers the penalty to the best and most
+considerable of the race by whom they have been injured.  If he
+falls by their hands, they are exposed, in their turn, to the
+danger of reprisals, the interest and principal of the bloody
+debt are accumulated: the individuals of either family lead a
+life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes
+elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled. ^37
+This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been
+moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in
+every private encounter some decent equality of age and strength,
+of numbers and weapons.  An annual festival of two, perhaps of
+four, months, was observed by the Arabs before the time of
+Mahomet, during which their swords were religiously sheathed both
+in foreign and domestic hostility; and this partial truce is more
+strongly expressive of the habits of anarchy and warfare. ^38
+
+[Footnote 35: Observe the first chapter of Job, and the long wall
+of 1500 stadia which Sesostris built from Pelusium to Heliopolis,
+(Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. i. p. 67.) Under the name of Hycsos,
+the shepherd kings, they had formerly subdued Egypt, (Marsham,
+Canon. Chron. p. 98 - 163) &c.)
+
+Note: This origin of the Hycsos, though probable, is by no
+means so certain here is some reason for supposing them
+Scythians. - M]
+
+[Footnote 36: Or, according to another account, 1200,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 75: ) the two historians
+who wrote of the Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in
+the 9th and 10th century.  The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was
+occasioned by two horses, lasted forty years, and ended in a
+proverb, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 48.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the
+revenge of murder are described by Niebuhr, (Description, p. 26 -
+31.) The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the
+Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p. 230, with Sale's Observations.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Procopius (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 16) places the
+two holy months about the summer solstice.  The Arabians
+consecrate four months of the year - the first, seventh,
+eleventh, and twelfth; and pretend, that in a long series of ages
+the truce was infringed only four or six times, (Sale's
+Preliminary Discourse, p. 147 - 150, and Notes on the ixth
+chapter of the Koran, p. 154, &c.  Casiri, Bibliot.
+Hispano-Arabica, tom. ii. p. 20, 21.)]
+
+But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the
+milder influence of trade and literature.  The solitary peninsula
+is encompassed by the most civilized nations of the ancient
+world; the merchant is the friend of mankind; and the annual
+caravans imported the first seeds of knowledge and politeness
+into the cities, and even the camps of the desert. Whatever may
+be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is derived from the
+same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the
+Chaldaean tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by
+their peculiar dialects; ^39 but each, after their own, allowed a
+just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca.  In
+Arabia, as well as in Greece, the perfection of language
+outstripped the refinement of manners; and her speech could
+diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a
+serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at
+a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory
+of an illiterate people.  The monuments of the Homerites were
+inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the
+Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were
+invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention
+was taught at Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after
+the birth of Mahomet.  The arts of grammar, of metre, and of
+rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians;
+but their penetration was sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit
+strong and sententious, ^40 and their more elaborate compositions
+were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their
+hearers.  The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by
+the applause of his own and the kindred tribes.  A solemn banquet
+was prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and
+displaying the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of
+their sons and husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that
+a champion had now appeared to vindicate their rights; that a
+herald had raised his voice to immortalize their renown. The
+distant or hostile tribes resorted to an annual fair, which was
+abolished by the fanaticism of the first Moslems; a national
+assembly that must have contributed to refine and harmonize the
+Barbarians.  Thirty days were employed in the exchange, not only
+of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry.  The prize was
+disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
+performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs;
+and we may read in our own language, the seven original poems
+which were inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the
+temple of Mecca. ^41 The Arabian poets were the historians and
+moralists of the age; and if they sympathized with the
+prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues, of their
+countrymen.  The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was
+the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their
+keenest satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the
+bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor
+the women to deny. ^42 The same hospitality, which was practised
+by Abraham, and celebrated by Homer, is still renewed in the
+camps of the Arabs. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the
+desert, embrace, without inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who
+dares to confide in their honor and to enter their tent.  His
+treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the wealth, or the
+poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he is
+dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps
+with gifts.  The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the
+wants of a brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could
+deserve the public applause, must have surpassed the narrow
+measure of discretion and experience.  A dispute had arisen, who,
+among the citizens of Mecca, was entitled to the prize of
+generosity; and a successive application was made to the three
+who were deemed most worthy of the trial.  Abdallah, the son of
+Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in the
+stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the
+uncle of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!"
+He instantly dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel,
+her rich caparison, and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold,
+excepting only the sword, either for its intrinsic value, or as
+the gift of an honored kinsman. The servant of Kais informed the
+second suppliant that his master was asleep: but he immediately
+added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand pieces of gold, (it is
+all we have in the house,) and here is an order, that will
+entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as he
+awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a
+gentle reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted
+his bounty.  The third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the
+hour of prayer, was supporting his steps on the shoulders of two
+slaves.  "Alas!" he replied, "my coffers are empty!  but these
+you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce them." At these words,
+pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall with his staff.
+
+The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian virtue:
+^43 he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful
+robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at
+the prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and
+the spoil.  The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of
+justice; they proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity
+and benevolence.
+
+[Footnote 39: Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Periplo
+Maris Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the
+dialects of the Arabs.  Their language and letters are copiously
+treated by Pocock, (Specimen, p. 150 - 154,) Casiri, (Bibliot.
+Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 1, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.,) and
+Niebuhr, (Description de l'Arabie, p. 72 - 36) I pass slightly; I
+am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.]
+
+[Footnote 40: A familiar tale in Voltaire's Zadig (le Chien et le
+Cheval) is related, to prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 120, 121.  Gagnier, Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. i. p. 37 - 46: ) but D'Arvieux, or rather La Roque,
+(Voyage de Palestine, p. 92,) denies the boasted superiority of
+the Bedoweens.  The one hundred and sixty-nine sentences of Ali
+(translated by Ockley, London, 1718) afford a just and favorable
+specimen of Arabian wit.
+
+Note: Compare the Arabic proverbs translated by Burckhardt.
+London. 1830 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Pocock (Specimen, p. 158 - 161) and Casiri
+(Bibliot. Hispano- Arabica, tom. i. p. 48, 84, &c., 119, tom. ii.
+p. 17, &c.) speak of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven
+poems of the Caaba have been published in English by Sir William
+Jones; but his honorable mission to India has deprived us of his
+own notes, far more interesting than the obscure and obsolete
+text.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 29, 30]
+
+[Footnote 43: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 458.  Gagnier, Vie
+de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 118.  Caab and Hesnus (Pocock, Specimen,
+p. 43, 46, 48) were likewise conspicuous for their liberality;
+and the latter is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: "Videbis
+eum cum accesseris exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo
+petis."
+
+Note: See the translation of the amusing Persian romance of
+Hatim Tai, by Duncan Forbes, Esq., among the works published by
+the Oriental Translation Fund. - M.]
+
+The religion of the Arabs, ^44 as well as of the Indians,
+consisted in the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed
+stars; a primitive and specious mode of superstition.  The bright
+luminaries of the sky display the visible image of a Deity: their
+number and distance convey to a philosophic, or even a vulgar,
+eye, the idea of boundless space: the character of eternity is
+marked on these solid globes, that seem incapable of corruption
+or decay: the regularity of their motions may be ascribed to a
+principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or imaginary,
+influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and its
+inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care.  The science
+of astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the
+Arabs was a clear firmament and a naked plain.  In their
+nocturnal marches, they steered by the guidance of the stars:
+their names, and order, and daily station, were familiar to the
+curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween; and he was taught by
+experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the zodiac of the
+moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with
+salutary rains, the thirst of the desert.  The reign of the
+heavenly orbs could not be extended beyond the visible sphere;
+and some metaphysical powers were necessary to sustain the
+transmigration of souls and the resurrection of bodies: a camel
+was left to perish on the grave, that he might serve his master
+in another life; and the invocation of departed spirits implies
+that they were still endowed with consciousness and power.  I am
+ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the
+Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the
+earth, of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination.
+Each tribe, each family, each independent warrior, created and
+changed the rites and the object of his fantastic worship; but
+the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion, as well as
+to the language, of Mecca.  The genuine antiquity of the Caaba
+ascends beyond the Christian aera; in describing the coast of the
+Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus ^45 has remarked, between
+the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, a famous temple, whose superior
+sanctity was revered by all the Arabians; the linen or silken
+veil, which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first
+offered by a pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven
+hundred years before the time of Mahomet. ^46 A tent, or a
+cavern, might suffice for the worship of the savages, but an
+edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its place; and the
+art and power of the monarchs of the East have been confined to
+the simplicity of the original model. ^47 A spacious portico
+encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba; a square chapel,
+twenty-four cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven
+high: a door and a window admit the light; the double roof is
+supported by three pillars of wood; a spout (now of gold)
+discharges the rain-water, and the well Zemzen is protected by a
+dome from accidental pollution.  The tribe of Koreish, by fraud
+and force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba: the sacerdotal
+office devolved through four lineal descents to the grandfather
+of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence he
+sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their
+country. ^48 The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of
+sanctuary; and, in the last month of each year, the city and the
+temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims, who presented
+their vows and offerings in the house of God.  The same rites
+which are now accomplished by the faithful Mussulman, were
+invented and practised by the superstition of the idolaters.  At
+an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven times,
+with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black
+stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent
+mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina;
+and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a
+sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and
+nails in the consecrated ground.  Each tribe either found or
+introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship: the temple was
+adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men,
+eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue
+of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
+heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane
+divination.  But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the
+devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet;
+and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in
+imitation of the black stone ^49 of Mecca, which is deeply
+tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin.  From Japan to
+Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the
+votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or
+consuming, in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of
+their gifts.  The life of a man ^50 is the most precious oblation
+to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore:
+the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the
+third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the
+Dumatians; ^51 and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the
+prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
+Justinian. ^52 A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits
+the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or
+the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and
+heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash
+vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of a hundred camels.
+In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians,
+abstained from the taste of swine's flesh; ^53 they circumcised
+^54 their children at the age of puberty: the same customs,
+without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been
+silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes.  It has
+been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged
+the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.  It is more simple to
+believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth,
+without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of
+Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the
+Danube or the Volga.
+
+[Footnote 44: Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the
+ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p. 89 - 136,
+163, 164.) His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely
+interpreted by Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14 - 24;) and
+Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient tom. iv. p. 580 - 590) has added some
+valuable remarks.]
+
+[Footnote 45: (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 211.) The
+character and position are so correctly apposite, that I am
+surprised how this curious passage should have been read without
+notice or application. Yet this famous temple had been overlooked
+by Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.,) whom
+Diodorus copies in the rest of the description.  Was the Sicilian
+more knowing than the Egyptian?  Or was the Caaba built between
+the years of Rome 650 and 746, the dates of their respective
+histories?  (Dodwell, in Dissert. ad tom. i. Hudson, p. 72.
+Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 770.)
+
+Note: Mr. Forster (Geography of Arabia, vol. ii. p. 118, et
+seq.) has raised an objection, as I think, fatal to this
+hypothesis of Gibbon.  The temple, situated in the country of the
+Banizomeneis, was not between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans,
+but higher up than the coast inhabited by the former.  Mr.
+Forster would place it as far north as Moiiah.  I am not quite
+satisfied that this will agree with the whole description of
+Diodorus - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Pocock, Specimen, p. 60, 61.  From the death of
+Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the
+Christian aera.  The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and
+gold, was no more than a piece of Egyptian linen, (Abulfeda, in
+Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14.)]
+
+[Footnote 47: The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely
+copied in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish
+draught, which Reland (de Religione Mohammedica, p. 113 - 123)
+has corrected and explained from the best authorities.  For the
+description and legend of the Caaba, consult Pocock, (Specimen,
+p. 115 - 122,) the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, (Caaba,
+Hagir, Zemzem, &c.,) and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 114 -
+122.)]
+
+[Footnote 48: Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have
+usurped the Caaba A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by
+Jannabi, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 65 - 69,) and by
+Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. 6, p. 13.)]
+
+[Footnote 49: In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes
+to the Arabs the worship of a stone, (Dissert. viii. tom. i. p.
+142, edit. Reiske;) and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the
+Christians, (Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40.  Arnobius
+contra Gentes, l. vi. p. 246.) Yet these stones were no other
+than of Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane
+antiquity, (Euseb. Praep. Evangel. l. i. p. 37. Marsham, Canon.
+Chron. p. 54 - 56.)]
+
+[Footnote 50: The two horrid subjects are accurately discussed by
+the learned Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chron. p. 76 - 78, 301 -
+304.) Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the
+example of Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived
+before, or after, Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all.]
+
+[Footnote 51: The reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes
+to the Roman the same barbarous custom, which, A. U. C. 657, had
+been finally abolished. Dumaetha, Daumat al Gendai, is noticed by
+Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, p. 9 - 29) and Abulfeda, (p. 57,)
+and may be found in D'Anville's maps, in the mid-desert between
+Chaibar and Tadmor.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Prcoopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 28,)
+Evagrius, (l. vi. c. 21,) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 72, 86,)
+attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century.
+The danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a
+fact, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 82 - 84.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus,
+(Polyhistor. c. 33,) who copies Pliny (l. viii. c. 68) in the
+strange supposition, that hogs can not live in Arabia.  The
+Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for
+that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p. 205.) The old Arabians
+likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, (Herodot.
+l. i. c. 80,) which is sanctified by the Mahometan law, (Reland,
+p. 75, &c., Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shah Abbas, tom. iv.
+p. 71, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject;
+yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even
+pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin,
+(Pocock, Specimen, p. 319, 320. Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p.
+106, 107.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part III.
+
+Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the
+storms of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to
+the happy land where they might profess what they thought, and
+practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and
+Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the
+Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.  In a remote period of antiquity,
+Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldaeans
+^55 and the arms of the Assyrians.  From the observations of two
+thousand years, the priests and astronomers of Babylon ^56
+deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence.  They adored
+the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven
+planets, and shed their irresistible influence on the earth.  The
+attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the
+zodiac, and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and
+southern hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans;
+the seven days of the week were dedicated to their respective
+deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of
+the moon at Haran was the term of their pilgrimage. ^57 But the
+flexible genius of their faith was always ready either to teach
+or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the deluge, and
+the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their Jewish
+captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
+Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the
+last remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John,
+in the territory of Bassora. ^58 The altars of Babylon were
+overturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were
+revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five
+hundred years under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of
+Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of idolatry, and breathed
+with their adversaries the freedom of the desert. ^59 Seven
+hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled
+in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy
+Land in the wars of Titus and Hadrian.  The industrious exiles
+aspired to liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the
+cities, and castles in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts
+were confounded with the children of Israel, whom they resembled
+in the outward mark of circumcision.  The Christian missionaries
+were still more active and successful: the Catholics asserted
+their universal reign; the sects whom they oppressed,
+successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman empire; the
+Marcionites and Manichaeans dispersed their fantastic opinions
+and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes of
+Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite
+and Nestorian bishops. ^60 The liberty of choice was presented to
+the tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private
+religion: and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with
+the sublime theology of saints and philosophers.  A fundamental
+article of faith was inculcated by the consent of the learned
+strangers; the existence of one supreme God who is exalted above
+the powers of heaven and earth, but who has often revealed
+himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and prophets,
+and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable
+miracles, the order of nature.  The most rational of the Arabs
+acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; ^61
+and it was habit rather than conviction that still attached them
+to the relics of idolatry.  The Jews and Christians were the
+people of the Book; the Bible was already translated into the
+Arabic language, ^62 and the volume of the Old Testament was
+accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies.  In the
+story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to
+discover the fathers of their nation.  They applauded the birth
+and promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham;
+traced his pedigree and their own to the creation of the first
+man, and imbibed, with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy
+text, and the dreams and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.
+
+[Footnote 55: Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142 - 145) has
+cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a
+Greek.  Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had
+looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt
+whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed
+stars.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii.
+com. xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474,
+who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems.  The
+earliest date of the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234
+before Christ.  After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they
+were communicated at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer
+Hipparchus.  What a moment in the annals of science!]
+
+[Footnote 57: Pocock, (Specimen, p. 138 - 146,) Hottinger, (Hist.
+Orient. p. 162 - 203,) Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124,
+128, &c.,) D'Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726,) and Sale,
+(Preliminary Discourse, p. 14, 15,) rather excite than gratify
+our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism
+with the primitive religion of the Arabs.]
+
+[Footnote 58: D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130 - 137)
+will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus
+(Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iv. p. 607 - 614) may explain their
+tenets.  But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an
+ignorant people afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret
+traditions.
+
+Note: The Codex Nasiraeus, their sacred book, has been
+published by Norberg whose researches contain almost all that is
+known of this singular people.  But their origin is almost as
+obscure as ever: if ancient, their creed has been so corrupted
+with mysticism and Mahometanism, that its native lineaments are
+very indistinct. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The Magi were fixed in the province of B hrein,
+(Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 114,) and mingled with the
+old Arabians, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 146 - 150.)]
+
+[Footnote 60: The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is
+described by Pocock from Sharestani, &c., (Specimen, p. 60, 134,
+&c.,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 212 - 238,) D'Herbelot,
+(Bibliot. Orient. p. 474 - 476,) Basnage, (Hist. des Juifs, tom.
+vii. p. 185, tom. viii. p. 280,) and Sale, (Preliminary
+Discourse, p. 22, &c., 33, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God
+for the profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more
+irritable, patron, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 108, 109.)]
+
+[Footnote 62: Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or
+Christian, appear more recent than the Koran; but the existence
+of a prior translation may be fairly inferred, - 1. From the
+perpetual practice of the synagogue of expounding the Hebrew
+lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue of the country; 2.
+From the analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Aethiopic versions,
+expressly quoted by the fathers of the fifth century, who assert
+that the Scriptures were translated into all the Barbaric
+languages, (Walton, Prolegomena ad Biblia Polyglot, p. 34, 93 -
+97.  Simon, Hist. Critique du V. et du N. Testament, tom. i. p.
+180, 181, 282 - 286, 293, 305, 306, tom. iv. p. 206.)]
+
+The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful
+calumny of the Christians, ^63 who exalt instead of degrading the
+merit of their adversary. His descent from Ismael was a national
+privilege or fable; but if the first steps of the pedigree ^64
+are dark and doubtful, he could produce many generations of pure
+and genuine nobility: he sprung from the tribe of Koreish and the
+family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the princes
+of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The
+grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a
+wealthy and generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine
+with the supplies of commerce.  Mecca, which had been fed by the
+liberality of the father, was saved by the courage of the son.
+The kingdom of Yemen was subject to the Christian princes of
+Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah was provoked by an insult to
+avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy city was invested by
+a train of elephants and an army of Africans.  A treaty was
+proposed; and, in the first audience, the grandfather of Mahomet
+demanded the restitution of his cattle.  "And why," said Abrahah,
+"do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple,
+which I have threatened to destroy?" "Because," replied the
+intrepid chief, "the cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the
+gods, and they will defend their house from injury and
+sacrilege." The want of provisions, or the valor of the Koreish,
+compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful retreat: their
+discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight of birds,
+who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the
+deliverance was long commemorated by the aera of the elephant.
+^65 The glory of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic
+happiness; his life was prolonged to the age of one hundred and
+ten years; and he became the father of six daughters and thirteen
+sons. His best beloved Abdallah was the most beautiful and modest
+of the Arabian youth; and in the first night, when he consummated
+his marriage with Amina, ^! of the noble race of the Zahrites,
+two hundred virgins are said to have expired of jealousy and
+despair.  Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son of
+Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, four years after the death
+of Justinian, and two months after the defeat of the Abyssinians,
+^66 whose victory would have introduced into the Caaba the
+religion of the Christians. In his early infancy, he was deprived
+of his father, his mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were
+strong and numerous; and, in the division of the inheritance, the
+orphan's share was reduced to five camels and an Aethiopian
+maid-servant.  At home and abroad, in peace and war, Abu Taleb,
+the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide and guardian of
+his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered into the service
+of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded
+his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune.  The marriage
+contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the mutual
+love of Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most
+accomplished of the tribe of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of
+twelve ounces of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by
+the liberality of his uncle. ^67 By this alliance, the son of
+Abdallah was restored to the station of his ancestors; and the
+judicious matron was content with his domestic virtues, till, in
+the fortieth year of his age, ^68 he assumed the title of a
+prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.
+
+[Footnote 63: In eo conveniunt omnes, ut plebeio vilique genere
+ortum, &c, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 136.) Yet Theophanes, the
+most ancient of the Greeks, and the father of many a lie,
+confesses that Mahomet was of the race of Ismael,  (Chronograph.
+p. 277.)]
+
+[Footnote 64: Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed. c. 1, 2) and Gagnier
+(Vie de Mahomet, p. 25 - 97) describe the popular and approved
+genealogy of the prophet.  At Mecca, I would not dispute its
+authenticity: at Lausanne, I will venture to observe, 1. That
+from Ismael to Mahomet, a period of 2500 years, they reckon
+thirty, instead of seventy five, generations: 2. That the modern
+Bedoweens are ignorant of their history, and careless of their
+pedigree, (Voyage de D'Arvieux p. 100, 103.)
+
+Note: The most orthodox Mahometans only reckon back the
+ancestry of the prophet for twenty generations, to Adnan.  Weil,
+Mohammed der Prophet, p. 1. - M.  1845.]
+
+[Footnote 65: The seed of this history, or fable, is contained in
+the cvth chapter of the Koran; and Gagnier (in Praefat. ad Vit.
+Moham. p. 18, &c.) has translated the historical narrative of
+Abulfeda, which may be illustrated from D'Herbelot (Bibliot.
+Orientale, p. 12) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 64.) Prideaux (Life
+of Mahomet, p. 48) calls it a lie of the coinage of Mahomet; but
+Sale, (Koran, p. 501 - 503,) who is half a Mussulman, attacks the
+inconsistent faith of the Doctor for believing the miracles of
+the Delphic Apollo.  Maracci (Alcoran, tom. i. part ii. p. 14,
+tom. ii. p. 823) ascribes the miracle to the devil, and extorts
+from the Mahometans the confession, that God would not have
+defended against the Christians the idols of the Caaba.
+
+Note: Dr. Weil says that the small-pox broke out in the army
+of Abrahah, but he does not give his authority, p. 10. - M.
+1845.]
+
+[Footnote !: Amina, or Emina, was of Jewish birth.  V. Hammer,
+Geschichte der Assass. p. 10. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The safest aeras of Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. i. p. 2,)
+of Alexander, or the Greeks, 882, of Bocht Naser, or Nabonassar,
+1316, equally lead us to the year 569.  The old Arabian calendar
+is too dark and uncertain to support the Benedictines, (Art. de
+Verifer les Dates, p. 15,) who, from the day of the month and
+week, deduce a new mode of calculation, and remove the birth of
+Mahomet to the year of Christ 570, the 10th of November.  Yet
+this date would agree with the year 882 of the Greeks, which is
+assigned by Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 5) and Abulpharagius,
+(Dynast. p. 101, and Errata, Pocock's version.) While we refine
+our chronology, it is possible that the illiterate prophet was
+ignorant of his own age.
+
+Note: The date of the birth of Mahomet is not yet fixed with
+precision. It is only known from Oriental authors that he was
+born on a Monday, the 10th Reby 1st, the third month of the
+Mahometan year; the year 40 or 42 of Chosroes Nushirvan, king of
+Persia; the year 881 of the Seleucidan aera; the year 1316 of the
+aera of Nabonassar.  This leaves the point undecided between the
+years 569, 570, 571, of J. C.  See the Memoir of M. Silv. de
+Sacy, on divers events in the history of the Arabs before
+Mahomet, Mem. Acad. des Loscript. vol. xlvii. p. 527, 531.  St.
+Martin, vol. xi. p. 59. - M.
+
+Dr. Weil decides on A.D. 571.  Mahomet died in 632, aged 63;
+but the Arabs reckoned his life by lunar years, which reduces his
+life nearly to 61 (p. 21.) - M.  1845]
+
+[Footnote 67: I copy the honorable testimony of Abu Taleb to his
+family and nephew.  Laus Dei, qui nos a stirpe Abrahami et semine
+Ismaelis constituit, et nobis regionem sacram dedit, et nos
+judices hominibus statuit.  Porro Mohammed filius Abdollahi
+nepotis mei (nepos meus) quo cum ex aequo librabitur e
+Koraishidis quispiam cui non praeponderaturus est, bonitate et
+excellentia, et intellectu et gloria, et acumine etsi opum inops
+fuerit, (et certe opes umbra transiens sunt et depositum quod
+reddi debet,) desiderio Chadijae filiae Chowailedi tenetur, et
+illa vicissim ipsius, quicquid autem dotis vice petieritis, ego
+in me suscipiam, (Pocock, Specimen, e septima parte libri Ebn
+Hamduni.)]
+
+[Footnote 68: The private life of Mahomet, from his birth to his
+mission, is preserved by Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. 3 - 7,) and the
+Arabian writers of genuine or apocryphal note, who are alleged by
+Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 204 - 211) Maracci, (tom. i. p. 10 -
+14,) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 97 - 134.)]
+
+According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet ^69
+was distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift
+which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been
+refused.  Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the
+affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his
+commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his
+gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted
+every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each
+expression of the tongue.  In the familiar offices of life he
+scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of
+his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful
+was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest
+citizens of Mecca: the frankness of his manner concealed the
+artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to
+personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was
+capacious and retentive; his wit easy and social; his imagination
+sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed
+the courage both of thought and action; and, although his designs
+might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he
+entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original
+and superior genius.  The son of Abdallah was educated in the
+bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of
+Arabia; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced
+by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these
+powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian: his
+youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and
+writing; ^70 the common ignorance exempted him from shame or
+reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and
+deprived of those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our mind the
+minds of sages and heroes.  Yet the book of nature and of man was
+open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the
+political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to
+the Arabian traveller. ^71 He compares the nations and the
+regions of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and
+Roman monarchies; beholds, with pity and indignation, the
+degeneracy of the times; and resolves to unite under one God and
+one king the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the
+Arabs.  Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that, instead of
+visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the two
+journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of
+Bostra and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when
+he accompanied the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty
+compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the
+merchandise of Cadijah.  In these hasty and superficial
+excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects
+invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge
+might be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the
+Syriac language must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot
+perceive, in the life or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect
+was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world.  From
+every region of that solitary world, the pilgrims of Mecca were
+annually assembled, by the calls of devotion and commerce: in the
+free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native
+tongue, might study the political state and character of the
+tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians.  Some
+useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the
+rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the
+Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of
+lending their secret aid to the composition of the Koran. ^72
+Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the
+school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand
+of a single artist.  From his earliest youth Mahomet was addicted
+to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of
+Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of
+Cadijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, ^73 he
+consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not
+in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet.  The faith which,
+under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is
+compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction, That
+there is only one God, and that Mahomet is the apostle of God.
+
+[Footnote 69: Abulfeda, in Vit. c. lxv. lxvi. Gagnier, Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 272 - 289.  The best traditions of the
+person and conversation of the prophet are derived from Ayesha,
+Ali, and Abu Horaira, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 267.  Ockley's Hist.
+of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 149,) surnamed the Father of a Cat,
+who died in the year 59 of the Hegira.
+
+Note: Compare, likewise, the new Life of Mahomet (Mohammed
+der prophet) by Dr. Weil, (Stuttgart, 1843.) Dr. Weil has a new
+tradition, that Mahomet was at one time a shepherd.  This
+assimilation to the life of Moses, instead of giving probability
+to the story, as Dr. Weil suggests, makes it more suspicious.
+Note, p. 34. - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Those who believe that Mahomet could read or write
+are incapable of reading what is written with another pen, in the
+Suras, or chapters of the Koran, vii. xxix. xcvi.  These texts,
+and the tradition of the Sonna, are admitted, without doubt, by
+Abulfeda, (in Vit. vii.,) Gagnier, (Not. ad Abulfed. p. 15,)
+Pocock, (Specimen, p. 151,) Reland, (de Religione Mohammedica, p.
+236,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 42.) Mr. White, almost
+alone, denies the ignorance, to accuse the imposture, of the
+prophet. His arguments are far from satisfactory. Two short
+trading journeys to the fairs of Syria were surely not sufficient
+to infuse a science so rare among the citizens of Mecca: it was
+not in the cool, deliberate act of treaty, that Mahomet would
+have dropped the mask; nor can any conclusion be drawn from the
+words of disease and delirium. The lettered youth, before he
+aspired to the prophetic character, must have often exercised, in
+private life, the arts of reading and writing; and his first
+converts, of his own family, would have been the first to detect
+and upbraid his scandalous hypocrisy, (White's Sermons, p. 203,
+204, Notes, p. xxxvi. - xxxviii.)
+
+Note: (Academ. des Inscript. I. p. 295) has observed that
+the text of the seveth Sura implies that Mahomet could read, the
+tradition alone denies it, and, according to Dr. Weil, (p. 46,)
+there is another reading of the tradition, that "he could not
+read well." Dr. Weil is not quite so successful in explaining
+away Sura xxix.  It means, he thinks that he had not read any
+books, from which he could have borrowed. - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 71: The count de Boulainvilliers (Vie de Mahomet, p.
+202 - 228) leads his Arabian pupil, like the Telemachus of
+Fenelon, or the Cyrus of Ramsay.  His journey to the court of
+Persia is probably a fiction nor can I trace the origin of his
+exclamation, "Les Grecs sont pour tant des hommes." The two
+Syrian journeys are expressed by almost all the Arabian writers,
+both Mahometans and Christians, (Gagnier Abulfed. p. 10.)]
+
+[Footnote 72: I am not at leisure to pursue the fables or
+conjectures which name the strangers accused or suspected by the
+infidels of Mecca, (Koran, c. 16, p. 223, c. 35, p. 297, with
+Sale's Remarks.  Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 22 - 27.
+Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 11, 74.  Maracci, tom. ii. p. 400.)
+Even Prideaux has observed, that the transaction must have been
+secret, and that the scene lay in the heart of Arabia.]
+
+[Footnote 73: Abulfeda in Vit. c. 7, p. 15.  Gagnier, tom. i. p.
+133, 135. The situation of Mount Hera is remarked by Abulfeda
+(Geograph. Arab p. 4.) Yet Mahomet had never read of the cave of
+Egeria, ubi nocturnae Numa constituebat amicae, of the Idaean
+Mount, where Minos conversed with Jove, &c.]
+
+It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the
+learned nations of antiquity were deluded by the fables of
+polytheism, their simple ancestors of Palestine preserved the
+knowledge and worship of the true God. The moral attributes of
+Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with the standard of human
+virtue: his metaphysical qualities are darkly expressed; but each
+page of the Pentateuch and the Prophets is an evidence of his
+power: the unity of his name is inscribed on the first table of
+the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible image
+of the invisible essence.  After the ruin of the temple, the
+faith of the Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened,
+by the spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of
+Mahomet will not justify his perpetual reproach, that the Jews of
+Mecca or Medina adored Ezra as the son of God. ^74 But the
+children of Israel had ceased to be a people; and the religions
+of the world were guilty, at least in the eyes of the prophet, of
+giving sons, or daughters, or companions, to the supreme God. In
+the rude idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest and
+audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the preeminence of
+the first planet, or intelligence, in their celestial hierarchy;
+and in the Magian system the conflict of the two principles
+betrays the imperfection of the conqueror.  The Christians of the
+seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of
+Paganism: their public and private vows were addressed to the
+relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East: the
+throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and
+saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the
+Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of
+Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a
+goddess. ^75 The mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation appear
+to contradict the principle of the divine unity.  In their
+obvious sense, they introduce three equal deities, and transform
+the man Jesus into the substance of the Son of God: ^76 an
+orthodox commentary will satisfy only a believing mind:
+intemperate curiosity and zeal had torn the veil of the
+sanctuary; and each of the Oriental sects was eager to confess
+that all, except themselves, deserved the reproach of idolatry
+and polytheism.  The creed of Mahomet is free from suspicion or
+ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the unity of
+God.  The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of idols and men,
+of stars and planets, on the rational principle that whatever
+rises must set, that whatever is born must die, that whatever is
+corruptible must decay and perish. ^77 In the Author of the
+universe, his rational enthusiasm confessed and adored an
+infinite and eternal being, without form or place, without issue
+or similitude, present to our most secret thoughts, existing by
+the necessity of his own nature, and deriving from himself all
+moral and intellectual perfection.  These sublime truths, thus
+announced in the language of the prophet, ^78 are firmly held by
+his disciples, and defined with metaphysical precision by the
+interpreters of the Koran.  A philosophic theist might subscribe
+the popular creed of the Mahometans; ^79 a creed too sublime,
+perhaps, for our present faculties. What object remains for the
+fancy, or even the understanding, when we have abstracted from
+the unknown substance all ideas of time and space, of motion and
+matter, of sensation and reflection? The first principle of
+reason and revolution was confirmed by the voice of Mahomet: his
+proselytes, from India to Morocco, are distinguished by the name
+of Unitarians; and the danger of idolatry has been prevented by
+the interdiction of images.  The doctrine of eternal decrees and
+absolute predestination is strictly embraced by the Mahometans;
+and they struggle, with the common difficulties, how to reconcile
+the prescience of God with the freedom and responsibility of man;
+how to explain the permission of evil under the reign of infinite
+power and infinite goodness.
+
+[Footnote 74: Koran, c. 9, p. 153.  Al Beidawi, and the other
+commentators quoted by Sale, adhere to the charge; but I do not
+understand that it is colored by the most obscure or absurd
+tradition of the Talmud.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 225 - 228.  The
+Collyridian heresy was carried from Thrace to Arabia by some
+women, and the name was borrowed from the cake, which they
+offered to the goddess. This example, that of Beryllus bishop of
+Bostra, (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. vi. c. 33,) and several others,
+may excuse the reproach, Arabia haerese haersewn ferax.]
+
+[Footnote 76: The three gods in the Koran (c. 4, p. 81, c. 5, p.
+92) are obviously directed against our Catholic mystery: but the
+Arabic commentators understand them of the Father, the Son, and
+the Virgin Mary, an heretical Trinity, maintained, as it is said,
+by some Barbarians at the Council of Nice, (Eutych. Annal. tom.
+i. p. 440.) But the existence of the Marianites is denied by the
+candid Beausobre, (Hist. de Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 532;) and he
+derives the mistake from the word Roxah, the Holy Ghost, which in
+some Oriental tongues is of the feminine gender, and is
+figuratively styled the mother of Christ in the Gospel of the
+Nazarenes.]
+
+[Footnote 77: This train of thought is philosophically
+exemplified in the character of Abraham, who opposed in Chaldaea
+the first introduction of idolatry, (Koran, c. 6, p. 106.
+D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 13.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: See the Koran, particularly the second, (p. 30,)
+the fifty-seventh, (p. 437,) the fifty-eighth (p. 441) chapters,
+which proclaim the omnipotence of the Creator.]
+
+[Footnote 79: The most orthodox creeds are translated by Pocock,
+(Specimen, p. 274, 284 - 292,) Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens,
+vol. ii. p. lxxxii. - xcv.,) Reland, (de Religion. Moham. l. i.
+p. 7 - 13,) and Chardin, (Voyages en Perse, tom. iv. p. 4 - 28.)
+The great truth, that God is without similitude, is foolishly
+criticized by Maracci, (Alcoran, tom. i. part iii. p. 87 - 94,)
+because he made man after his own image.]
+
+The God of nature has written his existence on all his
+works, and his law in the heart of man.  To restore the knowledge
+of the one, and the practice of the other, has been the real or
+pretended aim of the prophets of every age: the liberality of
+Mahomet allowed to his predecessors the same credit which he
+claimed for himself; and the chain of inspiration was prolonged
+from the fall of Adam to the promulgation of the Koran. ^80
+During that period, some rays of prophetic light had been
+imparted to one hundred and twenty-four thousand of the elect,
+discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and grace;
+three hundred and thirteen apostles were sent with a special
+commission to recall their country from idolatry and vice; one
+hundred and four volumes have been dictated by the Holy Spirit;
+and six legislators of transcendent brightness have announced to
+mankind the six successive revelations of various rites, but of
+one immutable religion.  The authority and station of Adam, Noah,
+Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, rise in just gradation above
+each other; but whosoever hates or rejects any one of the
+prophets is numbered with the infidels.  The writings of the
+patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of the
+Greeks and Syrians: ^81 the conduct of Adam had not entitled him
+to the gratitude or respect of his children; the seven precepts
+of Noah were observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the
+proselytes of the synagogue; ^82 and the memory of Abraham was
+obscurely revered by the Sabians in his native land of Chaldaea:
+of the myriads of prophets, Moses and Christ alone lived and
+reigned; and the remnant of the inspired writings was comprised
+in the books of the Old and the New Testament.  The miraculous
+story of Moses is consecrated and embellished in the Koran; ^83
+and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of imposing their
+own belief on the nations whose recent creeds they deride.  For
+the author of Christianity, the Mahometans are taught by the
+prophet to entertain a high and mysterious reverence. ^84
+"Verily, Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the apostle of God,
+and his word, which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit
+proceeding from him; honorable in this world, and in the world to
+come, and one of those who approach near to the presence of God."
+^85 The wonders of the genuine and apocryphal gospels ^86 are
+profusely heaped on his head; and the Latin church has not
+disdained to borrow from the Koran the immaculate conception ^87
+of his virgin mother. Yet Jesus was a mere mortal; and, at the
+day of judgment, his testimony will serve to condemn both the
+Jews, who reject him as a prophet, and the Christians, who adore
+him as the Son of God.  The malice of his enemies aspersed his
+reputation, and conspired against his life; but their intention
+only was guilty; a phantom or a criminal was substituted on the
+cross; and the innocent saint was translated to the seventh
+heaven. ^88 During six hundred years the gospel was the way of
+truth and salvation; but the Christians insensibly forgot both
+the laws and example of their founder; and Mahomet was instructed
+by the Gnostics to accuse the church, as well as the synagogue,
+of corrupting the integrity of the sacred text. ^89 The piety of
+Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the assurance of a future
+prophet, more illustrious than themselves: the evangelical
+promise of the Paraclete, or Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the
+name, and accomplished in the person, of Mahomet, ^90 the
+greatest and the last of the apostles of God.
+
+[Footnote 80: Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. i. p. 17 - 47.  Sale's
+Preliminary Discourse, p. 73 - 76.  Voyage de Chardin, tom. iv.
+p. 28 - 37, and 37 - 47, for the Persian addition, "Ali is the
+vicar of God!" Yet the precise number of the prophets is not an
+article of faith.]
+
+[Footnote 81: For the apocryphal books of Adam, see Fabricius,
+Codex Pseudepigraphus V. T. p. 27 - 29; of Seth, p. 154 - 157; of
+Enoch, p. 160 - 219.  But the book of Enoch is consecrated, in
+some measure, by the quotation of the apostle St. Jude; and a
+long legendary fragment is alleged by Syncellus and Scaliger.
+
+Note: The whole book has since been recovered in the
+Ethiopic language, - and has been edited and translated by
+Archbishop Lawrence, Oxford, 1881 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 82: The seven precepts of Noah are explained by
+Marsham, (Canon Chronicus, p. 154 - 180,) who adopts, on this
+occasion, the learning and credulity of Selden.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The articles of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, &c., in
+the Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot, are gayly bedecked with the
+fanciful legends of the Mahometans, who have built on the
+groundwork of Scripture and the Talmud.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Koran, c. 7, p. 128, &c., c. 10, p. 173, &c.
+D'Herbelot, p. 647, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Koran, c. 3, p. 40, c. 4. p. 80.  D'Herbelot, p.
+399, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 86: See the Gospel of St. Thomas, or of the Infancy, in
+the Codex Apocryphus N. T. of Fabricius, who collects the various
+testimonies concerning it, (p. 128 - 158.) It was published in
+Greek by Cotelier, and in Arabic by Sike, who thinks our present
+copy more recent than Mahomet. Yet his quotations agree with the
+original about the speech of Christ in his cradle, his living
+birds of clay, &c. (Sike, c. i. p. 168, 169, c. 36, p. 198, 199,
+c. 46, p. 206.  Cotelier, c. 2, p. 160, 161.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: It is darkly hinted in the Koran, (c. 3, p. 39,)
+and more clearly explained by the tradition of the Sonnites,
+(Sale's Note, and Maracci, tom. ii. p. 112.) In the xiith
+century, the immaculate conception was condemned by St. Bernard
+as a presumptuous novelty, (Fra Paolo, Istoria del Concilio di
+Trento, l. ii.)]
+
+[Footnote 88: See the Koran, c. 3, v. 53, and c. 4, v. 156, of
+Maracci's edition.  Deus est praestantissimus dolose agentium (an
+odd praise) ... nec crucifixerunt eum, sed objecta est eis
+similitudo; an expression that may suit with the system of the
+Docetes; but the commentators believe (Maracci, tom. ii. p. 113 -
+115, 173.  Sale, p. 42, 43, 79) that another man, a friend or an
+enemy, was crucified in the likeness of Jesus; a fable which they
+had read in the Gospel of St. Barnabus, and which had been
+started as early as the time of Irenaeus, by some Ebionite
+heretics, (Beausobre, Hist. du Manicheisme, tom. ii. p. 25,
+Mosheim. de Reb. Christ. p. 353.)]
+
+[Footnote 89: This charge is obscurely urged in the Koran, (c. 3,
+p. 45;) but neither Mahomet, nor his followers, are sufficiently
+versed in languages and criticism to give any weight or color to
+their suspicions. Yet the Arians and Nestorians could relate some
+stories, and the illiterate prophet might listen to the bold
+assertions of the Manichaeans.  See Beausobre, tom. i. p. 291 -
+305.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Among the prophecies of the Old and New Testament,
+which are perverted by the fraud or ignorance of the Mussulmans,
+they apply to the prophet the promise of the Paraclete, or
+Comforter, which had been already usurped by the Montanists and
+Manichaeans, (Beausobre, Hist. Critique du Manicheisme, tom. i.
+p. 263, &c.;) and the easy change of letters affords the
+etymology of the name of Mohammed, (Maracci, tom. i. part i. p.
+15 - 28.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part IV.
+
+The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought
+and language: the discourse of a philosopher would vibrate
+without effect on the ear of a peasant; yet how minute is the
+distance of their understandings, if it be compared with the
+contact of an infinite and a finite mind, with the word of God
+expressed by the tongue or the pen of a mortal!  The inspiration
+of the Hebrew prophets, of the apostles and evangelists of
+Christ, might not be incompatible with the exercise of their
+reason and memory; and the diversity of their genius is strongly
+marked in the style and composition of the books of the Old and
+New Testament.  But Mahomet was content with a character, more
+humble, yet more sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of
+the Koran, ^91 according to himself or his disciples, is
+uncreated and eternal; subsisting in the essence of the Deity,
+and inscribed with a pen of light on the table of his everlasting
+decrees.  A paper copy, in a volume of silk and gems, was brought
+down to the lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under the
+Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched on the most important
+errands; and this trusty messenger successively revealed the
+chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet.  Instead of a
+perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments
+of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each
+revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion;
+and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim, that any
+text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent
+passage.  The word of God, and of the apostle, was diligently
+recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones
+of mutton; and the pages, without order or connection, were cast
+into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of his wives.  Two
+years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected
+and published by his friend and successor Abubeker: the work was
+revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the
+Hegira; and the various editions of the Koran assert the same
+miraculous privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text.  In the
+spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of
+his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both
+men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and
+presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable
+performance. ^92 This argument is most powerfully addressed to a
+devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose
+ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is
+incapable of comparing the productions of human genius. ^93 The
+harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version,
+the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless
+incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which
+seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in
+the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds.  The divine
+attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his
+loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book
+of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the
+same language. ^94 If the composition of the Koran exceed the
+faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we
+ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes?  In
+all religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of
+his written revelation: the sayings of Mahomet were so many
+lessons of truth; his actions so many examples of virtue; and the
+public and private memorials were preserved by his wives and
+companions.  At the end of two hundred years, the Sonna, or oral
+law, was fixed and consecrated by the labors of Al Bochari, who
+discriminated seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five genuine
+traditions, from a mass of three hundred thousand reports, of a
+more doubtful or spurious character.  Each day the pious author
+prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions with
+the water of Zemzem: the pages were successively deposited on the
+pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been
+approved by the four orthodox sects of the Sonnites. ^95
+
+[Footnote 91: For the Koran, see D'Herbelot, p. 85 - 88.
+Maracci, tom. i. in Vit. Mohammed. p. 32 - 45.  Sale, Preliminary
+Discourse, p. 58 - 70.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Koran, c. 17, v. 89.  In Sale, p. 235, 236.  In
+Maracci, p. 410.
+
+Note: Compare Von Hammer Geschichte der Assassinen p. 11. -
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Yet a sect of Arabians was persuaded, that it might
+be equalled or surpassed by a human pen, (Pocock, Specimen, p.
+221, &c.;) and Maracci (the polemic is too hard for the
+translator) derides the rhyming affectation of the most applauded
+passage, (tom. i. part ii. p. 69 - 75.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: Colloquia (whether real or fabulous) in media
+Arabia atque ab Arabibus habita, (Lowth, de Poesi Hebraeorum.
+Praelect. xxxii. xxxiii. xxxiv, with his German editor,
+Michaelis, Epimetron iv.) Yet Michaelis (p. 671 - 673) has
+detected many Egyptian images, the elephantiasis, papyrus, Nile,
+crocodile, &c.  The language is ambiguously styled
+Arabico-Hebraea. The resemblance of the sister dialects was much
+more visible in their childhood, than in their mature age,
+(Michaelis, p. 682.  Schultens, in Praefat. Job.)
+
+Note: The age of the book of Job is still and probably will
+still be disputed.  Rosenmuller thus states his own opinion:
+"Certe serioribus reipublicae temporibus assignandum esse librum,
+suadere videtur ad Chaldaismum vergens sermo." Yet the
+observations of Kosegarten, which Rosenmuller has given in a
+note, and common reason, suggest that this Chaldaism may be the
+native form of a much earlier dialect; or the Chaldaic may have
+adopted the poetical archaisms of a dialect, differing from, but
+not less ancient than, the Hebrew.  See Rosenmuller, Proleg. on
+Job, p. 41. The poetry appears to me to belong to a much earlier
+period. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Ali Bochari died A. H. 224.  See D'Herbelot, p.
+208, 416, 827. Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. c. 19, p. 33.]
+
+The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus
+had been confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was
+repeatedly urged, by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to
+produce a similar evidence of his divine legation; to call down
+from heaven the angel or the volume of his revelation, to create
+a garden in the desert, or to kindle a conflagration in the
+unbelieving city.  As often as he is pressed by the demands of
+the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of vision
+and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and
+shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those
+signs and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and
+aggravate the guilt of infidelity But the modest or angry tone of
+his apologies betrays his weakness and vexation; and these
+passages of scandal established, beyond suspicion, the integrity
+of the Koran. ^96 The votaries of Mahomet are more assured than
+himself of his miraculous gifts; and their confidence and
+credulity increase as they are farther removed from the time and
+place of his spiritual exploits.  They believe or affirm that
+trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by stones; that
+water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry, cured the
+sick, and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a
+camel complained to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him
+of its being poisoned; and that both animate and inanimate nature
+were equally subject to the apostle of God. ^97 His dream of a
+nocturnal journey is seriously described as a real and corporeal
+transaction.  A mysterious animal, the Borak, conveyed him from
+the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem: with his companion
+Gabriel he successively ascended the seven heavens, and received
+and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the prophets, and
+the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the seventh
+heaven, Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the
+veil of unity, approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and
+felt a cold that pierced him to the heart, when his shoulder was
+touched by the hand of God.  After this familiar, though
+important conversation, he again descended to Jerusalem,
+remounted the Borak, returned to Mecca, and performed in the
+tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years. ^98
+According to another legend, the apostle confounded in a national
+assembly the malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless
+word split asunder the orb of the moon: the obedient planet
+stooped from her station in the sky, accomplished the seven
+revolutions round the Caaba, saluted Mahomet in the Arabian
+tongue, and, suddenly contracting her dimensions, entered at the
+collar, and issued forth through the sleeve, of his shirt. ^99
+The vulgar are amused with these marvellous tales; but the
+gravest of the Mussulman doctors imitate the modesty of their
+master, and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation. ^100
+They might speciously allege, that in preaching the religion it
+was needless to violate the harmony of nature; that a creed
+unclouded with mystery may be excused from miracles; and that the
+sword of Mahomet was not less potent than the rod of Moses.
+
+[Footnote 96: See, more remarkably, Koran, c. 2, 6, 12, 13, 17.
+Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 18, 19) has confounded the
+impostor.  Maracci, with a more learned apparatus, has shown that
+the passages which deny his miracles are clear and positive,
+(Alcoran, tom. i. part ii. p. 7 - 12,) and those which seem to
+assert them are ambiguous and insufficient, (p. 12 - 22.)]
+
+[Footnote 97: See the Specimen Hist. Arabum, the text of
+Abulpharagius, p. 17, the notes of Pocock, p. 187 - 190.
+D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 76, 77.  Voyages de
+Chardin, tom. iv. p. 200 - 203.  Maracci (Alcoran, tom. i. p. 22
+- 64) has most laboriously collected and confuted the miracles
+and prophecies of Mahomet, which, according to some writers,
+amount to three thousand.]
+
+[Footnote 98: The nocturnal journey is circumstantially related
+by Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed, c. 19, p. 33,) who wishes to think
+it a vision; by Prideaux, (p. 31 - 40,) who aggravates the
+absurdities; and by Gagnier (tom. i. p. 252 - 343,) who declares,
+from the zealous Al Jannabi, that to deny this journey, is to
+disbelieve the Koran.  Yet the Koran without naming either
+heaven, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, has only dropped a mysterious
+hint: Laus illi qui transtulit servum suum ab oratorio Haram ad
+oratorium remotissimum, (Koran, c. 17, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii.
+p. 407; for Sale's version is more licentious.) A slender basis
+for the aerial structure of tradition.]
+
+[Footnote 99: In the prophetic style, which uses the present or
+past for the future, Mahomet had said, Appropinquavit hora, et
+scissa est luna, (Koran, c. 54, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii. p.
+688.) This figure of rhetoric has been converted into a fact,
+which is said to be attested by the most respectable
+eye-witnesses, (Maracci, tom. ii. p. 690.) The festival is still
+celebrated by the Persians, (Chardin, tom. iv. p. 201;) and the
+legend is tediously spun out by Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. i.
+p. 183 - 234,) on the faith, as it should seem, of the credulous
+Al Jannabi.  Yet a Mahometan doctor has arraigned the credit of
+the principal witness, (apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 187;) the best
+interpreters are content with the simple sense of the Koran.  (Al
+Beidawi, apud Hottinger, Hist. Orient. l. ii. p. 302;) and the
+silence of Abulfeda is worthy of a prince and a philosopher.
+
+Note: Compare Hamaker Notes to Inc. Auct. Lib. de Exped.
+Memphides, p. 62 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Abulpharagius, in Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 17; and
+his scepticism is justified in the notes of Pocock, p. 190 - 194,
+from the purest authorities.]
+
+The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of
+superstition: a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven
+with the essence of the Mosaic law; and the spirit of the gospel
+had evaporated in the pageantry of the church.  The prophet of
+Mecca was tempted by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to
+sanctify the rites of the Arabians, and the custom of visiting
+the holy stone of the Caaba.  But the precepts of Mahomet himself
+inculcates a more simple and rational piety: prayer, fasting, and
+alms, are the religious duties of a Mussulman; and he is
+encouraged to hope, that prayer will carry him half way to God,
+fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms will
+gain him admittance. ^101 I.  According to the tradition of the
+nocturnal journey, the apostle, in his personal conference with
+the Deity, was commanded to impose on his disciples the daily
+obligation of fifty prayers.  By the advice of Moses, he applied
+for an alleviation of this intolerable burden; the number was
+gradually reduced to five; without any dispensation of business
+or pleasure, or time or place: the devotion of the faithful is
+repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening,
+and at the first watch of the night; and in the present decay of
+religious fervor, our travellers are edified by the profound
+humility and attention of the Turks and Persians.  Cleanliness is
+the key of prayer: the frequent lustration of the hands, the
+face, and the body, which was practised of old by the Arabs, is
+solemnly enjoined by the Koran; and a permission is formally
+granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water.  The words and
+attitudes of supplication, as it is performed either sitting, or
+standing, or prostrate on the ground, are prescribed by custom or
+authority; but the prayer is poured forth in short and fervent
+ejaculations; the measure of zeal is not exhausted by a tedious
+liturgy; and each Mussulman for his own person is invested with
+the character of a priest.  Among the theists, who reject the use
+of images, it has been found necessary to restrain the wanderings
+of the fancy, by directing the eye and the thought towards a
+kebla, or visible point of the horizon.  The prophet was at first
+inclined to gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem; but he
+soon returned to a more natural partiality; and five times every
+day the eyes of the nations at Astracan, at Fez, at Delhi, are
+devoutly turned to the holy temple of Mecca.  Yet every spot for
+the service of God is equally pure: the Mahometans indifferently
+pray in their chamber or in the street.  As a distinction from
+the Jews and Christians, the Friday in each week is set apart for
+the useful institution of public worship: the people is assembled
+in the mosch; and the imam, some respectable elder, ascends the
+pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon.  But the
+Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or sacrifice; and
+the independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with contempt on
+the ministers and the slaves of superstition. ^* II. The
+voluntary ^102 penance of the ascetics, the torment and glory of
+their lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his
+companions a rash vow of abstaining from flesh, and women, and
+sleep; and firmly declared, that he would suffer no monks in his
+religion. ^103 Yet he instituted, in each year, a fast of thirty
+days; and strenuously recommended the observance as a discipline
+which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a salutary
+exercise of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During
+the month of Ramadan, from the rising to the setting of the sun,
+the Mussulman abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and
+baths, and perfumes; from all nourishment that can restore his
+strength, from all pleasure that can gratify his senses.  In the
+revolution of the lunar year, the Ramadan coincides, by turns,
+with the winter cold and the summer heat; and the patient martyr,
+without assuaging his thirst with a drop of water, must expect
+the close of a tedious and sultry day.  The interdiction of wine,
+peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits, is converted by
+Mahomet alone into a positive and general law; ^104 and a
+considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command,
+the use of that salutary, though dangerous, liquor.  These
+painful restraints are, doubtless, infringed by the libertine,
+and eluded by the hypocrite; but the legislator, by whom they are
+enacted, cannot surely be accused of alluring his proselytes by
+the indulgence of their sensual appetites.  III.  The charity of
+the Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and the Koran
+repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and
+indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate.
+Mahomet, perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the
+precise measure of charity: the standard may vary with the degree
+and nature of property, as it consists either in money, in corn
+or cattle, in fruits or merchandise; but the Mussulman does not
+accomplish the law, unless he bestows a tenth of his revenue; and
+if his conscience accuses him of fraud or extortion, the tenth,
+under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a fifth. ^105
+Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since we are forbid to
+injure those whom we are bound to assist.  A prophet may reveal
+the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts
+he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.
+
+[Footnote 101: The most authentic account of these precepts,
+pilgrimage, prayer, fasting, alms, and ablutions, is extracted
+from the Persian and Arabian theologians by Maracci, (Prodrom.
+part iv. p. 9 - 24,) Reland, (in his excellent treatise de
+Religione Mohammedica, Utrecht, 1717, p. 67 - 123,) and Chardin,
+(Voyages in Perse, tom. iv. p. 47 - 195.) Marace is a partial
+accuser; but the jeweller, Chardin, had the eyes of a
+philosopher; and Reland, a judicious student, had travelled over
+the East in his closet at Utrecht. The xivth letter of Tournefort
+(Voyage du Levont, tom. ii. p. 325 - 360, in octavo) describes
+what he had seen of the religion of the Turks.]
+
+[Footnote *: Such is Mahometanism beyond the precincts of the
+Holy City. But Mahomet retained, and the Koran sanctions, (Sale's
+Koran, c. 5, in inlt. c. 22, vol. ii. p. 171, 172,) the sacrifice
+of sheep and camels (probably according to the old Arabian rites)
+at Mecca; and the pilgrims complete their ceremonial with
+sacrifices, sometimes as numerous and costly as those of King
+Solomon.  Compare note, vol. iv. c. xxiii. p. 96, and Forster's
+Mahometanism Unveiled, vol. i. p. 420.  This author quotes the
+questionable authority of Benjamin of Tudela, for the sacrifice
+of a camel by the caliph at Bosra; but sacrifice undoubtedly
+forms no part of the ordinary Mahometan ritual; nor will the
+sanctity of the caliph, as the earthly representative of the
+prophet, bear any close analogy to the priesthood of the Mosaic
+or Gentila religions. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 102: Mahomet (Sale's Koran, c. 9, p. 153) reproaches
+the Christians with taking their priests and monks for their
+lords, besides God.  Yet Maracci (Prodromus, part iii. p. 69, 70)
+excuses the worship, especially of the pope, and quotes, from the
+Koran itself, the case of Eblis, or Satan, who was cast from
+heaven for refusing to adore Adam.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Koran, c. 5, p. 94, and Sale's note, which refers
+to the authority of Jallaloddin and Al Beidawi.  D'Herbelot
+declares, that Mahomet condemned la vie religieuse; and that the
+first swarms of fakirs, dervises, &c., did not appear till after
+the year 300 of the Hegira, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 292, 718.)]
+
+[Footnote 104: See the double prohibition, (Koran, c. 2, p. 25,
+c. 5, p. 94;) the one in the style of a legislator, the other in
+that of a fanatic. The public and private motives of Mahomet are
+investigated by Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 62 - 64) and Sale,
+(Preliminary Discourse, p. 124.)]
+
+[Footnote 105: The jealousy of Maracci (Prodromus, part iv. p.
+33) prompts him to enumerate the more liberal alms of the
+Catholics of Rome.  Fifteen great hospitals are open to many
+thousand patients and pilgrims; fifteen hundred maidens are
+annually portioned; fifty-six charity schools are founded for
+both sexes; one hundred and twenty confraternities relieve the
+wants of their brethren, &c.  The benevolence of London is still
+more extensive; but I am afraid that much more is to be ascribed
+to the humanity, than to the religion, of the people.]
+
+The two articles of belief, and the four practical duties,
+of Islam, are guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith
+of the Mussulman is devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment
+and the last day.  The prophet has not presumed to determine the
+moment of that awful catastrophe, though he darkly announces the
+signs, both in heaven and earth, which will precede the universal
+dissolution, when life shall be destroyed, and the order of
+creation shall be confounded in the primitive chaos.  At the
+blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into being: angels,
+genii, and men will arise from the dead, and the human soul will
+again be united to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection was
+first entertained by the Egyptians; ^106 and their mummies were
+embalmed, their pyramids were constructed, to preserve the
+ancient mansion of the soul, during a period of three thousand
+years.  But the attempt is partial and unavailing; and it is with
+a more philosophic spirit that Mahomet relies on the omnipotence
+of the Creator, whose word can reanimate the breathless clay, and
+collect the innumerable atoms, that no longer retain their form
+or substance. ^107 The intermediate state of the soul it is hard
+to decide; and those who most firmly believe her immaterial
+nature, are at a loss to understand how she can think or act
+without the agency of the organs of sense.
+
+[Footnote 106: See Herodotus (l. ii. c. 123) and our learned
+countryman Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chronicus, p. 46.) The same
+writer (p. 254 - 274) is an elaborate sketch of the infernal
+regions, as they were painted by the fancy of the Egyptians and
+Greeks, of the poets and philosophers of antiquity.]
+
+[Footnote 107: The Koran (c. 2, p. 259, &c.; of Sale, p. 32; of
+Maracci, p. 97) relates an ingenious miracle, which satisfied the
+curiosity, and confirmed the faith, of Abraham.]
+
+The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the
+final judgment of mankind; and in his copy of the Magian picture,
+the prophet has too faithfully represented the forms of
+proceeding, and even the slow and successive operations, of an
+earthly tribunal.  By his intolerant adversaries he is upbraided
+for extending, even to themselves, the hope of salvation, for
+asserting the blackest heresy, that every man who believes in
+God, and accomplishes good works, may expect in the last day a
+favorable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to
+the character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger
+from heaven should depreciate the value and necessity of his own
+revelation.  In the idiom of the Koran, ^108 the belief of God is
+inseparable from that of Mahomet: the good works are those which
+he has enjoined, and the two qualifications imply the profession
+of Islam, to which all nations and all sects are equally invited.
+
+Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and
+crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments;
+and the tears which Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother for
+whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of
+humanity and enthusiasm. ^109 The doom of the infidels is common:
+the measure of their guilt and punishment is determined by the
+degree of evidence which they have rejected, by the magnitude of
+the errors which they have entertained: the eternal mansions of
+the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the Magians, and
+idolaters, are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the lowest
+hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed
+the mask of religion.  After the greater part of mankind has been
+condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be
+judged by their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will
+be accurately weighed in a real or allegorical balance; and a
+singular mode of compensation will be allowed for the payment of
+injuries: the aggressor will refund an equivalent of his own good
+actions, for the benefit of the person whom he has wronged; and
+if he should be destitute of any moral property, the weight of
+his sins will be loaded with an adequate share of the demerits of
+the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt or virtue shall
+preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without
+distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of the
+abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mahomet,
+will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty
+will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells.  The
+term of expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand
+years; but the prophet has judiciously promised, that all his
+disciples, whatever may be their sins, shall be saved, by their
+own faith and his intercession from eternal damnation.  It is not
+surprising that superstition should act most powerfully on the
+fears of her votaries, since the human fancy can paint with more
+energy the misery than the bliss of a future life.  With the two
+simple elements of darkness and fire, we create a sensation of
+pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea
+of endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite
+effect on the continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present
+enjoyments is obtained from the relief, or the comparison, of
+evil. It is natural enough that an Arabian prophet should dwell
+with rapture on the groves, the fountains, and the rivers of
+paradise; but instead of inspiring the blessed inhabitants with a
+liberal taste for harmony and science, conversation and
+friendship, he idly celebrates the pearls and diamonds, the robes
+of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines,
+artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of
+sensual and costly luxury, which becomes insipid to the owner,
+even in the short period of this mortal life.  Seventy-two
+Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming
+youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility, will be created
+for the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be
+prolonged to a thousand years; and his faculties will be
+increased a hundred fold, to render him worthy of his felicity.
+Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of heaven will be
+open to both sexes; but Mahomet has not specified the male
+companions of the female elect, lest he should either alarm the
+jealousy of their former husbands, or disturb their felicity, by
+the suspicion of an everlasting marriage.  This image of a carnal
+paradise has provoked the indignation, perhaps the envy, of the
+monks: they declaim against the impure religion of Mahomet; and
+his modest apologists are driven to the poor excuse of figures
+and allegories.  But the sounder and more consistent party adhere
+without shame, to the literal interpretation of the Koran:
+useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it were
+restored to the possession and exercise of its worthiest
+faculties; and the union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment is
+requisite to complete the happiness of the double animal, the
+perfect man.  Yet the joys of the Mahometan paradise will not be
+confined to the indulgence of luxury and appetite; and the
+prophet has expressly declared that all meaner happiness will be
+forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs, who shall be
+admitted to the beatitude of the divine vision. ^110
+
+[Footnote 108: The candid Reland has demonstrated, that Mahomet
+damns all unbelievers, (de Religion. Moham. p. 128 - 142;) that
+devils will not be finally saved, (p. 196 - 199;) that paradise
+will not solely consist of corporeal delights, (p. 199 - 205;)
+and that women's souls are immortal. (p. 205 - 209.)]
+
+[Footnote 109: A Beidawi, apud Sale.  Koran, c. 9, p. 164.  The
+refusal to pray for an unbelieving kindred is justified,
+according to Mahomet, by the duty of a prophet, and the example
+of Abraham, who reprobated his own father as an enemy of God.
+Yet Abraham (he adds, c. 9, v. 116.  Maracci, tom. ii. p. 317)
+fuit sane pius, mitis.]
+
+[Footnote 110: For the day of judgment, hell, paradise, &c.,
+consult the Koran, (c. 2, v. 25, c. 56, 78, &c.;) with Maracci's
+virulent, but learned, refutation, (in his notes, and in the
+Prodromus, part iv. p. 78, 120, 122, &c.;) D'Herbelot,
+(Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368, 375;) Reland, (p. 47 - 61;) and
+Sale, (p. 76 - 103.) The original ideas of the Magi are darkly
+and doubtfully explored by their apologist, Dr. Hyde, (Hist.
+Religionis Persarum, c. 33, p. 402 - 412, Oxon. 1760.) In the
+article of Mahomet, Bayle has shown how indifferently wit and
+philosophy supply the absence of genuine information.]
+
+The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet ^111 were
+those of his wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend; ^112
+since he presented himself as a prophet to those who were most
+conversant with his infirmities as a man. Yet Cadijah believed
+the words, and cherished the glory, of her husband; the
+obsequious and affectionate Zeid was tempted by the prospect of
+freedom; the illustrious Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, embraced the
+sentiments of his cousin with the spirit of a youthful hero; and
+the wealth, the moderation, the veracity of Abubeker confirmed
+the religion of the prophet whom he was destined to succeed.  By
+his persuasion, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca
+were introduced to the private lessons of Islam; they yielded to
+the voice of reason and enthusiasm; they repeated the fundamental
+creed, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;"
+and their faith, even in this life, was rewarded with riches and
+honors, with the command of armies and the government of
+kingdoms.  Three years were silently employed in the conversion
+of fourteen proselytes, the first-fruits of his mission; but in
+the fourth year he assumed the prophetic office, and resolving to
+impart to his family the light of divine truth, he prepared a
+banquet, a lamb, as it is said, and a bowl of milk, for the
+entertainment of forty guests of the race of Hashem. "Friends and
+kinsmen," said Mahomet to the assembly, "I offer you, and I alone
+can offer, the most precious of gifts, the treasures of this
+world and of the world to come.  God has commanded me to call you
+to his service.  Who among you will support my burden?  Who among
+you will be my companion and my vizier?" ^113 No answer was
+returned, till the silence of astonishment, and doubt, and
+contempt, was at length broken by the impatient courage of Ali, a
+youth in the fourteenth year of his age.  "O prophet, I am the
+man: whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth,
+tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly.  O prophet,
+I will be thy vizier over them." Mahomet accepted his offer with
+transport, and Abu Taled was ironically exhorted to respect the
+superior dignity of his son.  In a more serious tone, the father
+of Ali advised his nephew to relinquish his impracticable design.
+
+"Spare your remonstrances," replied the intrepid fanatic to his
+uncle and benefactor; "if they should place the sun on my right
+hand, and the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my
+course." He persevered ten years in the exercise of his mission;
+and the religion which has overspread the East and the West
+advanced with a slow and painful progress within the walls of
+Mecca.  Yet Mahomet enjoyed the satisfaction of beholding the
+increase of his infant congregation of Unitarians, who revered
+him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably dispensed the
+spiritual nourishment of the Koran.  The number of proselytes may
+be esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen
+women, who retired to Aethiopia in the seventh year of his
+mission; and his party was fortified by the timely conversion of
+his uncle Hamza, and of the fierce and inflexible Omar, who
+signalized in the cause of Islam the same zeal, which he had
+exerted for its destruction.  Nor was the charity of Mahomet
+confined to the tribe of Koreish, or the precincts of Mecca: on
+solemn festivals, in the days of pilgrimage, he frequented the
+Caaba, accosted the strangers of every tribe, and urged, both in
+private converse and public discourse, the belief and worship of
+a sole Deity.  Conscious of his reason and of his weakness, he
+asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of
+religious violence: ^114 but he called the Arabs to repentance,
+and conjured them to remember the ancient idolaters of Ad and
+Thamud, whom the divine justice had swept away from the face of
+the earth. ^115
+
+[Footnote 111: Before I enter on the history of the prophet, it
+is incumbent on me to produce my evidence.  The Latin, French,
+and English versions of the Koran are preceded by historical
+discourses, and the three translators, Maracci, (tom. i. p. 10 -
+32,) Savary, (tom. i. p. 1 - 248,) and Sale, (Preliminary
+Discourse, p. 33 - 56,) had accurately studied the language and
+character of their author.  Two professed Lives of Mahomet have
+been composed by Dr. Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, seventh edition,
+London, 1718, in octavo) and the count de Boulainvilliers, (Vie
+de Mahomed, Londres, 1730, in octavo: ) but the adverse wish of
+finding an impostor or a hero, has too often corrupted the
+learning of the doctor and the ingenuity of the count.  The
+article in D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 598 - 603) is chiefly
+drawn from Novairi and Mirkond; but the best and most authentic
+of our guides is M. Gagnier, a Frenchman by birth, and professor
+at Oxford of the Oriental tongues.  In two elaborate works,
+(Ismael Abulfeda de Vita et Rebus gestis Mohammedis, &c. Latine
+vertit, Praefatione et Notis illustravit Johannes Gagnier, Oxon.
+1723, in folio. La Vie de Mahomet traduite et compilee de
+l'Alcoran, des Traditions Authentiques de la Sonna et des
+meilleurs Auteurs Arabes; Amsterdam, 1748, 3 vols. in 12mo.,) he
+has interpreted, illustrated, and supplied the Arabic text of
+Abulfeda and Al Jannabi; the first, an enlightened prince who
+reigned at Hamah, in Syria, A.D. 1310 - 1332, (see Gagnier
+Praefat. ad Abulfed.;) the second, a credulous doctor, who
+visited Mecca A.D. 1556. (D'Herbelot, p. 397. Gagnier, tom. iii.
+p. 209, 210.) These are my general vouchers, and the inquisitive
+reader may follow the order of time, and the division of
+chapters. Yet I must observe that both Abulfeda and Al Jannabi
+are modern historians, and that they cannot appeal to any writers
+of the first century of the Hegira.
+
+Note: A new Life, by Dr. Weil, (Stuttgart. 1843,) has added
+some few traditions unknown in Europe.  Of Dr. Weil's Arabic
+scholarship, which professes to correct many errors in Gagnier,
+in Maracci, and in M. von Hammer, I am no judge.  But it is
+remarkable that he does not seem acquainted with the passage of
+Tabari, translated by Colonel Vans Kennedy, in the Bombay
+Transactions, (vol. iii.,) the earliest and most important
+addition made to the traditionary Life of Mahomet.  I am inclined
+to think Colonel Vans Kennedy's appreciation of the prophet's
+character, which may be overlooked in a criticism on Voltaire's
+Mahomet, the most just which I have ever read.  The work of Dr.
+Weil appears to me most valuable in its dissection and
+chronological view of the Koran. - M. 1845]
+
+[Footnote 112: After the Greeks, Prideaux (p. 8) discloses the
+secret doubts of the wife of Mahomet.  As if he had been a privy
+counsellor of the prophet, Boulainvilliers (p. 272, &c.) unfolds
+the sublime and patriotic views of Cadijah and the first
+disciples.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Vezirus, portitor, bajulus, onus ferens; and this
+plebeian name was transferred by an apt metaphor to the pillars
+of the state, (Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 19.) I endeavor to
+preserve the Arabian idiom, as far as I can feel it myself in a
+Latin or French translation.]
+
+[Footnote 114: The passages of the Koran in behalf of toleration
+are strong and numerous: c. 2, v. 257, c. 16, 129, c. 17, 54, c.
+45, 15, c. 50, 39, c. 88, 21, &c., with the notes of Maracci and
+Sale.  This character alone may generally decide the doubts of
+the learned, whether a chapter was revealed at Mecca or Medina.]
+
+[Footnote 115: See the Koran, (passim, and especially c. 7, p.
+123, 124, &c.,) and the tradition of the Arabs, (Pocock,
+Specimen, p. 35 - 37.) The caverns of the tribe of Thamud, fit
+for men of the ordinary stature, were shown in the midway between
+Medina and Damascus. (Abulfed Arabiae Descript. p. 43, 44,) and
+may be probably ascribed to the Throglodytes of the primitive
+world, (Michaelis, ad Lowth de Poesi Hebraeor. p. 131 - 134.
+Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 48, &c.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part V.
+
+The people of Mecca were hardened in their unbelief by
+superstition and envy.  The elders of the city, the uncles of the
+prophet, affected to despise the presumption of an orphan, the
+reformer of his country: the pious orations of Mahomet in the
+Caaba were answered by the clamors of Abu Taleb.  "Citizens and
+pilgrims, listen not to the tempter, hearken not to his impious
+novelties. Stand fast in the worship of Al Lata and Al Uzzah."
+Yet the son of Abdallah was ever dear to the aged chief: and he
+protected the fame and person of his nephew against the assaults
+of the Koreishites, who had long been jealous of the preeminence
+of the family of Hashem. Their malice was colored with the
+pretence of religion: in the age of Job, the crime of impiety was
+punished by the Arabian magistrate; ^116 and Mahomet was guilty
+of deserting and denying the national deities.  But so loose was
+the policy of Mecca, that the leaders of the Koreish, instead of
+accusing a criminal, were compelled to employ the measures of
+persuasion or violence.  They repeatedly addressed Abu Taleb in
+the style of reproach and menace.  "Thy nephew reviles our
+religion; he accuses our wise forefathers of ignorance and folly;
+silence him quickly, lest he kindle tumult and discord in the
+city.  If he persevere, we shall draw our swords against him and
+his adherents, and thou wilt be responsible for the blood of thy
+fellow-citizens." The weight and moderation of Abu Taleb eluded
+the violence of religious faction; the most helpless or timid of
+the disciples retired to Aethiopia, and the prophet withdrew
+himself to various places of strength in the town and country.
+As he was still supported by his family, the rest of the tribe of
+Koreish engaged themselves to renounce all intercourse with the
+children of Hashem, neither to buy nor sell, neither to marry not
+to give in marriage, but to pursue them with implacable enmity,
+till they should deliver the person of Mahomet to the justice of
+the gods.  The decree was suspended in the Caaba before the eyes
+of the nation; the messengers of the Koreish pursued the
+Mussulman exiles in the heart of Africa: they besieged the
+prophet and his most faithful followers, intercepted their water,
+and inflamed their mutual animosity by the retaliation of
+injuries and insults.  A doubtful truce restored the appearances
+of concord till the death of Abu Taleb abandoned Mahomet to the
+power of his enemies, at the moment when he was deprived of his
+domestic comforts by the loss of his faithful and generous
+Cadijah.  Abu Sophian, the chief of the branch of Ommiyah,
+succeeded to the principality of the republic of Mecca.  A
+zealous votary of the idols, a mortal foe of the line of Hashem,
+he convened an assembly of the Koreishites and their allies, to
+decide the fate of the apostle.  His imprisonment might provoke
+the despair of his enthusiasm; and the exile of an eloquent and
+popular fanatic would diffuse the mischief through the provinces
+of Arabia. His death was resolved; and they agreed that a sword
+from each tribe should be buried in his heart, to divide the
+guilt of his blood, and baffle the vengeance of the Hashemites.
+An angel or a spy revealed their conspiracy; and flight was the
+only resource of Mahomet. ^117 At the dead of night, accompanied
+by his friend Abubeker, he silently escaped from his house: the
+assassins watched at the door; but they were deceived by the
+figure of Ali, who reposed on the bed, and was covered with the
+green vestment of the apostle. The Koreish respected the piety of
+the heroic youth; but some verses of Ali, which are still extant,
+exhibit an interesting picture of his anxiety, his tenderness,
+and his religious confidence.  Three days Mahomet and his
+companion were concealed in the cave of Thor, at the distance of
+a league from Mecca; and in the close of each evening, they
+received from the son and daughter of Abubeker a secret supply of
+intelligence and food.  The diligence of the Koreish explored
+every haunt in the neighborhood of the city: they arrived at the
+entrance of the cavern; but the providential deceit of a spider's
+web and a pigeon's nest is supposed to convince them that the
+place was solitary and inviolate.  "We are only two," said the
+trembling Abubeker. "There is a third," replied the prophet; "it
+is God himself." No sooner was the pursuit abated than the two
+fugitives issued from the rock, and mounted their camels: on the
+road to Medina, they were overtaken by the emissaries of the
+Koreish; they redeemed themselves with prayers and promises from
+their hands.  In this eventful moment, the lance of an Arab might
+have changed the history of the world.  The flight of the prophet
+from Mecca to Medina has fixed the memorable aera of the Hegira,
+^118 which, at the end of twelve centuries, still discriminates
+the lunar years of the Mahometan nations. ^119
+
+[Footnote 116: In the time of Job, the crime of impiety was
+punished by the Arabian magistrate, (c. 21, v. 26, 27, 28.) I
+blush for a respectable prelate (de Poesi Hebraeorum, p. 650,
+651, edit. Michaelis; and letter of a late professor in the
+university of Oxford, p. 15 - 53,) who justifies and applauds
+this patriarchal inquisition.]
+
+[Footnote 117: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 445.  He quotes a
+particular history of the flight of Mahomet.]
+
+[Footnote 118: The Hegira was instituted by Omar, the second
+caliph, in imitation of the aera of the martyrs of the
+Christians, (D'Herbelot, p. 444;) and properly commenced
+sixty-eight days before the flight of Mahomet, with the first of
+Moharren, or first day of that Arabian year which coincides with
+Friday, July 16th, A.D. 622, (Abulfeda, Vit Moham, c. 22, 23, p.
+45 - 50; and Greaves's edition of Ullug Beg's Epochae Arabum,
+&c., c. 1, p. 8, 10, &c.)
+
+Note: Chronologists dispute between the 15th and 16th of
+July. St. Martin inclines to the 8th, ch. xi. p. 70. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Mahomet's life, from his mission to the Hegira,
+may be found in Abulfeda (p. 14 - 45) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p.
+134 - 251, 342 - 383.) The legend from p. 187 - 234 is vouched by
+Al Jannabi, and disdained by Abulfeda.]
+
+The religion of the Koran might have perished in its cradle,
+had not Medina embraced with faith and reverence the holy
+outcasts of Mecca. Medina, or the city, known under the name of
+Yathreb, before it was sanctified by the throne of the prophet,
+was divided between the tribes of the Charegites and the Awsites,
+whose hereditary feud was rekindled by the slightest
+provocations: two colonies of Jews, who boasted a sacerdotal
+race, were their humble allies, and without converting the Arabs,
+they introduced the taste of science and religion, which
+distinguished Medina as the city of the Book. Some of her noblest
+citizens, in a pilgrimage to the Canaba, were converted by the
+preaching of Mahomet; on their return, they diffused the belief
+of God and his prophet, and the new alliance was ratified by
+their deputies in two secret and nocturnal interviews on a hill
+in the suburbs of Mecca.  In the first, ten Charegites and two
+Awsites united in faith and love, protested, in the name of their
+wives, their children, and their absent brethren, that they would
+forever profess the creed, and observe the precepts, of the
+Koran.  The second was a political association, the first vital
+spark of the empire of the Saracens. ^120 Seventy-three men and
+two women of Medina held a solemn conference with Mahomet, his
+kinsman, and his disciples; and pledged themselves to each other
+by a mutual oath of fidelity.  They promised, in the name of the
+city, that if he should be banished, they would receive him as a
+confederate, obey him as a leader, and defend him to the last
+extremity, like their wives and children.  "But if you are
+recalled by your country," they asked with a flattering anxiety,
+"will you not abandon your new allies?" "All things," replied
+Mahomet with a smile, "are now common between us your blood is as
+my blood, your ruin as my ruin.  We are bound to each other by
+the ties of honor and interest.  I am your friend, and the enemy
+of your foes." "But if we are killed in your service, what,"
+exclaimed the deputies of Medina, "will be our reward?"
+"Paradise," replied the prophet.  "Stretch forth thy hand." He
+stretched it forth, and they reiterated the oath of allegiance
+and fidelity. Their treaty was ratified by the people, who
+unanimously embraced the profession of Islam; they rejoiced in
+the exile of the apostle, but they trembled for his safety, and
+impatiently expected his arrival.  After a perilous and rapid
+journey along the sea-coast, he halted at Koba, two miles from
+the city, and made his public entry into Medina, sixteen days
+after his flight from Mecca.  Five hundred of the citizens
+advanced to meet him; he was hailed with acclamations of loyalty
+and devotion; Mahomet was mounted on a she-camel, an umbrella
+shaded his head, and a turban was unfurled before him to supply
+the deficiency of a standard.  His bravest disciples, who had
+been scattered by the storm, assembled round his person; and the
+equal, though various, merit of the Moslems was distinguished by
+the names of Mohagerians and Ansars, the fugitives of Mecca, and
+the auxiliaries of Medina.  To eradicate the seeds of jealousy,
+Mahomet judiciously coupled his principal followers with the
+rights and obligations of brethren; and when Ali found himself
+without a peer, the prophet tenderly declared, that he would be
+the companion and brother of the noble youth.  The expedient was
+crowned with success; the holy fraternity was respected in peace
+and war, and the two parties vied with each other in a generous
+emulation of courage and fidelity. Once only the concord was
+slightly ruffled by an accidental quarrel: a patriot of Medina
+arraigned the insolence of the strangers, but the hint of their
+expulsion was heard with abhorrence; and his own son most eagerly
+offered to lay at the apostle's feet the head of his father.
+
+[Footnote 120: The triple inauguration of Mahomet is described by
+Abulfeda (p. 30, 33, 40, 86) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p. 342, &c.,
+349, &c., tom. ii. p. 223 &c.)]
+
+From his establishment at Medina, Mahomet assumed the
+exercise of the regal and sacerdotal office; and it was impious
+to appeal from a judge whose decrees were inspired by the divine
+wisdom.  A small portion of ground, the patrimony of two orphans,
+was acquired by gift or purchase; ^121 on that chosen spot he
+built a house and a mosch, more venerable in their rude
+simplicity than the palaces and temples of the Assyrian caliphs.
+His seal of gold, or silver, was inscribed with the apostolic
+title; when he prayed and preached in the weekly assembly, he
+leaned against the trunk of a palm-tree; and it was long before
+he indulged himself in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough
+timber. ^122 After a reign of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems,
+in arms and in the field, renewed their oath of allegiance; and
+their chief repeated the assurance of protection till the death
+of the last member, or the final dissolution of the party.  It
+was in the same camp that the deputy of Mecca was astonished by
+the attention of the faithful to the words and looks of the
+prophet, by the eagerness with which they collected his spittle,
+a hair that dropped on the ground, the refuse water of his
+lustrations, as if they participated in some degree of the
+prophetic virtue.  "I have seen," said he, "the Chosroes of
+Persia and the Caesar of Rome, but never did I behold a king
+among his subjects like Mahomet among his companions." The devout
+fervor of enthusiasm acts with more energy and truth than the
+cold and formal servility of courts.
+
+[Footnote 121: Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 44) reviles the
+wickedness of the impostor, who despoiled two poor orphans, the
+sons of a carpenter; a reproach which he drew from the Disputatio
+contra Saracenos, composed in Arabic before the year 1130; but
+the honest Gagnier (ad Abulfed. p. 53) has shown that they were
+deceived by the word Al Nagjar, which signifies, in this place,
+not an obscure trade, but a noble tribe of Arabs.  The desolate
+state of the ground is described by Abulfeda; and his worthy
+interpreter has proved, from Al Bochari, the offer of a price;
+from Al Jannabi, the fair purchase; and from Ahmeq Ben Joseph,
+the payment of the money by the generous Abubeker On these
+grounds the prophet must be honorably acquitted.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 246, 324)
+describes the seal and pulpit, as two venerable relics of the
+apostle of God; and the portrait of his court is taken from
+Abulfeda, (c. 44, p. 85.)]
+
+In the state of nature, every man has a right to defend, by
+force of arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even
+to prevent, the violence of his enemies, and to extend his
+hostilities to a reasonable measure of satisfaction and
+retaliation.  In the free society of the Arabs, the duties of
+subject and citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and Mahomet, in
+the exercise of a peaceful and benevolent mission, had been
+despoiled and banished by the injustice of his countrymen.  The
+choice of an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca
+to the rank of a sovereign; and he was invested with the just
+prerogative of forming alliances, and of waging offensive or
+defensive war.  The imperfection of human rights was supplied and
+armed by the plenitude of divine power: the prophet of Medina
+assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and more sanguinary
+tone, which proves that his former moderation was the effect of
+weakness: ^123 the means of persuasion had been tried, the season
+of forbearance was elapsed, and he was now commanded to propagate
+his religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments of idolatry,
+and, without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue
+the unbelieving nations of the earth.  The same bloody precepts,
+so repeatedly inculcated in the Koran, are ascribed by the author
+to the Pentateuch and the Gospel.  But the mild tenor of the
+evangelic style may explain an ambiguous text, that Jesus did not
+bring peace on the earth, but a sword: his patient and humble
+virtues should not be confounded with the intolerant zeal of
+princes and bishops, who have disgraced the name of his
+disciples.  In the prosecution of religious war, Mahomet might
+appeal with more propriety to the example of Moses, of the
+Judges, and the kings of Israel.  The military laws of the
+Hebrews are still more rigid than those of the Arabian
+legislator. ^124 The Lord of hosts marched in person before the
+Jews: if a city resisted their summons, the males, without
+distinction, were put to the sword: the seven nations of Canaan
+were devoted to destruction; and neither repentance nor
+conversion, could shield them from the inevitable doom, that no
+creature within their precincts should be left alive. ^* The fair
+option of friendship, or submission, or battle, was proposed to
+the enemies of Mahomet.  If they professed the creed of Islam,
+they were admitted to all the temporal and spiritual benefits of
+his primitive disciples, and marched under the same banner to
+extend the religion which they had embraced.  The clemency of the
+prophet was decided by his interest: yet he seldom trampled on a
+prostrate enemy; and he seems to promise, that on the payment of
+a tribute, the least guilty of his unbelieving subjects might be
+indulged in their worship, or at least in their imperfect faith.
+In the first months of his reign he practised the lessons of holy
+warfare, and displayed his white banner before the gates of
+Medina: the martial apostle fought in person at nine battles or
+sieges; ^125 and fifty enterprises of war were achieved in ten
+years by himself or his lieutenants.  The Arab continued to unite
+the professions of a merchant and a robber; and his petty
+excursions for the defence or the attack of a caravan insensibly
+prepared his troops for the conquest of Arabia.  The distribution
+of the spoil was regulated by a divine law: ^126 the whole was
+faithfully collected in one common mass: a fifth of the gold and
+silver, the prisoners and cattle, the movables and immovables,
+was reserved by the prophet for pious and charitable uses; the
+remainder was shared in adequate portions by the soldiers who had
+obtained the victory or guarded the camp: the rewards of the
+slain devolved to their widows and orphans; and the increase of
+cavalry was encouraged by the allotment of a double share to the
+horse and to the man. From all sides the roving Arabs were
+allured to the standard of religion and plunder: the apostle
+sanctified the license of embracing the female captives as their
+wives or concubines, and the enjoyment of wealth and beauty was a
+feeble type of the joys of paradise prepared for the valiant
+martyrs of the faith. "The sword," says Mahomet, "is the key of
+heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a
+night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting
+or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at
+the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion,
+and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be
+supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim." The intrepid souls
+of the Arabs were fired with enthusiasm: the picture of the
+invisible world was strongly painted on their imagination; and
+the death which they had always despised became an object of hope
+and desire.  The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute sense,
+the tenets of fate and predestination, which would extinguish
+both industry and virtue, if the actions of man were governed by
+his speculative belief.  Yet their influence in every age has
+exalted the courage of the Saracens and Turks.  The first
+companions of Mahomet advanced to battle with a fearless
+confidence: there is no danger where there is no chance: they
+were ordained to perish in their beds; or they were safe and
+invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. ^127
+
+[Footnote 123: The viiith and ixth chapters of the Koran are the
+loudest and most vehement; and Maracci (Prodromus, part iv. p. 59
+- 64) has inveighed with more justice than discretion against the
+double dealing of the impostor.]
+
+[Footnote 124: The xth and xxth chapters of Deuteronomy, with the
+practical comments of Joshua, David, &c., are read with more awe
+than satisfaction by the pious Christians of the present age.
+But the bishops, as well as the rabbis of former times, have beat
+the drum-ecclesiastic with pleasure and success.  (Sale's
+Preliminary Discourse, p. 142, 143.)]
+
+[Footnote *: The editor's opinions on this subject may be read in
+the History of the Jews vol. i. p. 137. - M]
+
+[Footnote 125: Abulfeda, in Vit. Moham. p. 156.  The private
+arsenal of the apostle consisted of nine swords, three lances,
+seven pikes or half-pikes, a quiver and three bows, seven
+cuirasses, three shields, and two helmets, (Gagnier, tom. iii. p.
+328 - 334,) with a large white standard, a black banner, (p.
+335,) twenty horses, (p. 322, &c.) Two of his martial sayings are
+recorded by tradition, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 88, 334.)]
+
+[Footnote 126: The whole subject de jure belli Mohammedanorum is
+exhausted in a separate dissertation by the learned Reland,
+(Dissertationes Miscellaneae, tom. iii. Dissertat. x. p. 3 -
+53.)]
+
+[Footnote 127: The doctrine of absolute predestination, on which
+few religions can reproach each other, is sternly exposed in the
+Koran, (c. 3, p. 52, 53, c. 4, p. 70, &c., with the notes of
+Sale, and c. 17, p. 413, with those of Maracci.) Reland (de
+Relig. Moham. p. 61 - 64) and Sale (Prelim. Discourse, p. 103)
+represent the opinions of the doctors, and our modern travellers
+the confidence, the fading confidence, of the Turks]
+
+Perhaps the Koreish would have been content with the dight
+of Mahomet, had they not been provoked and alarmed by the
+vengeance of an enemy, who could intercept their Syrian trade as
+it passed and repassed through the territory of Medina.  Abu
+Sophian himself, with only thirty or forty followers, conducted a
+wealthy caravan of a thousand camels; the fortune or dexterity of
+his march escaped the vigilance of Mahomet; but the chief of the
+Koreish was informed that the holy robbers were placed in ambush
+to await his return.  He despatched a messenger to his brethren
+of Mecca, and they were roused, by the fear of losing their
+merchandise and their provisions, unless they hastened to his
+relief with the military force of the city.  The sacred band of
+Mahomet was formed of three hundred and thirteen Moslems, of whom
+seventy-seven were fugitives, and the rest auxiliaries; they
+mounted by turns a train of seventy camels, (the camels of
+Yathreb were formidable in war;) but such was the poverty of his
+first disciples, that only two could appear on horseback in the
+field. ^128 In the fertile and famous vale of Beder, ^129 three
+stations from Medina, he was informed by his scouts of the
+caravan that approached on one side; of the Koreish, one hundred
+horse, eight hundred and fifty foot, who advanced on the other.
+After a short debate, he sacrificed the prospect of wealth to the
+pursuit of glory and revenge, and a slight intrenchment was
+formed, to cover his troops, and a stream of fresh water, that
+glided through the valley.  "O God," he exclaimed, as the numbers
+of the Koreish descended from the hills, "O God, if these are
+destroyed, by whom wilt thou be worshipped on the earth? -
+Courage, my children; close your ranks; discharge your arrows,
+and the day is your own." At these words he placed himself, with
+Abubeker, on a throne or pulpit, ^130 and instantly demanded the
+succor of Gabriel and three thousand angels.  His eye was fixed
+on the field of battle: the Mussulmans fainted and were pressed:
+in that decisive moment the prophet started from his throne,
+mounted his horse, and cast a handful of sand into the air: "Let
+their faces be covered with confusion." Both armies heard the
+thunder of his voice: their fancy beheld the angelic warriors:
+^131 the Koreish trembled and fled: seventy of the bravest were
+slain; and seventy captives adorned the first victory of the
+faithful.  The dead bodies of the Koreish were despoiled and
+insulted: two of the most obnoxious prisoners were punished with
+death; and the ransom of the others, four thousand drams of
+silver, compensated in some degree the escape of the caravan.
+But it was in vain that the camels of Abu Sophian explored a new
+road through the desert and along the Euphrates: they were
+overtaken by the diligence of the Mussulmans; and wealthy must
+have been the prize, if twenty thousand drams could be set apart
+for the fifth of the apostle.  The resentment of the public and
+private loss stimulated Abu Sophian to collect a body of three
+thousand men, seven hundred of whom were armed with cuirasses,
+and two hundred were mounted on horseback; three thousand camels
+attended his march; and his wife Henda, with fifteen matrons of
+Mecca, incessantly sounded their timbrels to animate the troops,
+and to magnify the greatness of Hobal, the most popular deity of
+the Caaba.  The standard of God and Mahomet was upheld by nine
+hundred and fifty believers: the disproportion of numbers was not
+more alarming than in the field of Beder; and their presumption
+of victory prevailed against the divine and human sense of the
+apostle.  The second battle was fought on Mount Ohud, six miles
+to the north of Medina; ^132 the Koreish advanced in the form of
+a crescent; and the right wing of cavalry was led by Caled, the
+fiercest and most successful of the Arabian warriors.  The troops
+of Mahomet were skilfully posted on the declivity of the hill;
+and their rear was guarded by a detachment of fifty archers.  The
+weight of their charge impelled and broke the centre of the
+idolaters: but in the pursuit they lost the advantage of their
+ground: the archers deserted their station: the Mussulmans were
+tempted by the spoil, disobeyed their general, and disordered
+their ranks.  The intrepid Caled, wheeling his cavalry on their
+flank and rear, exclaimed, with a loud voice, that Mahomet was
+slain.  He was indeed wounded in the face with a javelin: two of
+his teeth were shattered with a stone; yet, in the midst of
+tumult and dismay, he reproached the infidels with the murder of
+a prophet; and blessed the friendly hand that stanched his blood,
+and conveyed him to a place of safety Seventy martyrs died for
+the sins of the people; they fell, said the apostle, in pairs,
+each brother embracing his lifeless companion; ^133 their bodies
+were mangled by the inhuman females of Mecca; and the wife of Abu
+Sophian tasted the entrails of Hamza, the uncle of Mahomet.  They
+might applaud their superstition, and satiate their fury; but the
+Mussulmans soon rallied in the field, and the Koreish wanted
+strength or courage to undertake the siege of Medina.  It was
+attacked the ensuing year by an army of ten thousand enemies; and
+this third expedition is variously named from the nations, which
+marched under the banner of Abu Sophian, from the ditch which was
+drawn before the city, and a camp of three thousand Mussulmans.
+The prudence of Mahomet declined a general engagement: the valor
+of Ali was signalized in single combat; and the war was
+protracted twenty days, till the final separation of the
+confederates.  A tempest of wind, rain, and hail, overturned
+their tents: their private quarrels were fomented by an insidious
+adversary; and the Koreish, deserted by their allies, no longer
+hoped to subvert the throne, or to check the conquests, of their
+invincible exile. ^134
+
+[Footnote 128: Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 9) allows
+him seventy or eighty horse; and on two other occasions, prior to
+the battle of Ohud, he enlists a body of thirty (p. 10) and of
+500 (p. 66) troopers.  Yet the Mussulmans, in the field of Ohud,
+had no more than two horses, according to the better sense of
+Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. xxxi. p. 65.) In the Stony province,
+the camels were numerous; but the horse appears to have been less
+numerous than in the Happy or the Desert Arabia.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Bedder Houneene, twenty miles from Medina, and
+forty from Mecca, is on the high road of the caravan of Egypt;
+and the pilgrims annually commemorate the prophet's victory by
+illuminations, rockets, &c. Shaw's Travels, p. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 130: The place to which Mahomet retired during the
+action is styled by Gagnier (in Abulfeda, c. 27, p. 58.  Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 30, 33) Umbraculum, une loge de bois avec
+une porte.  The same Arabic word is rendered by Reiske (Annales
+Moslemici Abulfedae, p. 23) by Solium, Suggestus editior; and the
+difference is of the utmost moment for the honor both of the
+interpreter and of the hero.  I am sorry to observe the pride and
+acrimony with which Reiske chastises his fellow-laborer.  Saepi
+sic vertit, ut integrae paginae nequeant nisi una litura corrigi
+Arabice non satis callebat, et carebat judicio critico.  J. J.
+Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalisae Tabulas, p. 228, ad
+calcero Abulfedae Syriae Tabulae; Lipsiae, 1766, in 4to.]
+
+[Footnote 131: The loose expressions of the Koran (c. 3, p. 124,
+125, c. 8, p. 9) allow the commentators to fluctuate between the
+numbers of 1000, 3000, or 9000 angels; and the smallest of these
+might suffice for the slaughter of seventy of the Koreish,
+(Maracci, Alcoran, tom. ii. p. 131.) Yet the same scholiasts
+confess that this angelic band was not visible to any mortal eye,
+(Maracci, p. 297.) They refine on the words (c. 8, 16) "not thou,
+but God," &c.  (D'Herbelot. Bibliot. Orientale p. 600, 601.)]
+
+[Footnote 132: Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 133: In the iiid chapter of the Koran, (p. 50 - 53,
+with Sale's notes, the prophet alleges some poor excuses for the
+defeat of Ohud.
+
+Note: Dr. Weil has added some curious circumstances, which
+he gives as on good traditional authority, on the rescue of
+Mahomet.  The prophet was attacked by Ubeijj Ibn Challaf, whom he
+struck on the neck with a mortal wound.  This was the only time,
+it is added, that Mahomet personally engaged in battle.  (p.
+128.) - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 134: For the detail of the three Koreish wars, of
+Beder, of Ohud, and of the ditch, peruse Abulfeda, (p. 56 - 61,
+64 - 69, 73 - 77,) Gagnier (tom. i. p. 23 - 45, 70 - 96, 120 -
+139,) with the proper articles of D'Herbelot, and the abridgments
+of Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 6, 7) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast.
+p. 102.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part VI.
+
+The choice of Jerusalem for the first kebla of prayer
+discovers the early propensity of Mahomet in favor of the Jews;
+and happy would it have been for their temporal interest, had
+they recognized, in the Arabian prophet, the hope of Israel and
+the promised Messiah.  Their obstinacy converted his friendship
+into implacable hatred, with which he pursued that unfortunate
+people to the last moment of his life; and in the double
+character of an apostle and a conqueror, his persecution was
+extended to both worlds. ^135 The Kainoka dwelt at Medina under
+the protection of the city; he seized the occasion of an
+accidental tumult, and summoned them to embrace his religion, or
+contend with him in battle.  "Alas!" replied the trembling Jews,
+"we are ignorant of the use of arms, but we persevere in the
+faith and worship of our fathers; why wilt thou reduce us to the
+necessity of a just defence?" The unequal conflict was terminated
+in fifteen days; and it was with extreme reluctance that Mahomet
+yielded to the importunity of his allies, and consented to spare
+the lives of the captives.  But their riches were confiscated,
+their arms became more effectual in the hands of the Mussulmans;
+and a wretched colony of seven hundred exiles was driven, with
+their wives and children, to implore a refuge on the confines of
+Syria.  The Nadhirites were more guilty, since they conspired, in
+a friendly interview, to assassinate the prophet.  He besieged
+their castle, three miles from Medina; but their resolute defence
+obtained an honorable capitulation; and the garrison, sounding
+their trumpets and beating their drums, was permitted to depart
+with the honors of war.  The Jews had excited and joined the war
+of the Koreish: no sooner had the nations retired from the ditch,
+than Mahomet, without laying aside his armor, marched on the same
+day to extirpate the hostile race of the children of Koraidha.
+After a resistance of twenty-five days, they surrendered at
+discretion.  They trusted to the intercession of their old allies
+of Medina; they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates
+the feelings of humanity.  A venerable elder, to whose judgment
+they appealed, pronounced the sentence of their death; seven
+hundred Jews were dragged in chains to the market-place of the
+city; they descended alive into the grave prepared for their
+execution and burial; and the apostle beheld with an inflexible
+eye the slaughter of his helpless enemies.  Their sheep and
+camels were inherited by the Mussulmans: three hundred cuirasses,
+five hundred piles, a thousand lances, composed the most useful
+portion of the spoil.  Six days' journey to the north-east of
+Medina, the ancient and wealthy town of Chaibar was the seat of
+the Jewish power in Arabia: the territory, a fertile spot in the
+desert, was covered with plantations and cattle, and protected by
+eight castles, some of which were esteemed of impregnable
+strength.  The forces of Mahomet consisted of two hundred horse
+and fourteen hundred foot: in the succession of eight regular and
+painful sieges they were exposed to danger, and fatigue, and
+hunger; and the most undaunted chiefs despaired of the event.
+The apostle revived their faith and courage by the example of
+Ali, on whom he bestowed the surname of the Lion of God: perhaps
+we may believe that a Hebrew champion of gigantic stature was
+cloven to the chest by his irresistible cimeter; but we cannot
+praise the modesty of romance, which represents him as tearing
+from its hinges the gate of a fortress and wielding the ponderous
+buckler in his left hand. ^136 After the reduction of the
+castles, the town of Chaibar submitted to the yoke.  The chief of
+the tribe was tortured, in the presence of Mahomet, to force a
+confession of his hidden treasure: the industry of the shepherds
+and husbandmen was rewarded with a precarious toleration: they
+were permitted, so long as it should please the conqueror, to
+improve their patrimony, in equal shares, for his emolument and
+their own.  Under the reign of Omar, the Jews of Chaibar were
+transported to Syria; and the caliph alleged the injunction of
+his dying master; that one and the true religion should be
+professed in his native land of Arabia. ^137
+
+[Footnote 135: The wars of Mahomet against the Jewish tribes of
+Kainoka, the Nadhirites, Koraidha, and Chaibar, are related by
+Abulfeda (p. 61, 71, 77, 87, &c.) and Gagnier, (tom. ii. p. 61 -
+65, 107 - 112, 139 - 148, 268 - 294.)]
+
+[Footnote 136: Abu Rafe, the servant of Mahomet, is said to
+affirm that he himself, and seven other men, afterwards tried,
+without success, to move the same gate from the ground,
+(Abulfeda, p. 90.) Abu Rafe was an eye- witness, but who will be
+witness for Abu Rafe?]
+
+[Footnote 137: The banishment of the Jews is attested by Elmacin
+(Hist. Saracen, p. 9) and the great Al Zabari, (Gagnier, tom. ii.
+p. 285.) Yet Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, (p. 324) believes
+that the Jewish religion, and Karaite sect, are still professed
+by the tribe of Chaibar; and that, in the plunder of the
+caravans, the disciples of Moses are the confederates of those of
+Mahomet.]
+
+Five times each day the eyes of Mahomet were turned towards
+Mecca, ^138 and he was urged by the most sacred and powerful
+motives to revisit, as a conqueror, the city and the temple from
+whence he had been driven as an exile. The Caaba was present to
+his waking and sleeping fancy: an idle dream was translated into
+vision and prophecy; he unfurled the holy banner; and a rash
+promise of success too hastily dropped from the lips of the
+apostle.  His march from Medina to Mecca displayed the peaceful
+and solemn pomp of a pilgrimage: seventy camels, chosen and
+bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van; the sacred territory
+was respected; and the captives were dismissed without ransom to
+proclaim his clemency and devotion.  But no sooner did Mahomet
+descend into the plain, within a day's journey of the city, than
+he exclaimed, "They have clothed themselves with the skins of
+tigers: " the numbers and resolution of the Koreish opposed his
+progress; and the roving Arabs of the desert might desert or
+betray a leader whom they had followed for the hopes of spoil.
+The intrepid fanatic sunk into a cool and cautious politician: he
+waived in the treaty his title of apostle of God; concluded with
+the Koreish and their allies a truce of ten years; engaged to
+restore the fugitives of Mecca who should embrace his religion;
+and stipulated only, for the ensuing year, the humble privilege
+of entering the city as a friend, and of remaining three days to
+accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage.  A cloud of shame and
+sorrow hung on the retreat of the Mussulmans, and their
+disappointment might justly accuse the failure of a prophet who
+had so often appealed to the evidence of success.  The faith and
+hope of the pilgrims were rekindled by the prospect of Mecca:
+their swords were sheathed; ^* seven times in the footsteps of
+the apostle they encompassed the Caaba: the Koreish had retired
+to the hills, and Mahomet, after the customary sacrifice,
+evacuated the city on the fourth day.  The people was edified by
+his devotion; the hostile chiefs were awed, or divided, or
+seduced; and both Kaled and Amrou, the future conquerors of Syria
+and Egypt, most seasonably deserted the sinking cause of
+idolatry. The power of Mahomet was increased by the submission of
+the Arabian tribes; ten thousand soldiers were assembled for the
+conquest of Mecca; and the idolaters, the weaker party, were
+easily convicted of violating the truce. Enthusiasm and
+discipline impelled the march, and preserved the secret till the
+blaze of ten thousand fires proclaimed to the astonished Koreish
+the design, the approach, and the irresistible force of the
+enemy. The haughty Abu Sophian presented the keys of the city,
+admired the variety of arms and ensigns that passed before him in
+review; observed that the son of Abdallah had acquired a mighty
+kingdom, and confessed, under the cimeter of Omar, that he was
+the apostle of the true God.  The return of Marius and Scylla was
+stained with the blood of the Romans: the revenge of Mahomet was
+stimulated by religious zeal, and his injured followers were
+eager to execute or to prevent the order of a massacre.  Instead
+of indulging their passions and his own, ^139 the victorious
+exile forgave the guilt, and united the factions, of Mecca.  His
+troops, in three divisions, marched into the city:
+eight-and-twenty of the inhabitants were slain by the sword of
+Caled; eleven men and six women were proscribed by the sentence
+of Mahomet; but he blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant; and
+several of the most obnoxious victims were indebted for their
+lives to his clemency or contempt.  The chiefs of the Koreish
+were prostrate at his feet.  "What mercy can you expect from the
+man whom you have wronged?" "We confide in the generosity of our
+kinsman." "And you shall not confide in vain: begone! you are
+safe, you are free" The people of Mecca deserved their pardon by
+the profession of Islam; and after an exile of seven years, the
+fugitive missionary was enthroned as the prince and prophet of
+his native country. ^140 But the three hundred and sixty idols of
+the Caaba were ignominiously broken: the house of God was
+purified and adorned: as an example to future times, the apostle
+again fulfilled the duties of a pilgrim; and a perpetual law was
+enacted that no unbeliever should dare to set his foot on the
+territory of the holy city. ^141
+
+[Footnote 138: The successive steps of the reduction of Mecca are
+related by Abulfeda (p. 84 - 87, 97 - 100, 102 - 111) and
+Gagnier, (tom. ii. p. 202 - 245, 309 - 322, tom. iii. p. 1 - 58,)
+Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 8, 9, 10,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p.
+103.)]
+
+[Footnote *: This peaceful entrance into Mecca took place,
+according to the treaty the following year.  Weil, p. 202 - M.
+1845.]
+
+[Footnote 139: After the conquest of Mecca, the Mahomet of
+Voltaire imagines and perpetuates the most horrid crimes.  The
+poet confesses, that he is not supported by the truth of history,
+and can only allege, que celui qui fait la guerre a sa patrie au
+nom de Dieu, est capable de tout, (Oeuvres de Voltaire, tom. xv.
+p. 282.) The maxim is neither charitable nor philosophic; and
+some reverence is surely due to the fame of heroes and the
+religion of nations.  I am informed that a Turkish ambassador at
+Paris was much scandalized at the representation of this
+tragedy.]
+
+[Footnote 140: The Mahometan doctors still dispute, whether Mecca
+was reduced by force or consent, (Abulfeda, p. 107, et Gagnier ad
+locum;) and this verbal controversy is of as much moment as our
+own about William the Conqueror.]
+
+[Footnote 141: In excluding the Christians from the peninsula of
+Arabia, the province of Hejaz, or the navigation of the Red Sea,
+Chardin (Voyages en Perse, tom. iv. p. 166) and Reland
+(Dissertat. Miscell. tom. iii. p. 61) are more rigid than the
+Mussulmans themselves.  The Christians are received without
+scruple into the ports of Mocha, and even of Gedda; and it is
+only the city and precincts of Mecca that are inaccessible to the
+profane, (Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p. 308, 309, Voyage
+en Arabie, tom. i. p. 205, 248, &c.)]
+
+The conquest of Mecca determined the faith and obedience of
+the Arabian tribes; ^142 who, according to the vicissitudes of
+fortune, had obeyed, or disregarded, the eloquence or the arms of
+the prophet. Indifference for rites and opinions still marks the
+character of the Bedoweens; and they might accept, as loosely as
+they hold, the doctrine of the Koran.  Yet an obstinate remnant
+still adhered to the religion and liberty of their ancestors, and
+the war of Honain derived a proper appellation from the idols,
+whom Mahomet had vowed to destroy, and whom the confederates of
+Tayef had sworn to defend. ^143 Four thousand Pagans advanced
+with secrecy and speed to surprise the conqueror: they pitied and
+despised the supine negligence of the Koreish, but they depended
+on the wishes, and perhaps the aid, of a people who had so lately
+renounced their gods, and bowed beneath the yoke of their enemy.
+The banners of Medina and Mecca were displayed by the prophet; a
+crowd of Bedoweens increased the strength or numbers of the army,
+and twelve thousand Mussulmans entertained a rash and sinful
+presumption of their invincible strength.  They descended without
+precaution into the valley of Honain: the heights had been
+occupied by the archers and slingers of the confederates; their
+numbers were oppressed, their discipline was confounded, their
+courage was appalled, and the Koreish smiled at their impending
+destruction.  The prophet, on his white mule, was encompassed by
+the enemies: he attempted to rush against their spears in search
+of a glorious death: ten of his faithful companions interposed
+their weapons and their breasts; three of these fell dead at his
+feet: "O my brethren," he repeatedly cried, with sorrow and
+indignation, "I am the son of Abdallah, I am the apostle of
+truth!  O man, stand fast in the faith!  O God, send down thy
+succor!" His uncle Abbas, who, like the heroes of Homer, excelled
+in the loudness of his voice, made the valley resound with the
+recital of the gifts and promises of God: the flying Moslems
+returned from all sides to the holy standard; and Mahomet
+observed with pleasure that the furnace was again rekindled: his
+conduct and example restored the battle, and he animated his
+victorious troops to inflict a merciless revenge on the authors
+of their shame.  From the field of Honain, he marched without
+delay to the siege of Tayef, sixty miles to the south- east of
+Mecca, a fortress of strength, whose fertile lands produce the
+fruits of Syria in the midst of the Arabian desert.  A friendly
+tribe, instructed (I know not how) in the art of sieges, supplied
+him with a train of battering-rams and military engines, with a
+body of five hundred artificers.  But it was in vain that he
+offered freedom to the slaves of Tayef; that he violated his own
+laws by the extirpation of the fruit-trees; that the ground was
+opened by the miners; that the breach was assaulted by the
+troops.  After a siege of twenty-days, the prophet sounded a
+retreat; but he retreated with a song of devout triumph, and
+affected to pray for the repentance and safety of the unbelieving
+city.  The spoils of this fortunate expedition amounted to six
+thousand captives, twenty-four thousand camels, forty thousand
+sheep, and four thousand ounces of silver: a tribe who had fought
+at Hoinan redeemed their prisoners by the sacrifice of their
+idols; but Mahomet compensated the loss, by resigning to the
+soldiers his fifth of the plunder, and wished, for their sake,
+that he possessed as many head of cattle as there were trees in
+the province of Tehama.  Instead of chastising the disaffection
+of the Koreish, he endeavored to cut out their tongues, (his own
+expression,) and to secure their attachment by a superior measure
+of liberality: Abu Sophian alone was presented with three hundred
+camels and twenty ounces of silver; and Mecca was sincerely
+converted to the profitable religion of the Koran.
+
+[Footnote 142: Abulfeda, p. 112 - 115.  Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 67
+- 88. D'Herbelot, Mohammed.]
+
+[Footnote 143: The siege of Tayef, division of the spoil, &c.,
+are related by Abulfeda (p. 117 - 123) and Gagnier, (tom. iii. p.
+88 - 111.) It is Al Jannabi who mentions the engines and
+engineers of the tribe of Daws.  The fertile spot of Tayef was
+supposed to be a piece of the land of Syria detached and dropped
+in the general deluge]
+
+The fugitives and auxiliaries complained, that they who had
+borne the burden were neglected in the season of victory "Alas!"
+replied their artful leader, "suffer me to conciliate these
+recent enemies, these doubtful proselytes, by the gift of some
+perishable goods.  To your guard I intrust my life and fortunes.
+You are the companions of my exile, of my kingdom, of my
+paradise." He was followed by the deputies of Tayef, who dreaded
+the repetition of a siege.  "Grant us, O apostle of God!  a truce
+of three years, with the toleration of our ancient worship." "Not
+a month, not an hour." "Excuse us at least from the obligation of
+prayer." "Without prayer religion is of no avail." They submitted
+in silence: their temples were demolished, and the same sentence
+of destruction was executed on all the idols of Arabia.  His
+lieutenants, on the shores of the Red Sea, the Ocean, and the
+Gulf of Persia, were saluted by the acclamations of a faithful
+people; and the ambassadors, who knelt before the throne of
+Medina, were as numerous (says the Arabian proverb) as the dates
+that fall from the maturity of a palm-tree.  The nation submitted
+to the God and the sceptre of Mahomet: the opprobrious name of
+tribute was abolished: the spontaneous or reluctant oblations of
+arms and tithes were applied to the service of religion; and one
+hundred and fourteen thousand Moslems accompanied the last
+pilgrimage of the apostle. ^144
+
+[Footnote 144: The last conquests and pilgrimage of Mahomet are
+contained in Abulfeda, (p. 121, 133,) Gagnier, (tom. iii. p. 119
+- 219,) Elmacin, (p. 10, 11,) Abulpharagius, (p. 103.) The ixth
+of the Hegira was styled the Year of Embassies, (Gagnier, Not. ad
+Abulfed. p. 121.)]
+
+When Heraclius returned in triumph from the Persian war, he
+entertained, at Emesa, one of the ambassadors of Mahomet, who
+invited the princes and nations of the earth to the profession of
+Islam.  On this foundation the zeal of the Arabians has supposed
+the secret conversion of the Christian emperor: the vanity of the
+Greeks has feigned a personal visit of the prince of Medina, who
+accepted from the royal bounty a rich domain, and a secure
+retreat, in the province of Syria. ^145 But the friendship of
+Heraclius and Mahomet was of short continuance: the new religion
+had inflamed rather than assuaged the rapacious spirit of the
+Saracens, and the murder of an envoy afforded a decent pretence
+for invading, with three thousand soldiers, the territory of
+Palestine, that extends to the eastward of the Jordan.  The holy
+banner was intrusted to Zeid; and such was the discipline or
+enthusiasm of the rising sect, that the noblest chiefs served
+without reluctance under the slave of the prophet.  On the event
+of his decease, Jaafar and Abdallah were successively substituted
+to the command; and if the three should perish in the war, the
+troops were authorized to elect their general.  The three leaders
+were slain in the battle of Muta, ^146 the first military action,
+which tried the valor of the Moslems against a foreign enemy.
+Zeid fell, like a soldier, in the foremost ranks: the death of
+Jaafar was heroic and memorable: he lost his right hand: he
+shifted the standard to his left: the left was severed from his
+body: he embraced the standard with his bleeding stumps, till he
+was transfixed to the ground with fifty honorable wounds. ^*
+"Advance," cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant place,
+"advance with confidence: either victory or paradise is our own."
+The lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the falling
+standard was rescued by Caled, the proselyte of Mecca: nine
+swords were broken in his hand; and his valor withstood and
+repulsed the superior numbers of the Christians.  In the
+nocturnal council of the camp he was chosen to command: his
+skilful evolutions of the ensuing day secured either the victory
+or the retreat of the Saracens; and Caled is renowned among his
+brethren and his enemies by the glorious appellation of the Sword
+of God. In the pulpit, Mahomet described, with prophetic rapture,
+the crowns of the blessed martyrs; but in private he betrayed the
+feelings of human nature: he was surprised as he wept over the
+daughter of Zeid: "What do I see?" said the astonished votary.
+"You see," replied the apostle, "a friend who is deploring the
+loss of his most faithful friend." After the conquest of Mecca,
+the sovereign of Arabia affected to prevent the hostile
+preparations of Heraclius; and solemnly proclaimed war against
+the Romans, without attempting to disguise the hardships and
+dangers of the enterprise. ^147 The Moslems were discouraged:
+they alleged the want of money, or horses, or provisions; the
+season of harvest, and the intolerable heat of the summer: "Hell
+is much hotter," said the indignant prophet.  He disdained to
+compel their service: but on his return he admonished the most
+guilty, by an excommunication of fifty days.  Their desertion
+enhanced the merit of Abubeker, Othman, and the faithful
+companions who devoted their lives and fortunes; and Mahomet
+displayed his banner at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty
+thousand foot.  Painful indeed was the distress of the march:
+lassitude and thirst were aggravated by the scorching and
+pestilential winds of the desert: ten men rode by turns on one
+camel; and they were reduced to the shameful necessity of
+drinking the water from the belly of that useful animal.  In the
+mid-way, ten days' journey from Medina and Damascus, they reposed
+near the grove and fountain of Tabuc.  Beyond that place Mahomet
+declined the prosecution of the war: he declared himself
+satisfied with the peaceful intentions, he was more probably
+daunted by the martial array, of the emperor of the East.  But
+the active and intrepid Caled spread around the terror of his
+name; and the prophet received the submission of the tribes and
+cities, from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea.
+To his Christian subjects, Mahomet readily granted the security
+of their persons, the freedom of their trade, the property of
+their goods, and the toleration of their worship. ^148 The
+weakness of their Arabian brethren had restrained them from
+opposing his ambition; the disciples of Jesus were endeared to
+the enemy of the Jews; and it was the interest of a conqueror to
+propose a fair capitulation to the most powerful religion of the
+earth.
+
+[Footnote 145: Compare the bigoted Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom.
+ii. p. 232 - 255) with the no less bigoted Greeks, Theophanes,
+(p. 276 - 227,) Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 86,) and Cedrenus,
+(p. 421.)]
+
+[Footnote 146: For the battle of Muta, and its consequences, see
+Abulfeda (p 100 - 102) and Gagnier, (tom. ii. p. 327 - 343.).]
+
+[Footnote *: To console the afflicted relatives of his kinsman
+Jauffer, he (Mahomet) represented that, in Paradise, in exchange
+for the arms which he had lost, he had been furnished with a pair
+of wings, resplendent with the blushing glories of the ruby, and
+with which he was become the inseparable companion of the
+archangal Gabriel, in his volitations through the regions of
+eternal bliss.  Hence, in the catalogue of the martyrs, he has
+been denominated Jauffer teyaur, the winged Jauffer.  Price,
+Chronological Retrospect of Mohammedan History, vol. i. p. 5. -
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 147: The expedition of Tabuc is recorded by our
+ordinary historians Abulfeda (Vit. Moham. p. 123 - 127) and
+Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 147 - 163: ) but we have
+the advantage of appealing to the original evidence of the Koran,
+(c. 9, p. 154, 165,) with Sale's learned and rational notes.]
+
+[Footnote 148: The Diploma securitatis Ailensibus is attested by
+Ahmed Ben Joseph, and the author Libri Splendorum, (Gagnier, Not.
+ad Abulfe dam, p. 125;) but Abulfeda himself, as well as Elmacin,
+(Hist. Saracen. p. 11,) though he owns Mahomet's regard for the
+Christians, (p 13,) only mentions peace and tribute.  In the year
+1630, Sionita published at Paris the text and version of
+Mahomet's patent in favor of the Christians; which was admitted
+and reprobated by the opposite taste of Salmasius and Grotius,
+(Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Aa.) Hottinger doubts of its authenticity,
+(Hist. Orient. p. 237;) Renaudot urges the consent of the
+Mohametans, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 169;) but Mosheim (Hist.
+Eccles. p. 244) shows the futility of their opinion and inclines
+to believe it spurious.  Yet Abulpharagius quotes the impostor's
+treaty with the Nestorian patriarch, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient.
+tom. ii. p. 418;) but Abulpharagius was primate of the
+Jacobites.]
+
+Till the age of sixty-three years, the strength of Mahomet
+was equal to the temporal and spiritual fatigues of his mission.
+His epileptic fits, an absurd calumny of the Greeks, would be an
+object of pity rather than abhorrence; ^149 but he seriously
+believed that he was poisoned at Chaibar by the revenge of a
+Jewish female. ^150 During four years, the health of the prophet
+declined; his infirmities increased; but his mortal disease was a
+fever of fourteen days, which deprived him by intervals of the
+use of reason. As soon as he was conscious of his danger, he
+edified his brethren by the humility of his virtue or penitence.
+"If there be any man," said the apostle from the pulpit, "whom I
+have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of
+retaliation.  Have I aspersed the reputation of a Mussulman?  let
+him proclaim my thoughts in the face of the congregation. Has any
+one been despoiled of his goods?  the little that I possess shall
+compensate the principal and the interest of the debt." "Yes,"
+replied a voice from the crowd, "I am entitled to three drams of
+silver." Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and
+thanked his creditor for accusing him in this world rather than
+at the day of judgment.  He beheld with temperate firmness the
+approach of death; enfranchised his slaves (seventeen men, as
+they are named, and eleven women;) minutely directed the order of
+his funeral, and moderated the lamentations of his weeping
+friends, on whom he bestowed the benediction of peace.  Till the
+third day before his death, he regularly performed the function
+of public prayer: the choice of Abubeker to supply his place,
+appeared to mark that ancient and faithful friend as his
+successor in the sacerdotal and regal office; but he prudently
+declined the risk and envy of a more explicit nomination.  At a
+moment when his faculties were visibly impaired, he called for
+pen and ink to write, or, more properly, to dictate, a divine
+book, the sum and accomplishment of all his revelations: a
+dispute arose in the chamber, whether he should be allowed to
+supersede the authority of the Koran; and the prophet was forced
+to reprove the indecent vehemence of his disciples. If the
+slightest credit may be afforded to the traditions of his wives
+and companions, he maintained, in the bosom of his family, and to
+the last moments of his life, the dignity ^* of an apostle, and
+the faith of an enthusiast; described the visits of Gabriel, who
+bade an everlasting farewell to the earth, and expressed his
+lively confidence, not only of the mercy, but of the favor, of
+the Supreme Being.  In a familiar discourse he had mentioned his
+special prerogative, that the angel of death was not allowed to
+take his soul till he had respectfully asked the permission of
+the prophet. The request was granted; and Mahomet immediately
+fell into the agony of his dissolution: his head was reclined on
+the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of all his wives; he fainted
+with the violence of pain; recovering his spirits, he raised his
+eyes towards the roof of the house, and, with a steady look,
+though a faltering voice, uttered the last broken, though
+articulate, words: "O God! ..... pardon my sins....... Yes,
+...... I come, ...... among my fellow-citizens on high;" and thus
+peaceably expired on a carpet spread upon the floor.  An
+expedition for the conquest of Syria was stopped by this mournful
+event; the army halted at the gates of Medina; the chiefs were
+assembled round their dying master.  The city, more especially
+the house, of the prophet, was a scene of clamorous sorrow of
+silent despair: fanaticism alone could suggest a ray of hope and
+consolation.  "How can he be dead, our witness, our intercessor,
+our mediator, with God?  By God he is not dead: like Moses and
+Jesus, he is wrapped in a holy trance, and speedily will he
+return to his faithful people." The evidence of sense was
+disregarded; and Omar, unsheathing his cimeter, threatened to
+strike off the heads of the infidels, who should dare to affirm
+that the prophet was no more.  The tumult was appeased by the
+weight and moderation of Abubeker.  "Is it Mahomet," said he to
+Omar and the multitude, "or the God of Mahomet, whom you worship?
+
+The God of Mahomet liveth forever; but the apostle was a mortal
+like ourselves, and according to his own prediction, he has
+experienced the common fate of mortality." He was piously
+interred by the hands of his nearest kinsman, on the same spot on
+which he expired: ^151 Medina has been sanctified by the death
+and burial of Mahomet; and the innumerable pilgrims of Mecca
+often turn aside from the way, to bow, in voluntary devotion,
+^152 before the simple tomb of the prophet. ^153
+
+[Footnote 149: The epilepsy, or falling-sickness, of Mahomet is
+asserted by Theophanes, Zonaras, and the rest of the Greeks; and
+is greedily swallowed by the gross bigotry of Hottinger, (Hist.
+Orient. p. 10, 11,) Prideaux, (Life of Mahomet, p. 12,) and
+Maracci, (tom. ii. Alcoran, p. 762, 763.) The titles (the
+wrapped-up, the covered) of two chapters of the Koran, (73, 74)
+can hardly be strained to such an interpretation: the silence,
+the ignorance of the Mahometan commentators, is more conclusive
+than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is
+espoused by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, tom. i. p. 301,)
+Gagnier, (ad Abulfedam, p. 9.  Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 118,)
+and Sale, (Koran, p. 469 - 474.)
+
+Note: Dr Weil believes in the epilepsy, and adduces strong
+evidence for it; and surely it may be believed, in perfect
+charity; and that the prophet's visions were connected, as they
+appear to have been, with these fits.  I have little doubt that
+he saw and believed these visions, and visions they were. Weil,
+p. 43. - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 150: This poison (more ignominious since it was offered
+as a test of his prophetic knowledge) is frankly confessed by his
+zealous votaries, Abulfeda (p. 92) and Al Jannabi, (apud Gagnier,
+tom. ii. p. 286 - 288.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Major Price, who writes with the authority of one
+widely conversant with the original sources of Eastern knowledge,
+and in a very candid tone, takes a very different view of the
+prophet's death.  "In tracing the circumstances of Mahommed's
+illness, we look in vain for any proofs of that meek and heroic
+firmness which might be expected to dignify and embellish the
+last moments of the apostle of God.  On some occasions he
+betrayed such want of fortitude, such marks of childish
+impatience, as are in general to be found in men only of the most
+ordinary stamp; and such as extorted from his wife Ayesha, in
+particular, the sarcastic remark, that in herself, or any of her
+family, a similar demeanor would long since have incurred his
+severe displeasure.  * * * He said that the acuteness and
+violence of his sufferings were necessarily in the proportion of
+those honors with which it had ever pleased the hand of
+Omnipotence to distinguish its peculiar favorites Price, vol. i.
+p. 13. - M]
+
+[Footnote 151: The Greeks and Latins have invented and propagated
+the vulgar and ridiculous story, that Mahomet's iron tomb is
+suspended in the air at Mecca, (Laonicus Chalcondyles, de Rebus
+Turcicis, l. iii. p. 66,) by the action of equal and potent
+loadstones, (Dictionnaire de Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Ee. Ff.)
+Without any philosophical inquiries, it may suffice, that, 1. The
+prophet was not buried at Mecca; and, 2. That his tomb at Medina,
+which has been visited by millions, is placed on the ground,
+(Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. ii. c. 19, p. 209 - 211.  Gagnier,
+Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 263 - 268.)
+
+Note: According to the testimony of all the Eastern authors,
+Mahomet died on Monday the 12th Reby 1st, in the year 11 of the
+Hegira, which answers in reality to the 8th June, 632, of J. C.
+We find in Ockley (Hist. of Saracens) that it was on Monday the
+6th June, 632.  This is a mistake; for the 6th June of that year
+was a Saturday, not a Monday; the 8th June, therefore, was a
+Monday.  It is easy to discover that the lunar year, in this
+calculation has been confounded with the solar.  St. Martin vol.
+xi. p. 186. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Al Jannabi enumerates (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii.
+p. 372 - 391) the multifarious duties of a pilgrim who visits the
+tombs of the prophet and his companions; and the learned casuist
+decides, that this act of devotion is nearest in obligation and
+merit to a divine precept.  The doctors are divided which, of
+Mecca or Medina, be the most excellent, (p. 391 - 394.)]
+
+[Footnote 153: The last sickness, death, and burial of Mahomet,
+are described by Abulfeda and Gagnier, (Vit. Moham. p. 133 - 142.
+
+Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 220 - 271.) The most private and
+interesting circumstances were originally received from Ayesha,
+Ali, the sons of Abbas, &c.; and as they dwelt at Medina, and
+survived the prophet many years, they might repeat the pious tale
+to a second or third generation of pilgrims.]
+
+At the conclusion of the life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be
+expected, that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I
+should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more
+properly belongs to that extraordinary man.  Had I been
+intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would
+still be difficult, and the success uncertain: at the distance of
+twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud
+of religious incense; and could I truly delineate the portrait of
+an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the
+solitary of Mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the
+conqueror of Arabia.  The author of a mighty revolution appears
+to have been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition:
+so soon as marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he
+avoided the paths of ambition and avarice; and till the age of
+forty he lived with innocence, and would have died without a
+name.  The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and
+reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians
+would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca.  It
+was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of
+salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and
+error.  The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object,
+would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the
+warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt
+as the inspirations of Heaven; the labor of thought would expire
+in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible
+monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an
+angel of God. ^154 From enthusiasm to imposture, the step is
+perilous and slippery: the daemon of Socrates ^155 affords a
+memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive himself, how a
+good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a
+mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud.
+Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were
+those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is
+incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his
+claims despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might
+forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the
+enemies of God; the stern passions of pride and revenge were
+kindled in the bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet
+of Nineveh, for the destruction of the rebels whom he had
+condemned.  The injustice of Mecca and the choice of Medina,
+transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into
+the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by the
+example of the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful
+world with pestilence and earthquakes, might inspire for their
+conversion or chastisement the valor of his servants.  In the
+exercise of political government, he was compelled to abate of
+the stern rigor of fanaticism, to comply in some measure with the
+prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ even the
+vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation.  The use
+of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often
+subservient to the propagation of the faith; and Mahomet
+commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and idolaters
+who had escaped from the field of battle.  By the repetition of
+such acts, the character of Mahomet must have been gradually
+stained; and the influence of such pernicious habits would be
+poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social
+virtues which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a
+prophet among his sectaries and friends.  Of his last years,
+ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician will suspect,
+that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at the
+enthusiasm of his youth, and the credulity of his proselytes.
+^156 A philosopher will observe, that their credulity and his
+success would tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his
+divine mission, that his interest and religion were inseparably
+connected, and that his conscience would be soothed by the
+persuasion, that he alone was absolved by the Deity from the
+obligation of positive and moral laws.  If he retained any
+vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet may be
+allowed as an evidence of his sincerity.  In the support of
+truth, the arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal;
+and he would have started at the foulness of the means, had he
+not been satisfied of the importance and justice of the end. Even
+in a conqueror or a priest, I can surprise a word or action of
+unaffected humanity; and the decree of Mahomet, that, in the sale
+of captives, the mothers should never be separated from their
+children, may suspend, or moderate, the censure of the historian.
+^157
+
+[Footnote 154: The Christians, rashly enough, have assigned to
+Mahomet a tame pigeon, that seemed to descend from heaven and
+whisper in his ear.  As this pretended miracle is urged by
+Grotius, (de Veritate Religionis Christianae,) his Arabic
+translator, the learned Pocock, inquired of him the names of his
+authors; and Grotius confessed, that it is unknown to the
+Mahometans themselves.  Lest it should provoke their indignation
+and laughter, the pious lie is suppressed in the Arabic version;
+but it has maintained an edifying place in the numerous editions
+of the Latin text, (Pocock, Specimen, Hist. Arabum, p. 186, 187.
+Reland, de Religion.  Moham. l. ii. c. 39, p. 259 - 262.)]
+
+[Footnote 155: (Plato, in Apolog. Socrat. c. 19, p. 121, 122,
+edit. Fischer.) The familiar examples, which Socrates urges in
+his Dialogue with Theages, (Platon. Opera, tom. i. p. 128, 129,
+edit. Hen. Stephan.) are beyond the reach of human foresight; and
+the divine inspiration of the philosopher is clearly taught in
+the Memorabilia of Xenophon.  The ideas of the most rational
+Platonists are expressed by Cicero, (de Divinat. i. 54,) and in
+the xivth and xvth Dissertations of Maximus of Tyre, (p. 153 -
+172, edit. Davis.)]
+
+[Footnote 156: In some passage of his voluminous writings,
+Voltaire compares the prophet, in his old age, to a fakir, "qui
+detache la chaine de son cou pour en donner sur les oreilles a
+ses confreres."]
+
+[Footnote 157: Gagnier relates, with the same impartial pen, this
+humane law of the prophet, and the murders of Caab, and Sophian,
+which he prompted and approved, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 69,
+97, 208.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part VII.
+
+The good sense of Mahomet ^158 despised the pomp of royalty:
+the apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family:
+he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended
+with his own hands his shoes and his woollen garment.  Disdaining
+the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed, without effort or
+vanity, the abstemious diet of an Arab and a soldier.  On solemn
+occasions he feasted his companions with rustic and hospitable
+plenty; but in his domestic life, many weeks would elapse without
+a tire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet.  The
+interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was
+appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread: he delighted
+in the taste of milk and honey; but his ordinary food consisted
+of dates and water.  Perfumes and women were the two sensual
+enjoyments which his nature required, and his religion did not
+forbid; and Mahomet affirmed, that the fervor of his devotion was
+increased by these innocent pleasures.  The heat of the climate
+inflames the blood of the Arabs; and their libidinous complexion
+has been noticed by the writers of antiquity. ^159 Their
+incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious laws of the
+Koran: their incestuous alliances were blamed; the boundless
+license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or
+concubines; their rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably
+determined; the freedom of divorce was discouraged, adultery was
+condemned as a capital offence; and fornication, in either sex,
+was punished with a hundred stripes. ^160 Such were the calm and
+rational precepts of the legislator: but in his private conduct,
+Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of
+a prophet.  A special revelation dispensed him from the laws
+which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without
+reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular
+prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the
+veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans.  If
+we remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines
+of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian,
+who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives; eleven are
+enumerated who occupied at Medina their separate apartments round
+the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their turns the favor of
+his conjugal society.  What is singular enough, they were all
+widows, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker.  She was
+doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such
+is the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine
+years of age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave
+her a superior ascendant: she was beloved and trusted by the
+prophet; and, after his death, the daughter of Abubeker was long
+revered as the mother of the faithful.  Her behavior had been
+ambiguous and indiscreet: in a nocturnal march she was
+accidentally left behind; and in the morning Ayesha returned to
+the camp with a man.  The temper of Mahomet was inclined to
+jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence:
+he chastised her accusers, and published a law of domestic peace,
+that no woman should be condemned unless four male witnesses had
+seen her in the act of adultery. ^161 In his adventures with
+Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the
+amorous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation.  At the
+house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a
+loose undress, the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into an
+ejaculation of devotion and desire.  The servile, or grateful,
+freedman understood the hint, and yielded without hesitation to
+the love of his benefactor.  But as the filial relation had
+excited some doubt and scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from
+heaven to ratify the deed, to annul the adoption, and gently to
+reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence of his God.
+One of his wives, Hafna, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on
+her own bed, in the embraces of his Egyptian captive: she
+promised secrecy and forgiveness, he swore that he would renounce
+the possession of Mary.  Both parties forgot their engagements;
+and Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to
+absolve him from his oath, and to exhort him freely to enjoy his
+captives and concubines, without listening to the clamors of his
+wives.  In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he labored, alone
+with Mary, to fulfil the commands of the angel.  When his love
+and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven
+wives, reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and
+threatened them with a sentence of divorce, both in this world
+and in the next; a dreadful sentence, since those who had
+ascended the bed of the prophet were forever excluded from the
+hope of a second marriage.  Perhaps the incontinence of Mahomet
+may be palliated by the tradition of his natural or preternatural
+gifts; ^162 he united the manly virtue of thirty of the children
+of Adam: and the apostle might rival the thirteenth labor ^163 of
+the Grecian Hercules. ^164 A more serious and decent excuse may
+be drawn from his fidelity to Cadijah.  During the twenty-four
+years of their marriage, her youthful husband abstained from the
+right of polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable
+matron was never insulted by the society of a rival.  After her
+death, he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women, with
+the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best
+beloved of his daughters. "Was she not old?" said Ayesha, with
+the insolence of a blooming beauty; "has not God given you a
+better in her place?" "No, by God," said Mahomet, with an
+effusion of honest gratitude, "there never can be a better!  She
+believed in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants, when
+I was poor and persecuted by the world." ^165
+
+[Footnote 158: For the domestic life of Mahomet, consult Gagnier,
+and the corresponding chapters of Abulfeda; for his diet, (tom.
+iii. p. 285 - 288;) his children, (p. 189, 289;) his wives, (p.
+290 - 303;) his marriage with Zeineb, (tom. ii. p. 152 - 160;)
+his amour with Mary, (p. 303 - 309;) the false accusation of
+Ayesha, (p. 186 - 199.) The most original evidence of the three
+last transactions is contained in the xxivth, xxxiiid, and lxvith
+chapters of the Koran, with Sale's Commentary.  Prideaux (Life of
+Mahomet, p. 80 - 90) and Maracci (Prodrom. Alcoran, part iv. p.
+49 - 59) have maliciously exaggerated the frailties of Mahomet.]
+
+[Footnote 159: Incredibile est quo ardore apud eos in Venerem
+uterque solvitur sexus, (Ammian. Marcellin. l. xiv. c. 4.)]
+
+[Footnote 160: Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 133 - 137) has
+recapitulated the laws of marriage, divorce, &c.; and the curious
+reader of Selden's Uror Hebraica will recognize many Jewish
+ordinances.]
+
+[Footnote 161: In a memorable case, the Caliph Omar decided that
+all presumptive evidence was of no avail; and that all the four
+witnesses must have actually seen stylum in pyxide, (Abulfedae
+Annales Moslemici, p. 71, vers. Reiske.)]
+
+[Footnote 162: Sibi robur ad generationem, quantum triginta viri
+habent, inesse jacteret: ita ut unica hora posset undecim
+foeminis satisfacere, ut ex Arabum libris refert Stus.  Petrus
+Paschasius, c. 2., (Maracci, Prodromus Alcoran, p. iv. p. 55.
+See likewise Observations de Belon, l. iii. c. 10, fol. 179,
+recto.) Al Jannabi (Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 287) records his own
+testimony, that he surpassed all men in conjugal vigor; and
+Abulfeda mentions the exclamation of Ali, who washed the body
+after his death, "O propheta, certe penis tuus coelum versus
+erectus est," in Vit. Mohammed, p. 140.]
+
+[Footnote 163: I borrow the style of a father of the church,
+(Greg. Nazianzen, Orat. iii. p. 108.)]
+
+[Footnote 164: The common and most glorious legend includes, in a
+single night the fifty victories of Hercules over the virgin
+daughters of Thestius, (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iv. p. 274.
+Pausanias, l. ix. p. 763. Statius Sylv. l. i. eleg. iii. v. 42.)
+But Athenaeus allows seven nights, (Deipnosophist, l. xiii. p.
+556,) and Apollodorus fifty, for this arduous achievement of
+Hercules, who was then no more than eighteen years of age,
+(Bibliot. l. ii. c. 4, p. 111, cum notis Heyne, part i. p. 332.)]
+
+[Footnote 165: Abulfeda in Vit. Moham. p. 12, 13, 16, 17, cum
+Notis Gagnier]
+
+In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a
+religion and empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a
+numerous posterity and a lineal succession.  The hopes of Mahomet
+were fatally disappointed.  The virgin Ayesha, and his ten widows
+of mature age and approved fertility, were barren in his potent
+embraces.  The four sons of Cadijah died in their infancy.  Mary,
+his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the birth of
+Ibrahim.  At the end of fifteen months the prophet wept over his
+grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery of his
+enemies, and checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems,
+by the assurance that an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by
+the death of the infant.  Cadijah had likewise given him four
+daughters, who were married to the most faithful of his
+disciples: the three eldest died before their father; but Fatima,
+who possessed his confidence and love, became the wife of her
+cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny.  The merit
+and misfortunes of Ali and his descendants will lead me to
+anticipate, in this place, the series of the Saracen caliphs, a
+title which describes the commanders of the faithful as the
+vicars and successors of the apostle of God. ^166
+
+[Footnote 166: This outline of the Arabian history is drawn from
+the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, (under the names of
+Aboubecre, Omar Othman, Ali, &c.;) from the Annals of Abulfeda,
+Abulpharagius, and Elmacin, (under the proper years of the
+Hegira,) and especially from Ockley's History of the Saracens,
+(vol. i. p. 1 - 10, 115 - 122, 229, 249, 363 - 372, 378 - 391,
+and almost the whole of the second volume.) Yet we should weigh
+with caution the traditions of the hostile sects; a stream which
+becomes still more muddy as it flows farther from the source.
+Sir John Chardin has too faithfully copied the fables and errors
+of the modern Persians, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 235 - 250, &c.)]
+
+The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali, which exalted
+him above the rest of his countrymen, might justify his claim to
+the vacant throne of Arabia.  The son of Abu Taleb was, in his
+own right, the chief of the family of Hashem, and the hereditary
+prince or guardian of the city and temple of Mecca.  The light of
+prophecy was extinct; but the husband of Fatima might expect the
+inheritance and blessing of her father: the Arabs had sometimes
+been patient of a female reign; and the two grandsons of the
+prophet had often been fondled in his lap, and shown in his
+pulpit as the hope of his age, and the chief of the youth of
+paradise.  The first of the true believers might aspire to march
+before them in this world and in the next; and if some were of a
+graver and more rigid cast, the zeal and virtue of Ali were never
+outstripped by any recent proselyte.  He united the
+qualifications of a poet, a soldier, and a saint: his wisdom
+still breathes in a collection of moral and religious sayings;
+^167 and every antagonist, in the combats of the tongue or of the
+sword, was subdued by his eloquence and valor.  From the first
+hour of his mission to the last rites of his funeral, the apostle
+was never forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to
+name his brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a
+second Moses.  The son of Abu Taleb was afterwards reproached for
+neglecting to secure his interest by a solemn declaration of his
+right, which would have silenced all competition, and sealed his
+succession by the decrees of Heaven.  But the unsuspecting hero
+confided in himself: the jealousy of empire, and perhaps the fear
+of opposition, might suspend the resolutions of Mahomet; and the
+bed of sickness was besieged by the artful Ayesha, the daughter
+of Abubeker, and the enemy of Ali. ^*
+
+[Footnote 167: Ockley (at the end of his second volume) has given
+an English version of 169 sentences, which he ascribes, with some
+hesitation, to Ali, the son of Abu Taleb.  His preface is colored
+by the enthusiasm of a translator; yet these sentences delineate
+a characteristic, though dark, picture of human life.]
+
+[Footnote *: Gibbon wrote chiefly from the Arabic or Sunnite
+account of these transactions, the only sources accessible at the
+time when he composed his History.  Major Price, writing from
+Persian authorities, affords us the advantage of comparing
+throughout what may be fairly considered the Shiite Version.  The
+glory of Ali is the constant burden of their strain.  He was
+destined, and, according to some accounts, designated, for the
+caliphate by the prophet; but while the others were fiercely
+pushing their own interests, Ali was watching the remains of
+Mahomet with pious fidelity.  His disinterested magnanimity, on
+each separate occasion, declined the sceptre, and gave the noble
+example of obedience to the appointed caliph.  He is described,
+in retirement, on the throne, and in the field of battle, as
+transcendently pious, magnanimous, valiant, and humane.  He lost
+his empire through his excess of virtue and love for the faithful
+his life through his confidence in God, and submission to the
+decrees of fate.
+
+Compare the curious account of this apathy in Price, chapter
+ii.  It is to be regretted, I must add, that Major Price has
+contented himself with quoting the names of the Persian works
+which he follows, without any account of their character, age,
+and authority. - M.]
+
+The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of
+the people; and his companions convened an assembly to deliberate
+on the choice of his successor.  The hereditary claim and lofty
+spirit of Ali were offensive to an aristocracy of elders,
+desirous of bestowing and resuming the sceptre by a free and
+frequent election: the Koreish could never be reconciled to the
+proud preeminence of the line of Hashem; the ancient discord of
+the tribes was rekindled, the fugitives of Mecca and the
+auxiliaries of Medina asserted their respective merits; and the
+rash proposal of choosing two independent caliphs would have
+crushed in their infancy the religion and empire of the Saracens.
+The tumult was appeased by the disinterested resolution of Omar,
+who, suddenly renouncing his own pretensions, stretched forth his
+hand, and declared himself the first subject of the mild and
+venerable Abubeker. ^* The urgency of the moment, and the
+acquiescence of the people, might excuse this illegal and
+precipitate measure; but Omar himself confessed from the pulpit,
+that if any Mulsulman should hereafter presume to anticipate the
+suffrage of his brethren, both the elector and the elected would
+be worthy of death. ^168 After the simple inauguration of
+Abubeker, he was obeyed in Medina, Mecca, and the provinces of
+Arabia: the Hashemites alone declined the oath of fidelity; and
+their chief, in his own house, maintained, above six months, a
+sullen and independent reserve; without listening to the threats
+of Omar, who attempted to consume with fire the habitation of the
+daughter of the apostle.  The death of Fatima, and the decline of
+his party, subdued the indignant spirit of Ali: he condescended
+to salute the commander of the faithful, accepted his excuse of
+the necessity of preventing their common enemies, and wisely
+rejected his courteous offer of abdicating the government of the
+Arabians.  After a reign of two years, the aged caliph was
+summoned by the angel of death.  In his testament, with the tacit
+approbation of his companions, he bequeathed the sceptre to the
+firm and intrepid virtue of Omar.  "I have no occasion," said the
+modest candidate, "for the place." "But the place has occasion
+for you," replied Abubeker; who expired with a fervent prayer,
+that the God of Mahomet would ratify his choice, and direct the
+Mussulmans in the way of concord and obedience.  The prayer was
+not ineffectual, since Ali himself, in a life of privacy and
+prayer, professed to revere the superior worth and dignity of his
+rival; who comforted him for the loss of empire, by the most
+flattering marks of confidence and esteem.  In the twelfth year
+of his reign, Omar received a mortal wound from the hand of an
+assassin: he rejected with equal impartiality the names of his
+son and of Ali, refused to load his conscience with the sins of
+his successor, and devolved on six of the most respectable
+companions the arduous task of electing a commander of the
+faithful.  On this occasion, Ali was again blamed by his friends
+^169 for submitting his right to the judgment of men, for
+recognizing their jurisdiction by accepting a place among the six
+electors.  He might have obtained their suffrage, had he deigned
+to promise a strict and servile conformity, not only to the Koran
+and tradition, but likewise to the determinations of two seniors.
+^170 With these limitations, Othman, the secretary of Mahomet,
+accepted the government; nor was it till after the third caliph,
+twenty-four years after the death of the prophet, that Ali was
+invested, by the popular choice, with the regal and sacerdotal
+office. The manners of the Arabians retained their primitive
+simplicity, and the son of Abu Taleb despised the pomp and vanity
+of this world.  At the hour of prayer, he repaired to the mosch
+of Medina, clothed in a thin cotton gown, a coarse turban on his
+head, his slippers in one hand, and his bow in the other, instead
+of a walking-staff.  The companions of the prophet, and the
+chiefs of the tribes, saluted their new sovereign, and gave him
+their right hands as a sign of fealty and allegiance.
+
+[Footnote *: Abubeker, the father of the virgin Ayesha.  St.
+Martin, vol. XL, p. 88 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 168: Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 5, 6,)
+from an Arabian Ms., represents Ayesha as adverse to the
+substitution of her father in the place of the apostle.  This
+fact, so improbable in itself, is unnoticed by Abulfeda, Al
+Jannabi, and Al Bochari, the last of whom quotes the tradition of
+Ayesha herself, (Vit. Mohammed, p. 136 Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii.
+p. 236.)]
+
+[Footnote 169: Particularly by his friend and cousin Abdallah,
+the son of Abbas, who died A.D. 687, with the title of grand
+doctor of the Moslems. In Abulfeda he recapitulates the important
+occasions in which Ali had neglected his salutary advice, (p. 76,
+vers. Reiske;) and concludes, (p. 85,) O princeps fidelium,
+absque controversia tu quidem vere fortis es, at inops boni
+consilii, et rerum gerendarum parum callens.]
+
+[Footnote 170: I suspect that the two seniors (Abulpharagius, p.
+115. Ockley, tom. i. p. 371,) may signify not two actual
+counsellors, but his two predecessors, Abubeker and Omar.]
+
+The mischiefs that flow from the contests of ambition are
+usually confined to the times and countries in which they have
+been agitated.  But the religious discord of the friends and
+enemies of Ali has been renewed in every age of the Hegira, and
+is still maintained in the immortal hatred of the Persians and
+Turks. ^171 The former, who are branded with the appellation of
+Shiites or sectaries, have enriched the Mahometan creed with a
+new article of faith; and if Mahomet be the apostle, his
+companion Ali is the vicar, of God. In their private converse, in
+their public worship, they bitterly execrate the three usurpers
+who intercepted his indefeasible right to the dignity of Imam and
+Caliph; and the name of Omar expresses in their tongue the
+perfect accomplishment of wickedness and impiety. ^172 The
+Sonnites, who are supported by the general consent and orthodox
+tradition of the Mussulmans, entertain a more impartial, or at
+least a more decent, opinion.  They respect the memory of
+Abubeker, Omar, Othman, and Ali, the holy and legitimate
+successors of the prophet.  But they assign the last and most
+humble place to the husband of Fatima, in the persuasion that the
+order of succession was determined by the decrees of sanctity.
+^173 An historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand
+unshaken by superstition, will calmly pronounce that their
+manners were alike pure and exemplary; that their zeal was
+fervent, and probably sincere; and that, in the midst of riches
+and power, their lives were devoted to the practice of moral and
+religious duties.  But the public virtues of Abubeker and Omar,
+the prudence of the first, the severity of the second, maintained
+the peace and prosperity of their reigns.  The feeble temper and
+declining age of Othman were incapable of sustaining the weight
+of conquest and empire.  He chose, and he was deceived; he
+trusted, and he was betrayed: the most deserving of the faithful
+became useless or hostile to his government, and his lavish
+bounty was productive only of ingratitude and discontent.  The
+spirit of discord went forth in the provinces: their deputies
+assembled at Medina; and the Charegites, the desperate fanatics
+who disclaimed the yoke of subordination and reason, were
+confounded among the free-born Arabs, who demanded the redress of
+their wrongs and the punishment of their oppressors. From Cufa,
+from Bassora, from Egypt, from the tribes of the desert, they
+rose in arms, encamped about a league from Medina, and despatched
+a haughty mandate to their sovereign, requiring him to execute
+justice, or to descend from the throne.  His repentance began to
+disarm and disperse the insurgents; but their fury was rekindled
+by the arts of his enemies; and the forgery of a perfidious
+secretary was contrived to blast his reputation and precipitate
+his fall.  The caliph had lost the only guard of his
+predecessors, the esteem and confidence of the Moslems: during a
+siege of six weeks his water and provisions were intercepted, and
+the feeble gates of the palace were protected only by the
+scruples of the more timorous rebels.  Forsaken by those who had
+abused his simplicity, the hopeless and venerable caliph expected
+the approach of death: the brother of Ayesha marched at the head
+of the assassins; and Othman, with the Koran in his lap, was
+pierced with a multitude of wounds. ^* A tumultuous anarchy of
+five days was appeased by the inauguration of Ali: his refusal
+would have provoked a general massacre.  In this painful
+situation he supported the becoming pride of the chief of the
+Hashemites; declared that he had rather serve than reign; rebuked
+the presumption of the strangers; and required the formal, if not
+the voluntary, assent of the chiefs of the nation. He has never
+been accused of prompting the assassin of Omar; though Persia
+indiscreetly celebrates the festival of that holy martyr. The
+quarrel between Othman and his subjects was assuaged by the early
+mediation of Ali; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons, was
+insulted and wounded in the defence of the caliph.  Yet it is
+doubtful whether the father of Hassan was strenuous and sincere
+in his opposition to the rebels; and it is certain that he
+enjoyed the benefit of their crime.  The temptation was indeed of
+such magnitude as might stagger and corrupt the most obdurate
+virtue.  The ambitious candidate no longer aspired to the barren
+sceptre of Arabia; the Saracens had been victorious in the East
+and West; and the wealthy kingdoms of Persia, Syria, and Egypt
+were the patrimony of the commander of the faithful.
+
+[Footnote 171: The schism of the Persians is explained by all our
+travellers of the last century, especially in the iid and ivth
+volumes of their master, Chardin.  Niebuhr, though of inferior
+merit, has the advantage of writing so late as the year 1764,
+(Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 208 - 233,) since the
+ineffectual attempt of Nadir Shah to change the religion of the
+nation, (see his Persian History translated into French by Sir
+William Jones, tom. ii. p. 5, 6, 47, 48, 144 - 155.)]
+
+[Footnote 172: Omar is the name of the devil; his murderer is a
+saint. When the Persians shoot with the bow, they frequently cry,
+"May this arrow go to the heart of Omar!" (Voyages de Chardin,
+tom. ii. p 239, 240, 259, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 173: This gradation of merit is distinctly marked in a
+creed illustrated by Reland, (de Relig. Mohamm. l. i. p. 37;) and
+a Sonnite argument inserted by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens,
+tom. ii. p. 230.) The practice of cursing the memory of Ali was
+abolished, after forty years, by the Ommiades themselves,
+(D'Herbelot, p. 690;) and there are few among the Turks who
+presume to revile him as an infidel, (Voyages de Chardin, tom.
+iv. p. 46.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare Price, p. 180. - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.
+
+Part VIII.
+
+A life of prayer and contemplation had not chilled the
+martial activity of Ali; but in a mature age, after a long
+experience of mankind, he still betrayed in his conduct the
+rashness and indiscretion of youth. ^* In the first days of his
+reign, he neglected to secure, either by gifts or fetters, the
+doubtful allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two of the most powerful
+of the Arabian chiefs.  They escaped from Medina to Mecca, and
+from thence to Bassora; erected the standard of revolt; and
+usurped the government of Irak, or Assyria, which they had vainly
+solicited as the reward of their services. The mask of patriotism
+is allowed to cover the most glaring inconsistencies; and the
+enemies, perhaps the assassins, of Othman now demanded vengeance
+for his blood.  They were accompanied in their flight by Ayesha,
+the widow of the prophet, who cherished, to the last hour of her
+life, an implacable hatred against the husband and the posterity
+of Fatima.  The most reasonable Moslems were scandalized, that
+the mother of the faithful should expose in a camp her person and
+character; ^! but the superstitious crowd was confident that her
+presence would sanctify the justice, and assure the success, of
+their cause. At the head of twenty thousand of his loyal Arabs,
+and nine thousand valiant auxiliaries of Cufa, the caliph
+encountered and defeated the superior numbers of the rebels under
+the walls of Bassora. ^!! Their leaders, Telha and Zobeir, ^@
+were slain in the first battle that stained with civil blood the
+arms of the Moslems. ^@@ After passing through the ranks to
+animate the troops, Ayesha had chosen her post amidst the dangers
+of the field.  In the heat of the action, seventy men, who held
+the bridle of her camel, were successively killed or wounded; and
+the cage or litter, in which she sat, was stuck with javelins and
+darts like the quills of a porcupine.  The venerable captive
+sustained with firmness the reproaches of the conqueror, and was
+speedily dismissed to her proper station at the tomb of Mahomet,
+with the respect and tenderness that was still due to the widow
+of the apostle. ^* After this victory, which was styled the Day
+of the Camel, Ali marched against a more formidable adversary;
+against Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, who had assumed the
+title of caliph, and whose claim was supported by the forces of
+Syria and the interest of the house of Ommiyah.  From the passage
+of Thapsacus, the plain of Siffin ^174 extends along the western
+bank of the Euphrates.  On this spacious and level theatre, the
+two competitors waged a desultory war of one hundred and ten
+days.  In the course of ninety actions or skirmishes, the loss of
+Ali was estimated at twenty-five, that of Moawiyah at forty-five,
+thousand soldiers; and the list of the slain was dignified with
+the names of five-and-twenty veterans who had fought at Beder
+under the standard of Mahomet.  In this sanguinary contest the
+lawful caliph displayed a superior character of valor and
+humanity. ^!!! His troops were strictly enjoined to await the
+first onset of the enemy, to spare their flying brethren, and to
+respect the bodies of the dead, and the chastity of the female
+captives.  He generously proposed to save the blood of the
+Moslems by a single combat; but his trembling rival declined the
+challenge as a sentence of inevitable death.  The ranks of the
+Syrians were broken by the charge of a hero who was mounted on a
+piebald horse, and wielded with irresistible force his ponderous
+and two-edged sword.  As often as he smote a rebel, he shouted
+the Allah Acbar, "God is victorious!" and in the tumult of a
+nocturnal battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that
+tremendous exclamation.  The prince of Damascus already meditated
+his flight; but the certain victory was snatched from the grasp
+of Ali by the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops.  Their
+conscience was awed by the solemn appeal to the books of the
+Koran which Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances; and Ali was
+compelled to yield to a disgraceful truce and an insidious
+compromise.  He retreated with sorrow and indignation to Cufa;
+his party was discouraged; the distant provinces of Persia, of
+Yemen, and of Egypt, were subdued or seduced by his crafty rival;
+and the stroke of fanaticism, which was aimed against the three
+chiefs of the nation, was fatal only to the cousin of Mahomet.
+In the temple of Mecca, three Charegites or enthusiasts
+discoursed of the disorders of the church and state: they soon
+agreed, that the deaths of Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend
+Amrou, the viceroy of Egypt, would restore the peace and unity of
+religion.  Each of the assassins chose his victim, poisoned his
+dagger, devoted his life, and secretly repaired to the scene of
+action.  Their resolution was equally desperate: but the first
+mistook the person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied
+his seat; the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the
+second; the lawful caliph, in the mosch of Cufa, received a
+mortal wound from the hand of the third.  He expired in the
+sixty-third year of his age, and mercifully recommended to his
+children, that they would despatch the murderer by a single
+stroke. ^* The sepulchre of Ali ^175 was concealed from the
+tyrants of the house of Ommiyah; ^176 but in the fourth age of
+the Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the ruins of
+Cufa. ^177 Many thousands of the Shiites repose in holy ground at
+the feet of the vicar of God; and the desert is vivified by the
+numerous and annual visits of the Persians, who esteem their
+devotion not less meritorious than the pilgrimage of Mecca.
+
+[Footnote *: Ali had determined to supersede all the lieutenants
+in the different provinces.  Price, p. 191.  Compare, on the
+conduct of Telha and Zobeir, p. 193 - M.]
+
+[Footnote !: See the very curious circumstances which took place
+before and during her flight.  Price, p. 196. - M.]
+
+[Footnote !!: The reluctance of Ali to shed the blood of true
+believers is strikingly described by Major Price's Persian
+historians. Price, p. 222. - M.]
+
+[Footnote @: See (in Price) the singular adventures of Zobeir.
+He was murdered after having abandoned the army of the
+insurgents.  Telha was about to do the same, when his leg was
+pierced with an arrow by one of his own party The wound was
+mortal.  Price, p. 222. - M.]
+
+[Footnote @@: According to Price, two hundred and eighty of the
+Benni Beianziel alone lost a right hand in this service, (p.
+225.) - M]
+
+[Footnote *: She was escorted by a guard of females disguised as
+soldiers. When she discovered this, Ayesha was as much gratified
+by the delicacy of the arrangement, as she had been offended by
+the familiar approach of so many men. Price, p. 229. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 174: The plain of Siffin is determined by D'Anville
+(l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 29) to be the Campus Barbaricus of
+Procopius.]
+
+[Footnote !!!: The Shiite authors have preserved a noble instance
+of Ali's magnanimity.  The superior generalship of Moawiyah had
+cut off the army of Ali from the Euphrates; his soldiers were
+perishing from want of water.  Ali sent a message to his rival to
+request free access to the river, declaring that under the same
+circumstances he would not allow any of the faithful, though his
+adversaries, to perish from thirst.  After some debate, Moawiyah
+determined to avail himself of the advantage of his situation,
+and to reject the demand of Ali.  The soldiers of Ali became
+desperate; forced their way through that part of the hostile army
+which commanded the river, and in their turn entirely cut off the
+troops of Moawiyah from the water.  Moawiyah was reduced to make
+the same supplication to Ali.  The generous caliph instantly
+complied; and both armies, with their cattle enjoyed free and
+unmolested access to the river. Price, vol. i. p. 268, 272 - M.]
+
+[Footnote *: His son Hassan was recognized as caliph in Arabia
+and Irak; but voluntarily abdicated the throne, after six or
+seven months, in favor of Moawiyah St. Martin, vol. xi. p 375. -
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Abulfeda, a moderate Sonnite, relates the
+different opinions concerning the burial of Ali, but adopts the
+sepulchre of Cufa, hodie fama numeroque religiose frequentantium
+celebratum.  This number is reckoned by Niebuhr to amount
+annually to 2000 of the dead, and 5000 of the living, (tom. ii.
+p. 208, 209.)]
+
+[Footnote 176: All the tyrants of Persia, from Adhad el Dowlat
+(A.D. 977, D'Herbelot, p. 58, 59, 95) to Nadir Shah, (A.D. 1743,
+Hist. de Nadir Shah, tom. ii. p. 155,) have enriched the tomb of
+Ali with the spoils of the people. The dome is copper, with a
+bright and massy gilding, which glitters to the sun at the
+distance of many a mile.]
+
+[Footnote 177: The city of Meshed Ali, five or six miles from the
+ruins of Cufa, and one hundred and twenty to the south of Bagdad,
+is of the size and form of the modern Jerusalem.  Meshed Hosein,
+larger and more populous, is at the distance of thirty miles.]
+
+The persecutors of Mahomet usurped the inheritance of his
+children; and the champions of idolatry became the supreme heads
+of his religion and empire. The opposition of Abu Sophian had
+been fierce and obstinate; his conversion was tardy and
+reluctant; his new faith was fortified by necessity and interest;
+he served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and the sins of the
+time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits of the
+family of Ommiyah. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, and of the
+cruel Henda, was dignified, in his early youth, with the office
+or title of secretary of the prophet: the judgment of Omar
+intrusted him with the government of Syria; and he administered
+that important province above forty years, either in a
+subordinate or supreme rank.  Without renouncing the fame of
+valor and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity and
+moderation: a grateful people was attached to their benefactor;
+and the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of
+Cyprus and Rhodes.  The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of
+Othman was the engine and pretence of his ambition.  The bloody
+shirt of the martyr was exposed in the mosch of Damascus: the
+emir deplored the fate of his injured kinsman; and sixty thousand
+Syrians were engaged in his service by an oath of fidelity and
+revenge.  Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, himself an army, was the
+first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged the dangerous
+secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created elsewhere than
+in the city of the prophet. ^178 The policy of Moawiyah eluded
+the valor of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he
+negotiated the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was
+either above or below the government of the world, and who
+retired without a sigh from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell
+near the tomb of his grandfather.  The aspiring wishes of the
+caliph were finally crowned by the important change of an
+elective to an hereditary kingdom.  Some murmurs of freedom or
+fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs, and four
+citizens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity; but the designs
+of Moawiyah were conducted with vigor and address; and his son
+Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as the
+commander of the faithful and the successor on the apostle of
+God.
+
+[Footnote 178: I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and
+expression of Tacitus, (Hist. i. 4: ) Evulgato imperii arcano
+posse imperatorem alni quam Romae fieri.]
+
+A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the
+sons of Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently
+dropped a dish of scalding broth on his master: the heedless
+wretch fell prostrate, to deprecate his punishment, and repeated
+a verse of the Koran: "Paradise is for those who command their
+anger: " - "I am not angry: " - "and for those who pardon
+offences: " - "I pardon your offence: " - "and for those who
+return good for evil: " - "I give you your liberty and four
+hundred pieces of silver." With an equal measure of piety,
+Hosein, the younger brother of Hassan, inherited a remnant of his
+father's spirit, and served with honor against the Christians in
+the siege of Constantinople.  The primogeniture of the line of
+Hashem, and the holy character of grandson of the apostle, had
+centred in his person, and he was at liberty to prosecute his
+claim against Yezid, the tyrant of Damascus, whose vices he
+despised, and whose title he had never deigned to acknowledge.  A
+list was secretly transmitted from Cufa to Medina, of one hundred
+and forty thousand Moslems, who professed their attachment to his
+cause, and who were eager to draw their swords so soon as he
+should appear on the banks of the Euphrates.  Against the advice
+of his wisest friends, he resolved to trust his person and family
+in the hands of a perfidious people. He traversed the desert of
+Arabia with a timorous retinue of women and children; but as he
+approached the confines of Irak he was alarmed by the solitary or
+hostile face of the country, and suspected either the defection
+or ruin of his party.  His fears were just: Obeidollah, the
+governor of Cufa, had extinguished the first sparks of an
+insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela, was
+encompassed by a body of five thousand horse, who intercepted his
+communication with the city and the river.  He might still have
+escaped to a fortress in the desert, that had defied the power of
+Caesar and Chosroes, and confided in the fidelity of the tribe of
+Tai, which would have armed ten thousand warriors in his defence.
+
+In a conference with the chief of the enemy, he proposed the
+option of three honorable conditions: that he should be allowed
+to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison
+against the Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of Yezid.
+But the commands of the caliph, or his lieutenant, were stern and
+absolute; and Hosein was informed that he must either submit as a
+captive and a criminal to the commander of the faithful, or
+expect the consequences of his rebellion.  "Do you think,"
+replied he, "to terrify me with death?" And, during the short
+respite of a night, ^* he prepared with calm and solemn
+resignation to encounter his fate.  He checked the lamentations
+of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin of his
+house.  "Our trust," said Hosein, "is in God alone.  All things,
+both in heaven and earth, must perish and return to their
+Creator.  My brother, my father, my mother, were better than me,
+and every Mussulman has an example in the prophet." He pressed
+his friends to consult their safety by a timely flight: they
+unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved master:
+and their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer and the
+assurance of paradise.  On the morning of the fatal day, he
+mounted on horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Koran in
+the other: his generous band of martyrs consisted only of
+thirty-two horse and forty foot; but their flanks and rear were
+secured by the tent-ropes, and by a deep trench which they had
+filled with lighted fagots, according to the practice of the
+Arabs. The enemy advanced with reluctance, and one of their
+chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to claim the partnership
+of inevitable death. In every close onset, or single combat, the
+despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but the surrounding
+multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud of arrows,
+and the horses and men were successively slain; a truce was
+allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at
+length expired by the death of the last companions of Hosein.
+Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his
+tent.  As he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced in the mouth
+with a dart; and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths, were
+killed in his arms.  He lifted his hands to heaven; they were
+full of blood; and he uttered a funeral prayer for the living and
+the dead. In a transport of despair his sister issued from the
+tent, and adjured the general of the Cufians, that he would not
+suffer Hosein to be murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled
+down his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell
+back on every side as the dying hero threw himself among them.
+The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the faithful,
+reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain
+with three-and-thirty strokes of lances and swords.  After they
+had trampled on his body, they carried his head to the castle of
+Cufa, and the inhuman Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a
+cane: "Alas," exclaimed an aged Mussulman, "on these lips have I
+seen the lips of the apostle of God!" In a distant age and
+climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the
+sympathy of the coldest reader. ^179 ^* On the annual festival of
+his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his
+Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious frenzy of
+sorrow and indignation. ^180
+
+[Footnote *: According to Major Price's authorities a much longer
+time elapsed (p. 198 &c.) - M.]
+
+[Footnote 179: I have abridged the interesting narrative of
+Ockley, (tom. ii. p. 170 - 231.) It is long and minute: but the
+pathetic, almost always, consists in the detail of little
+circumstances.]
+
+[Footnote *: The account of Hosein's death, in the Persian Tarikh
+Tebry, is much longer; in some circumstances, more pathetic, than
+that of Ockley, followed by Gibbon.  His family, after his
+defenders were all slain, perished in succession before his eyes.
+
+They had been cut off from the water, and suffered all the
+agonies of thirst.  His eldest son, Ally Akbar, after ten
+different assaults on the enemy, in each of which he slew two or
+three, complained bitterly of his sufferings from heat and
+thirst.  "His father arose, and introducing his own tongue within
+the parched lips of his favorite child, thus endeavored to
+alleviate his sufferings by the only means of which his enemies
+had not yet been able to deprive him." Ally was slain and cut to
+pieces in his sight: this wrung from him his first and only cry;
+then it was that his sister Zeyneb rushed from the tent.  The
+rest, including his nephew, fell in succession.  Hosein's horse
+was wounded - he fell to the ground.  The hour of prayer, between
+noon and sunset, had arrived; the Imaun began the religious
+duties: - as Hosein prayed, he heard the cries of his infant
+child Abdallah, only twelve months old.  The child was, at his
+desire, placed on his bosom: as he wept over it, it was
+transfixed by an arrow.  Hosein dragged himself to the Euphrates:
+as he slaked his burning thirst, his mouth was pierced by an
+arrow: he drank his own blood.  Wounded in four-and-thirty
+places, he still gallantly resisted. A soldier named Zeraiah gave
+the fatal wound: his head was cut off by Ziliousheng.  Price, p.
+402, 410. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Niebuhr the Dane (Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii.
+p. 208, &c.) is, perhaps, the only European traveller who has
+dared to visit Meshed Ali and Meshed Hosein.  The two sepulchres
+are in the hands of the Turks, who tolerate and tax the devotion
+of the Persian heretics.  The festival of the death of Hosein is
+amply described by Sir John Chardin, a traveller whom I have
+often praised.]
+
+When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains
+to the throne of Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate
+the enmity of a popular and hostile race, whom he had injured
+beyond the hope of reconciliation.  But Yezid preferred the
+councils of mercy; and the mourning family was honorably
+dismissed to mingle their tears with their kindred at Medina.
+The glory of martyrdom superseded the right of primogeniture; and
+the twelve imams, ^181 or pontiffs, of the Persian creed, are
+Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the
+ninth generation.  Without arms, or treasures, or subjects, they
+successively enjoyed the veneration of the people, and provoked
+the jealousy of the reigning caliphs: their tombs, at Mecca or
+Medina, on the banks of the Euphrates, or in the province of
+Chorasan, are still visited by the devotion of their sect.  Their
+names were often the pretence of sedition and civil war; but
+these royal saints despised the pomp of the world: submitted to
+the will of God and the injustice of man; and devoted their
+innocent lives to the study and practice of religion.  The
+twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title of
+Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his
+predecessors.  He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the
+time and place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend
+that he still lives, and will appear before the day of judgment
+to overthrow the tyranny of Dejal, or the Antichrist. ^182 In the
+lapse of two or three centuries, the posterity of Abbas, the
+uncle of Mahomet, had multiplied to the number of thirty-three
+thousand: ^183 the race of Ali might be equally prolific: the
+meanest individual was above the first and greatest of princes;
+and the most eminent were supposed to excel the perfection of
+angels.  But their adverse fortune, and the wide extent of the
+Mussulman empire, allowed an ample scope for every bold and
+artful imposture, who claimed affinity with the holy seed: the
+sceptre of the Almohades, in Spain and Africa; of the Fatimites,
+in Egypt and Syria; ^184 of the Sultans of Yemen; and of the
+Sophis of Persia; ^185 has been consecrated by this vague and
+ambiguous title.  Under their reigns it might be dangerous to
+dispute the legitimacy of their birth; and one of the Fatimite
+caliphs silenced an indiscreet question by drawing his cimeter:
+"This," said Moez, "is my pedigree; and these," casting a handful
+of gold to his soldiers, - "and these are my kindred and my
+children." In the various conditions of princes, or doctors, or
+nobles, or merchants, or beggars, a swarm of the genuine or
+fictitious descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honored with the
+appellation of sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs.  In the Ottoman
+empire they are distinguished by a green turban; receive a
+stipend from the treasury; are judged only by their chief; and,
+however debased by fortune or character, still assert the proud
+preeminence of their birth.  A family of three hundred persons,
+the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved
+without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and
+Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve
+centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of
+their native land.  The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a
+plebeian race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends
+the recent majesty of the kings of the earth. ^186
+
+[Footnote 181: The general article of Imam, in D'Herbelot's
+Bibliotheque, will indicate the succession; and the lives of the
+twelve are given under their respective names.]
+
+[Footnote 182: The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but
+the Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every
+religion, (Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 80, 82.) In the royal
+stable of Ispahan, two horses were always kept saddled, one for
+the Mahadi himself, the other for his lieutenant, Jesus the son
+of Mary.]
+
+[Footnote 183: In the year of the Hegira 200, (A.D. 815.) See
+D'Herbelot, p. 146]
+
+[Footnote 184: D'Herbelot, p. 342.  The enemies of the Fatimites
+disgraced them by a Jewish origin.  Yet they accurately deduced
+their genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam; and the impartial
+Abulfeda allows (Annal. Moslem. p. 230) that they were owned by
+many, qui absque controversia genuini sunt Alidarum, homines
+propaginum suae gentis exacte callentes.  He quotes some lines
+from the celebrated Scherif or Rahdi, Egone humilitatem induam in
+terris hostium?  (I suspect him to be an Edrissite of Sicily,)
+cum in Aegypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii, quocum ego communem
+habeo patrem et vindicem.]
+
+[Footnote 185: The kings of Persia in the last century are
+descended from Sheik Sefi, a saint of the xivth century, and
+through him, from Moussa Cassem, the son of Hosein, the son of
+Ali, (Olearius, p. 957.  Chardin, tom. iii. p. 288.) But I cannot
+trace the intermediate degrees in any genuine or fabulous
+pedigree.  If they were truly Fatimites, they might draw their
+origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in the ixth
+century, (D'Herbelot, p. 96.)]
+
+[Footnote 186: The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali
+is most accurately described by Demetrius Cantemir (Hist. of the
+Othmae Empire, p. 94) and Niebuhr, (Description de l'Arabie, p. 9
+- 16, 317 &c.) It is much to be lamented, that the Danish
+traveller was unable to purchase the chronicles of Arabia.]
+
+The talents of Mahomet are entitled to our applause; but his
+success has, perhaps, too strongly attracted our admiration.  Are
+we surprised that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the
+doctrine and the passions of an eloquent fanatic?  In the
+heresies of the church, the same seduction has been tried and
+repeated from the time of the apostles to that of the reformers.
+Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the
+sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a
+monarchy by his victorious arms?  In the moving picture of the
+dynasties of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen
+from a baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and
+filled a larger scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike
+instructed to preach and to fight; and the union of these
+opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to
+his success: the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm
+and fear, continually acted on each other, till every barrier
+yielded to their irresistible power.  His voice invited the Arabs
+to freedom and victory, to arms and rapine, to the indulgence of
+their darling passions in this world and the other: the
+restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the
+credit of the prophet, and to exercise the obedience of the
+people; and the only objection to his success was his rational
+creed of the unity and perfections of God.  It is not the
+propagation, but the permanency, of his religion, that deserves
+our wonder: the same pure and perfect impression which he
+engraved at Mecca and Medina, is preserved, after the revolutions
+of twelve centuries, by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish
+proselytes of the Koran.  If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or
+St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly
+inquire the name of the Deity who is worshipped with such
+mysterious rites in that magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva,
+they would experience less surprise; but it might still be
+incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the church, and to
+study the orthodox commentators on their own writings and the
+words of their Master.  But the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with
+an increase of splendor and size, represents the humble
+tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mahomet.  The
+Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing
+the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses
+and imagination of man.  "I believe in one God, and Mahomet the
+apostle of God," is the simple and invariable profession of
+Islam.  The intellectual image of the Deity has never been
+degraded by any visible idol; the honors of the prophet have
+never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living
+precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within
+the bounds of reason and religion.  The votaries of Ali have,
+indeed, consecrated the memory of their hero, his wife, and his
+children; and some of the Persian doctors pretend that the divine
+essence was incarnate in the person of the Imams; but their
+superstition is universally condemned by the Sonnites; and their
+impiety has afforded a seasonable warning against the worship of
+saints and martyrs.  The metaphysical questions on the attributes
+of God, and the liberty of man, have been agitated in the schools
+of the Mahometans, as well as in those of the Christians; but
+among the former they have never engaged the passions of the
+people, or disturbed the tranquillity of the state.  The cause of
+this important difference may be found in the separation or union
+of the regal and sacerdotal characters. It was the interest of
+the caliphs, the successors of the prophet and commanders of the
+faithful, to repress and discourage all religious innovations:
+the order, the discipline, the temporal and spiritual ambition of
+the clergy, are unknown to the Moslems; and the sages of the law
+are the guides of their conscience and the oracles of their
+faith.  From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran is
+acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology, but
+of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate
+the actions and the property of mankind are guarded by the
+infallible and immutable sanction of the will of God.  This
+religious servitude is attended with some practical disadvantage;
+the illiterate legislator had been often misled by his own
+prejudices and those of his country; and the institutions of the
+Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth and numbers of
+Ispahan and Constantinople.  On these occasions, the Cadhi
+respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes
+a dexterous interpretation more apposite to the principles of
+equity, and the manners and policy of the times.
+
+His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public
+happiness is the last consideration in the character of Mahomet.
+The most bitter or most bigoted of his Christian or Jewish foes
+will surely allow that he assumed a false commission to inculcate
+a salutary doctrine, less perfect only than their own.  He
+piously supposed, as the basis of his religion, the truth and
+sanctity of their prior revolutions, the virtues and miracles of
+their founders.  The idols of Arabia were broken before the
+throne of God; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer,
+and fasting, and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion;
+and his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by
+the images most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation.
+Mahomet was, perhaps, incapable of dictating a moral and
+political system for the use of his countrymen: but he breathed
+among the faithful a spirit of charity and friendship;
+recommended the practice of the social virtues; and checked, by
+his laws and precepts, the thirst of revenge, and the oppression
+of widows and orphans.  The hostile tribes were united in faith
+and obedience, and the valor which had been idly spent in
+domestic quarrels was vigorously directed against a foreign
+enemy.  Had the impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home
+and formidable abroad, might have flourished under a succession
+of her native monarchs.  Her sovereignty was lost by the extent
+and rapidity of conquest.  The colonies of the nation were
+scattered over the East and West, and their blood was mingled
+with the blood of their converts and captives.  After the reign
+of three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to the
+valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities
+were violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a
+subject, perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert,
+awakening from their dream of dominion, resumed their old and
+solitary independence. ^187
+
+[Footnote 187: The writers of the Modern Universal History (vols.
+i. and ii.) have compiled, in 850 folio pages, the life of
+Mahomet and the annals of the caliphs.  They enjoyed the
+advantage of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text;
+yet, notwithstanding their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find,
+after the conclusion of my work, that they have afforded me much
+(if any) additional information.  The dull mass is not quickened
+by a spark of philosophy or taste; and the compilers indulge the
+criticism of acrimonious bigotry against Boulainvilliers, Sale,
+Gagnier, and all who have treated Mahomet with favor, or even
+justice.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part I.
+
+The Conquest Of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, And Spain, By
+The Arabs Or Saracens. - Empire Of The Caliphs, Or Successors Of
+Mahomet. - State Of The Christians, &c., Under Their Government.
+
+The revolution of Arabia had not changed the character of
+the Arabs: the death of Mahomet was the signal of independence;
+and the hasty structure of his power and religion tottered to its
+foundations.  A small and faithful band of his primitive
+disciples had listened to his eloquence, and shared his distress;
+had fled with the apostle from the persecution of Mecca, or had
+received the fugitive in the walls of Medina.  The increasing
+myriads, who acknowledged Mahomet as their king and prophet, had
+been compelled by his arms, or allured by his prosperity.  The
+polytheists were confounded by the simple idea of a solitary and
+invisible God; the pride of the Christians and Jews disdained the
+yoke of a mortal and contemporary legislator.  The habits of
+faith and obedience were not sufficiently confirmed; and many of
+the new converts regretted the venerable antiquity of the law of
+Moses, or the rites and mysteries of the Catholic church; or the
+idols, the sacrifices, the joyous festivals, of their Pagan
+ancestors. The jarring interests and hereditary feuds of the
+Arabian tribes had not yet coalesced in a system of union and
+subordination; and the Barbarians were impatient of the mildest
+and most salutary laws that curbed their passions, or violated
+their customs.  They submitted with reluctance to the religious
+precepts of the Koran, the abstinence from wine, the fast of the
+Ramadan, and the daily repetition of five prayers; and the alms
+and tithes, which were collected for the treasury of Medina,
+could be distinguished only by a name from the payment of a
+perpetual and ignominious tribute. The example of Mahomet had
+excited a spirit of fanaticism or imposture, and several of his
+rivals presumed to imitate the conduct, and defy the authority,
+of the living prophet.  At the head of the fugitives and
+auxiliaries, the first caliph was reduced to the cities of Mecca,
+Medina, and Tayef; and perhaps the Koreish would have restored
+the idols of the Caaba, if their levity had not been checked by a
+seasonable reproof.  "Ye men of Mecca, will ye be the last to
+embrace, and the first to abandon, the religion of Islam?" After
+exhorting the Moslems to confide in the aid of God and his
+apostle, Abubeker resolved, by a vigorous attack, to prevent the
+junction of the rebels.  The women and children were safely
+lodged in the cavities of the mountains: the warriors, marching
+under eleven banners, diffused the terror of their arms; and the
+appearance of a military force revived and confirmed the loyalty
+of the faithful.  The inconstant tribes accepted, with humble
+repentance, the duties of prayer, and fasting, and alms; and,
+after some examples of success and severity, the most daring
+apostates fell prostrate before the sword of the Lord and of
+Caled.  In the fertile province of Yemanah, ^1 between the Red
+Sea and the Gulf of Persia, in a city not inferior to Medina
+itself, a powerful chief (his name was Moseilama) had assumed the
+character of a prophet, and the tribe of Hanifa listened to his
+voice.  A female prophetess ^* was attracted by his reputation;
+the decencies of words and actions were spurned by these
+favorites of Heaven; ^2 and they employed several days in mystic
+and amorous converse.  An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book,
+is yet extant; ^3 and in the pride of his mission, Moseilama
+condescended to offer a partition of the earth.  The proposal was
+answered by Mahomet with contempt; but the rapid progress of the
+impostor awakened the fears of his successor: forty thousand
+Moslems were assembled under the standard of Caled; and the
+existence of their faith was resigned to the event of a decisive
+battle. ^* In the first action they were repulsed by the loss of
+twelve hundred men; but the skill and perseverance of their
+general prevailed; their defeat was avenged by the slaughter of
+ten thousand infidels; and Moseilama himself was pierced by an
+Aethiopian slave with the same javelin which had mortally wounded
+the uncle of Mahomet.  The various rebels of Arabia without a
+chief or a cause, were speedily suppressed by the power and
+discipline of the rising monarchy; and the whole nation again
+professed, and more steadfastly held, the religion of the Koran.
+The ambition of the caliphs provided an immediate exercise for
+the restless spirit of the Saracens: their valor was united in
+the prosecution of a holy war; and their enthusiasm was equally
+confirmed by opposition and victory.
+
+[Footnote 1: See the description of the city and country of Al
+Yamanah, in Abulfeda, Descript.  Arabiae, p. 60, 61.  In the
+xiiith century, there were some ruins, and a few palms; but in
+the present century, the same ground is occupied by the visions
+and arms of a modern prophet, whose tenets are imperfectly known,
+(Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p. 296 - 302.)]
+
+[Footnote *: This extraordinary woman was a Christian; she was at
+the head of a numerous and flourishing sect; Moseilama professed
+to recognize her inspiration.  In a personal interview he
+proposed their marriage and the union of their sects.  The
+handsome person, the impassioned eloquence, and the arts of
+Moseilama, triumphed over the virtue of the prophetesa who was
+rejected with scorn by her lover, and by her notorious unchastity
+ost her influence with her own followers.  Gibbon, with that
+propensity too common, especially in his later volumes, has
+selected only the grosser part of this singular adventure. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The first salutation may be transcribed, but cannot
+be translated.  It was thus that Moseilama said or sung: -
+
+Surge tandem itaque strenue permolenda; nam stratus tibi thorus est.
+Aut in propatulo tentorio si velis, aut in abditiore cubiculo si malis;
+Aut supinam te humi exporrectam fustigabo, si velis,
+Aut si malis manibus pedibusque nixam.
+Aut si velis ejus (Priapi) gemino triente aut si malis totus veniam.
+Imo, totus venito, O Apostole Dei, clamabat foemina.
+Id ipsum, dicebat
+Moseilama, mihi quoque suggessit Deus.
+
+The prophetess Segjah, after the fall of her lover, returned to
+idolatry; but under the reign of Moawiyah, she became a
+Mussulman, and died at Bassora, (Abulfeda, Annal. vers. Reiske,
+p. 63.)]
+
+[Footnote 3: See this text, which demonstrates a God from the
+work of generation, in Abulpharagius (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p.
+13, and Dynast. p. 103) and Abulfeda, (Annal. p. 63.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare a long account of this battle in Price, p.
+42. - M.]
+
+From the rapid conquests of the Saracens a presumption will
+naturally arise, that the caliphs ^! commanded in person the
+armies of the faithful, and sought the crown of martyrdom in the
+foremost ranks of the battle.  The courage of Abubeker, ^4 Omar,
+^5 and Othman, ^6 had indeed been tried in the persecution and
+wars of the prophet; and the personal assurance of paradise must
+have taught them to despise the pleasures and dangers of the
+present world.  But they ascended the throne in a venerable or
+mature age; and esteemed the domestic cares of religion and
+justice the most important duties of a sovereign.  Except the
+presence of Omar at the siege of Jerusalem, their longest
+expeditions were the frequent pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca;
+and they calmly received the tidings of victory as they prayed or
+preached before the sepulchre of the prophet.  The austere and
+frugal measure of their lives was the effect of virtue or habit,
+and the pride of their simplicity insulted the vain magnificence
+of the kings of the earth.  When Abubeker assumed the office of
+caliph, he enjoined his daughter Ayesha to take a strict account
+of his private patrimony, that it might be evident whether he
+were enriched or impoverished by the service of the state.  He
+thought himself entitled to a stipend of three pieces of gold,
+with the sufficient maintenance of a single camel and a black
+slave; but on the Friday of each week he distributed the residue
+of his own and the public money, first to the most worthy, and
+then to the most indigent, of the Moslems.  The remains of his
+wealth, a coarse garment, and five pieces of gold, were delivered
+to his successor, who lamented with a modest sigh his own
+inability to equal such an admirable model.  Yet the abstinence
+and humility of Omar were not inferior to the virtues of
+Abubeker: his food consisted of barley bread or dates; his drink
+was water; he preached in a gown that was torn or tattered in
+twelve places; and the Persian satrap, who paid his homage to the
+conqueror, found him asleep among the beggars on the steps of the
+mosch of Medina.  Oeeconomy is the source of liberality, and the
+increase of the revenue enabled Omar to establish a just and
+perpetual reward for the past and present services of the
+faithful.  Careless of his own emolument, he assigned to Abbas,
+the uncle of the prophet, the first and most ample allowance of
+twenty-five thousand drachms or pieces of silver.  Five thousand
+were allotted to each of the aged warriors, the relics of the
+field of Beder; and the last and meanest of the companions of
+Mahomet was distinguished by the annual reward of three thousand
+pieces.  One thousand was the stipend of the veterans who had
+fought in the first battles against the Greeks and Persians; and
+the decreasing pay, as low as fifty pieces of silver, was adapted
+to the respective merit and seniority of the soldiers of Omar.
+Under his reign, and that of his predecessor, the conquerors of
+the East were the trusty servants of God and the people; the mass
+of the public treasure was consecrated to the expenses of peace
+and war; a prudent mixture of justice and bounty maintained the
+discipline of the Saracens, and they united, by a rare felicity,
+the despatch and execution of despotism with the equal and frugal
+maxims of a republican government.  The heroic courage of Ali, ^7
+the consummate prudence of Moawiyah, ^8 excited the emulation of
+their subjects; and the talents which had been exercised in the
+school of civil discord were more usefully applied to propagate
+the faith and dominion of the prophet.  In the sloth and vanity
+of the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes of the house of
+Ommiyah were alike destitute of the qualifications of statesmen
+and of saints. ^9 Yet the spoils of unknown nations were
+continually laid at the foot of their throne, and the uniform
+ascent of the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit of
+the nation rather than the abilities of their chiefs.  A large
+deduction must be allowed for the weakness of their enemies.  The
+birth of Mahomet was fortunately placed in the most degenerate
+and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and the
+Barbarians of Europe: the empires of Trajan, or even of
+Constantine or Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of
+the naked Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have been
+obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia.
+
+[Footnote !: In Arabic, "successors." V. Hammer Geschichte der
+Assas. p. 14 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 4: His reign in Eutychius, tom. ii. p. 251.  Elmacin,
+p. 18. Abulpharagius, p. 108.  Abulfeda, p. 60.  D'Herbelot, p.
+58.]
+
+[Footnote 5: His reign in Eutychius, p. 264.  Elmacin, p. 24.
+Abulpharagius, p. 110.  Abulfeda, p. 66.  D'Herbelot, p. 686.]
+
+[Footnote 6: His reign in Eutychius, p. 323.  Elmacin, p. 36.
+Abulpharagius, p. 115.  Abulfeda, p. 75.  D'Herbelot, p. 695.]
+
+[Footnote 7: His reign in Eutychius, p. 343.  Elmacin, p. 51.
+Abulpharagius, p. 117.  Abulfeda, p. 83.  D'Herbelot, p. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 8: His reign in Eutychius, p. 344.  Elmacin, p. 54.
+Abulpharagius, p. 123.  Abulfeda, p. 101.  D'Herbelot, p. 586.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Their reigns in Eutychius, tom. ii. p. 360 - 395.
+Elmacin, p. 59 - 108.  Abulpharagius, Dynast. ix. p. 124 - 139.
+Abulfeda, p. 111 - 141. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
+691, and the particular articles of the Ommiades.]
+
+In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been
+the aim of the senate to confine their councils and legions to a
+single war, and completely to suppress a first enemy before they
+provoked the hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of
+policy were disdained by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the
+Arabian caliphs.  With the same vigor and success they invaded
+the successors of Augustus and those of Artaxerxes; and the rival
+monarchies at the same instant became the prey of an enemy whom
+they had been so long accustomed to despise.  In the ten years of
+the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his obedience
+thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand
+churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen
+hundred moschs for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet.  One
+hundred years after his flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign
+of his successors extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over
+the various and distant provinces, which may be comprised under
+the names of, I.  Persia; II. Syria; III.  Egypt; IV. Africa;
+and, V.  Spain.  Under this general division, I shall proceed to
+unfold these memorable transactions; despatching with brevity the
+remote and less interesting conquests of the East, and reserving
+a fuller narrative for those domestic countries which had been
+included within the pale of the Roman empire.  Yet I must excuse
+my own defects by a just complaint of the blindness and
+insufficiency of my guides.  The Greeks, so loquacious in
+controversy, have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs of
+their enemies. ^10 After a century of ignorance, the first annals
+of the Mussulmans were collected in a great measure from the
+voice of tradition. ^11 Among the numerous productions of Arabic
+and Persian literature, ^12 our interpreters have selected the
+imperfect sketches of a more recent age. ^13 The art and genius
+of history have ever been unknown to the Asiatics; ^14 they are
+ignorant of the laws of criticism; and our monkish chronicle of
+the same period may be compared to their most popular works,
+which are never vivified by the spirit of philosophy and freedom.
+
+The Oriental library of a Frenchman ^15 would instruct the most
+learned mufti of the East; and perhaps the Arabs might not find
+in a single historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of
+their own exploits as that which will be deduced in the ensuing
+sheets.
+
+[Footnote 10: For the viith and viiith century, we have scarcely
+any original evidence of the Byzantine historians, except the
+chronicles of Theophanes (Theophanis Confessoris Chronographia,
+Gr. et Lat. cum notis Jacobi Goar. Paris, 1665, in folio) and the
+Abridgment of Nicephorus, (Nicephori Patriarchae C. P. Breviarium
+Historicum, Gr. et Lat. Paris, 1648, in folio,) who both lived in
+the beginning of the ixth century, (see Hanckius de Scriptor.
+Byzant. p. 200 - 246.) Their contemporary, Photius, does not seem
+to be more opulent.  After praising the style of Nicephorus, he
+adds, and only complains of his extreme brevity, (Phot. Bibliot.
+Cod. lxvi. p. 100.) Some additions may be gleaned from the more
+recent histories of Cedrenus and Zonaras of the xiith century.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Tabari, or Al Tabari, a native of Taborestan, a
+famous Imam of Bagdad, and the Livy of the Arabians, finished his
+general history in the year of the Hegira 302, (A.D. 914.) At the
+request of his friends, he reduced a work of 30,000 sheets to a
+more reasonable size.  But his Arabic original is known only by
+the Persian and Turkish versions.  The Saracenic history of Ebn
+Amid, or Elmacin, is said to be an abridgment of the great
+Tabari, (Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. preface, p.
+xxxix. and list of authors, D'Herbelot, p. 866, 870, 1014.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: Besides the list of authors framed by Prideaux,
+(Life of Mahomet, p. 179 - 189,) Ockley, (at the end of his
+second volume,) and Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Gengiscan, p.
+525 - 550,) we find in the Bibliotheque Orientale Tarikh, a
+catalogue of two or three hundred histories or chronicles of the
+East, of which not more than three or four are older than Tabari.
+
+A lively sketch of Oriental literature is given by Reiske, (in
+his Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalifae librum memorialem ad calcem
+Abulfedae Tabulae Syriae, Lipsiae, 1776;) but his project and the
+French version of Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Timur Bec, tom. i.
+preface, p. xlv.) have fallen to the ground.]
+
+[Footnote 13: The particular historians and geographers will be
+occasionally introduced.  The four following titles represent the
+Annals which have guided me in this general narrative.  1.
+Annales Eutychii, Patriarchoe Alexandrini, ab Edwardo Pocockio,
+Oxon. 1656, 2 vols. in 4to. A pompous edition of an indifferent
+author, translated by Pocock to gratify the Presbyterian
+prejudices of his friend Selden.  2. Historia Saracenica Georgii
+Elmacini, opera et studio Thomae Erpenii, in 4to., Lugd.
+Batavorum, 1625.  He is said to have hastily translated a corrupt
+Ms., and his version is often deficient in style and sense.  3.
+Historia compendiosa Dynastiarum a Gregorio Abulpharagio,
+interprete Edwardo Pocockio, in 4to., Oxon. 1663. More useful for
+the literary than the civil history of the East.  4. Abulfedoe
+Annales Moslemici ad Ann. Hegiroe ccccvi. a Jo. Jac. Reiske, in
+4to., Lipsioe, 1754.  The best of our chronicles, both for the
+original and version, yet how far below the name of Abulfeda!  We
+know that he wrote at Hamah in the xivth century.  The three
+former were Christians of the xth, xiith, and xiiith centuries;
+the two first, natives of Egypt; a Melchite patriarch, and a
+Jacobite scribe.]
+
+[Footnote 14: M. D. Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. pref. p.
+xix. xx.) has characterized, with truth and knowledge, the two
+sorts of Arabian historians - the dry annalist, and the tumid and
+flowery orator.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Bibliotheque Orientale, par M. D'Herbelot, in
+folio, Paris, 1697.  For the character of the respectable author,
+consult his friend Thevenot, (Voyages du Levant, part i. chap.
+1.) His work is an agreeable miscellany, which must gratify every
+taste; but I never can digest the alphabetical order; and I find
+him more satisfactory in the Persian than the Arabic history.
+The recent supplement from the papers of Mm. Visdelou, and
+Galland, (in folio, La Haye, 1779,) is of a different cast, a
+medley of tales, proverbs, and Chinese antiquities.]
+
+I.  In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant
+Caled, the Sword of God, and the scourge of the infidels,
+advanced to the banks of the Euphrates, and reduced the cities of
+Anbar and Hira.  Westward of the ruins of Babylon, a tribe of
+sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the verge of the desert;
+and Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had embraced the
+Christian religion, and reigned above six hundred years under the
+shadow of the throne of Persia. ^16 The last of the Mondars ^*
+was defeated and slain by Caled; his son was sent a captive to
+Medina; his nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet; the
+people was tempted by the example and success of their
+countrymen; and the caliph accepted as the first-fruits of
+foreign conquest an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of
+gold.  The conquerors, and even their historians, were astonished
+by the dawn of their future greatness: "In the same year," says
+Elmacin, "Caled fought many signal battles: an immense multitude
+of the infidels was slaughtered; and spoils infinite and
+innumerable were acquired by the victorious Moslems." ^17 But the
+invincible Caled was soon transferred to the Syrian war: the
+invasion of the Persian frontier was conducted by less active or
+less prudent commanders: the Saracens were repulsed with loss in
+the passage of the Euphrates; and, though they chastised the
+insolent pursuit of the Magians, their remaining forces still
+hovered in the desert of Babylon. ^!
+
+[Footnote 16: Pocock will explain the chronology, (Specimen Hist.
+Arabum, p. 66 - 74,) and D'Anville the geography, (l'Euphrate, et
+le Tigre, p. 125,) of the dynasty of the Almondars.  The English
+scholar understood more Arabic than the mufti of Aleppo, (Ockley,
+vol. ii. p. 34: ) the French geographer is equally at home in
+every age and every climate of the world.]
+
+[Footnote *: Eichhorn and Silvestre de Sacy have written on the
+obscure history of the Mondars. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Fecit et Chaled plurima in hoc anno praelia, in
+quibus vicerunt Muslimi, et infidelium immensa multitudine occisa
+spolia infinita et innumera sunt nacti, (Hist. Saracenica, p.
+20.) The Christian annalist slides into the national and
+compendious term of infidels, and I often adopt (I hope without
+scandal) this characteristic mode of expression.]
+
+[Footnote !: Compare throughout Malcolm, vol. ii. p. 136. - M.]
+
+The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a
+moment their intestine divisions.  By the unanimous sentence of
+the priests and nobles, their queen Arzema was deposed; the sixth
+of the transient usurpers, who had arisen and vanished in three
+or four years since the death of Chosroes, and the retreat of
+Heraclius.  Her tiara was placed on the head of Yezdegerd, the
+grandson of Chosroes; and the same aera, which coincides with an
+astronomical period, ^18 has recorded the fall of the Sassanian
+dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. ^19 The youth and
+inexperience of the prince (he was only fifteen years of age)
+declined a perilous encounter: the royal standard was delivered
+into the hands of his general Rustam; and a remnant of thirty
+thousand regular troops was swelled in truth, or in opinion, to
+one hundred and twenty thousand subjects, or allies, of the great
+king.  The Moslems, whose numbers were reenforced from twelve to
+thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Cadesia:
+^20 and their line, though it consisted of fewer men, could
+produce more soldiers, than the unwieldy host of the infidels.  I
+shall here observe, what I must often repeat, that the charge of
+the Arabs was not, like that of the Greeks and Romans, the effort
+of a firm and compact infantry: their military force was chiefly
+formed of cavalry and archers; and the engagement, which was
+often interrupted and often renewed by single combats and flying
+skirmishes, might be protracted without any decisive event to the
+continuance of several days.  The periods of the battle of
+Cadesia were distinguished by their peculiar appellations.  The
+first, from the well- timed appearance of six thousand of the
+Syrian brethren, was denominated the day of succor.  The day of
+concussion might express the disorder of one, or perhaps of both,
+of the contending armies.  The third, a nocturnal tumult,
+received the whimsical name of the night of barking, from the
+discordant clamors, which were compared to the inarticulate
+sounds of the fiercest animals.  The morning of the succeeding
+day ^* determined the fate of Persia; and a seasonable whirlwind
+drove a cloud of dust against the faces of the unbelievers.  The
+clangor of arms was reechoed to the tent of Rustam, who, far
+unlike the ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining in a
+cool and tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp, and the
+train of mules that were laden with gold and silver.  On the
+sound of danger he started from his couch; but his flight was
+overtaken by a valiant Arab, who caught him by the foot, struck
+off his head, hoisted it on a lance, and instantly returning to
+the field of battle, carried slaughter and dismay among the
+thickest ranks of the Persians. The Saracens confess a loss of
+seven thousand five hundred men; ^! and the battle of Cadesia is
+justly described by the epithets of obstinate and atrocious. ^21
+The standard of the monarchy was overthrown and captured in the
+field - a leathern apron of a blacksmith, who in ancient times
+had arisen the deliverer of Persia; but this badge of heroic
+poverty was disguised, and almost concealed, by a profusion of
+precious gems. ^22 After this victory, the wealthy province of
+Irak, or Assyria, submitted to the caliph, and his conquests were
+firmly established by the speedy foundation of Bassora, ^23 a
+place which ever commands the trade and navigation of the
+Persians.  As the distance of fourscore miles from the Gulf, the
+Euphrates and Tigris unite in a broad and direct current, which
+is aptly styled the river of the Arabs.  In the midway, between
+the junction and the mouth of these famous streams, the new
+settlement was planted on the western bank: the first colony was
+composed of eight hundred Moslems; but the influence of the
+situation soon reared a flourishing and populous capital.  The
+air, though excessively hot, is pure and healthy: the meadows are
+filled with palm- trees and cattle; and one of the adjacent
+valleys has been celebrated among the four paradises or gardens
+of Asia.  Under the first caliphs the jurisdiction of this
+Arabian colony extended over the southern provinces of Persia:
+the city has been sanctified by the tombs of the companions and
+martyrs; and the vessels of Europe still frequent the port of
+Bassora, as a convenient station and passage of the Indian trade.
+
+[Footnote 18: A cycle of 120 years, the end of which an
+intercalary month of 30 days supplied the use of our Bissextile,
+and restored the integrity of the solar year.  In a great
+revolution of 1440 years this intercalation was successively
+removed from the first to the twelfth month; but Hyde and Freret
+are involved in a profound controversy, whether the twelve, or
+only eight of these changes were accomplished before the aera of
+Yezdegerd, which is unanimously fixed to the 16th of June, A.D.
+632.  How laboriously does the curious spirit of Europe explore
+the darkest and most distant antiquities! (Hyde de Religione
+Persarum, c. 14 - 18, p. 181 - 211. Freret in the Mem. de
+l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xvi. p. 233 - 267.)]
+
+[Footnote 19: Nine days after the death of Mahomet (7th June,
+A.D. 632) we find the aera of Yezdegerd, (16th June, A.D. 632,)
+and his accession cannot be postponed beyond the end of the first
+year.  His predecessors could not therefore resist the arms of
+the caliph Omar; and these unquestionable dates overthrow the
+thoughtless chronology of Abulpharagius.  See Ockley's Hist. of
+the Saracens, vol. i. p. 130.
+
+Note: The Rezont Uzzuffa (Price, p. 105) has a strange
+account of an embassy to Yezdegerd.  The Oriental historians take
+great delight in these embassies, which give them an opportunity
+of displaying their Asiatic eloquence - M.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Cadesia, says the Nubian geographer, (p. 121,) is
+in margine solitudinis, 61 leagues from Bagdad, and two stations
+from Cufa.  Otter (Voyage, tom. i. p. 163) reckons 15 leagues,
+and observes, that the place is supplied with dates and water.]
+
+[Footnote *: The day of cormorants, or according to another
+reading the day of reinforcements.  It was the night which was
+called the night of snarling. Price, p. 114. - M.]
+
+[Footnote !: According to Malcolm's authorities, only three
+thousand; but he adds "This is the report of Mahomedan
+historians, who have a great disposition of the wonderful, in
+relating the first actions of the faithful" Vol. i. p. 39. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Atrox, contumax, plus semel renovatum, are the
+well-chosen expressions of the translator of Abulfeda, (Reiske,
+p. 69.)]
+
+[Footnote 22: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 297, 348.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The reader may satisfy himself on the subject of
+Bassora by consulting the following writers: Geograph, Nubiens.
+p. 121.  D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 192.  D'Anville,
+l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130, 133, 145.  Raynal, Hist.
+Philosophique des deux Indes, tom. ii. p. 92 - 100. Voyages di
+Pietro della Valle, tom. iv. p. 370 - 391.  De Tavernier, tom. i.
+p. 240 - 247.  De Thevenot, tom. ii. p. 545 - 584.  D Otter, tom.
+ii. p. 45 - 78.  De Niebuhr, tom. ii. p. 172 - 199.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part II.
+
+After the defeat of Cadesia, a country intersected by rivers
+and canals might have opposed an insuperable barrier to the
+victorious cavalry; and the walls of Ctesiphon or Madayn, which
+had resisted the battering-rams of the Romans, would not have
+yielded to the darts of the Saracens.  But the flying Persians
+were overcome by the belief, that the last day of their religion
+and empire was at hand; the strongest posts were abandoned by
+treachery or cowardice; and the king, with a part of his family
+and treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the Median hills.
+
+In the third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of
+Omar, passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken
+by assault; and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a
+keener edge to the sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with
+religious transport, "This is the white palace of Chosroes; this
+is the promise of the apostle of God!" The naked robbers of the
+desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope or
+knowledge.  Each chamber revealed a new treasure secreted with
+art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the
+various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says
+Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers; and another historian
+defines the untold and almost infinite mass, by the fabulous
+computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of
+pieces of gold. ^24 Some minute though curious facts represent
+the contrast of riches and ignorance.  From the remote islands of
+the Indian Ocean a large provision of camphire ^25 had been
+imported, which is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate
+the palaces of the East. Strangers to the name and properties of
+that odoriferous gum, the Saracens, mistaking it for salt,
+mingled the camphire in their bread, and were astonished at the
+bitterness of the taste.  One of the apartments of the palace was
+decorated with a carpet of silk, sixty cubits in length, and as
+many in breadth: a paradise or garden was depictured on the
+ground: the flowers, fruits, and shrubs, were imitated by the
+figures of the gold embroidery, and the colors of the precious
+stones; and the ample square was encircled by a variegated and
+verdant border. ^! The Arabian general persuaded his soldiers to
+relinquish their claim, in the reasonable hope that the eyes of
+the caliph would be delighted with the splendid workmanship of
+nature and industry. Regardless of the merit of art, and the pomp
+of royalty, the rigid Omar divided the prize among his brethren
+of Medina: the picture was destroyed; but such was the intrinsic
+value of the materials, that the share of Ali alone was sold for
+twenty thousand drams.  A mule that carried away the tiara and
+cuirass, the belt and bracelets of Chosroes, was overtaken by the
+pursuers; the gorgeous trophy was presented to the commander of
+the faithful; and the gravest of the companions condescended to
+smile when they beheld the white beard, the hairy arms, and
+uncouth figure of the veteran, who was invested with the spoils
+of the Great King. ^26 The sack of Ctesiphon was followed by its
+desertion and gradual decay.  The Saracens disliked the air and
+situation of the place, and Omar was advised by his general to
+remove the seat of government to the western side of the
+Euphrates.  In every age, the foundation and ruin of the Assyrian
+cities has been easy and rapid: the country is destitute of stone
+and timber; and the most solid structures ^27 are composed of
+bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement of the native
+bitumen.  The name of Cufa ^28 describes a habitation of reeds
+and earth; but the importance of the new capital was supported by
+the numbers, wealth, and spirit, of a colony of veterans; and
+their licentiousness was indulged by the wisest caliphs, who were
+apprehensive of provoking the revolt of a hundred thousand
+swords: "Ye men of Cufa," said Ali, who solicited their aid, "you
+have been always conspicuous by your valor.  You conquered the
+Persian king, and scattered his forces, till you had taken
+possession of his inheritance." This mighty conquest was achieved
+by the battles of Jalula and Nehavend. After the loss of the
+former, Yezdegerd fled from Holwan, and concealed his shame and
+despair in the mountains of Farsistan, from whence Cyrus had
+descended with his equal and valiant companions.  The courage of
+the nation survived that of the monarch: among the hills to the
+south of Ecbatana or Hamadan, one hundred and fifty thousand
+Persians made a third and final stand for their religion and
+country; and the decisive battle of Nehavend was styled by the
+Arabs the victory of victories.  If it be true that the flying
+general of the Persians was stopped and overtaken in a crowd of
+mules and camels laden with honey, the incident, however slight
+and singular, will denote the luxurious impediments of an
+Oriental army. ^29
+
+[Footnote 24: Mente vix potest numerove comprehendi quanta spolia
+nostris cesserint.  Abulfeda, p. 69.  Yet I still suspect, that
+the extravagant numbers of Elmacin may be the error, not of the
+text, but of the version. The best translators from the Greek,
+for instance, I find to be very poor arithmeticians.
+
+Note: Ockley (Hist. of Saracens, vol. i. p. 230) translates
+in the same manner three thousand million of ducats.  See
+Forster's Mahometanism Unveiled, vol. ii. p. 462; who makes this
+innocent doubt of Gibbon, in which, is to the amount of the
+plunder, I venture to concur, a grave charge of inaccuracy and
+disrespect to the memory of Erpenius.
+
+The Persian authorities of Price (p. 122) make the booty
+worth three hundred and thirty millions sterling! - M]
+
+[Footnote 25: The camphire-tree grows in China and Japan; but
+many hundred weight of those meaner sorts are exchanged for a
+single pound of the more precious gum of Borneo and Sumatra,
+(Raynal, Hist. Philosoph. tom. i. p. 362 - 365.  Dictionnaire
+d'Hist. Naturelle par Bomare Miller's Gardener's Dictionary.)
+These may be the islands of the first climate from whence the
+Arabians imported their camphire (Geograph. Nub. p. 34, 35.
+D'Herbelot, p. 232.)]
+
+[Footnote !: Compare Price, p. 122. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 26: See Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 376, 377.
+I may credit the fact, without believing the prophecy.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The most considerable ruins of Assyria are the
+tower of Belus, at Babylon, and the hall of Chosroes, at
+Ctesiphon: they have been visited by that vain and curious
+traveller Pietro della Valle, (tom. i. p. 713 - 718, 731 - 735.)
+
+Note: The best modern account is that of Claudius Rich Esq.
+Two Memoirs of Babylon.  London, 1818. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Consult the article of Coufah in the Bibliotheque
+of D'Herbelot ( p. 277, 278,) and the second volume of Ockley's
+History, particularly p. 40 and 153.]
+
+[Footnote 29: See the article of Nehavend, in D'Herbelot, p. 667,
+668; and Voyages en Turquie et en Perse, par Otter, tom. i. 191.
+
+Note: Malcolm vol. i. p. 141. - M.]
+
+The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks
+and Latins; but the most illustrious of her cities appear to be
+more ancient than the invasion of the Arabs.  By the reduction of
+Hamadan and Ispahan, of Caswin, Tauris, and Rei, they gradually
+approached the shores of the Caspian Sea: and the orators of
+Mecca might applaud the success and spirit of the faithful, who
+had already lost sight of the northern bear, and had almost
+transcended the bounds of the habitable world. ^30 Again, turning
+towards the West and the Roman empire, they repassed the Tigris
+over the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces of
+Armenia and Mesopotamia, embraced their victorious brethren of
+the Syrian army.  From the palace of Madayn their Eastern
+progress was not less rapid or extensive.  They advanced along
+the Tigris and the Gulf; penetrated through the passes of the
+mountains into the valley of Estachar or Persepolis, and profaned
+the last sanctuary of the Magian empire.  The grandson of
+Chosroes was nearly surprised among the falling columns and
+mutilated figures; a sad emblem of the past and present fortune
+of Persia: ^31 he fled with accelerated haste over the desert of
+Kirman, implored the aid of the warlike Segestans, and sought an
+humble refuge on the verge of the Turkish and Chinese power.  But
+a victorious army is insensible of fatigue: the Arabs divided
+their forces in the pursuit of a timorous enemy; and the caliph
+Othman promised the government of Chorasan to the first general
+who should enter that large and populous country, the kingdom of
+the ancient Bactrians.  The condition was accepted; the prize was
+deserved; the standard of Mahomet was planted on the walls of
+Herat, Merou, and Balch; and the successful leader neither halted
+nor reposed till his foaming cavalry had tasted the waters of the
+Oxus.  In the public anarchy, the independent governors of the
+cities and castles obtained their separate capitulations: the
+terms were granted or imposed by the esteem, the prudence, or the
+compassion, of the victors; and a simple profession of faith
+established the distinction between a brother and a slave.  After
+a noble defence, Harmozan, the prince or satrap of Ahwaz and
+Susa, was compelled to surrender his person and his state to the
+discretion of the caliph; and their interview exhibits a portrait
+of the Arabian manners. In the presence, and by the command, of
+Omar, the gay Barbarian was despoiled of his silken robes
+embroidered with gold, and of his tiara bedecked with rubies and
+emeralds: "Are you now sensible," said the conqueror to his naked
+captive - "are you now sensible of the judgment of God, and of
+the different rewards of infidelity and obedience?" "Alas!"
+replied Harmozan, "I feel them too deeply.  In the days of our
+common ignorance, we fought with the weapons of the flesh, and my
+nation was superior.  God was then neuter: since he has espoused
+your quarrel, you have subverted our kingdom and religion."
+Oppressed by this painful dialogue, the Persian complained of
+intolerable thirst, but discovered some apprehension lest he
+should be killed whilst he was drinking a cup of water.  "Be of
+good courage," said the caliph; "your life is safe till you have
+drunk this water: " the crafty satrap accepted the assurance, and
+instantly dashed the vase against the ground.  Omar would have
+avenged the deceit, but his companions represented the sanctity
+of an oath; and the speedy conversion of Harmozan entitled him
+not only to a free pardon, but even to a stipend of two thousand
+pieces of gold.  The administration of Persia was regulated by an
+actual survey of the people, the cattle, and the fruits of the
+earth; ^32 and this monument, which attests the vigilance of the
+caliphs, might have instructed the philosophers of every age. ^33
+
+[Footnote 30: It is in such a style of ignorance and wonder that
+the Athenian orator describes the Arctic conquests of Alexander,
+who never advanced beyond the shores of the Caspian.  Aeschines
+contra Ctesiphontem, tom. iii. p. 554, edit.  Graec. Orator.
+Reiske.  This memorable cause was pleaded at Athens, Olymp. cxii.
+3, (before Christ 330,) in the autumn, (Taylor, praefat. p. 370,
+&c.,) about a year after the battle of Arbela; and Alexander, in
+the pursuit of Darius, was marching towards Hyrcania and
+Bactriana.]
+
+[Footnote 31: We are indebted for this curious particular to the
+Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 116; but it is needless to prove
+the identity of Estachar and Persepolis, (D'Herbelot, p. 327;)
+and still more needless to copy the drawings and descriptions of
+Sir John Chardin, or Corneillo le Bruyn.]
+
+[Footnote 32: After the conquest of Persia, Theophanes adds,
+(Chronograph p. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Amidst our meagre relations, I must regret that
+D'Herbelot has not found and used a Persian translation of
+Tabari, enriched, as he says, with many extracts from the native
+historians of the Ghebers or Magi, (Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
+1014.)]
+
+The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus, and
+as far as the Jaxartes, two rivers ^34 of ancient and modern
+renown, which descend from the mountains of India towards the
+Caspian Sea.  He was hospitably entertained by Takhan, prince of
+Fargana, ^35 a fertile province on the Jaxartes: the king of
+Samarcand, with the Turkish tribes of Sogdiana and Scythia, were
+moved by the lamentations and promises of the fallen monarch; and
+he solicited, by a suppliant embassy, the more solid and powerful
+friendship of the emperor of China. ^36 The virtuous Taitsong,
+^37 the first of the dynasty of the Tang may be justly compared
+with the Antonines of Rome: his people enjoyed the blessings of
+prosperity and peace; and his dominion was acknowledged by
+forty-four hordes of the Barbarians of Tartary.  His last
+garrisons of Cashgar and Khoten maintained a frequent intercourse
+with their neighbors of the Jaxartes and Oxus; a recent colony of
+Persians had introduced into China the astronomy of the Magi; and
+Taitsong might be alarmed by the rapid progress and dangerous
+vicinity of the Arabs.  The influence, and perhaps the supplies,
+of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd and the zeal of the
+worshippers of fire; and he returned with an army of Turks to
+conquer the inheritance of his fathers.  The fortunate Moslems,
+without unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin
+and death.  The grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by his servant,
+insulted by the seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed,
+defeated, and pursued by his Barbarian allies.  He reached the
+banks of a river, and offered his rings and bracelets for an
+instant passage in a miller's boat. Ignorant or insensible of
+royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drams of silver
+were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend
+his work unless the loss were repaid.  In this moment of
+hesitation and delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was
+overtaken and slaughtered by the Turkish cavalry, in the
+nineteenth year of his unhappy reign. ^38 ^* His son Firuz, an
+humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station of
+captain of his guards; and the Magian worship was long preserved
+by a colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bucharia. ^! His
+grandson inherited the regal name; but after a faint and
+fruitless enterprise, he returned to China, and ended his days in
+the palace of Sigan.  The male line of the Sassanides was
+extinct; but the female captives, the daughters of Persia, were
+given to the conquerors in servitude, or marriage; and the race
+of the caliphs and imams was ennobled by the blood of their royal
+mothers. ^39
+
+[Footnote 34: The most authentic accounts of the two rivers, the
+Sihon (Jaxartes) and the Gihon, (Oxus,) may be found in Sherif al
+Edrisi (Geograph. Nubiens. p. 138,) Abulfeda, (Descript.
+Chorasan. in Hudson, tom. iii. p. 23,) Abulghazi Khan, who
+reigned on their banks, (Hist. Genealogique des Tatars, p. 32,
+57, 766,) and the Turkish Geographer, a MS. in the king of
+France's library, (Examen Critique des Historiens d'Alexandre, p.
+194 - 360.)]
+
+[Footnote 35: The territory of Fergana is described by Abulfeda,
+p. 76, 77.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Eo redegit angustiarum eundem regem exsulem, ut
+Turcici regis, et Sogdiani, et Sinensis, auxilia missis literis
+imploraret, (Abulfed. Annal. p. 74) The connection of the Persian
+and Chinese history is illustrated by Freret (Mem. de l'Academie,
+tom. xvi. p. 245 - 255) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.
+p. 54 - 59,) and for the geography of the borders, tom. ii. p. 1
+- 43.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Hist. Sinica, p. 41 - 46, in the iiid part of the
+Relations Curieuses of Thevenot.]
+
+[Footnote 38: I have endeavored to harmonize the various
+narratives of Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 37,) Abulpharagius,
+(Dynast. p. 116,) Abulfeda, (Annal. p. 74, 79,) and D'Herbelot,
+(p. 485.) The end of Yezdegerd, was not only unfortunate but
+obscure.]
+
+[Footnote *: The account of Yezdegerd's death in the Habeib
+'usseyr and Rouzut uzzuffa (Price, p. 162) is much more probable.
+
+On the demand of the few dhirems, he offered to the miller his
+sword, and royal girdle, of inesturable value.  This awoke the
+cupidity of the miller, who murdered him, and threw the body into
+the stream. - M.]
+
+[Footnote !: Firouz died leaving a son called Ni-ni-cha by the
+Chinese, probably Narses.  Yezdegerd had two sons, Firouz and
+Bahram St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 318. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The two daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the
+son of Ali, and Mohammed, the son of Abubeker; and the first of
+these was the father of a numerous progeny.  The daughter of
+Phirouz became the wife of the caliph Walid, and their son Yezid
+derived his genuine or fabulous descent from the Chosroes of
+Persia, the Caesars of Rome, and the Chagans of the Turks or
+Avars, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot.  Orientale, p. 96, 487.)]
+
+After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the River Oxus
+divided the territories of the Saracens and of the Turks.  This
+narrow boundary was soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs;
+the governors of Chorasan extended their successive inroads; and
+one of their triumphs was adorned with the buskin of a Turkish
+queen, which she dropped in her precipitate flight beyond the
+hills of Bochara. ^40 But the final conquest of Transoxiana, ^41
+as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign of the
+inactive Walid; and the name of Catibah, the camel driver,
+declares the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant.
+While one of his colleagues displayed the first Mahometan banner
+on the banks of the Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus,
+the Jaxartes, and the Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of
+Catibah to the obedience of the prophet and of the caliph. ^42 A
+tribute of two millions of pieces of gold was imposed on the
+infidels; their idols were burnt or broken; the Mussulman chief
+pronounced a sermon in the new mosch of Carizme; after several
+battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and
+the emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious
+Arabs.  To their industry, the prosperity of the province, the
+Sogdiana of the ancients, may in a great measure be ascribed; but
+the advantages of the soil and climate had been understood and
+cultivated since the reign of the Macedonian kings.  Before the
+invasion of the Saracens, Carizme, Bochara, and Samarcand were
+rich and populous under the yoke of the shepherds of the north.
+^* These cities were surrounded with a double wall; and the
+exterior fortification, of a larger circumference, enclosed the
+fields and gardens of the adjacent district. The mutual wants of
+India and Europe were supplied by the diligence of the Sogdian
+merchants; and the inestimable art of transforming linen into
+paper has been diffused from the manufacture of Samarcand over
+the western world. ^43
+
+[Footnote 40: It was valued at 2000 pieces of gold, and was the
+prize of Obeidollah, the son of Ziyad, a name afterwards infamous
+by the murder of Hosein, (Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol.
+ii. p. 142, 143,) His brother Salem was accompanied by his wife,
+the first Arabian woman (A.D. 680) who passed the Oxus: she
+borrowed, or rather stole, the crown and jewels of the princess
+of the Sogdians, (p. 231, 232.)]
+
+[Footnote 41: A part of Abulfeda's geography is translated by
+Greaves, inserted in Hudson's collection of the minor
+geographers, (tom. iii.,) and entitled Descriptio Chorasmiae et
+Mawaralnahroe, id est, regionum extra fluvium, Oxum, p. 80.  The
+name of Transoxiana, softer in sound, equivalent in sense, is
+aptly used by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Gengiscan, &c.,) and
+some modern Orientalists, but they are mistaken in ascribing it
+to the writers of antiquity.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The conquests of Catibah are faintly marked by
+Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 84,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient.
+Catbah, Samarcand Valid.,) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom.
+i. p. 58, 59.)]
+
+[Footnote *: The manuscripts Arabian and Persian writers in the
+royal library contain very circumstantial details on the contest
+between the Persians and Arabians.  M. St. Martin declined this
+addition to the work of Le Beau, as extending to too great a
+length.  St. Martin vol. xi. p. 320. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 43: A curious description of Samarcand is inserted in
+the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 208, &c.  The
+librarian Casiri (tom. ii. 9) relates, from credible testimony,
+that paper was first imported from China to Samarcand, A. H. 30,
+and invented, or rather introduced, at Mecca, A. H. 88.  The
+Escurial library contains paper Mss. as old as the ivth or vth
+century of the Hegira.]
+
+II.  No sooner had Abubeker restored the unity of faith and
+government, than he despatched a circular letter to the Arabian
+tribes. "In the name of the most merciful God, to the rest of the
+true believers. Health and happiness, and the mercy and blessing
+of God, be upon you.  I praise the most high God, and I pray for
+his prophet Mahomet.  This is to acquaint you, that I intend to
+send the true believers into Syria ^44 to take it out of the
+hands of the infidels.  And I would have you know, that the
+fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God." His
+messengers returned with the tidings of pious and martial ardor
+which they had kindled in every province; and the camp of Medina
+was successively filled with the intrepid bands of the Saracens,
+who panted for action, complained of the heat of the season and
+the scarcity of provisions, and accused with impatient murmurs
+the delays of the caliph.  As soon as their numbers were
+complete, Abubeker ascended the hill, reviewed the men, the
+horses, and the arms, and poured forth a fervent prayer for the
+success of their undertaking.  In person, and on foot, he
+accompanied the first day's march; and when the blushing leaders
+attempted to dismount, the caliph removed their scruples by a
+declaration, that those who rode, and those who walked, in the
+service of religion, were equally meritorious.  His instructions
+^45 to the chiefs of the Syrian army were inspired by the warlike
+fanaticism which advances to seize, and affects to despise, the
+objects of earthly ambition.  "Remember," said the successor of
+the prophet, "that you are always in the presence of God, on the
+verge of death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of
+paradise.  Avoid injustice and oppression; consult with your
+brethren, and study to preserve the love and confidence of your
+troops.  When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit
+yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not your
+victory be stained with the blood of women or children.  Destroy
+no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no
+fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill
+to eat.  When you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and
+be as good as your word.  As you go on, you will find some
+religious persons who live retired in monasteries, and propose to
+themselves to serve God that way: let them alone, and neither
+kill them nor destroy their monasteries: ^46 And you will find
+another sort of people, that belong to the synagogue of Satan,
+who have shaven crowns; ^47 be sure you cleave their skulls, and
+give them no quarter till they either turn Mahometans or pay
+"tribute." All profane or frivolous conversation, all dangerous
+recollection of ancient quarrels, was severely prohibited among
+the Arabs: in the tumult of a camp, the exercises of religion
+were assiduously practised; and the intervals of action were
+employed in prayer, meditation, and the study of the Koran.  The
+abuse, or even the use, of wine was chastised by fourscore
+strokes on the soles of the feet, and in the fervor of their
+primitive zeal, many secret sinners revealed their fault, and
+solicited their punishment.  After some hesitation, the command
+of the Syrian army was delegated to Abu Obeidah, one of the
+fugitives of Mecca, and companions of Mahomet; whose zeal and
+devotion was assuaged, without being abated, by the singular
+mildness and benevolence of his temper.  But in all the
+emergencies of war, the soldiers demanded the superior genius of
+Caled; and whoever might be the choice of the prince, the Sword
+of God was both in fact and fame the foremost leader of the
+Saracens.  He obeyed without reluctance; ^* he was consulted
+without jealousy; and such was the spirit of the man, or rather
+of the times, that Caled professed his readiness to serve under
+the banner of the faith, though it were in the hands of a child
+or an enemy.  Glory, and riches, and dominion, were indeed
+promised to the victorious Mussulman; but he was carefully
+instructed, that if the goods of this life were his only
+incitement, they likewise would be his only reward.
+
+[Footnote 44: A separate history of the conquest of Syria has
+been composed by Al Wakidi, cadi of Bagdad, who was born A.D.
+748, and died A.D. 822; he likewise wrote the conquest of Egypt,
+of Diarbekir, &c.  Above the meagre and recent chronicles of the
+Arabians, Al Wakidi has the double merit of antiquity and
+copiousness.  His tales and traditions afford an artless picture
+of the men and the times.  Yet his narrative is too often
+defective, trifling, and improbable.  Till something better shall
+be found, his learned and spiritual interpreter (Ockley, in his
+History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 21 - 342) will not deserve
+the petulant animadversion of Reiske, (Prodidagmata ad Magji
+Chalifae Tabulas, p. 236.) I am sorry to think that the labors of
+Ockley were consummated in a jail, (see his two prefaces to the
+1st A.D. 1708, to the 2d, 1718, with the list of authors at the
+end.)
+
+Note: M. Hamaker has clearly shown that neither of these
+works can be inscribed to Al Wakidi: they are not older than the
+end of the xith century or later than the middle of the xivth.
+Praefat. in Inc. Auct. LIb. de Expugnatione Memphidis, c. ix. x.
+- M.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The instructions, &c., of the Syrian war are
+described by Al Wakidi and Ockley, tom. i. p. 22 - 27, &c.  In
+the sequel it is necessary to contract, and needless to quote,
+their circumstantial narrative.  My obligations to others shall
+be noticed.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Notwithstanding this precept, M. Pauw (Recherches
+sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 192, edit. Lausanne) represents
+the Bedoweens as the implacable enemies of the Christian monks.
+For my own part, I am more inclined to suspect the avarice of the
+Arabian robbers, and the prejudices of the German philosopher.
+
+Note: Several modern travellers (Mr. Fazakerley, in
+Walpole's Travels in the East, vol. xi. 371) give very amusing
+accounts of the terms on which the monks of Mount Sinai live with
+the neighboring Bedoweens. Such, probably, was their relative
+state in older times, wherever the Arab retained his Bedoween
+habits. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Even in the seventh century, the monks were
+generally laymen: 'hey wore their hair long and dishevelled, and
+shaved their heads when they were ordained priests.  The circular
+tonsure was sacred and mysterious; it was the crown of thorns;
+but it was likewise a royal diadem, and every priest was a king,
+&c., (Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 721 - 758,
+especially p. 737, 738.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare Price, p. 90. - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part IV.
+
+Another expedition of the conquerors of Damascus will
+equally display their avidity and their contempt for the riches
+of the present world.  They were informed that the produce and
+manufactures of the country were annually collected in the fair
+of Abyla, ^64 about thirty miles from the city; that the cell of
+a devout hermit was visited at the same time by a multitude of
+pilgrims; and that the festival of trade and superstition would
+be ennobled by the nuptials of the daughter of the governor of
+Tripoli.  Abdallah, the son of Jaafar, a glorious and holy
+martyr, undertook, with a banner of five hundred horse, the pious
+and profitable commission of despoiling the infidels.  As he
+approached the fair of Abyla, he was astonished by the report of
+this mighty concourse of Jews and Christians, Greeks, and
+Armenians, of natives of Syria and of strangers of Egypt, to the
+number of ten thousand, besides a guard of five thousand horse
+that attended the person of the bride.  The Saracens paused: "For
+my own part," said Abdallah, "I dare not go back: our foes are
+many, our danger is great, but our reward is splendid and secure,
+either in this life or in the life to come.  Let every man,
+according to his inclination, advance or retire." Not a Mussulman
+deserted his standard.  "Lead the way," said Abdallah to his
+Christian guide, "and you shall see what the companions of the
+prophet can perform." They charged in five squadrons; but after
+the first advantage of the surprise, they were encompassed and
+almost overwhelmed by the multitude of their enemies; and their
+valiant band is fancifully compared to a white spot in the skin
+of a black camel. ^65 About the hour of sunset, when their
+weapons dropped from their hands, when they panted on the verge
+of eternity, they discovered an approaching cloud of dust; they
+heard the welcome sound of the tecbir, ^66 and they soon
+perceived the standard of Caled, who flew to their relief with
+the utmost speed of his cavalry.  The Christians were broken by
+his attack, and slaughtered in their flight, as far as the river
+of Tripoli.  They left behind them the various riches of the
+fair; the merchandises that were exposed for sale, the money that
+was brought for purchase, the gay decorations of the nuptials,
+and the governor's daughter, with forty of her female attendants.
+
+The fruits, provisions, and furniture, the money, plate, and
+jewels, were diligently laden on the backs of horses, asses, and
+mules; and the holy robbers returned in triumph to Damascus.  The
+hermit, after a short and angry controversy with Caled, declined
+the crown of martyrdom, and was left alive in the solitary scene
+of blood and devastation.
+
+[Footnote 64: Dair Abil Kodos.  After retrenching the last word,
+the epithet, holy, I discover the Abila of Lysanias between
+Damascus and Heliopolis: the name (Abil signifies a vineyard)
+concurs with the situation to justify my conjecture, (Reland,
+Palestin. tom. i. p 317, tom. ii. p. 526, 527.)]
+
+[Footnote 65: I am bolder than Mr. Ockley, (vol. i. p. 164,) who
+dares not insert this figurative expression in the text, though
+he observes in a marginal note, that the Arabians often borrow
+their similes from that useful and familiar animal.  The reindeer
+may be equally famous in the songs of the Laplanders.]
+
+[Footnote 66:  We hear the tecbir; so the Arabs call
+
+Their shout of onset, when with loud appeal
+They challenge heaven, as if demanding conquest.
+
+This word, so formidable in their holy wars, is a verb active,
+(says Ockley in his index,) of the second conjugation, from
+Kabbara, which signifies saying Alla Acbar, God is most mighty!]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part V.
+
+Syria, ^67 one of the countries that have been improved by
+the most early cultivation, is not unworthy of the preference.
+^68 The heat of the climate is tempered by the vicinity of the
+sea and mountains, by the plenty of wood and water; and the
+produce of a fertile soil affords the subsistence, and encourages
+the propagation, of men and animals.  From the age of David to
+that of Heraclius, the country was overspread with ancient and
+flourishing cities: the inhabitants were numerous and wealthy;
+and, after the slow ravage of despotism and superstition, after
+the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could still
+attract and reward the rapacious tribes of the desert.  A plain,
+of ten days' journey, from Damascus to Aleppo and Antioch, is
+watered, on the western side, by the winding course of the
+Orontes.  The hills of Libanus and Anti-Libanus are planted from
+north to south, between the Orontes and the Mediterranean; and
+the epithet of hollow (Coelesyria) was applied to a long and
+fruitful valley, which is confined in the same direction, by the
+two ridges of snowy mountains. ^69 Among the cities, which are
+enumerated by Greek and Oriental names in the geography and
+conquest of Syria, we may distinguish Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis
+or Baalbec, the former as the metropolis of the plain, the latter
+as the capital of the valley.  Under the last of the Caesars,
+they were strong and populous; the turrets glittered from afar:
+an ample space was covered with public and private buildings; and
+the citizens were illustrious by their spirit, or at least by
+their pride; by their riches, or at least by their luxury.  In
+the days of Paganism, both Emesa and Heliopolis were addicted to
+the worship of Baal, or the sun; but the decline of their
+superstition and splendor has been marked by a singular variety
+of fortune.  Not a vestige remains of the temple of Emesa, which
+was equalled in poetic style to the summits of Mount Libanus, ^70
+while the ruins of Baalbec, invisible to the writers of
+antiquity, excite the curiosity and wonder of the European
+traveller. ^71 The measure of the temple is two hundred feet in
+length, and one hundred in breadth: the front is adorned with a
+double portico of eight columns; fourteen may be counted on
+either side; and each column, forty-five feet in height, is
+composed of three massy blocks of stone or marble.  The
+proportions and ornaments of the Corinthian order express the
+architecture of the Greeks: but as Baalbec has never been the
+seat of a monarch, we are at a loss to conceive how the expense
+of these magnificent structures could be supplied by private or
+municipal liberality. ^72 From the conquest of Damascus the
+Saracens proceeded to Heliopolis and Emesa: but I shall decline
+the repetition of the sallies and combats which have been already
+shown on a larger scale. In the prosecution of the war, their
+policy was not less effectual than their sword.  By short and
+separate truces they dissolved the union of the enemy; accustomed
+the Syrians to compare their friendship with their enmity;
+familiarized the idea of their language, religion, and manners;
+and exhausted, by clandestine purchase, the magazines and
+arsenals of the cities which they returned to besiege.  They
+aggravated the ransom of the more wealthy, or the more obstinate;
+and Chalcis alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold, five
+thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as
+many figs and olives as would load five thousand asses. But the
+terms of truce or capitulation were faithfully observed; and the
+lieutenant of the caliph, who had promised not to enter the walls
+of the captive Baalbec, remained tranquil and immovable in his
+tent till the jarring factions solicited the interposition of a
+foreign master.  The conquest of the plain and valley of Syria
+was achieved in less than two years. Yet the commander of the
+faithful reproved the slowness of their progress; and the
+Saracens, bewailing their fault with tears of rage and
+repentance, called aloud on their chiefs to lead them forth to
+fight the battles of the Lord.  In a recent action, under the
+walls of Emesa, an Arabian youth, the cousin of Caled, was heard
+aloud to exclaim, "Methinks I see the black-eyed girls looking
+upon me; one of whom, should she appear in this world, all
+mankind would die for love of her.  And I see in the hand of one
+of them a handkerchief of green silk, and a cap of precious
+stones, and she beckons me, and calls out, Come hither quickly,
+for I love thee." With these words, charging the Christians, he
+made havoc wherever he went, till, observed at length by the
+governor of Hems, he was struck through with a javelin.
+
+[Footnote 67: In the Geography of Abulfeda, the description of
+Syria, his native country, is the most interesting and authentic
+portion.  It was published in Arabic and Latin, Lipsiae, 1766, in
+quarto, with the learned notes of Kochler and Reiske, and some
+extracts of geography and natural history from Ibn Ol Wardii.
+Among the modern travels, Pocock's Description of the East (of
+Syria and Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 88 - 209) is a work of
+superior learning and dignity; but the author too often confounds
+what he had seen and what he had read.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The praises of Dionysius are just and lively.
+Syria, (in Periegesi, v. 902, in tom. iv. Geograph. Minor.
+Hudson.) In another place he styles the country differently, (v.
+898.)
+
+This poetical geographer lived in the age of Augustus, and
+his description of the world is illustrated by the Greek
+commentary of Eustathius, who paid the same compliment to Homer
+and Dionysius, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. l. iv. c. 2, tom. iii. p.
+21, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 69: The topography of the Libanus and Anti-Libanus is
+excellently described by the learning and sense of Reland,
+(Palestin. tom. i. p. 311 - 326)]
+
+[Footnote 70: - Emesae fastigia celsa renident.
+           Nam diffusa solo latus explicat; ac subit auras
+           Turribus in coelum nitentibus: incola claris
+           Cor studiis acuit ...
+           Denique flammicomo devoti pectora soli
+           Vitam agitant.  Libanus frondosa cacumina turget.
+           Et tamen his certant celsi fastigia templi.
+
+These verses of the Latin version of Rufus Avienus are wanting in
+the Greek original of Dionysius; and since they are likewise
+unnoticed by Eustathius, I must, with Fabricius, (Bibliot. Latin.
+tom. iii. p. 153, edit. Ernesti,) and against Salmasius, (ad
+Vopiscum, p. 366, 367, in Hist. August.,) ascribed them to the
+fancy, rather than the Mss., of Avienus.]
+
+[Footnote 71: I am much better satisfied with Maundrell's slight
+octavo, (Journey, p. 134 - 139), than with the pompous folio of
+Dr. Pocock, (Description of the East, vol. ii. p. 106 - 113;) but
+every preceding account is eclipsed by the magnificent
+description and drawings of Mm. Dawkins and Wood, who have
+transported into England the ruins of Pamyra and Baalbec.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The Orientals explain the prodigy by a
+never-failing expedient. The edifices of Baalbec were constructed
+by the fairies or the genii, Hist. de Timour Bec, tom. iii. l. v.
+c. 23, p. 311, 312.  Voyage d'Otter, tom. i. p. 83.) With less
+absurdity, but with equal ignorance, Abulfeda and Ibn Chaukel
+ascribe them to the Sabaeans or Aadites Non sunt in omni Syria
+aedificia magnificentiora his, (Tabula Syria p. 108.)]
+
+It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of
+their valor and enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who
+was taught, by repeated losses, that the rovers of the desert had
+undertaken, and would speedily achieve, a regular and permanent
+conquest.  From the provinces of Europe and Asia, fourscore
+thousand soldiers were transported by sea and land to Antioch and
+Caesarea: the light troops of the army consisted of sixty
+thousand Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan.  Under the
+banner of Jabalah, the last of their princes, they marched in the
+van; and it was a maxim of the Greeks, that for the purpose of
+cutting diamond, a diamond was the most effectual. Heraclius
+withheld his person from the dangers of the field; but his
+presumption, or perhaps his despondency, suggested a peremptory
+order, that the fate of the province and the war should be
+decided by a single battle. The Syrians were attached to the
+standard of Rome and of the cross: but the noble, the citizen,
+the peasant, were exasperated by the injustice and cruelty of a
+licentious host, who oppressed them as subjects, and despised
+them as strangers and aliens. ^73 A report of these mighty
+preparations was conveyed to the Saracens in their camp of Emesa,
+and the chiefs, though resolved to fight, assembled a council:
+the faith of Abu Obeidah would have expected on the same spot the
+glory of martyrdom; the wisdom of Caled advised an honorable
+retreat to the skirts of Palestine and Arabia, where they might
+await the succors of their friends, and the attack of the
+unbelievers.  A speedy messenger soon returned from the throne of
+Medina, with the blessings of Omar and Ali, the prayers of the
+widows of the prophet, and a reenforcement of eight thousand
+Moslems.  In their way they overturned a detachment of Greeks,
+and when they joined at Yermuk the camp of their brethren, they
+found the pleasing intelligence, that Caled had already defeated
+and scattered the Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan.  In the
+neighborhood of Bosra, the springs of Mount Hermon descend in a
+torrent to the plain of Decapolis, or ten cities; and the
+Hieromax, a name which has been corrupted to Yermuk, is lost,
+after a short course, in the Lake of Tiberias. ^74 The banks of
+this obscure stream were illustrated by a long and bloody
+encounter. ^* On this momentous occasion, the public voice, and
+the modesty of Abu Obeidah, restored the command to the most
+deserving of the Moslems.  Caled assumed his station in the
+front, his colleague was posted in the rear, that the disorder of
+the fugitive might be checked by his venerable aspect, and the
+sight of the yellow banner which Mahomet had displayed before the
+walls of Chaibar.  The last line was occupied by the sister of
+Derar, with the Arabian women who had enlisted in this holy war,
+who were accustomed to wield the bow and the lance, and who in a
+moment of captivity had defended, against the uncircumcised
+ravishers, their chastity and religion. ^75 The exhortation of
+the generals was brief and forcible: "Paradise is before you, the
+devil and hell-fire in your rear." Yet such was the weight of the
+Roman cavalry, that the right wing of the Arabs was broken and
+separated from the main body.  Thrice did they retreat in
+disorder, and thrice were they driven back to the charge by the
+reproaches and blows of the women. In the intervals of action,
+Abu Obeidah visited the tents of his brethren, prolonged their
+repose by repeating at once the prayers of two different hours,
+bound up their wounds with his own hands, and administered the
+comfortable reflection, that the infidels partook of their
+sufferings without partaking of their reward.  Four thousand and
+thirty of the Moslems were buried in the field of battle; and the
+skill of the Armenian archers enabled seven hundred to boast that
+they had lost an eye in that meritorious service.  The veterans
+of the Syrian war acknowledged that it was the hardest and most
+doubtful of the days which they had seen.  But it was likewise
+the most decisive: many thousands of the Greeks and Syrians fell
+by the swords of the Arabs; many were slaughtered, after the
+defeat, in the woods and mountains; many, by mistaking the ford,
+were drowned in the waters of the Yermuk; and however the loss
+may be magnified, ^76 the Christian writers confess and bewail
+the bloody punishment of their sins. ^77 Manuel, the Roman
+general, was either killed at Damascus, or took refuge in the
+monastery of Mount Sinai.  An exile in the Byzantine court,
+Jabalah lamented the manners of Arabia, and his unlucky
+preference of the Christian cause. ^78 He had once inclined to
+the profession of Islam; but in the pilgrimage of Mecca, Jabalah
+was provoked to strike one of his brethren, and fled with
+amazement from the stern and equal justice of the caliph These
+victorious Saracens enjoyed at Damascus a month of pleasure and
+repose: the spoil was divided by the discretion of Abu Obeidah:
+an equal share was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a
+double portion was reserved for the noble coursers of the Arabian
+breed.
+
+[Footnote 73: I have read somewhere in Tacitus, or Grotius,
+Subjectos habent tanquam suos, viles tanquam alienos.  Some Greek
+officers ravished the wife, and murdered the child, of their
+Syrian landlord; and Manuel smiled at his undutiful complaint.]
+
+[Footnote 74: See Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p. 272, 283, tom. ii.
+p. 773, 775. This learned professor was equal to the task of
+describing the Holy Land, since he was alike conversant with
+Greek and Latin, with Hebrew and Arabian literature.  The Yermuk,
+or Hieromax, is noticed by Cellarius (Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii.
+p. 392) and D'Anville, (Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 185.)
+The Arabs, and even Abulfeda himself, do not seem to recognize
+the scene of their victory.]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare Price, p. 79.  The army of the Romans is
+swoller to 400,000 men of which 70,000 perished. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 75: These women were of the tribe of the Hamyarites,
+who derived their origin from the ancient Amalekites.  Their
+females were accustomed to ride on horseback, and to fight like
+the Amazons of old, (Ockley, vol. i. p. 67.)]
+
+[Footnote 76: We killed of them, says Abu Obeidah to the caliph,
+one hundred and fifty thousand, and made prisoners forty
+thousand, (Ockley vol. i. p. 241.) As I cannot doubt his
+veracity, nor believe his computation, I must suspect that the
+Arabic historians indulge themselves in the practice of comparing
+speeches and letters for their heroes.]
+
+[Footnote 77: After deploring the sins of the Christians,
+Theophanes, adds, (Chronograph. p. 276,) does he mean Aiznadin?
+His account is brief and obscure, but he accuses the numbers of
+the enemy, the adverse wind, and the cloud of dust.
+(Chronograph. p. 280.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 70, 71,) who
+transcribes the poetical complaint of Jabalah himself, and some
+panegyrical strains of an Arabian poet, to whom the chief of
+Gassan sent from Constantinople a gift of five hundred pieces of
+gold by the hands of the ambassador of Omar.]
+
+After the battle of Yermuk, the Roman army no longer
+appeared in the field; and the Saracens might securely choose,
+among the fortified towns of Syria, the first object of their
+attack.  They consulted the caliph whether they should march to
+Caesarea or Jerusalem; and the advice of Ali determined the
+immediate siege of the latter.  To a profane eye, Jerusalem was
+the first or second capital of Palestine; but after Mecca and
+Medina, it was revered and visited by the devout Moslems, as the
+temple of the Holy Land which had been sanctified by the
+revelation of Moses, of Jesus, and of Mahomet himself.  The son
+of Abu Sophian was sent with five thousand Arabs to try the first
+experiment of surprise or treaty; but on the eleventh day, the
+town was invested by the whole force of Abu Obeidah.  He
+addressed the customary summons to the chief commanders and
+people of Aelia. ^79
+
+[Footnote 79: In the name of the city, the profane prevailed over
+the sacred Jerusalem was known to the devout Christians, (Euseb.
+de Martyr Palest. c xi.;) but the legal and popular appellation
+of Aelia (the colony of Aelius Hadrianus) has passed from the
+Romans to the Arabs.  (Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p. 207, tom. ii.
+p. 835. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, Cods, p. 269, Ilia,
+p. 420.) The epithet of Al Cods, the Holy, is used as the proper
+name of Jerusalem.]
+
+"Health and happiness to every one that follows the right
+way!  We require of you to testify that there is but one God, and
+that Mahomet is his apostle.  If you refuse this, consent to pay
+tribute, and be under us forthwith.  Otherwise I shall bring men
+against you who love death better than you do the drinking of
+wine or eating hog's flesh.  Nor will I ever stir from you, if it
+please God, till I have destroyed those that fight for you, and
+made slaves of your children." But the city was defended on every
+side by deep valleys and steep ascents; since the invasion of
+Syria, the walls and towers had been anxiously restored; the
+bravest of the fugitives of Yermuk had stopped in the nearest
+place of refuge; and in the defence of the sepulchre of Christ,
+the natives and strangers might feel some sparks of the
+enthusiasm, which so fiercely glowed in the bosoms of the
+Saracens. The siege of Jerusalem lasted four months; not a day
+was lost without some action of sally or assault; the military
+engines incessantly played from the ramparts; and the inclemency
+of the winter was still more painful and destructive to the
+Arabs. The Christians yielded at length to the perseverance of
+the besiegers.  The patriarch Sophronius appeared on the walls,
+and by the voice of an interpreter demanded a conference. ^*
+After a vain attempt to dissuade the lieutenant of the caliph
+from his impious enterprise, he proposed, in the name of the
+people, a fair capitulation, with this extraordinary clause, that
+the articles of security should be ratified by the authority and
+presence of Omar himself. The question was debated in the council
+of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice of Ali,
+persuaded the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and
+enemies; and the simplicity of his journey is more illustrious
+than the royal pageants of vanity and oppression.  The conqueror
+of Persia and Syria was mounted on a red camel, which carried,
+besides his person, a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish,
+and a leathern bottle of water. Wherever he halted, the company,
+without distinction, was invited to partake of his homely fare,
+and the repast was consecrated by the prayer and exhortation of
+the commander of the faithful. ^80 But in this expedition or
+pilgrimage, his power was exercised in the administration of
+justice: he reformed the licentious polygamy of the Arabs,
+relieved the tributaries from extortion and cruelty, and
+chastised the luxury of the Saracens, by despoiling them of their
+rich silks, and dragging them on their faces in the dirt.  When
+he came within sight of Jerusalem, the caliph cried with a loud
+voice, "God is victorious.  O Lord, give us an easy conquest!"
+and, pitching his tent of coarse hair, calmly seated himself on
+the ground.  After signing the capitulation, he entered the city
+without fear or precaution; and courteously discoursed with the
+patriarch concerning its religious antiquities. ^81 Sophronius
+bowed before his new master, and secretly muttered, in the words
+of Daniel, "The abomination of desolation is in the holy place."
+^82 At the hour of prayer they stood together in the church of
+the resurrection; but the caliph refused to perform his
+devotions, and contented himself with praying on the steps of the
+church of Constantine.  To the patriarch he disclosed his prudent
+and honorable motive.  "Had I yielded," said Omar, "to your
+request, the Moslems of a future age would have infringed the
+treaty under color of imitating my example." By his command the
+ground of the temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation
+of a mosch; ^83 and, during a residence of ten days, he regulated
+the present and future state of his Syrian conquests.  Medina
+might be jealous, lest the caliph should be detained by the
+sanctity of Jerusalem or the beauty of Damascus; her
+apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and voluntary return
+to the tomb of the apostle. ^84
+
+[Footnote *: See the explanation of this in Price, with the
+prophecy which was hereby fulfilled, p 85. - M]
+
+[Footnote 80: The singular journey and equipage of Omar are
+described (besides Ockley, vol. i. p. 250) by Murtadi,
+(Merveilles de l'Egypte, p. 200 - 202.)]
+
+[Footnote 81: The Arabs boast of an old prophecy preserved at
+Jerusalem, and describing the name, the religion, and the person
+of Omar, the future conqueror.  By such arts the Jews are said to
+have soothed the pride of their foreign masters, Cyrus and
+Alexander, (Joseph. Ant. Jud. l. xi c. 1, 8, p. 447, 579 - 582.)]
+
+[Footnote 82: Theophan. Chronograph. p. 281.  This prediction,
+which had already served for Antiochus and the Romans, was again
+refitted for the present occasion, by the economy of Sophronius,
+one of the deepest theologians of the Monothelite controversy.]
+
+[Footnote 83: According to the accurate survey of D'Anville,
+(Dissertation sun l'ancienne Jerusalem, p. 42 - 54,) the mosch of
+Omar, enlarged and embellished by succeeding caliphs, covered the
+ground of the ancient temple, (says Phocas,) a length of 215, a
+breadth of 172, toises. The Nubian geographer declares, that this
+magnificent structure was second only in size and beauty to the
+great mosch of Cordova, (p. 113,) whose present state Mr.
+Swinburne has so elegantly represented, (Travels into Spain, p.
+296 - 302.)]
+
+[Footnote 84: Of the many Arabic tarikhs or chronicles of
+Jerusalem, (D'Herbelot, p. 867,) Ockley found one among the
+Pocock Mss. of Oxford, (vol. i. p. 257,) which he has used to
+supply the defective narrative of Al Wakidi.]
+
+To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war the caliph
+had formed two separate armies; a chosen detachment, under Amrou
+and Yezid, was left in the camp of Palestine; while the larger
+division, under the standard of Abu Obeidah and Caled, marched
+away to the north against Antioch and Aleppo.  The latter of
+these, the Beraea of the Greeks, was not yet illustrious as the
+capital of a province or a kingdom; and the inhabitants, by
+anticipating their submission and pleading their poverty,
+obtained a moderate composition for their lives and religion.
+But the castle of Aleppo, ^85 distinct from the city, stood erect
+on a lofty artificial mound the sides were sharpened to a
+precipice, and faced with free-stone; and the breadth of the
+ditch might be filled with water from the neighboring springs.
+After the loss of three thousand men, the garrison was still
+equal to the defence; and Youkinna, their valiant and hereditary
+chief, had murdered his brother, a holy monk, for daring to
+pronounce the name of peace.  In a siege of four or five months,
+the hardest of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens were
+killed and wounded: their removal to the distance of a mile could
+not seduce the vigilance of Youkinna; nor could the Christians be
+terrified by the execution of three hundred captives, whom they
+beheaded before the castle wall.  The silence, and at length the
+complaints, of Abu Obeidah informed the caliph that their hope
+and patience were consumed at the foot of this impregnable
+fortress.  "I am variously affected," replied Omar, "by the
+difference of your success; but I charge you by no means to raise
+the siege of the castle.  Your retreat would diminish the
+reputation of our arms, and encourage the infidels to fall upon
+you on all sides.  Remain before Aleppo till God shall determine
+the event, and forage with your horse round the adjacent
+country." The exhortation of the commander of the faithful was
+fortified by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes of
+Arabia, who arrived in the camp on horses or camels.  Among these
+was Dames, of a servile birth, but of gigantic size and intrepid
+resolution.  The forty-seventh day of his service he proposed,
+with only thirty men, to make an attempt on the castle.  The
+experience and testimony of Caled recommended his offer; and Abu
+Obeidah admonished his brethren not to despise the baser origin
+of Dames, since he himself, could he relinquish the public care,
+would cheerfully serve under the banner of the slave.  His design
+was covered by the appearance of a retreat; and the camp of the
+Saracens was pitched about a league from Aleppo.  The thirty
+adventurers lay in ambush at the foot of the hill; and Dames at
+length succeeded in his inquiries, though he was provoked by the
+ignorance of his Greek captives. "God curse these dogs," said the
+illiterate Arab; "what a strange barbarous language they speak!"
+At the darkest hour of the night, he scaled the most accessible
+height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the
+stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the
+guard less vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on
+each other's shoulders, and the weight of the column was
+sustained on the broad and sinewy back of the gigantic slave.
+The foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the
+lowest part of the battlements; they silently stabbed and cast
+down the sentinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious
+ejaculation, "O apostle of God, help and deliver us!" were
+successively drawn up by the long folds of their turbans.  With
+bold and cautious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the
+governor, who celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of
+his deliverance.  From thence, returning to his companions, he
+assaulted on the inside the entrance of the castle.  They
+overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down the
+drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival of
+Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured
+their conquest.  Youkinna, a formidable foe, became an active and
+useful proselyte; and the general of the Saracens expressed his
+regard for the most humble merit, by detaining the army at Aleppo
+till Dames was cured of his honorable wounds.  The capital of
+Syria was still covered by the castle of Aazaz and the iron
+bridge of the Orontes.  After the loss of those important posts,
+and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies, the luxury of
+Antioch ^86 trembled and obeyed.  Her safety was ransomed with
+three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the
+successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government of the
+East, which had been decorated by Caesar with the titles of free,
+and holy, and inviolate was degraded under the yoke of the
+caliphs to the secondary rank of a provincial town. ^87
+
+[Footnote 85: The Persian historian of Timur (tom. iii. l. v. c.
+21, p. 300) describes the castle of Aleppo as founded on a rock
+one hundred cubits in height; a proof, says the French
+translator, that he had never visited the place.  It is now in
+the midst of the city, of no strength with a single gate; the
+circuit is about 500 or 600 paces, and the ditch half full of
+stagnant water, (Voyages de Tavernier, tom. i. p. 149 Pocock,
+vol. ii. part i. p. 150.) The fortresses of the East are
+contemptible to a European eye.]
+
+[Footnote 86: The date of the conquest of Antioch by the Arabs is
+of some importance.  By comparing the years of the world in the
+chronography of Theophanes with the years of the Hegira in the
+history of Elmacin, we shall determine, that it was taken between
+January 23d and September 1st of the year of Christ 638, (Pagi,
+Critica, in Baron. Annal. tom. ii. p. 812, 813.) Al Wakidi
+(Ockley, vol. i. p. 314) assigns that event to Tuesday, August
+21st, an inconsistent date; since Easter fell that year on April
+5th, the 21st of August must have been a Friday, (see the Tables
+of the Art de Verifier les Dates.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: His bounteous edict, which tempted the grateful
+city to assume the victory of Pharsalia for a perpetual aera, is
+given. John Malala, in Chron. p. 91, edit. Venet.  We may
+distinguish his authentic information of domestic facts from his
+gross ignorance of general history.]
+
+In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war are
+clouded on either hand by the disgrace and weakness of his more
+early and his later days. When the successors of Mahomet
+unsheathed the sword of war and religion, he was astonished at
+the boundless prospect of toil and danger; his nature was
+indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of the emperor be
+kindled to a second effort.  The sense of shame, and the
+importunities of the Syrians, prevented the hasty departure from
+the scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of
+Damascus and Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk,
+may be imputed in some degree to the absence or misconduct of the
+sovereign.  Instead of defending the sepulchre of Christ, he
+involved the church and state in a metaphysical controversy for
+the unity of his will; and while Heraclius crowned the offspring
+of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped of the most
+valuable part of their inheritance.  In the cathedral of Antioch,
+in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix, he
+bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession
+instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to
+resist the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact,
+since they were invincible in opinion; and the desertion of
+Youkinna, his false repentance and repeated perfidy, might
+justify the suspicion of the emperor, that he was encompassed by
+traitors and apostates, who conspired to betray his person and
+their country to the enemies of Christ. In the hour of adversity,
+his superstition was agitated by the omens and dreams of a
+falling crown; and after bidding an eternal farewell to Syria, he
+secretly embarked with a few attendants, and absolved the faith
+of his subjects. ^88 Constantine, his eldest son, had been
+stationed with forty thousand men at Caesarea, the civil
+metropolis of the three provinces of Palestine.  But his private
+interest recalled him to the Byzantine court; and, after the
+flight of his father, he felt himself an unequal champion to the
+united force of the caliph.  His vanguard was boldly attacked by
+three hundred Arabs and a thousand black slaves, who, in the
+depth of winter, had climbed the snowy mountains of Libanus, and
+who were speedily followed by the victorious squadrons of Caled
+himself.  From the north and south the troops of Antioch and
+Jerusalem advanced along the sea-shore till their banners were
+joined under the walls of the Phoenician cities: Tripoli and Tyre
+were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered
+without distrust the captive harbors, brought a seasonable supply
+of arms and provisions to the camp of the Saracens.  Their labors
+were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Caesarea: the
+Roman prince had embarked in the night; ^89 and the defenceless
+citizens solicited their pardon with an offering of two hundred
+thousand pieces of gold.  The remainder of the province, Ramlah,
+Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus,
+Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed
+to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the
+sceptre of the caliphs seven hundred years after Pompey had
+despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings. ^90
+
+[Footnote 88: See Ockley, (vol. i. p. 308, 312,) who laughs at
+the credulity of his author.  When Heraclius bade farewell to
+Syria, Vale Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied that the Romans
+should never reenter the province till the birth of an
+inauspicious child, the future scourge of the empire.  Abulfeda,
+p. 68.  I am perfectly ignorant of the mystic sense, or nonsense,
+of this prediction.]
+
+[Footnote 89: In the loose and obscure chronology of the times, I
+am guided by an authentic record, (in the book of ceremonies of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus,) which certifies that, June 4, A.D.
+638, the emperor crowned his younger son Heraclius, in the
+presence of his eldest, Constantine, and in the palace of
+Constantinople; that January 1, A.D. 639, the royal procession
+visited the great church, and on the 4th of the same month, the
+hippodrome.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Sixty-five years before Christ, Syria Pontusque
+monumenta sunt Cn. Pompeii virtutis, (Vell. Patercul. ii. 38,)
+rather of his fortune and power: he adjudged Syria to be a Roman
+province, and the last of the Seleucides were incapable of
+drawing a sword in the defence of their patrimony (see the
+original texts collected by Usher, Annal. p. 420)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part VI.
+
+The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many
+thousands of the Moslems.  They died with the reputation and the
+cheerfulness of martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be
+expressed in the words of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for
+the last time, his sister and mother: "It is not," said he, "the
+delicacies of Syria, or the fading delights of this world, that
+have prompted me to devote my life in the cause of religion.  But
+I seek the favor of God and his apostle; and I have heard, from
+one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits of the
+martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall
+taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers, of paradise. Farewell,
+we shall meet again among the groves and fountains which God has
+provided for his elect." The faithful captives might exercise a
+passive and more arduous resolution; and a cousin of Mahomet is
+celebrated for refusing, after an abstinence of three days, the
+wine and pork, the only nourishment that was allowed by the
+malice of the infidels.  The frailty of some weaker brethren
+exasperated the implacable spirit of fanaticism; and the father
+of Amer deplored, in pathetic strains, the apostasy and damnation
+of a son, who had renounced the promises of God, and the
+intercession of the prophet, to occupy, with the priests and
+deacons, the lowest mansions of hell.  The more fortunate Arabs,
+who survived the war and persevered in the faith, were restrained
+by their abstemious leader from the abuse of prosperity.  After a
+refreshment of three days, Abu Obeidah withdrew his troops from
+the pernicious contagion of the luxury of Antioch, and assured
+the caliph that their religion and virtue could only be preserved
+by the hard discipline of poverty and labor.  But the virtue of
+Omar, however rigorous to himself, was kind and liberal to his
+brethren.  After a just tribute of praise and thanksgiving, he
+dropped a tear of compassion; and sitting down on the ground,
+wrote an answer, in which he mildly censured the severity of his
+lieutenant: "God," said the successor of the prophet, "has not
+forbidden the use of the good things of this worl to faithful
+men, and such as have performed good works.  Therefore you ought
+to have given them leave to rest themselves, and partake freely
+of those good things which the country affordeth.  If any of the
+Saracens have no family in Arabia, they may marry in Syria; and
+whosoever of them wants any female slaves, he may purchase as
+many as he hath occasion for." The conquerors prepared to use, or
+to abuse, this gracious permission; but the year of their triumph
+was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five
+thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of
+Syria. The death of Abu Obeidah might be lamented by the
+Christians; but his brethren recollected that he was one of the
+ten elect whom the prophet had named as the heirs of paradise.
+^91 Caled survived his brethren about three years: and the tomb
+of the Sword of God is shown in the neighborhood of Emesa.  His
+valor, which founded in Arabia and Syria the empire of the
+caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special providence;
+and as long as he wore a cap, which had been blessed by Mahomet,
+he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the infidels.
+^*
+
+[Footnote 91: Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 73.  Mahomet could
+artfully vary the praises of his disciples.  Of Omar he was
+accustomed to say, that if a prophet could arise after himself,
+it would be Omar; and that in a general calamity, Omar would be
+accepted by the divine justice, (Ockley, vol. i. p. 221.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Khaled, according to the Rouzont Uzzuffa, (Price, p.
+90,) after having been deprived of his ample share of the plunder
+of Syria by the jealousy of Omar, died, possessed only of his
+horse, his arms, and a single slave.  Yet Omar was obliged to
+acknowledge to his lamenting parent. that never mother had
+produced a son like Khaled. - M.]
+
+The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new
+generation of their children and countrymen: Syria became the
+seat and support of the house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the
+soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom were consecrated to
+enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs.  But the
+Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their historians
+scarcely condescend to mention the subordinate conquests which
+are lost in the splendor and rapidity of their victorious career.
+
+To the north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to
+their obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus,
+the ancient monument of the Assyrian kings.  Beyond a second
+ridge of the same mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather
+than the light of religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine,
+and the neighborhood of Constantinople.  To the east they
+advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris:
+^92 the long disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever
+confounded the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis,
+which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan,
+were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might
+vainly produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an
+unbelieving conqueror.  To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded
+by the sea: and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula
+on the coast, was postponed during ten years.  But the hills of
+Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of Phoenicia was populous
+in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped
+and manned by the natives of the desert. The Imperial navy of the
+Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the
+Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of
+Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a
+pun. ^93 The Saracens rode masters of the sea; and the islands of
+Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to
+their rapacious visits.  Three hundred years before the Christian
+aera, the memorable though fruitless siege of Rhodes ^94 by
+Demetrius had furnished that maritime republic with the materials
+and the subject of a trophy.  A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the
+sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected at the entrance of the
+harbor, a monument of the freedom and the arts of Greece.  After
+standing fifty-six years, the colossus of Rhodes was overthrown
+by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments, lay
+scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described
+as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected
+by the diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant
+of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the
+weight of the brass metal; an enormous weight, though we should
+include the hundred colossal figures, ^95 and the three thousand
+statues, which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.
+
+[Footnote 92: Al Wakidi had likewise written a history of the
+conquest of Diarbekir, or Mesopotamia, (Ockley, at the end of the
+iid vol.,) which our interpreters do not appear to have seen.
+The Chronicle of Dionysius of Telmar, the Jacobite patriarch,
+records the taking of Edessa A.D. 637, and of Dara A.D. 641,
+(Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 103;) and the attentive
+may glean some doubtful information from the Chronography of
+Theophanes, (p. 285 - 287.) Most of the towns of Mesopotamia
+yielded by surrender, (Abulpharag. p. 112.)
+
+Note: It has been published in Arabic by M. Ewald St.
+Martin, vol. xi p 248; but its authenticity is doubted. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 93: He dreamt that he was at Thessalonica, a harmless
+and unmeaning vision; but his soothsayer, or his cowardice,
+understood the sure omen of a defeat concealed in that
+inauspicious word, Give to another the victory, (Theoph. p. 286.
+Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 88.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: Every passage and every fact that relates to the
+isle, the city, and the colossus of Rhodes, are compiled in the
+laborious treatise of Meursius, who has bestowed the same
+diligence on the two larger islands of the Crete and Cyprus.
+See, in the iiid vol. of his works, the Rhodus of Meursius, (l.
+i. c. 15, p. 715 - 719.) The Byzantine writers, Theophanes and
+Constantine, have ignorantly prolonged the term to 1360 years,
+and ridiculously divide the weight among 30,000 camels.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Centum colossi alium nobilitaturi locum, says
+Pliny, with his usual spirit.  Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 18.]
+
+II.  The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character
+of the victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation, in an
+age when the meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature
+by the spirit of enthusiasm.  The birth of Amrou was at once base
+and illustrious; his mother, a notorious prostitute, was unable
+to decide among five of the Koreish; but the proof of resemblance
+adjudged the child to Aasi, the oldest of her lovers. ^96 The
+youth of Amrou was impelled by the passions and prejudices of his
+kindred: his poetic genius was exercised in satirical verses
+against the person and doctrine of Mahomet; his dexterity was
+employed by the reigning faction to pursue the religious exiles
+who had taken refuge in the court of the Aethiopian king. ^97 Yet
+he returned from this embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or
+his interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he
+escaped from Mecca with his friend Caled; and the prophet of
+Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of embracing
+the two firmest champions of his cause.  The impatience of Amrou
+to lead the armies of the faithful was checked by the reproof of
+Omar, who advised him not to seek power and dominion, since he
+who is a subject to-day, may be a prince to-morrow.  Yet his
+merit was not overlooked by the two first successors of Mahomet;
+they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of Palestine; and
+in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with the temper
+of a chief the valor of an adventurous soldier.  In a visit to
+Medina, the caliph expressed a wish to survey the sword which had
+cut down so many Christian warriors; the son of Aasi unsheathed a
+short and ordinary cimeter; and as he perceived the surprise of
+Omar, "Alas," said the modest Saracen, "the sword itself, without
+the arm of its master, is neither sharper nor more weighty than
+the sword of Pharezdak the poet." ^98 After the conquest of
+Egypt, he was recalled by the jealousy of the caliph Othman; but
+in the subsequent troubles, the ambition of a soldier, a
+statesman, and an orator, emerged from a private station.  His
+powerful support, both in council and in the field, established
+the throne of the Ommiades; the administration and revenue of
+Egypt were restored by the gratitude of Moawiyah to a faithful
+friend who had raised himself above the rank of a subject; and
+Amrou ended his days in the palace and city which he had founded
+on the banks of the Nile.  His dying speech to his children is
+celebrated by the Arabians as a model of eloquence and wisdom: he
+deplored the errors of his youth but if the penitent was still
+infected by the vanity of a poet, he might exaggerate the venom
+and mischief of his impious compositions. ^99
+
+[Footnote 96: We learn this anecdote from a spirited old woman,
+who reviled to their faces, the caliph and his friend.  She was
+encouraged by the silence of Amrou and the liberality of
+Moawiyah, (Abulfeda, Annal Moslem. p. 111.)]
+
+[Footnote 97: Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 46, &c., who
+quotes the Abyssinian history, or romance of Abdel Balcides.  Yet
+the fact of the embassy and ambassador may be allowed.]
+
+[Footnote 98: This saying is preserved by Pocock, (Not. ad Carmen
+Tograi, p 184,) and justly applauded by Mr. Harris,
+(Philosophical Arrangements, p. 850.)]
+
+[Footnote 99: For the life and character of Amrou, see Ockley
+(Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 28, 63, 94, 328, 342, 344, and
+to the end of the volume; vol. ii. p. 51, 55, 57, 74, 110 - 112,
+162) and Otter, (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi.
+p. 131, 132.) The readers of Tacitus may aptly compare Vespasian
+and Mucianus with Moawiyah and Amrou.  Yet the resemblance is
+still more in the situation, than in the characters, of the men.]
+
+From his camp in Palestine, Amrou had surprised or
+anticipated the caliph's leave for the invasion of Egypt. ^100
+The magnanimous Omar trusted in his God and his sword, which had
+shaken the thrones of Chosroes and Caesar: but when he compared
+the slender force of the Moslems with the greatness of the
+enterprise, he condemned his own rashness, and listened to his
+timid companions.  The pride and the greatness of Pharaoh were
+familiar to the readers of the Koran; and a tenfold repetition of
+prodigies had been scarcely sufficient to effect, not the
+victory, but the flight, of six hundred thousand of the children
+of Israel: the cities of Egypt were many and populous; their
+architecture was strong and solid; the Nile, with its numerous
+branches, was alone an insuperable barrier; and the granary of
+the Imperial city would be obstinately defended by the Roman
+powers.  In this perplexity, the commander of the faithful
+resigned himself to the decision of chance, or, in his opinion,
+of Providence.  At the head of only four thousand Arabs, the
+intrepid Amrou had marched away from his station of Gaza when he
+was overtaken by the messenger of Omar.  "If you are still in
+Syria," said the ambiguous mandate, "retreat without delay; but
+if, at the receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the
+frontiers of Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the
+succor of God and of your brethren." The experience, perhaps the
+secret intelligence, of Amrou had taught him to suspect the
+mutability of courts; and he continued his march till his tents
+were unquestionably pitched on Egyptian ground.  He there
+assembled his officers, broke the seal, perused the epistle,
+gravely inquired the name and situation of the place, and
+declared his ready obedience to the commands of the caliph.
+After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah or
+Pelusium; and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named,
+unlocked the entrance of the country as far as the ruins of
+Heliopolis and the neighborhood of the modern Cairo.
+
+[Footnote 100: Al Wakidi had likewise composed a separate history
+of the conquest of Egypt, which Mr. Ockley could never procure;
+and his own inquiries (vol. i. 344 - 362) have added very little
+to the original text of Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 296 - 323,
+vers. Pocock,) the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria, who lived
+three hundred years after the revolution.]
+
+On the Western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the
+east of the Pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the
+Delta, Memphis, one hundred and fifty furlongs in circumference,
+displayed the magnificence of ancient kings.  Under the reign of
+the Ptolemies and Caesars, the seat of government was removed to
+the sea-coast; the ancient capital was eclipsed by the arts and
+opulence of Alexandria; the palaces, and at length the temples,
+were reduced to a desolate and ruinous condition: yet, in the age
+of Augustus, and even in that of Constantine, Memphis was still
+numbered among the greatest and most populous of the provincial
+cities. ^101 The banks of the Nile, in this place of the breadth
+of three thousand feet, were united by two bridges of sixty and
+of thirty boats, connected in the middle stream by the small
+island of Rouda, which was covered with gardens and habitations.
+^102 The eastern extremity of the bridge was terminated by the
+town of Babylon and the camp of a Roman legion, which protected
+the passage of the river and the second capital of Egypt.  This
+important fortress, which might fairly be described as a part of
+Memphis or Misrah, was invested by the arms of the lieutenant of
+Omar: a reenforcement of four thousand Saracens soon arrived in
+his camp; and the military engines, which battered the walls, may
+be imputed to the art and labor of his Syrian allies.  Yet the
+siege was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were
+encompassed and threatened by the inundation of the Nile. ^103
+Their last assault was bold and successful: they passed the
+ditch, which had been fortified with iron spikes, applied their
+scaling ladders, entered the fortress with the shout of "God is
+victorious!" and drove the remnant of the Greeks to their boats
+and the Isle of Rouda.  The spot was afterwards recommended to
+the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and the
+peninsula of Arabia; the remains of Memphis were deserted; the
+tents of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations; and
+the first mosch was blessed by the presence of fourscore
+companions of Mahomet. ^104 A new city arose in their camp, on
+the eastward bank of the Nile; and the contiguous quarters of
+Babylon and Fostat are confounded in their present decay by the
+appellation of old Misrah, or Cairo, of which they form an
+extensive suburb.  But the name of Cairo, the town of victory,
+more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded in
+the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs. ^105 It has gradually
+receded from the river; but the continuity of buildings may be
+traced by an attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris to
+those of Saladin. ^106
+
+[Footnote 101: Strabo, an accurate and attentive spectator,
+observes of Heliopolis, (Geograph. l. xvii. p. 1158;) but of
+Memphis he notices, however, the mixture of inhabitants, and the
+ruin of the palaces.  In the proper Egypt, Ammianus enumerates
+Memphis among the four cities, maximis urbibus quibus provincia
+nitet, (xxii. 16;) and the name of Memphis appears with
+distinction in the Roman Itinerary and episcopal lists.]
+
+[Footnote 102: These rare and curious facts, the breadth (2946
+feet) and the bridge of the Nile, are only to be found in the
+Danish traveller and the Nubian geographer, (p. 98.)]
+
+[Footnote 103: From the month of April, the Nile begins
+imperceptibly to rise; the swell becomes strong and visible in
+the moon after the summer solstice, (Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 10,) and
+is usually proclaimed at Cairo on St. Peter's day, (June 29.) A
+register of thirty successive years marks the greatest height of
+the waters between July 25 and August 18, (Maillet, Description
+de l'Egypte, lettre xi. p. 67, &c. Pocock's Description of the
+East, vol. i. p. 200.  Shaw's Travels, p. 383.)]
+
+[Footnote 104: Murtadi, Merveilles de l'Egypte, 243, 259.  He
+expatiates on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a
+citizen and a bigot, and his local traditions have a strong air
+of truth and accuracy.]
+
+[Footnote 105: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 233.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The position of New and of Old Cairo is well
+known, and has been often described.  Two writers, who were
+intimately acquainted with ancient and modern Egypt, have fixed,
+after a learned inquiry, the city of Memphis at Gizeh, directly
+opposite the Old Cairo, (Sicard, Nouveaux Memoires des Missions
+du Levant, tom. vi. p. 5, 6.  Shaw's Observations and Travels, p.
+296 - 304.) Yet we may not disregard the authority or the
+arguments of Pocock, (vol. i. p. 25 - 41,) Niebuhr, (Voyage, tom.
+i. p. 77 - 106,) and above all, of D'Anville, (Description de
+l'Egypte, p. 111, 112, 130 - 149,) who have removed Memphis
+towards the village of Mohannah, some miles farther to the south.
+
+In their heat, the disputants have forgot that the ample space of
+a metropolis covers and annihilates the far greater part of the
+controversy.]
+
+Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise,
+must have retreated to the desert, had they not found a powerful
+alliance in the heart of the country.  The rapid conquest of
+Alexander was assisted by the superstition and revolt of the
+natives: they abhorred their Persian oppressors, the disciples of
+the Magi, who had burnt the temples of Egypt, and feasted with
+sacrilegious appetite on the flesh of the god Apis. ^107 After a
+period of ten centuries, the same revolution was renewed by a
+similar cause; and in the support of an incomprehensible creed,
+the zeal of the Coptic Christians was equally ardent.  I have
+already explained the origin and progress of the Monophysite
+controversy, and the persecution of the emperors, which converted
+a sect into a nation, and alienated Egypt from their religion and
+government.  The Saracens were received as the deliverers of the
+Jacobite church; and a secret and effectual treaty was opened
+during the siege of Memphis between a victorious army and a
+people of slaves.  A rich and noble Egyptian, of the name of
+Mokawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain the administration
+of his province: in the disorders of the Persian war he aspired
+to independence: the embassy of Mahomet ranked him among princes;
+but he declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the
+proposal of a new religion. ^108 The abuse of his trust exposed
+him to the resentment of Heraclius: his submission was delayed by
+arrogance and fear; and his conscience was prompted by interest
+to throw himself on the favor of the nation and the support of
+the Saracens.  In his first conference with Amrou, he heard
+without indignation the usual option of the Koran, the tribute,
+or the sword.  "The Greeks," replied Mokawkas, "are determined to
+abide the determination of the sword; but with the Greeks I
+desire no communion, either in this world or in the next, and I
+abjure forever the Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and
+his Melchite slaves.  For myself and my brethren, we are resolved
+to live and die in the profession of the gospel and unity of
+Christ.  It is impossible for us to embrace the revelations of
+your prophet; but we are desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit
+to pay tribute and obedience to his temporal successors." The
+tribute was ascertained at two pieces of gold for the head of
+every Christian; but old men, monks, women, and children, of both
+sexes, under sixteen years of age, were exempted from this
+personal assessment: the Copts above and below Memphis swore
+allegiance to the caliph, and promised a hospitable entertainment
+of three days to every Mussulman who should travel through their
+country.  By this charter of security, the ecclesiastical and
+civil tyranny of the Melchites was destroyed: ^109 the anathemas
+of St. Cyril were thundered from every pulpit; and the sacred
+edifices, with the patrimony of the church, were restored to the
+national communion of the Jacobites, who enjoyed without
+moderation the moment of triumph and revenge.  At the pressing
+summons of Amrou, their patriarch Benjamin emerged from his
+desert; and after the first interview, the courteous Arab
+affected to declare that he had never conversed with a Christian
+priest of more innocent manners and a more venerable aspect. ^110
+In the march from Memphis to Alexandria, the lieutenant of Omar
+intrusted his safety to the zeal and gratitude of the Egyptians:
+the roads and bridges were diligently repaired; and in every step
+of his progress, he could depend on a constant supply of
+provisions and intelligence.  The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers
+could scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were overwhelmed by
+the universal defection: they had ever been hated, they were no
+longer feared: the magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop
+from his altar; and the distant garrisons were surprised or
+starved by the surrounding multitudes.  Had not the Nile afforded
+a safe and ready conveyance to the sea, not an individual could
+have escaped, who by birth, or language, or office, or religion,
+was connected with their odious name.
+
+[Footnote 107: See Herodotus, l. iii. c. 27, 28, 29.  Aelian,
+Hist. Var. l. iv. c. 8. Suidas in, tom. ii. p. 774.  Diodor.
+Sicul. tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 197, edit. Wesseling.  Says the last
+of these historians.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Mokawkas sent the prophet two Coptic damsels, with
+two maids and one eunuch, an alabaster vase, an ingot of pure
+gold, oil, honey, and the finest white linen of Egypt, with a
+horse, a mule, and an ass, distinguished by their respective
+qualifications.  The embassy of Mahomet was despatched from
+Medina in the seventh year of the Hegira, (A.D. 628.) See
+Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 255, 256, 303,) from Al
+Jannabi.]
+
+[Footnote 109: The praefecture of Egypt, and the conduct of the
+war, had been trusted by Heraclius to the patriarch Cyrus,
+(Theophan. p. 280, 281.) "In Spain," said James II., "do you not
+consult your priests?" "We do," replied the Catholic ambassador,
+"and our affairs succeed accordingly." I know not how to relate
+the plans of Cyrus, of paying tribute without impairing the
+revenue, and of converting Omar by his marriage with the
+Emperor's daughter, (Nicephor. Breviar. p. 17, 18.)]
+
+[Footnote 110: See the life of Benjamin, in Renaudot, (Hist.
+Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 156 - 172,) who has enriched the
+conquest of Egypt with some facts from the Arabic text of Severus
+the Jacobite historian]
+
+By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper
+Egypt, a considerable force was collected in the Island of Delta;
+the natural and artificial channels of the Nile afforded a
+succession of strong and defensible posts; and the road to
+Alexandria was laboriously cleared by the victory of the Saracens
+in two-and-twenty days of general or partial combat.  In their
+annals of conquest, the siege of Alexandria ^111 is perhaps the
+most arduous and important enterprise.  The first trading city in
+the world was abundantly replenished with the means of
+subsistence and defence.  Her numerous inhabitants fought for the
+dearest of human rights, religion and property; and the enmity of
+the natives seemed to exclude them from the common benefit of
+peace and toleration.  The sea was continually open; and if
+Heraclius had been awake to the public distress, fresh armies of
+Romans and Barbarians might have been poured into the harbor to
+save the second capital of the empire.  A circumference of ten
+miles would have scattered the forces of the Greeks, and favored
+the stratagems of an active enemy; but the two sides of an oblong
+square were covered by the sea and the Lake Maraeotis, and each
+of the narrow ends exposed a front of no more than ten furlongs.
+The efforts of the Arabs were not inadequate to the difficulty of
+the attempt and the value of the prize.  From the throne of
+Medina, the eyes of Omar were fixed on the camp and city: his
+voice excited to arms the Arabian tribes and the veterans of
+Syria; and the merit of a holy war was recommended by the
+peculiar fame and fertility of Egypt. Anxious for the ruin or
+expulsion of their tyrants, the faithful natives devoted their
+labors to the service of Amrou: some sparks of martial spirit
+were perhaps rekindled by the example of their allies; and the
+sanguine hopes of Mokawkas had fixed his sepulchre in the church
+of St. John of Alexandria.  Eutychius the patriarch observes,
+that the Saracens fought with the courage of lions: they repulsed
+the frequent and almost daily sallies of the besieged, and soon
+assaulted in their turn the walls and towers of the city.  In
+every attack, the sword, the banner of Amrou, glittered in the
+van of the Moslems.  On a memorable day, he was betrayed by his
+imprudent valor: his followers who had entered the citadel were
+driven back; and the general, with a friend and slave, remained a
+prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted
+before the praefect, he remembered his dignity, and forgot his
+situation: a lofty demeanor, and resolute language, revealed the
+lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was
+already raised to strike off the head of the audacious captive.
+His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly
+gave his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an
+angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his superiors.  The
+credulous Greek was deceived: he listened to the offer of a
+treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more
+respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp
+announced the return of their general, and insulted the folly of
+the infidels.  At length, after a siege of fourteen months, ^112
+and the loss of three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens
+prevailed: the Greeks embarked their dispirited and diminished
+numbers, and the standard of Mahomet was planted on the walls of
+the capital of Egypt.  "I have taken," said Amrou to the caliph,
+"the great city of the West.  It is impossible for me to
+enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty; and I shall
+content myself with observing, that it contains four thousand
+palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of
+amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food,
+and forty thousand tributary Jews.  The town has been subdued by
+force of arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems
+are impatient to seize the fruits of their victory." ^113 The
+commander of the faithful rejected with firmness the idea of
+pillage, and directed his lieutenant to reserve the wealth and
+revenue of Alexandria for the public service and the propagation
+of the faith: the inhabitants were numbered; a tribute was
+imposed, the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were curbed,
+and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were indulged
+in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship.  The
+intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted
+the declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a
+dropsy about seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria. ^114 Under
+the minority of his grandson, the clamors of a people, deprived
+of their daily sustenance, compelled the Byzantine court to
+undertake the recovery of the capital of Egypt.  In the space of
+four years, the harbor and fortifications of Alexandria were
+twice occupied by a fleet and army of Romans.  They were twice
+expelled by the valor of Amrou, who was recalled by the domestic
+peril from the distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But the
+facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the
+obstinacy of the resistance, provoked him to swear, that if a
+third time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render
+Alexandria as accessible on all sides as the house of a
+prostitute.  Faithful to his promise, he dismantled several parts
+of the walls and towers; but the people was spared in the
+chastisement of the city, and the mosch of Mercy was erected on
+the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of his
+troops.
+
+[Footnote 111: The local description of Alexandria is perfectly
+ascertained by the master hand of the first of geographers,
+(D'Anville, Memoire sur l'Egypte, p. 52 - 63;) but we may borrow
+the eyes of the modern travellers, more especially of Thevenot,
+(Voyage au Levant, part i. p. 381 - 395,) Pocock, (vol. i. p. 2 -
+13,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. i. p. 34 - 43.) Of the
+two modern rivals, Savary and Volmey, the one may amuse, the
+other will instruct.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Both Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 319) and
+Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 28) concur in fixing the taking of
+Alexandria to Friday of the new moon of Moharram of the twentieth
+year of the Hegira, (December 22, A.D. 640.) In reckoning
+backwards fourteen months spent before Alexandria, seven months
+before Babylon, &c., Amrou might have invaded Egypt about the end
+of the year 638; but we are assured that he entered the country
+the 12th of Bayni, 6th of June, (Murtadi, Merveilles de l'Egypte,
+p. 164. Severus, apud Renaudot, p. 162.) The Saracen, and
+afterwards Lewis IX. of France, halted at Pelusium, or Damietta,
+during the season of the inundation of the Nile.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 316, 319.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Notwithstanding some inconsistencies of Theophanes
+and Cedrenus, the accuracy of Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 824) has
+extracted from Nicephorus and the Chronicon Orientale the true
+date of the death of Heraclius, February 11th, A.D. 641, fifty
+days after the loss of Alexandria. A fourth of that time was
+sufficient to convey the intelligence.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part VII.
+
+I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed
+in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is
+described by the learned Abulpharagius.  The spirit of Amrou was
+more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his
+leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the
+conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who
+derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of
+grammar and philosophy. ^115 Emboldened by this familiar
+intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable
+in his opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians - the
+royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had
+not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror.
+
+Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his
+rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without
+the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was
+inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic.  "If these writings of
+the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need
+not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and
+ought to be destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind
+obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to
+the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their
+incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for
+the consumption of this precious fuel.  Since the Dynasties of
+Abulpharagius ^116 have been given to the world in a Latin
+version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every
+scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable
+shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of
+antiquity.  For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both
+the fact and the consequences. ^* The fact is indeed marvellous.
+"Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and the solitary
+report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on
+the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two
+annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of
+Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has
+amply described the conquest of Alexandria. ^117 The rigid
+sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept
+of the Mahometan casuists they expressly declare, that the
+religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by
+the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and
+that the works of profane science, historians or poets,
+physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of
+the faithful. ^118 A more destructive zeal may perhaps be
+attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this
+instance, the conflagration would have speedily expired in the
+deficiency of materials. I should not recapitulate the disasters
+of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was
+kindled by Caesar in his own defence, ^119 or the mischievous
+bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments
+of idolatry. ^120 But if we gradually descend from the age of the
+Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of
+contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of
+Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred
+thousand volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and
+magnificence of the Ptolemies. ^121 Perhaps the church and seat
+of the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books;
+but if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy
+were indeed consumed in the public baths, ^122 a philosopher may
+allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the
+benefit of mankind.  I sincerely regret the more valuable
+libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman
+empire; but when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste
+of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather
+than our losses, are the objects of my surprise.  Many curious
+and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great
+historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a
+mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing
+compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the
+Greeks.  Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances
+of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the
+suffrage of antiquity ^123 had adjudged the first place of genius
+and glory: the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still
+extant, had perused and compared the writings of their
+predecessors; ^124 nor can it fairly be presumed that any
+important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been
+snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.
+
+[Footnote 115: Many treatises of this lover of labor are still
+extant, but for readers of the present age, the printed and
+unpublished are nearly in the same predicament.  Moses and
+Aristotle are the chief objects of his verbose commentaries, one
+of which is dated as early as May 10th, A.D. 617, (Fabric.
+Bibliot. Graec. tom. ix. p. 458 - 468.) A modern, (John Le
+Clerc,) who sometimes assumed the same name was equal to old
+Philoponus in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real
+knowledge.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 114, vers. Pocock.  Audi
+quid factum sit et mirare.  It would be endless to enumerate the
+moderns who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish
+with honor the rational scepticism of Renaudot, (Hist. Alex.
+Patriarch, p. 170: ) historia ... habet aliquid ut Arabibus
+familiare est.]
+
+[Footnote *: Since this period several new Mahometan authorities
+have been adduced to support the authority of Abulpharagius.
+That of, I. Abdollatiph by Professor White: II.  Of Makrizi; I
+have seen a Ms. extract from this writer: III.  Of Ibn Chaledun:
+and after them Hadschi Chalfa. See Von Hammer, Geschichte der
+Assassinen, p. 17.  Reinhard, in a German Dissertation, printed
+at Gottingen, 1792, and St. Croix, (Magasin Encyclop. tom. iv. p.
+433,) have examined the question.  Among Oriental scholars,
+Professor White, M. St. Martin, Von Hammer. and Silv. de Sacy,
+consider the fact of the burning the library, by the command of
+Omar, beyond question. Compare St. Martin's note. vol. xi. p.
+296.  A Mahometan writer brings a similar charge against the
+Crusaders.  The library of Tripoli is said to have contained the
+incredible number of three millions of volumes.  On the capture
+of the city, Count Bertram of St. Giles, entering the first room,
+which contained nothing but the Koran, ordered the whole to be
+burnt, as the works of the false prophet of Arabia.  See Wilken.
+Gesch der Kreux zuge, vol. ii. p. 211. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 117: This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the
+annals of Eutychius, and the Saracenic history of Elmacin.  The
+silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems, is less
+conclusive from their ignorance of Christian literature.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in
+his iiid volume of Dissertations, p. 37.  The reason for not
+burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians, is derived
+from the respect that is due to the name of God.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement.
+Livian, c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had
+styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque
+egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly
+criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate
+Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into
+nonsense.]
+
+[Footnote 120: See this History, vol. iii. p. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Aulus Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus
+Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all
+speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably
+strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum
+monumentorum veterum concinens fides, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible,
+Hexapla, Catenoe Patrum, Commentaries, &c., (p. 170.) Our
+Alexandrian Ms., if it came from Egypt, and not from
+Constantinople or Mount Athos, (Wetstein, Prolegom. ad N. T. p.
+8, &c.,) might possibly be among them.]
+
+[Footnote 123: I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of
+Quintilian, (Institut. Orator. x. i.,) in which that judicious
+critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin
+classics.]
+
+[Footnote 124: Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c.  On this
+subject Wotton (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 85
+- 95) argues, with solid sense, against the lively exotic fancies
+of Sir William Temple.  The contempt of the Greeks for Barbaric
+science would scarcely admit the Indian or Aethiopic books into
+the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that philosophy has
+sustained any real loss from their exclusion.]
+
+In the administration of Egypt, ^125 Amrou balanced the
+demands of justice and policy; the interest of the people of the
+law, who were defended by God; and of the people of the alliance,
+who were protected by man.  In the recent tumult of conquest and
+deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs
+were most adverse to the tranquillity of the province.  To the
+former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood would be
+doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he
+should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of
+their innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to injure
+and supplant.  He excited the latter by the motives of religion
+and honor to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear
+themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the
+caliph, to spare and protect a people who had trusted to their
+faith, and to content themselves with the legitimate and splendid
+rewards of their victory.  In the management of the revenue, he
+disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation, and
+preferred with reason a proportion of taxes deducted on every
+branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce.  A
+third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs
+of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare.
+Under his administration, the fertility of Egypt supplied the
+dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and
+provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from
+Memphis to Medina. ^126 But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the
+maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by
+the Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the Caesars; and a canal, at least
+eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea.
+^* This inland navigation, which would have joined the
+Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as
+useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to
+Damascus, and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to
+the holy cities of Arabia. ^127
+
+[Footnote 125: This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi
+(p. 284 - 289) has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley, or
+by the self- sufficient compilers of the Modern Universal
+History.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Eutychius, Annal. tom. ii. p. 320.  Elmacin, Hist.
+Saracen. p. 35.]
+
+[Footnote *: Many learned men have doubted the existence of a
+communication by water between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean
+by the Nile.  Yet the fact is positively asserted by the
+ancients.  Diodorus Siculus (l. i. p. 33) speaks of it in the
+most distinct manner as existing in his time.  So, also, Strabo,
+(l. xvii. p. 805.) Pliny (vol. vi. p. 29) says that the canal
+which united the two seas was navigable, (alveus navigabilis.)
+The indications furnished by Ptolemy and by the Arabic historian,
+Makrisi, show that works were executed under the reign of Hadrian
+to repair the canal and extend the navigation; it then received
+the name of the River of Trajan Lucian, (in his Pseudomantis, p.
+44,) says that he went by water from Alexandria to Clysma, on the
+Red Sea. Testimonies of the 6th and of the 8th century show that
+the communication was not interrupted at that time. See the
+French translation of Strabo, vol. v. p. 382.  St. Martin vol.
+xi. p. 299. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 127: On these obscure canals, the reader may try to
+satisfy himself from D'Anville, (Mem. sur l'Egypte, p. 108 - 110,
+124, 132,) and a learned thesis, maintained and printed at
+Strasburg in the year 1770, (Jungendorum marium fluviorumque
+molimina, p. 39 - 47, 68 - 70.) Even the supine Turks have
+agitated the old project of joining the two seas. (Memoires du
+Baron de Tott, tom. iv.)]
+
+Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect
+knowledge from the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran.
+He requested that his lieutenant would place before his eyes the
+realm of Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou
+exhibits a lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular
+country. ^128 "O commander of the faithful, Egypt is a compound
+of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized mountain
+and a red sand.  The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's
+journey for a horseman.  Along the valley descends a river, on
+which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening
+and morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of
+the sun and moon.  When the annual dispensation of Providence
+unlocks the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the
+Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters through the realm of
+Egypt: the fields are overspread by the salutary flood; and the
+villages communicate with each other in their painted barks. The
+retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the
+reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who
+blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants;
+and their native indolence is quickened by the lash of the
+task-master, and the promise of the flowers and fruits of a
+plentiful increase.  Their hope is seldom deceived; but the
+riches which they extract from the wheat, the barley, and the
+rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally
+shared between those who labor and those who possess.  According
+to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is
+adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep
+yellow of a golden harvest." ^129 Yet this beneficial order is
+sometimes interrupted; and the long delay and sudden swell of the
+river in the first year of the conquest might afford some color
+to an edifying fable.  It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a
+virgin ^130 had been interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that
+the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the
+mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which
+rose in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits.  The
+admiration of the Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the
+license of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest
+authors, that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand cities or
+villages: ^131 that, exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts
+alone were found, on the assessment, six millions of tributary
+subjects, ^132 or twenty millions of either sex, and of every
+age: that three hundred millions of gold or silver were annually
+paid to the treasury of the caliphs. ^133 Our reason must be
+startled by these extravagant assertions; and they will become
+more palpable, if we assume the compass and measure the extent of
+habitable ground: a valley from the tropic to Memphis seldom
+broader than twelve miles, and the triangle of the Delta, a flat
+surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues, compose a
+twelfth part of the magnitude of France. ^134 A more accurate
+research will justify a more reasonable estimate.  The three
+hundred millions, created by the error of a scribe, are reduced
+to the decent revenue of four millions three hundred thousand
+pieces of gold, of which nine hundred thousand were consumed by
+the pay of the soldiers. ^135 Two authentic lists, of the present
+and of the twelfth century, are circumscribed within the
+respectable number of two thousand seven hundred villages and
+towns. ^136 After a long residence at Cairo, a French consul has
+ventured to assign about four millions of Mahometans, Christians,
+and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible, scope of the
+population of Egypt. ^137
+
+[Footnote 128: A small volume, des Merveilles, &c., de l'Egypte,
+composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and
+translated from an Arabic Ms. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published
+by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666.  The antiquities of Egypt are wild
+and legendary; but the writer deserves credit and esteem for his
+account of the conquest and geography of his native country, (see
+the correspondence of Amrou and Omar, p. 279 - 289.)]
+
+[Footnote 129: In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul
+Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre
+ii. particularly p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre
+ix.) From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen
+the same objects with a keener glance: -
+
+What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
+
+Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed,
+
+From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
+
+And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings:
+
+If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
+
+The dusky people drive before the gale:
+
+Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
+
+That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.
+
+(Mason's Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]
+
+[Footnote 130: Murtadi, p. 164 - 167.  The reader will not easily
+credit a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a
+miracle of the successors of Mahomet.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Maillet, Description de l'Egypte, p. 22.  He
+mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds, that the
+generality of these villages contain two or three thousand
+persons, and that many of them are more populous than our large
+cities.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 308, 311.  The twenty
+millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth of
+mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of
+men to women as seventeen or sixteen, (Recherches sur la
+Population de la France, p. 71, 72.) The president Goguet
+(Origine des Arts, &c., tom. iii. p. 26, &c.) Bestows
+twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen
+hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 218; and this gross
+lump is swallowed without scruple by D'Herbelot, (Bibliot.
+Orient. p. 1031,) Ar. buthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, p. 262,)
+and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 135.) They might
+allege the not less extravagant liberality of Appian in favor of
+the Ptolemies (in praefat.) of seventy four myriads, 740,000
+talents, an annual income of 185, or near 300 millions of pounds
+sterling, according as we reckon by the Egyptian or the
+Alexandrian talent, (Bernard, de Ponderibus Antiq. p. 186.)]
+
+[Footnote 134: See the measurement of D'Anville, (Mem. sur
+l'Egypte, p. 23, &c.) After some peevish cavils, M. Pauw
+(Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. i. p. 118 - 121) can only
+enlarge his reckoning to 2250 square leagues.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexand. p. 334, who
+calls the common reading or version of Elmacin, error librarii.
+His own emendation, of 4,300,000 pieces, in the ixth century,
+maintains a probable medium between the 3,000,000 which the Arabs
+acquired by the conquest of Egypt, idem, p. 168.) and the
+2,400,000 which the sultan of Constantinople levied in the last
+century, (Pietro della Valle, tom. i. p. 352 Thevenot, part i. p.
+824.) Pauw (Recherches, tom. ii. p. 365 - 373) gradually raises
+the revenue of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Caesars, from
+six to fifteen millions of German crowns.]
+
+[Footnote 136: The list of Schultens (Index Geograph. ad calcem
+Vit. Saladin. p. 5) contains 2396 places; that of D'Anville,
+(Mem. sur l'Egypte, p. 29,) from the divan of Cairo, enumerates
+2696.]
+
+[Footnote 137: See Maillet, (Description de l'Egypte, p. 28,) who
+seems to argue with candor and judgment.  I am much better
+satisfied with the observations than with the reading of the
+French consul.  He was ignorant of Greek and Latin literature,
+and his fancy is too much delighted with the fictions of the
+Arabs.  Their best knowledge is collected by Abulfeda, (Descript.
+Aegypt. Arab. et Lat. a Joh. David Michaelis, Gottingae, in 4to.,
+1776;) and in two recent voyages into Egypt, we are amused by
+Savary, and instructed by Volney.  I wish the latter could travel
+over the globe.]
+
+IV.  The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic
+Ocean, ^138 was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman.
+
+The pious design was approved by the companions of Mahomet and
+the chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from
+Medina, with the gifts and the blessing of the commander of the
+faithful.  They were joined in the camp of Memphis by twenty
+thousand of their countrymen; and the conduct of the war was
+intrusted to Abdallah, ^139 the son of Said and the
+foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the
+conqueror and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince,
+and the merit of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of
+his apostasy.  The early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful
+pen, had recommended him to the important office of transcribing
+the sheets of the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the
+text, derided the errors which he had made, and fled to Mecca to
+escape the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the apostle.
+After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of
+Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a
+reluctant pardon; out the prophet declared that he had so long
+hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to avenge his
+injury in the blood of the apostate.  With apparent fidelity and
+effective merit, he served the religion which it was no longer
+his interest to desert: his birth and talents gave him an
+honorable rank among the Koreish; and, in a nation of cavalry,
+Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most dexterous horseman
+of Arabia.  At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced
+from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of
+Barca might be impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were
+attended by their faithful camels; and the natives of the desert
+beheld without terror the familiar aspect of the soil and
+climate.  After a painful march, they pitched their tents before
+the walls of Tripoli, ^140 a maritime city in which the name, the
+wealth, and the inhabitants of the province had gradually
+centred, and which now maintains the third rank among the states
+of Barbary.  A reenforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in
+pieces on the sea-shore; but the fortifications of Tripoli
+resisted the first assaults; and the Saracens were tempted by the
+approach of the praefect Gregory ^141 to relinquish the labors of
+the siege for the perils and the hopes of a decisive action.  If
+his standard was followed by one hundred and twenty thousand men,
+the regular bands of the empire must have been lost in the naked
+and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who formed the
+strength, or rather the numbers, of his host.  He rejected with
+indignation the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during
+several days the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn
+of light to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the
+excessive heat compelled them to seek shelter and refreshment in
+their respective camps. The daughter of Gregory, a maid of
+incomparable beauty and spirit, is said to have fought by his
+side: from her earliest youth she was trained to mount on
+horseback, to draw the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the
+richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost
+ranks of the battle.  Her hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of
+gold, was offered for the head of the Arabian general, and the
+youths of Africa were excited by the prospect of the glorious
+prize.  At the pressing solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah
+withdrew his person from the field; but the Saracens were
+discouraged by the retreat of their leader, and the repetition of
+these equal or unsuccessful conflicts.
+
+[Footnote 138: My conquest of Africa is drawn from two French
+interpreters of Arabic literature, Cardonne (Hist. de l'Afrique
+et de l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. i. p. 8 - 55)
+and Otter, (Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi. p.
+111 - 125, and 136.) They derive their principal information from
+Novairi, who composed, A.D. 1331 an Encyclopaedia in more than
+twenty volumes.  The five general parts successively treat of, 1.
+Physics; 2. Man; 3. Animals; 4. Plants; and, 5. History; and the
+African affairs are discussed in the vith chapter of the vth
+section of this last part, (Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji
+Chalifae Tabulas, p. 232 - 234.) Among the older historians who
+are quoted by Navairi we may distinguish the original narrative
+of a soldier who led the van of the Moslems.]
+
+[Footnote 139: See the history of Abdallah, in Abulfeda (Vit.
+Mohammed. p. 108) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. 45 -
+48.)]
+
+[Footnote 140: The province and city of Tripoli are described by
+Leo Africanus (in Navigatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i.
+Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso) and Marmol, (Description de
+l'Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.) The first of these writers was a
+Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who composed or translated his
+African geography in a state of captivity at Rome, where he had
+assumed the name and religion of Pope Leo X.  In a similar
+captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of
+Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by
+D'Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.) Marmol
+had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and
+extensive observation which abounds in the original work of Leo
+the African.]
+
+[Footnote 141: Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than
+the death, of Gregory.  He brands the praefect with the name: he
+had probably assumed the purple, (Chronograph. p. 285.)]
+
+A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali,
+and the father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt,
+and Zobeir ^142 was the first who planted the scaling-ladder
+against the walls of Babylon.  In the African war he was detached
+from the standard of Abdallah.  On the news of the battle,
+Zobeir, with twelve companions, cut his way through the camp of
+the Greeks, and pressed forwards, without tasting either food or
+repose, to partake of the dangers of his brethren.  He cast his
+eyes round the field: "Where," said he, "is our general?" "In his
+tent." "Is the tent a station for the general of the Moslems?"
+Abdallah represented with a blush the importance of his own life,
+and the temptation that was held forth by the Roman praefect.
+"Retort," said Zobeir, "on the infidels their ungenerous attempt.
+
+Proclaim through the ranks that the head of Gregory shall be
+repaid with his captive daughter, and the equal sum of one
+hundred thousand pieces of gold." To the courage and discretion
+of Zobeir the lieutenant of the caliph intrusted the execution of
+his own stratagem, which inclined the long-disputed balance in
+favor of the Saracens. Supplying by activity and artifice the
+deficiency of numbers, a part of their forces lay concealed in
+their tents, while the remainder prolonged an irregular skirmish
+with the enemy till the sun was high in the heavens.  On both
+sides they retired with fainting steps: their horses were
+unbridled, their armor was laid aside, and the hostile nations
+prepared, or seemed to prepare, for the refreshment of the
+evening, and the encounter of the ensuing day.  On a sudden the
+charge was sounded; the Arabian camp poured forth a swarm of
+fresh and intrepid warriors; and the long line of the Greeks and
+Africans was surprised, assaulted, overturned, by new squadrons
+of the faithful, who, to the eye of fanaticism, might appear as a
+band of angels descending from the sky.  The praefect himself was
+slain by the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and
+death, was surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives
+involved in their disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they
+escaped from the sabres and lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was
+built one hundred and fifty miles to the south of Carthage: a
+gentle declivity is watered by a running stream, and shaded by a
+grove of juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of a triumpha arch, a
+portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order, curiosity may
+yet admire the magnificence of the Romans. ^143 After the fall of
+this opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all
+sides the mercy of the conqueror.  His vanity or his zeal might
+be flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith: but
+his losses, his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical
+disease, prevented a solid establishment; and the Saracens, after
+a campaign of fifteen months, retreated to the confines of Egypt,
+with the captives and the wealth of their African expedition.
+The caliph's fifth was granted to a favorite, on the nominal
+payment of five hundred thousand pieces of gold; ^144 but the
+state was doubly injured by this fallacious transaction, if each
+foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each horseman three
+thousand, pieces, in the real division of the plunder.  The
+author of the death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the
+most precious reward of the victory: from his silence it might be
+presumed that he had fallen in the battle, till the tears and
+exclamations of the praefect's daughter at the sight of Zobeir
+revealed the valor and modesty of that gallant soldier.  The
+unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected as a slave,
+by her father's murderer, who coolly declared that his sword was
+consecrated to the service of religion; and that he labored for a
+recompense far above the charms of mortal beauty, or the riches
+of this transitory life.  A reward congenial to his temper was
+the honorable commission of announcing to the caliph Othman the
+success of his arms.  The companions the chiefs, and the people,
+were assembled in the mosch of Medina, to hear the interesting
+narrative of Zobeir; and as the orator forgot nothing except the
+merit of his own counsels and actions, the name of Abdallah was
+joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of Caled and Amrou.
+^145
+
+[Footnote 142: See in Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p.
+45) the death of Zobeir, which was honored with the tears of Ali,
+against whom he had rebelled.  His valor at the siege of Babylon,
+if indeed it be the same person, is mentioned by Eutychius,
+(Annal. tom. ii. p. 308)]
+
+[Footnote 143: Shaw's Travels, p. 118, 119.]
+
+[Footnote 144: Mimica emptio, says Abulfeda, erat haec, et mira
+donatio; quandoquidem Othman, ejus nomine nummos ex aerario prius
+ablatos aerario praestabat, (Annal. Moslem. p. 78.) Elmacin (in
+his cloudy version, p. 39) seems to report the same job.  When
+the Arabs be sieged the palace of Othman, it stood high in their
+catalogue of grievances.`]
+
+[Footnote 145: Theophan.  Chronograph. p. 235 edit. Paris.  His
+chronology is loose and inaccurate.]
+
+[A. D. 665-689.]  The western conquests of the Saracens were
+suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by
+the establishment of the house of Ommiyah; and the caliph Moawiyah
+was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves.  The successors
+of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which they had been
+compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead of being moved to
+pity and relieve their distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a
+fine, a second tribute of a similar amount.  The ears of the zantine
+ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin
+their despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master;
+and the extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested
+with civil and military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the
+Catholics, of the Roman province to abjure the religion as well as
+the authority of their tyrants.  The first lieutenant of Moawiyah
+acquired a just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army
+of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives,
+and enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and
+Egypt.^146  But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due
+to his successor Akbah.  He marched from Damascus at the head of ten
+thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems
+was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand
+Barbarians.  It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the
+accurate line of the progress of Akbah.  The interior regions have
+been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary
+citadels.  In the warlike province of Zab or Numidia, fourscore
+thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but the number of
+three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the ignorance or
+decay of husbandry;^147 and a circumference of three leagues will not
+be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis
+of that inland country.  As we approach the seacoast, the well-known
+titles of Bugia,^148 and Tangier^149 define the more certain limits
+of the Saracen victories.  A remnant of trade still adheres to the
+commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more prosperous age, is said
+to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the plenty of
+iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have supplied a
+braver people with the instruments of defence.  The remote position
+and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by
+the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative expressions of the
+latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and that the roofs
+were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems
+of strength and opulence.
+
+[Footnote 146: Theophanes (in Chronograph.  p. 293.) inserts the vague
+rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the western conquests of the
+Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon of Aquileia (de Gestis
+Langobard.  1. v. c. 13), that at this time they sent a fleet from
+Alexandria into the Sicilian and African seas.]
+
+[Footnote 147: See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus (fol.
+81, verso), who reckoned only cinque citta e infinite casal, Marmol
+(Description de l'Afrique, tom. iii.  p. 33,) and Shaw (Travels,
+p. 57, 65-68)]
+
+[Footnote 148: Leo African.  fol. 58, verso, 59, recto.  Marmol,
+tom. ii. p. 415.  Shaw, p. 43]
+
+[Footnote 149: Leo African.  fol. 52.  Marmol, tom. ii.  p. 228.]
+
+The province of Mauritania Tingitana,^150 which assumed the name of
+the capital had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the
+Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the
+more southern parts were seldom explored except by the agents of
+luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citron wood,^151
+and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish.  The fearless
+Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness
+in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez and
+Morocco,^152 and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic
+and the great desert.  The river Suz descends from the western sides
+of mount Atlas, fertilizes, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and
+falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or
+adjacent  islands.  Its banks were inhabited by the last of the
+Moors, a race of savages, without laws, or discipline, or religion:
+they were astonished by the strange and irresistible terrors of the
+Oriental arms; and as they possessed neither gold nor silver, the
+richest spoil was the beauty of the female captives, some of whom
+were afterward sold for a thousand pieces of gold.  The career,
+though not the zeal, of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a
+boundless ocean.  He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising
+his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: "Great God!
+if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to
+the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy
+name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship
+another gods than thee."^153  Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who
+sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests.
+By the universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled
+from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left
+him only the resource of an honourable death.  The last scene was
+dignified by an example of national virtue.  An ambitious chief, who
+had disputed the command and failed in the attempt, was led about as
+a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general.  The insurgents had
+trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their offers and
+revealed their designs.  In the hour of danger, the grateful Akbah
+unlocked his fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die
+under the banner of his rival.  Embracing as friends and martyrs,
+they unsheathed their scimeters, broke their scabbards, and
+maintained an obstinate combat, till they fell by each other's side
+on the last of their slaughtered countrymen.  The third general or
+governor of Africa, Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate of his
+predecessor.  He vanquished the natives in many battles; he was
+overthrown by a powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the
+relief of Carthage.
+
+[Footnote 150: Regio ignobilis, et vix quicquam illustre sortita,
+parvis oppidis habitatur, parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris
+meleor et segnitie gentis obscura.  Pomponius Mela, i. 5, iii. 10.
+Mela deserves the more credit, since his own Phoenician ancestors had
+migrated from Tingitana to Spain (see, in ii. 6, a passage of that
+geographer so cruelly tortured by Salmasius, Isaac Vossius, and the
+most virulent of critics, James Gronovius).  He lived at the time of
+the final reduction of that country by the emperor Claudius: yet
+almost thirty years afterward, Pliny (Hist. Nat. v. i.) complains of
+his authors, to lazy to inquire, too proud to confess their ignorance
+of that wild and remote province.]
+
+[Footnote 151: The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed at Rome
+among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the women.  A round
+board or table, four or five feet in diameter, sold for the price of
+an estate (latefundii taxatione), eight, ten, or twelve thousand
+pounds sterling (Plin. Hist. Natur. xiii. 29).  I conceive that I
+must not confound the tree citrus, with that of the fruit citrum.
+But I am not botanist enough to define the former (it is like the
+wild cypress) by the vulgar or Linnaean name; nor will I decide
+whether the citrum be the orange or the lemon.  Salmasius appears to
+exhaust the subject, but he too often involves himself in the web of
+his disorderly erudition.  (Flinian. Exercitat.  tom. ii. p 666, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 152: Leo African. fol. 16, verso.  Marmol, tom. ii. p. 28.
+This province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness of the
+cherifs  is often mentioned in the curious history of that dynasty at
+the end of the third volume of Marmol, Description de l'Afrique.  The
+third vol. of The Recherches Historiques sur les Maures (lately
+published at Paris) illustrates the history and geography of the
+kingdoms of Fez and Morocco.]
+
+[Footnote 153: Otter (p. 119,) has given the strong tone of fanaticism
+to this exclamation, which Cardonne (p. 37,) has softened to a pious
+wish of preaching the Koran.  Yet they had both the same text of
+Novairi before their eyes.]
+
+[A. D.  670-675.]  It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish
+tribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the
+faith, and to revolt in their savage state of independence and
+idolatry, on the first retreat or misfortune of the Moslems.  The
+prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the
+heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the levity of the
+Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of
+war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens.  With this view,
+and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted
+this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira.  In its present
+decay, Cairoan^154 still holds the second rank in the kingdom of
+Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south;^155
+its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected
+the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets.  When the wild beasts
+and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness,
+was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy
+plain: the vegetable food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the
+scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns
+and reservoirs a precarious supply of rain water.  These obstacles
+were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of
+three thousand and six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a
+brick wall; in the space of five years, the governor's palace was
+surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a
+spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite,
+porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the seat of
+learning as well as of empire.  But these were the glories of a later
+age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and
+Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the
+civil discord of the Arabian monarchy.  The son of the valiant Zobeir
+maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months against the
+house of Ommiyah.  Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the
+lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage,
+he was devoid of the generosity, of his
+father.^156
+
+[A. D.  692-698.]  The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph
+Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was
+delivered to Hassan governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that
+kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to the
+important service.  In the vicissitudes of war, the interior
+provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens.  But the
+seacoast still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the predecessors
+of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications of Carthage; and
+the number of its defenders was recruited by the fugitives of Cabes
+and Tripoli.  The arms of Hassan were bolder and more fortunate: he
+reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the mention of
+scaling-ladders may justify the suspicion, that he anticipated, by a
+sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege.  But
+the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the
+Christian succours.  The praefect and patrician John, a general of
+experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the
+Eastern empire;^157 they were joined by the ships and soldiers of
+Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths^158 was obtained from
+the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch.
+
+[Footnote 154: The foundation of Cairoan is mentioned by Ockley (Hist.
+of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 129, 130); and the situation, mosque, &c.
+of the city are described by Leo Africanus (fol. 75), Marmol (tom. ii.
+p. 532), and Shaw (p. 115).]
+
+[Footnote 155: A portentous, though frequent mistake, has been the
+confounding, from a slight similitude of name, the Cyrene of the
+Greeks, and the Cairoan of the Arabs, two cities which are separated
+by an interval of a thousand miles along the seacoast.  The great
+Thuanus has not escaped this fault, the less excusable as it is
+connected with a formal and elaborate description of Africa
+(Historiar. l. vii. c. 2, in tom. i. p. 240, edit. Buckley).]
+
+[Footnote 156: Besides the Arabic Chronicles of Abulfeda, Elmacin,
+and Abulpharagius, under the lxxiiid year of the Hegira, we may
+consult nd'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient.  p. 7,) and Ockley (Hist. of the
+Saracens, vol. ii. p. 339-349).  The latter has given the last and
+pathetic dialogue between Abdallah and his mother; but he has forgot
+a physical effect of her grief for his death, the return, at the age
+of ninety, and fatal consequences of her menses.]
+
+[Footnote 157: The patriarch of Constantinople, with Theophanes
+(Chronograph. p. 309,) have slightly mentioned this last attempt for
+the relief or Africa.  Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 129. 141,) has nicely
+ascertained the chronology by a strict comparison of the Arabic and
+Byzantine historians, who often disagree both in time and fact.  See
+likewise a note of Otter (p. 121).]
+
+[Footnote 158: Dove s'erano ridotti i nobili Romani e i Gotti; and
+afterward, i Romani suggirono e i Gotti lasciarono Carthagine.
+(Leo African. for. 72, recto)  I know not from what Arabic writer the
+African derived his Goths; but the fact, though new, is so interesting
+and so probable, that I will accept it on the slightest authority.]
+
+The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the
+entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Cairoan, or Tripoli;
+the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross,
+and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or
+deliverance.  But Africa was irrecoverably lost: the zeal and
+resentment of the commander of the faithful^159 prepared in the
+ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the
+patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and
+fortifications of Carthage.  A second battle was fought in the
+neighbourhood of Utica; and the Greeks and Goths were again defeated;
+and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan, who
+had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp.
+Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and
+the colony of Dido^160 and Cesar lay desolate above two hundred
+years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was
+repeopled by the first of the Fatimite caliphs.  In the beginning of
+the sixteenth century, the second capital of the West was represented
+by a mosque, a college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops,
+and the huts of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty,
+displayed the arrogance of the Punic senators.  Even that paltry
+village was swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles the Fifth had
+stationed in the fortress of the Goletta.  The ruins of Carthage have
+perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of an
+aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive
+traveller.^161
+
+[A. D.  698-709.]  The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were
+not yet masters of the country.  In the interior provinces the Moors
+or Berbers,^162 so feeble under the first Cesars, so formidable to
+the Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly resistance to the
+religion and power of the successors of Mahomet.  Under the standard
+of their queen Cahina, the independent tribes acquired some degree of
+union and discipline; and as the Moors respected in their females the
+character of a prophetess, they attacked the invaders with an
+enthusiasm similar to their own.  The veteran bands of Hassan were
+inadequate to the defence of Africa: the conquests of an age were
+lost in a single day; and the Arabian chief, overwhelmed by the
+torrent, retired to the confines of Egypt, and expected, five years,
+the promised succours of the caliph.  After the retreat of the
+Saracens, the victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and
+recommended a measure of strange and savage policy.  "Our cities,"
+said she, "and the gold and silver which they contain, perpetually
+attract the arms of the Arabs.  These vile metals are not the objects
+of OUR ambition; we content ourselves with the simple productions of
+the earth.  Let us destroy these cities; let us bury in their ruins
+those pernicious treasures; and when the avarice of our foes shall be
+destitute of temptation, perhaps they will cease to disturb the
+tranquillity of a warlike people."  The proposal was accepted with
+unanimous applause.  From Tangier to Tripoli the buildings, or at
+least the fortifications, were demolished, the fruit-trees were cut
+down, the means of subsistence were extirpated, a fertile and
+populous garden was changed into a desert, and the historians of a
+more recent period could discern the frequent traces of the
+prosperity and devastation of their ancestors.
+
+[Footnote 159: This commander is styled by Nicephorus, --------
+a vague though not improper definition of the caliph.  Theophanes
+introduces the strange appellation of ----------, which his interpreter
+Goar explains by Vizir Azem.  They may approach the truth, in assigning
+the active part to the minister, rather than the prince; but they
+forget that the Ommiades had only a kaleb, or secretary, and that the
+office of Vizir was not revived or instituted till the 132d year of
+the Hegira (d'Herbelot, 912).]
+
+[Footnote 160: According to Solinus (1.27, p. 36, edit.  Salmas),
+the Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years; a various reading,
+which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions (Salmas, Plinian.
+Exercit tom i. p. 228)  The former of these accounts, which gives 823
+years before Christ, is more consistent with the well-weighed
+testimony of Velleius Paterculus: but the latter is preferred by our
+chronologists (Marsham, Canon.  Chron.  p. 398,) as more agreeable to
+the Hebrew and Syrian annals.]
+
+[Footnote 161: Leo African.  fo1. 71, verso; 72, recto.  Marmol,
+tom. ii. p.445-447.  Shaw, p.80.]
+
+[Footnote 162: The history of the word Barbar may be classed under four
+periods, 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and Asiatics might
+probably use a common idiom, the imitative sound of Barbar was
+applied to the ruder tribes, whose pronunciation was most harsh,
+whose grammar was most defective.   2. From the time, at least, of
+Herodotus, it was extended to all the nations who were strangers to
+the language and manners of the Greeks.  3. In the age, of Plautus,
+the Romans submitted to the insult (Pompeius Festus, l. ii. p. 48,
+edit. Dacier), and freely gave themselves the name of Barbarians.
+They insensibly claimed an exemption for Italy, and her subject
+provinces; and at length removed the disgraceful appellation to the
+savage or hostile nations beyond the pale of the empire.  4. In every
+sense, it was due to the Moors; the familiar word was borrowed from
+the Latin Provincials by the Arabian conquerors, and has justly
+settled as a local denomination (Barbary) along the northern coast of
+Africa.]
+
+Such is the tale of the modern Arabians.  Yet I strongly suspect that
+their ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous, and the
+fashion of extolling the philosophy of Barbarians, has induced them
+to describe, as one voluntary act, the calamities of three hundred
+years since the first fury of the Donatists and Vandals.  In the
+progress of the revolt, Cahina had most probably contributed her
+share of destruction; and the alarm of universal ruin might terrify
+and alienate the cities that had reluctantly yielded to her unworthy
+yoke.  They no longer hoped, perhaps they no longer wished, the
+return of their Byzantine sovereigns: their present servitude was not
+alleviated by the benefits of order and justice; and the most zealous
+Catholic must prefer the imperfect truths of the Koran to the blind
+and rude idolatry of the Moors.  The general of the Saracens was
+again received as the saviour of the province; the friends of civil
+society conspired against the savages of the land; and the royal
+prophetess was slain in the first battle which overturned the
+baseless fabric of her superstition and empire.  The same spirit
+revived under the successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled by the
+activity of Musa and his two sons; but the number of the rebels may
+be presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives; sixty
+thousand of whom, the caliph's fifth, were sold for the profit of
+thee public treasury.  Thirty thousand of the Barbarian youth were
+enlisted in the troops; and the pious labours of Musa to inculcate
+the knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to
+obey the apostle of God and the commander of the faithful.  In their
+climate and government, their diet and habitation, the wandering
+Moors resembled the Bedoweens of the desert.  With the religion, they
+were proud to adopt the language, name, and origin of Arabs: the
+blood of the strangers and natives was insensibly mingled; and from
+the Euphrates to the Atlantic the same nation might seem to be
+diffused over the sandy plains of Asia and Africa.  Yet I will not
+deny that fifty thousand tents of pure Arabians might be transported
+over the Nile, and scattered through the Lybian desert: and I am not
+ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes still retain their barbarous
+idiom, with the appellation and character of white Africans.^163
+
+[A. D.  709.]  V.  In the progress of conquest from the north and
+south, the Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the
+confines of Europe and Africa.  In the opinion of the latter, the
+difference of religion is a reasonable ground of enmity and
+warfare.^164  As early as the time of Othman^165 their piratical
+squadrons had ravaged the coast of Andalusia;^166 nor had they
+forgotten the relief of Carthage by the Gothic succours.  In that
+age, as well as in the present, the kings of Spain were possessed of
+the fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of Hercules, which is
+divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar or point of
+Europe.  A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to the
+African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed
+from the walls of Ceuta, by the vigilance and courage of count
+Julian, the general of the Goths.  From his disappointment and
+perplexity, Musa was relieved by an unexpected message of the
+Christian chief, who offered his place, his person, and his sword,
+to the successors of Mahomet, and solicited the disgraceful honour
+of introducing their arms into the heart of Spain.^167
+
+[Footnote 163: The first book of Leo Africanus, and the observations
+of Dr. Shaw (p. 220. 223. 227. 247, &c.) will throw some light on the
+roving tribes of Barbary, of Arabian or Moorish descent.  But Shaw
+had seen these savages with distant terror; and Leo, a captive in the
+Vatican, appears to have lost more of his Arabic, than he could
+acquire of Greek or Roman, learning.  Many of his gross mistakes
+might be detected in the first period of the Mahometan history.]
+
+[Footnote 164: In a conference with a prince of the Greeks, Amrou
+observed that their religion was different; upon which score it was
+lawful for brothers to quarrel.  Ockley's History of the Saracens,
+vol. i. p. 328.]
+
+[Footnote 165: Abulfeda, Annal.  Moslem.  p 78, vers.  Reiske.]
+
+[Footnote 166: The name of Andalusia is applied by the Arabs not only
+to the modern province, but to the whole peninsula of Spain (Geograph.
+Nub. p. 151, d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient.  p. 114, 115).  The etymology
+has been most improbably deduced from Vandalusia, country of the
+Vandals.  (d'Anville Etats de l'Europe, p. 146, 147, &c.)  But the
+Handalusia of Casiri, which signifies, in Arabic, the region of the
+evening, of the West, in a word, the Hesperia of the Greeks, is
+perfectly apposite.  (Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii.  p. 327,
+&c.)]
+
+[Footnote 167: The fall and resurrection of the Gothic monarchy are
+related by Mariana (tom. l.  p. 238-260, l. vi. c. 19--26, l. vii. c.
+1, 2). That historian has infused into his noble work (Historic de Rebus
+Hispaniae, libri xxx.  Hagae Comitum 1733, in four volumes, folio,
+with the continuation of Miniana), the style and spirit of a Roman
+classic; and after the twelfth century, his knowledge and judgment
+may be safely trusted.  But the Jesuit is not exempt from the
+prejudices of his order; he adopts and adorns, like his rival
+Buchanan, the most absurd of the national legends; he is too careless
+of criticism and chronology, and supplies, from a lively fancy, the
+chasms of historical evidence.  These chasms are large and frequent;
+Roderic archbishop of Toledo, the father of the Spanish history,
+lived five hundred years after the conquest of the Arabs; and the
+more early accounts are comprised in some meagre lines of the blind
+chronicles of Isidore of Badajoz (Pacensis,) and of Alphonso III.
+king of Leon, which I have seen only in the Annals of Pagi.]
+
+If we inquire into the cause of this treachery, the Spaniards will
+repeat the popular story of his daughter Cava;^168 of a virgin who
+was seduced, or ravished, by her sovereign; of a father who
+sacrificed his religion and country to the thirst of revenge.  The
+passions of princes have often been licentious and destructive; but
+this well-known tale, romantic in itself, is indifferently supported
+by external evidence; and the history of Spain will suggest some
+motives of interest and policy more congenial to the breast of a
+veteran statesman.^169  After the decease or deposition of Witiza,
+his two sons were supplanted by the ambition of Roderic, a noble
+Goth, whose father, the duke or governor of a province, had fallen a
+victim to the preceding tyranny.  The monarchy was still elective;
+but the sons of Witiza, educated on the steps of the throne, were
+impatient of a private station.  Their resentment was the more
+dangerous, as it was varnished with the dissimulation of courts:
+their followers were excited by the remembrance of favours and the
+promise of a revolution: and their uncle Oppas, archbishop of Toledo
+and Seville, was the first person in the church, and the second in
+the state.  It is probable that Julian was involved in the disgrace
+of the unsuccessful faction, that he had little to hope and much to
+fear from the new reign; and that the imprudent king could not forget
+or forgive the injuries which Roderic and his family had sustained.
+The merit and influence of the count rendered him a useful or
+formidable subject: his estates were ample, his followers bold and
+numerous, and it was too fatally shown that, by his Andalusian and
+Mauritanian commands, he held in his hands the keys of the Spanish
+monarchy.  Too feeble, however, to meet his sovereign in arms, he
+sought the aid of a foreign power; and his rash invitation of the
+Moors and Arabs produced the calamities of eight hundred years.  In
+his epistles, or in a personal interview, he revealed the wealth and
+nakedness of his country; the weakness of an unpopular prince; the
+degeneracy of an effeminate people.  The Goths were no longer the
+victorious Barbarians, who had humbled the pride of Rome, despoiled
+the queen of nations, and penetrated from the Danube to the Atlantic
+ocean.  Secluded from the world by the Pyrenean mountains, the
+successors of Alaric had slumbered in a long peace: the walls of the
+city were mouldered into dust: the youth had abandoned the exercise
+of arms; and the presumption of their ancient renown would expose
+them in a field of battle to the first assault of the invaders.  The
+ambitious Saracen was fired by the ease and importance of the
+attempt; but the execution was delayed till he had consulted the
+commander of the faithful; and his messenger returned with the
+permission of Walid to annex the unknown kingdoms of the West to the
+religion and throne of the caliphs.  In his residence of Tangier,
+Musa, with secrecy and caution, continued his correspondence and
+hastened his preparations.  But the remorse of the conspirators was
+soothed by the fallacious assurance that he should content himself
+with the glory and spoil, without aspiring to establish the Moslems
+beyond the sea that separates Africa from Europe.^170
+
+[Footnote 168: Le viol (says Voltaire) est aussi difficile a faire qu'a
+prouver.  Des Eveques se seroient ils lignes pour une fille?  (Hist.
+Generale, c. xxvi.)  His argument is not logically conclusive.]
+
+[Footnote 169: In the story of Cava, Mariana (I. vi. c. 21, p. 241,
+242,) seems to vie with the Lucretia of Livy.  Like the ancients, he
+seldom quotes; and the oldest testimony of Baronius (Annal. Eccles.
+A.D. 713, No. 19), that of Lucus Tudensis, a Gallician deacon of the
+thirteenth century, only says, Cava quam pro concubina utebatur.]
+
+[Footnote 170: The Orientals, Elmacin, Abulpharagins, Abolfeda, pass
+over the conquest of Spain in silence, or with a single word.  The text
+of Novairi, and the other Arabian writers, is represented, though with
+some foreign alloy, by M. de Cardonne (Hist. de l'Afrique et de
+l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, Paris, 1765, 3 vols. 12mo.
+tom. i.  p. 55-114), and more concisely by M. de Guignes (Hist. des
+Hune. tom. i.  p. 347-350).  The librarian of the Escurial has not
+satisfied my hopes: yet he appears to have searched with diligence
+his broken materials; and the history of the conquest is illustrated
+by some valuable fragments of the genuine Razis (who wrote at.
+Corduba, A. H. 300), of Ben Hazil, &c.  See Bibliot.  Arabico-
+Hispana, tom. ii.  p. 32. 105, 106.  182.  252.  315--332.  On this
+occasion, the industry of Pagi has been aided by the Arabic learning
+of his friend the Abbe de Longuerue, and to their joint labours I am
+deeply indebted.]
+
+[A. D.  710.]  Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to the
+traitors and infidels of a foreign land, he made a less dangerous
+trial of their strength and veracity.  One hundred Arabs and four
+hundred Africans, passed over, in four vessels, from Tangier or
+Ceuta; the place of their descent on the opposite shore of the
+strait, is marked by the name of Tarif their chief; and the date of
+this memorable event^171 is fixed to the month of Ramandan, of the
+ninety-first year of the Hegira, to the month of July, seven hundred
+and forty-eight years from the Spanish era of Cesar,^172 seven
+hundred and ten after the birth of Christ.  From their first station,
+they marched eighteen miles through a hilly country to the castle and
+town of Julian;^173 on which (it is still called Algezire) they
+bestowed the name of the Green Island, from a verdant cape that
+advances into the sea.  Their hospitable entertainment, the
+Christians who joined their standard, their inroad into a fertile and
+unguarded province, the richness of their spoil and the safety of
+their return, announced to their brethren the most favourable omens
+of victory.  In the ensuing spring, five thousand veterans and
+volunteers were embarked under the command of Tarik, a dauntless and
+skilful soldier, who surpassed the expectation of his chief; and the
+necessary transports were provided by the industry of their too
+faithful ally.  The Saracens landed^174 at the pillar or point of
+Europe; the corrupt and familiar appellation of Gibraltar (Gebel el
+Tarik) describes the mountain of Tarik; and the intrenchments of his
+camp were the first outline of those fortifications, which, in the
+hands of our countrymen, have resisted the art and power of the house
+of Bourbon.  The adjacent governors informed the court of Toledo of
+the descent and progress of the Arabs; and the defeat of his
+lieutenant Edeco, who had been commanded to seize and bind the
+presumptuous strangers, admonished Roderic of the magnitude of the
+danger.  At the royal summons, the dukes and counts, the bishops and
+nobles of the Gothic monarchy assembled at the head of their
+followers; and the title of king of the Romans, which is employed by
+an Arabic historian, may be excused by the close affinity of
+language, religion, and manners, between the nations of Spain.  His
+army consisted of ninety or a hundred thousand men: a formidable
+power, if their fidelity and discipline had been adequate to their
+numbers.  The troops of Tarik had been augmented to twelve thousand
+Saracens; but the Christian malecontents were attracted by the
+influence of Julian, and a crowd of Africans most greedily tasted the
+temporal blessings of the Koran.  In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, the
+town of Xeres^175 has been illustrated by the encounter which
+determined the fate of the kingdom; the stream of the Guadalete,
+which falls into the bay, divided the two camps, and marked the
+advancing and retreating skirmishes of three successive and bloody
+days.
+
+[Footnote 171: A mistake of Roderic of Toledo, in comparing the lunar
+years of the Hegira with the Julian years of the Era, has determined
+Baronius, Mariana, and the crowd of Spanish historians, to place the
+first invasion in the year 713, and the battle of Xeres in November,
+714. This anachronism of three years has been detected by the more
+correct industry of modern chronologists, above all, of Pagi (Critics,
+tom. iii.  p. 164. 171-174), who have restored the genuine state
+of the revolution.  At the present time, an Arabian scholar, like
+Cardonne, who adopts the ancient error (tom. i.  p. 75), is
+inexcusably ignorant or careless.]
+
+[Footnote 172: The Era of Cesar, which in Spain was in legal and popular
+use till the xivth century, begins thirty-eight years before the birth of
+Christ.  I would refer the origin to the general peace by sea and
+land, which confirmed the power and partition of the triumvirs.
+(Dion. Cassius, l. xlviii.  p. 547. 553.  Appian de Bell. Civil. l.
+v.  p. 1034, edit. fol.)  Spain was a province of Cesar Octavian; and
+Tarragona, which raised the first temple to Augustus (Tacit  Annal.
+i. 78), might borrow from the orientals this mode of flattery.]
+
+[Footnote 173: The road, the country, the old castle of count Julian,
+and the superstitious belief of the Spaniards of hidden treasures, &c.
+are described by Pere Labat (Voyages en Espagne et en Italie, tom i.
+p. 207-217), with his usual pleasantry.]
+
+[Footnote 174: The Nubian geographer (p. 154,) explains the topography
+of the war; but it is highly incredible that the lieutenant of Musa
+should execute the desperate and useless measure of burning his ships.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Xeres (the Roman colony of Asta Regia) is only two leagues
+from Cadiz.  In the xvith century It was a granary of corn; and the wine
+of Xeres is familiar to the nations of Europe (Lud. Nonii Hispania,
+c. 13, p. 54-56, a work of correct and concise knowledge; d'Anville,
+Etats de l'Europe &c p 154).]
+
+On the fourth day, the two armies joined a more serious and decisive
+issue; but Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his unworthy
+successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls, encumbered with
+a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and reclining on a
+litter, or car of ivory, drawn by two white mules.  Notwithstanding
+the valour of the Saracens, they fainted under the weight of
+multitudes, and the plain of Xeres was overspread with sixteen
+thousand of their dead bodies.  "My brethren," said Tarik to his
+surviving companions, "the enemy is before you, the sea is behind;
+whither would ye fly?  Follow your general I am resolved either to
+lose my life, or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans."
+Besides the resource of despair, he confided in the secret
+correspondence and nocturnal interviews of count Julian, with the
+sons and the brother of Witiza.  The two princes and the archbishop
+of Toledo occupied the most important post; their well-timed
+defection broke the ranks of the Christians; each warrior was
+prompted by fear or suspicion to consult his personal safety; and the
+remains of the Gothic army were scattered or destroyed to the flight
+and pursuit of the three following days.  Amidst the general
+disorder, Roderic started from his car, and mounted Orelia, the
+fleetest of his Horses; but he escaped from a soldier's death to
+perish more ignobly in the waters of the Boetis or Guadalquiver.  His
+diadem, his robes, and his courser, were found on the bank; but as
+the body of the Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the pride and
+ignorance of the caliph must have been gratified with some meaner
+head, which was exposed in triumph before the palace of Damascus.
+"And such," continues a valiant historian of the Arabs, "is the fate
+of those kings who withdraw themselves from a field of battle."^176.
+
+[A. D.  711.]  Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and
+infamy, that his only hope was in the ruin of his country.  After the
+battle of Xeres he recommended the most effectual measures to the
+victorious Saracens.  "The king of the Goths is slain; their princes
+are fled before you, the army is routed, the nation is astonished.
+Secure with sufficient detachments the cities of Boetica; but in
+person and without delay, march to the royal city of Toledo, and
+allow not the distracted Christians either time or tranquillity for
+the election of a new monarch."  Tarik listened to his advice.  A
+Roman captive and proselyte, who had been enfranchised by the caliph
+himself, assaulted Cordova with seven hundred horse: he swam the
+river, surprised the town, and drove the Christians into the great
+church, where they defended themselves above three months.  Another
+detachment reduced the seacoast of Boetica, which in the last period
+of the Moorish power has comprised in a narrow space the populous
+kingdom of Grenada.  The march of Tarik from the Boetis to the
+Tagus,^177 was directed through the Sierra Morena, that separates
+Andalusia and Castille, till he appeared in arms under the walls of
+Toledo.^178  The most zealous of the Catholics had escaped with the
+relics of their saints; and if the gates were shut, it was only till
+the victor had subscribed a fair and reasonable capitulation.  The
+voluntary  exiles were allowed to depart with their effects; seven
+churches were appropriated to the Christian worship; the archbishop
+and his clergy were at liberty to exercise their functions, the monks
+to practise or neglect their penance; and the Goths and Romans were
+left in all civil or criminal cases to the subordinate jurisdiction
+of their own laws and magistrates.  But if the justice of Tarik
+protected the Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the Jews,
+to whose secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important
+acquisitions.  Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had
+often pressed the alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast
+nation embraced the moment of revenge: the comparison of their past
+and present state was the pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance
+between the disciples of Moses and those of Mahomet, was maintained
+till the final era of their common expulsion.
+
+[Footnote 176: Id sane infortunii regibus pedem ex acie referentibus
+saepe contingit.  Den Hazil of Grenada, in Bibliot.  Arabico-Hispana.
+tom. ii.  p. 337.  Some credulous Spaniards believe that king Roderic,
+or Rodrigo, escaped to a hermit's cell; and others, that he was cast
+alive into a tub full of serpents, from whence he exclaimed with a
+lamentable voice, "they devour the part with which I have so
+grievously sinned."  (Don Quixote, part ii.  l. iii.  c. 1.)]
+
+[Footnote 177: The direct road from Corduba to Toledo was measured by
+Mr. Swinburne's mules in 72 1/2 hours: but a larger computation must
+be adopted for the slow and devious marches of an army.  The Arabs
+traversed the province of La Mancha, which the pen of Cervantes has
+transformed into classic ground to the reader of every nation.]
+
+[Footnote 178: The antiquities of Toledo, Urbs Parva in the Punic
+wars, Urbs Regia in the sixth century, are briefly described by Nonius
+(Hispania, c. 59, p. 181-136).  He borrows from Roderic the fatale
+palatium of Moorish portraits; but modestly insinuates, that it was
+no more than a Roman amphitheatre.]
+
+
+From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader spread his
+conquests to the north, over the modern realms of Castille and Leon;
+but it is heedless to enumerate the cities that yielded on his
+approach, or again to describe the table of emerald,^179 transported
+from the East by the Romans, acquired by the Goths among the spoils
+of Rome, and presented by the Arabs to the throne of Damascus.
+Beyond the Asturian mountains, the maritime town of Gijon was the
+term^180 of the lieutenant of Musa, who had performed with the speed
+of a traveller, his victorious march of seven hundred miles, from the
+rock of Gibraltar to the bay of Biscay.  The failure of land
+compelled him to retreat: and he was recalled to Toledo, to excuse
+his presumption of subduing a kingdom in the absence of his general.
+Spain, which in a more savage and disorderly state, had resisted, two
+hundred years, the arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few months by
+those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission and
+treaty, that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only
+chief who fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands.  The
+cause of the Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres;
+and in the national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined a
+contest with the antagonist who had vanquished the united strength of
+the whole.^181  That strength had been wasted by two successive
+seasons of famine and pestilence; and the governors, who were
+impatient to surrender, might exaggerate the difficulty of
+collecting the provisions of a siege.  To disarm the Christians,
+superstition likewise contributed her terrors: and the subtle Arab
+encouraged the report of dreams, omens, and prophecies, and of the
+portraits of the destined conquerors of Spain, that were discovered
+on the breaking open an apartment of the royal palace.  Yet a spark
+of the vital flame was still alive; some invincible fugitives
+preferred a life of poverty and freedom in the Asturian valleys; the
+hardy mountaineers repulsed the slaves of the caliph; and the sword
+of Pelagius has been transformed into the sceptre of the Catholic
+kings.^182
+
+[Footnote 179: In the Historia Arabum (c. 9, p. 17, ad calcem Elmacin),
+Roderic of Toledo describes the emerald tables, and inserts the name
+of Medinat Ahneyda in Arabic words and letters.  He appears to
+be conversant with the Mahometan writers; but I cannot agree with M.
+de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.  p. 350) that he had read and
+transcribed Novairi; because he was dead a hundred years before
+Novairi composed his history.  This mistake is founded on a still
+grosser error.  M. de Guignes confounds the governed historian
+Roderic Ximines, archbishop of Toledo, in the xiiith century, with
+cardinal Ximines, who governed Spain in the beginning of the xvith,
+and was the subject, not the author, of historical compositions.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Tarik might have inscribed on the last rock, the boast
+of Regnard and his companions in their Lapland journey, "Hic tandem
+stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis."]
+
+[Footnote 181: Such was the argument of the traitor Oppas, and every
+chief to whom it was addressed did not answer with the spirit of
+Pelagius; Omnis Hispania dudum sub uno regimine Gothorum, omnis
+exercitus Hispaniae in uno congregatus Ismaelitarum non valuit
+sustinere impetum.  Chron.  Alphonsi Regis, apud Pagi, tom. iii.
+p. 177.]
+
+[Footnote 182: The revival of tire Gothic kingdom in the Asturias is
+distinctly though concisely noticed by d'Anville (Etats de l'Europe,
+p. 159)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part IX.
+
+On the intelligence of this rapid success, the applause of
+Musa degenerated into envy; and he began, not to complain, but to
+fear, that Tarik would leave him nothing to subdue.  At the head
+of ten thousand Arabs and eight thousand Africans, he passed over
+in person from Mauritania to Spain: the first of his companions
+were the noblest of the Koreish; his eldest son was left in the
+command of Africa; the three younger brethren were of an age and
+spirit to second the boldest enterprises of their father.  At his
+landing in Algezire, he was respectfully entertained by Count
+Julian, who stifled his inward remorse, and testified, both in
+words and actions, that the victory of the Arabs had not impaired
+his attachment to their cause.  Some enemies yet remained for the
+sword of Musa.  The tardy repentance of the Goths had compared
+their own numbers and those of the invaders; the cities from
+which the march of Tarik had declined considered themselves as
+impregnable; and the bravest patriots defended the fortifications
+of Seville and Merida.  They were successively besieged and
+reduced by the labor of Musa, who transported his camp from the
+Boetis to the Anas, from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana.  When
+he beheld the works of Roman magnificence, the bridge, the
+aqueducts, the triumphal arches, and the theatre, of the ancient
+metropolis of Lusitania, "I should imagine," said he to his four
+companions, "that the human race must have united their art and
+power in the foundation of this city: happy is the man who shall
+become its master!" He aspired to that happiness, but the
+Emeritans sustained on this occasion the honor of their descent
+from the veteran legionaries of Augustus ^183 Disdaining the
+confinement of their walls, they gave battle to the Arabs on the
+plain; but an ambuscade rising from the shelter of a quarry, or a
+ruin, chastised their indiscretion, and intercepted their return.
+
+The wooden turrets of assault were rolled forwards to the foot of
+the rampart; but the defence of Merida was obstinate and long;
+and the castle of the martyrs was a perpetual testimony of the
+losses of the Moslems.  The constancy of the besieged was at
+length subdued by famine and despair; and the prudent victor
+disguised his impatience under the names of clemency and esteem.
+The alternative of exile or tribute was allowed; the churches
+were divided between the two religions; and the wealth of those
+who had fallen in the siege, or retired to Gallicia, was
+confiscated as the reward of the faithful.  In the midway between
+Merida and Toledo, the lieutenant of Musa saluted the vicegerent
+of the caliph, and conducted him to the palace of the Gothic
+kings.  Their first interview was cold and formal: a rigid
+account was exacted of the treasures of Spain: the character of
+Tarik was exposed to suspicion and obloquy; and the hero was
+imprisoned, reviled, and ignominiously scourged by the hand, or
+the command, of Musa.  Yet so strict was the discipline, so pure
+the zeal, or so tame the spirit, of the primitive Moslems, that,
+after this public indignity, Tarik could serve and be trusted in
+the reduction of the Tarragonest province.  A mosch was erected
+at Saragossa, by the liberality of the Koreish: the port of
+Barcelona was opened to the vessels of Syria; and the Goths were
+pursued beyond the Pyrenaean mountains into their Gallic province
+of Septimania or Languedoc. ^184 In the church of St. Mary at
+Carcassone, Musa found, but it is improbable that he left, seven
+equestrian statues of massy silver; and from his term or column
+of Narbonne, he returned on his footsteps to the Gallician and
+Lusitanian shores of the ocean.  During the absence of the
+father, his son Abdelaziz chastised the insurgents of Seville,
+and reduced, from Malaga to Valentia, the sea-coast of the
+Mediterranean: his original treaty with the discreet and valiant
+Theodemir ^185 will represent the manners and policy of the
+times.  "The conditions of peace agreed and sworn between
+Abdelaziz, the son of Musa, the son of Nassir, and Theodemir
+prince of the Goths.  In the name of the most merciful God,
+Abdelaziz makes peace on these conditions: that Theodemir shall
+not be disturbed in his principality; nor any injury be offered
+to the life or property, the wives and children, the religion and
+temples, of the Christians: that Theodemir shall freely deliver
+his seven ^* cities, Orihuela, Valentola, Alicanti Mola,
+Vacasora, Bigerra, (now Bejar,) Ora, (or Opta,) and Lorca: that
+he shall not assist or entertain the enemies of the caliph, but
+shall faithfully communicate his knowledge of their hostile
+designs: that himself, and each of the Gothic nobles, shall
+annually pay one piece of gold, four measures of wheat, as many
+of barley, with a certain proportion of honey, oil, and vinegar;
+and that each of their vassals shall be taxed at one moiety of
+the said imposition.  Given the fourth of Regeb, in the year of
+the Hegira ninety- four, and subscribed with the names of four
+Mussulman witnesses." ^186 Theodemir and his subjects were
+treated with uncommon lenity; but the rate of tribute appears to
+have fluctuated from a tenth to a fifth, according to the
+submission or obstinacy of the Christians. ^187 In this
+revolution, many partial calamities were inflicted by the carnal
+or religious passions of the enthusiasts: some churches were
+profaned by the new worship: some relics or images were
+confounded with idols: the rebels were put to the sword; and one
+town (an obscure place between Cordova and Seville) was razed to
+its foundations.  Yet if we compare the invasion of Spain by the
+Goths, or its recovery by the kings of Castile and Arragon, we
+must applaud the moderation and discipline of the Arabian
+conquerors.
+
+[Footnote 183: The honorable relics of the Cantabrian war (Dion
+Cassius, l. liii p. 720) were planted in this metropolis of
+Lusitania, perhaps of Spain, (submittit cui tota suos Hispania
+fasces.) Nonius (Hispania, c. 31, p. 106 - 110) enumerates the
+ancient structures, but concludes with a sigh: Urbs haec olim
+nobilissima ad magnam incolarum infrequentiam delapsa est, et
+praeter priscae claritatis ruinas nihil ostendit.]
+
+[Footnote 184: Both the interpreters of Novairi, De Guignes
+(Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 349) and Cardonne, (Hist. de
+l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 93, 94, 104, 135,) lead
+Musa into the Narbonnese Gaul.  But I find no mention of this
+enterprise, either in Roderic of Toledo, or the Mss. of the
+Escurial, and the invasion of the Saracens is postponed by a
+French chronicle till the ixth year after the conquest of Spain,
+A.D. 721, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 177, 195.  Historians of
+France, tom. iii.) I much question whether Musa ever passed the
+Pyrenees.]
+
+[Footnote 185: Four hundred years after Theodemir, his
+territories of Murcia and Carthagena retain in the Nubian
+geographer Edrisi (p, 154, 161) the name of Tadmir, (D'Anville,
+Etats de l'Europe, p. 156.  Pagi, tom. iii. p. 174.) In the
+present decay of Spanish agriculture, Mr. Swinburne (Travels into
+Spain, p. 119) surveyed with pleasure the delicious valley from
+Murcia to Orihuela, four leagues and a half of the finest corn
+pulse, lucerne, oranges, &c.]
+
+[Footnote *: Gibbon has made eight cities: in Conde's translation
+Bigera does not appear. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 186: See the treaty in Arabic and Latin, in the
+Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 105, 106.  It is signed
+the 4th of the month of Regeb, A. H. 94, the 5th of April, A.D.
+713; a date which seems to prolong the resistance of Theodemir,
+and the government of Musa.]
+
+[Footnote 187: From the history of Sandoval, p. 87.  Fleury
+(Hist. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 261) has given the substance of
+another treaty concluded A Ae. C. 782, A.D. 734, between an
+Arabian chief and the Goths and Romans, of the territory of
+Conimbra in Portugal.  The tax of the churches is fixed at
+twenty-five pounds of gold; of the monasteries, fifty; of the
+cathedrals, one hundred; the Christians are judged by their
+count, but in capital cases he must consult the alcaide.  The
+church doors must be shut, and they must respect the name of
+Mahomet.  I have not the original before me; it would confirm or
+destroy a dark suspicion, that the piece has been forged to
+introduce the immunity of a neighboring convent.]
+
+The exploits of Musa were performed in the evening of life,
+though he affected to disguise his age by coloring with a red
+powder the whiteness of his beard.  But in the love of action and
+glory, his breast was still fired with the ardor of youth; and
+the possession of Spain was considered only as the first step to
+the monarchy of Europe.  With a powerful armament by sea and
+land, he was preparing to repass the Pyrenees, to extinguish in
+Gaul and Italy the declining kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards,
+and to preach the unity of God on the altar of the Vatican.  From
+thence, subduing the Barbarians of Germany, he proposed to follow
+the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea, to
+overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and
+returning from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with
+Antioch and the provinces of Syria. ^188 But his vast enterprise,
+perhaps of easy execution, must have seemed extravagant to vulgar
+minds; and the visionary conqueror was soon reminded of his
+dependence and servitude.  The friends of Tarik had effectually
+stated his services and wrongs: at the court of Damascus, the
+proceedings of Musa were blamed, his intentions were suspected,
+and his delay in complying with the first invitation was
+chastised by a harsher and more peremptory summons. An intrepid
+messenger of the caliph entered his camp at Lugo in Gallicia, and
+in the presence of the Saracens and Christians arrested the
+bridle of his horse.  His own loyalty, or that of his troops,
+inculcated the duty of obedience: and his disgrace was alleviated
+by the recall of his rival, and the permission of investing with
+his two governments his two sons, Abdallah and Abdelaziz.  His
+long triumph from Ceuta to Damascus displayed the spoils of
+Africa and the treasures of Spain: four hundred Gothic nobles,
+with gold coronets and girdles, were distinguished in his train;
+and the number of male and female captives, selected for their
+birth or beauty, was computed at eighteen, or even at thirty,
+thousand persons.  As soon as he reached Tiberias in Palestine,
+he was apprised of the sickness and danger of the caliph, by a
+private message from Soliman, his brother and presumptive heir;
+who wished to reserve for his own reign the spectacle of victory.
+
+Had Walid recovered, the delay of Musa would have been criminal:
+he pursued his march, and found an enemy on the throne.  In his
+trial before a partial judge against a popular antagonist, he was
+convicted of vanity and falsehood; and a fine of two hundred
+thousand pieces of gold either exhausted his poverty or proved
+his rapaciousness.  The unworthy treatment of Tarik was revenged
+by a similar indignity; and the veteran commander, after a public
+whipping, stood a whole day in the sun before the palace gate,
+till he obtained a decent exile, under the pious name of a
+pilgrimage to Mecca.  The resentment of the caliph might have
+been satiated with the ruin of Musa; but his fears demanded the
+extirpation of a potent and injured family.  A sentence of death
+was intimated with secrecy and speed to the trusty servants of
+the throne both in Africa and Spain; and the forms, if not the
+substance, of justice were superseded in this bloody execution.
+In the mosch or palace of Cordova, Abdelaziz was slain by the
+swords of the conspirators; they accused their governor of
+claiming the honors of royalty; and his scandalous marriage with
+Egilona, the widow of Roderic, offended the prejudices both of
+the Christians and Moslems.  By a refinement of cruelty, the head
+of the son was presented to the father, with an insulting
+question, whether he acknowledged the features of the rebel?  "I
+know his features," he exclaimed with indignation: "I assert his
+innocence; and I imprecate the same, a juster fate, against the
+authors of his death." The age and despair of Musa raised him
+above the power of kings; and he expired at Mecca of the anguish
+of a broken heart.  His rival was more favorably treated: his
+services were forgiven; and Tarik was permitted to mingle with
+the crowd of slaves. ^189 I am ignorant whether Count Julian was
+rewarded with the death which he deserved indeed, though not from
+the hands of the Saracens; but the tale of their ingratitude to
+the sons of Witiza is disproved by the most unquestionable
+evidence.  The two royal youths were reinstated in the private
+patrimony of their father; but on the decease of Eba, the elder,
+his daughter was unjustly despoiled of her portion by the
+violence of her uncle Sigebut.  The Gothic maid pleaded her cause
+before the caliph Hashem, and obtained the restitution of her
+inheritance; but she was given in marriage to a noble Arabian,
+and their two sons, Isaac and Ibrahim, were received in Spain
+with the consideration that was due to their origin and riches.
+
+[Footnote 188: This design, which is attested by several Arabian
+historians, (Cardonne, tom. i. p. 95, 96,) may be compared with
+that of Mithridates, to march from the Crimaea to Rome; or with
+that of Caesar, to conquer the East, and return home by the
+North; and all three are perhaps surpassed by the real and
+successful enterprise of Hannibal.]
+
+[Footnote 189: I much regret our loss, or my ignorance, of two
+Arabic works of the viiith century, a Life of Musa, and a poem on
+the exploits of Tarik. Of these authentic pieces, the former was
+composed by a grandson of Musa, who had escaped from the massacre
+of his kindred; the latter, by the vizier of the first
+Abdalrahman, caliph of Spain, who might have conversed with some
+of the veterans of the conqueror, (Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom.
+ii. p. 36, 139.)]
+
+A province is assimilated to the victorious state by the
+introduction of strangers and the imitative spirit of the
+natives; and Spain, which had been successively tinctured with
+Punic, and Roman, and Gothic blood, imbibed, in a few
+generations, the name and manners of the Arabs.  The first
+conquerors, and the twenty successive lieutenants of the caliphs,
+were attended by a numerous train of civil and military
+followers, who preferred a distant fortune to a narrow home: the
+private and public interest was promoted by the establishment of
+faithful colonies; and the cities of Spain were proud to
+commemorate the tribe or country of their Eastern progenitors.
+The victorious though motley bands of Tarik and Musa asserted, by
+the name of Spaniards, their original claim of conquest; yet they
+allowed their brethren of Egypt to share their establishments of
+Murcia and Lisbon.  The royal legion of Damascus was planted at
+Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Kinnisrin or Chalcis
+at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia.  The
+natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered round Toledo and the
+inland country, and the fertile seats of Grenada were bestowed on
+ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the
+purest and most noble of the Arabian tribes. ^190 A spirit of
+emulation, sometimes beneficial, more frequently dangerous, was
+nourished by these hereditary factions.  Ten years after the
+conquest, a map of the province was presented to the caliph: the
+seas, the rivers, and the harbors, the inhabitants and cities,
+the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of the earth.
+^191 In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were
+improved by the agriculture, ^192 the manufactures, and the
+commerce, of an industrious people; and the effects of their
+diligence have been magnified by the idleness of their fancy.
+The first of the Ommiades who reigned in Spain solicited the
+support of the Christians; and in his edict of peace and
+protection, he contents himself with a modest imposition of ten
+thousand ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten
+thousand horses, as many mules, one thousand cuirasses, with an
+equal number of helmets and lances. ^193 The most powerful of his
+successors derived from the same kingdom the annual tribute of
+twelve millions and forty-five thousand dinars or pieces of gold,
+about six millions of sterling money; ^194 a sum which, in the
+tenth century, most probably surpassed the united revenues of the
+Christians monarchs.  His royal seat of Cordova contained six
+hundred moschs, nine hundred baths, and two hundred thousand
+houses; he gave laws to eighty cities of the first, to three
+hundred of the second and third order; and the fertile banks of
+the Guadalquivir were adorned with twelve thousand villages and
+hamlets.  The Arabs might exaggerate the truth, but they created
+and they describe the most prosperous aera of the riches, the
+cultivation, and the populousness of Spain. ^195
+
+[Footnote 190: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. ii. p. 32, 252.  The
+former of these quotations is taken from a Biographia Hispanica,
+by an Arabian of Valentia, (see the copious Extracts of Casiri,
+tom. ii. p. 30 - 121;) and the latter from a general Chronology
+of the Caliphs, and of the African and Spanish Dynasties, with a
+particular History of the kingdom of Grenada, of which Casiri has
+given almost an entire version, (Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom.
+ii. p. 177 - 319.) The author, Ebn Khateb, a native of Grenada,
+and a contemporary of Novairi and Abulfeda, (born A.D. 1313, died
+A.D. 1374,) was an historian, geographer, physician, poet, &c.,
+(tom. ii. p. 71, 72.)]
+
+[Footnote 191: Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom.
+i. p. 116, 117.]
+
+[Footnote 192: A copious treatise of husbandry, by an Arabian of
+Seville, in the xiith century, is in the Escurial library, and
+Casiri had some thoughts of translating it.  He gives a list of
+the authors quoted, Arabs as well as Greeks, Latins, &c.; but it
+is much if the Andalusian saw these strangers through the medium
+of his countryman Columella, (Casiri, Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana,
+tom. i. p. 323 - 338.)]
+
+[Footnote 193: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 104.  Casiri
+translates the original testimony of the historian Rasis, as it
+is alleged in the Arabic Biographia Hispanica, pars ix.  But I am
+most exceedingly surprised at the address, Principibus
+caeterisque Christianis, Hispanis suis Castellae.  The name of
+Castellae was unknown in the viiith century; the kingdom was not
+erected till the year 1022, a hundred years after the time of
+Rasis, (Bibliot. tom. ii. p. 330,) and the appellation was always
+expressive, not of a tributary province, but of a line of castles
+independent of the Moorish yoke, (D'Anville, Etats de l'Europe,
+p. 166 - 170.) Had Casiri been a critic, he would have cleared a
+difficulty, perhaps of his own making.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Cardonne, tom. i. p. 337, 338.  He computes the
+revenue at 130,000,000 of French livres.  The entire picture of
+peace and prosperity relieves the bloody uniformity of the
+Moorish annals.]
+
+[Footnote 195: I am happy enough to possess a splendid and
+interesting work which has only been distributed in presents by
+the court of Madrid Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis,
+opera et studio Michaelis Casiri, Syro Maronitoe.  Matriti, in
+folio, tomus prior, 1760, tomus posterior, 1770.  The execution
+of this work does honor to the Spanish press; the Mss., to the
+number of MDCCCLI., are judiciously classed by the editor, and
+his copious extracts throw some light on the Mahometan literature
+and history of Spain. These relics are now secure, but the task
+has been supinely delayed, till, in the year 1671, a fire
+consumed the greatest part of the Escurial library, rich in the
+spoils of Grenada and Morocco.
+
+Note: Compare the valuable work of Conde, Historia de la
+Dominacion de las Arabes en Espana.  Madrid, 1820. - M.]
+
+The wars of the Moslems were sanctified by the prophet; but
+among the various precepts and examples of his life, the caliphs
+selected the lessons of toleration that might tend to disarm the
+resistance of the unbelievers. Arabia was the temple and
+patrimony of the God of Mahomet; but he beheld with less jealousy
+and affection the nations of the earth.  The polytheists and
+idolaters, who were ignorant of his name, might be lawfully
+extirpated by his votaries; ^196 but a wise policy supplied the
+obligation of justice; and after some acts of intolerant zeal,
+the Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagods of
+that devout and populous country.  The disciples of Abraham, of
+Moses, and of Jesus, were solemnly invited to accept the more
+perfect revelation of Mahomet; but if they preferred the payment
+of a moderate tribute, they were entitled to the freedom of
+conscience and religious worship. ^197 In a field of battle the
+forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the profession of
+Islam; the females were bound to embrace the religion of their
+masters, and a race of sincere proselytes was gradually
+multiplied by the education of the infant captives.  But the
+millions of African and Asiatic converts, who swelled the native
+band of the faithful Arabs, must have been allured, rather than
+constrained, to declare their belief in one God and the apostle
+of God.  By the repetition of a sentence and the loss of a
+foreskin, the subject or the slave, the captive or the criminal,
+arose in a moment the free and equal companion of the victorious
+Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was dissolved:
+the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence of nature;
+the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by the
+trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world,
+every member of a new society ascended to the natural level of
+his capacity and courage.  The minds of the multitude were
+tempted by the invisible as well as temporal blessings of the
+Arabian prophet; and charity will hope that many of his
+proselytes entertained a serious conviction of the truth and
+sanctity of his revelation.  In the eyes of an inquisitive
+polytheist, it must appear worthy of the human and the divine
+nature.  More pure than the system of Zoroaster, more liberal
+than the law of Moses, the religion of Mahomet might seem less
+inconsistent with reason than the creed of mystery and
+superstition, which, in the seventh century, disgraced the
+simplicity of the gospel.
+
+[Footnote 196: The Harbii, as they are styled, qui tolerari
+nequeunt, are, 1. Those who, besides God, worship the sun, moon,
+or idols.  2. Atheists, Utrique, quamdiu princeps aliquis inter
+Mohammedanos superest, oppugnari debent donec religionem
+amplectantur, nec requies iis concedenda est, nec pretium
+acceptandum pro obtinenda conscientiae libertate, (Reland,
+Dissertat. x. de Jure Militari Mohammedan. tom. iii. p. 14;) a
+rigid theory!]
+
+[Footnote 197: The distinction between a proscribed and a
+tolerated sect, between the Harbii and the people of the Book,
+the believers in some divine revelation, is correctly defined in
+the conversation of the caliph Al Mamum with the idolaters or
+Sabaeans of Charrae, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 107, 108.)]
+
+In the extensive provinces of Persia and Africa, the
+national religion has been eradicated by the Mahometan faith.
+The ambiguous theology of the Magi stood alone among the sects of
+the East; but the profane writings of Zoroaster ^198 might, under
+the reverend name of Abraham, be dexterously connected with the
+chain of divine revelation.  Their evil principle, the daemon
+Ahriman, might be represented as the rival, or as the creature,
+of the God of light.  The temples of Persia were devoid of
+images; but the worship of the sun and of fire might be
+stigmatized as a gross and criminal idolatry. ^199 The milder
+sentiment was consecrated by the practice of Mahomet ^200 and the
+prudence of the caliphs; the Magians or Ghebers were ranked with
+the Jews and Christians among the people of the written law; ^201
+and as late as the third century of the Hegira, the city of Herat
+will afford a lively contrast of private zeal and public
+toleration. ^202 Under the payment of an annual tribute, the
+Mahometan law secured to the Ghebers of Herat their civil and
+religious liberties: but the recent and humble mosch was
+overshadowed by the antique splendor of the adjoining temple of
+fire.  A fanatic Iman deplored, in his sermons, the scandalous
+neighborhood, and accused the weakness or indifference of the
+faithful. Excited by his voice, the people assembled in tumult;
+the two houses of prayer were consumed by the flames, but the
+vacant ground was immediately occupied by the foundations of a
+new mosch.  The injured Magi appealed to the sovereign of
+Chorasan; he promised justice and relief; when, behold! four
+thousand citizens of Herat, of a grave character and mature age,
+unanimously swore that the idolatrous fane had never existed; the
+inquisition was silenced and their conscience was satisfied (says
+the historian Mirchond ^203) with this holy and meritorious
+perjury. ^204 But the greatest part of the temples of Persia were
+ruined by the insensible and general desertion of their votaries.
+
+It was insensible, since it is not accompanied with any memorial
+of time or place, of persecution or resistance. It was general,
+since the whole realm, from Shiraz to Samarcand, imbibed the
+faith of the Koran; and the preservation of the native tongue
+reveals the descent of the Mahometans of Persia. ^205 In the
+mountains and deserts, an obstinate race of unbelievers adhered
+to the superstition of their fathers; and a faint tradition of
+the Magian theology is kept alive in the province of Kirman,
+along the banks of the Indus, among the exiles of Surat, and in
+the colony which, in the last century, was planted by Shaw Abbas
+at the gates of Ispahan.  The chief pontiff has retired to Mount
+Elbourz, eighteen leagues from the city of Yezd: the perpetual
+fire (if it continues to burn) is inaccessible to the profane;
+but his residence is the school, the oracle, and the pilgrimage
+of the Ghebers, whose hard and uniform features attest the
+unmingled purity of their blood.  Under the jurisdiction of their
+elders, eighty thousand families maintain an innocent and
+industrious life: their subsistence is derived from some curious
+manufactures and mechanic trades; and they cultivate the earth
+with the fervor of a religious duty.  Their ignorance withstood
+the despotism of Shaw Abbas, who demanded with threats and
+tortures the prophetic books of Zoroaster; and this obscure
+remnant of the Magians is spared by the moderation or contempt of
+their present sovereigns. ^206
+
+[Footnote 198: The Zend or Pazend, the bible of the Ghebers, is
+reckoned by themselves, or at least by the Mahometans, among the
+ten books which Abraham received from heaven; and their religion
+is honorably styled the religion of Abraham, (D'Herblot, Bibliot.
+Orient. p. 701; Hyde, de Religione veterum Persarum, c, iii. p.
+27, 28, &c.) I much fear that we do not possess any pure and free
+description of the system of Zoroaster. ^* Dr. Prideaux
+(Connection, vol. i. p. 300, octavo) adopts the opinion, that he
+had been the slave and scholar of some Jewish prophet in the
+captivity of Babylon.  Perhaps the Persians, who have been the
+masters of the Jews, would assert the honor, a poor honor, of
+being their masters.
+
+[Footnote *: Whatever the real age of the Zendavesta,
+published by Anquetil du Perron, whether of the time of Ardeschir
+Babeghan, according to Mr. Erskine, or of much higher antiquity,
+it may be considered, I conceive, both a "pure and a free,"
+though imperfect, description of Zoroastrianism; particularly
+with the illustrations of the original translator, and of the
+German Kleuker - M.]
+
+[Footnote 199: The Arabian Nights, a faithful and amusing picture
+of the Oriental world, represent in the most odious colors of the
+Magians, or worshippers of fire, to whom they attribute the
+annual sacrifice of a Mussulman.  The religion of Zoroaster has
+not the least affinity with that of the Hindoos, yet they are
+often confounded by the Mahometans; and the sword of Timour was
+sharpened by this mistake, (Hist. de Timour Bec, par Cherefeddin
+Ali Yezdi, l. v.]
+
+[Footnote 200: Vie de Mahomet, par Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 114,
+115.)]
+
+[Footnote 201: Hae tres sectae, Judaei, Christiani, et qui inter
+Persas Magorum institutis addicti sunt, populi libri dicuntur,
+(Reland, Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 15.) The caliph Al Mamun
+confirms this honorable distinction in favor of the three sects,
+with the vague and equivocal religion of the Sabaeans, under
+which the ancient polytheists of Charrae were allowed to shelter
+their idolatrous worship, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient p. 167, 168.)]
+
+[Footnote 202: This singular story is related by D'Herbelot,
+(Bibliot. Orient. p 448, 449,) on the faith of Khondemir, and by
+Mirchond himself, (Hist priorum Regum Persarum, &c., p. 9, 10,
+not. p. 88, 89.)]
+
+[Footnote 203: Mirchond, (Mohammed Emir Khoondah Shah,) a native
+of Herat, composed in the Persian language a general history of
+the East, from the creation to the year of the Hegira 875, (A.D.
+1471.) In the year 904 (A.D. 1498) the historian obtained the
+command of a princely library, and his applauded work, in seven
+or twelve parts, was abbreviated in three volumes by his son
+Khondemir, A. H. 927, A.D. 1520.  The two writers, most
+accurately distinguished by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de
+Genghizcan, p.537, 538, 544, 545,) are loosely confounded by
+D'Herbelot, (p. 358, 410, 994, 995: ) but his numerous extracts,
+under the improper name of Khondemir, belong to the father rather
+than the son.  The historian of Genghizcan refers to a Ms. of
+Mirchond, which he received from the hands of his friend
+D'Herbelot himself.  A curious fragment (the Taherian and
+Soffarian Dynasties) has been lately published in Persic and
+Latin, (Viennae, 1782, in 4to., cum notis Bernard de Jenisch;)
+and the editor allows us to hope for a continuation of Mirchond.]
+
+[Footnote 204: Quo testimonio boni se quidpiam praestitisse
+opinabantur. Yet Mirchond must have condemned their zeal, since
+he approved the legal toleration of the Magi, cui (the fire
+temple) peracto singulis annis censu uti sacra Mohammedis lege
+cautum, ab omnibus molestiis ac oneribus libero esse licuit.]
+
+[Footnote 205: The last Magian of name and power appears to be
+Mardavige the Dilemite, who, in the beginning of the 10th
+century, reigned in the northern provinces of Persia, near the
+Caspian Sea, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 355.) But his
+soldiers and successors, the Bowides either professed or embraced
+the Mahometan faith; and under their dynasty (A.D. 933 - 1020) I
+should say the fall of the religion of Zoroaster.]
+
+[Footnote 206: The present state of the Ghebers in Persia is
+taken from Sir John Chardin, not indeed the most learned, but the
+most judicious and inquisitive of our modern travellers, (Voyages
+en Perse, tom. ii. p. 109, 179 - 187, in 4to.) His brethren,
+Pietro della Valle, Olearius, Thevenot, Tavernier, &c., whom I
+have fruitlessly searched, had neither eyes nor attention for
+this interesting people.]
+
+The Northern coast of Africa is the only land in which the
+light of the gospel, after a long and perfect establishment, has
+been totally extinguished. The arts, which had been taught by
+Carthage and Rome, were involved in a cloud of ignorance; the
+doctrine of Cyprian and Augustin was no longer studied. Five
+hundred episcopal churches were overturned by the hostile fury of
+the Donatists, the Vandals, and the Moors.  The zeal and numbers
+of the clergy declined; and the people, without discipline, or
+knowledge, or hope, submissively sunk under the yoke of the
+Arabian prophet Within fifty years after the expulsion of the
+Greeks, a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the
+tribute of the infidels was abolished by their conversion; ^207
+and, though he sought to disguise his fraud and rebellion, his
+specious pretence was drawn from the rapid and extensive progress
+of the Mahometan faith.  In the next age, an extraordinary
+mission of five bishops was detached from Alexandria to Cairoan.
+They were ordained by the Jacobite patriarch to cherish and
+revive the dying embers of Christianity: ^208 but the
+interposition of a foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an
+enemy to the Catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the
+African hierarchy.  It was no longer the time when the successor
+of St. Cyprian, at the head of a numerous synod, could maintain
+an equal contest with the ambition of the Roman pontiff.  In the
+eleventh century, the unfortunate priest who was seated on the
+ruins of Carthage implored the arms and the protection of the
+Vatican; and he bitterly complains that his naked body had been
+scourged by the Saracens, and that his authority was disputed by
+the four suffragans, the tottering pillars of his throne.  Two
+epistles of Gregory the Seventh ^209 are destined to soothe the
+distress of the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The
+pope assures the sultan that they both worship the same God, and
+may hope to meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint that
+three bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother,
+announces the speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order.
+The Christians of Africa and Spain had long since submitted to
+the practice of circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine
+and pork; and the name of Mozarabes ^210 (adoptive Arabs) was
+applied to their civil or religious conformity. ^211 About the
+middle of the twelfth century, the worship of Christ and the
+succession of pastors were abolished along the coast of Barbary,
+and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and
+Grenada. ^212 The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians, was
+founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary rigor
+might be provoked or justified by the recent victories and
+intolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon
+and Portugal.  The faith of the Mozarabes was occasionally
+revived by the papal missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles
+the Fifth, some families of Latin Christians were encouraged to
+rear their heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel
+was quickly eradicated, and the long province from Tripoli to the
+Atlantic has lost all memory of the language and religion of
+Rome. ^213
+
+[Footnote 207: The letter of Abdoulrahman, governor or tyrant of
+Africa, to the caliph Aboul Abbas, the first of the Abbassides,
+is dated A. H. 132 Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne,
+tom. i. p. 168.)]
+
+[Footnote 208: Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 66.  Renaudot, Hist.
+Patriarch. Alex. p. 287, 288.]
+
+[Footnote 209: Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX.
+epist. 3; Gregor. VII. l. i. epist. 22, 23, l. iii. epist. 19,
+20, 21; and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iv. A.D. 1053, No. 14,
+A.D. 1073, No. 13,) who investigates the name and family of the
+Moorish prince, with whom the proudest of the Roman pontiffs so
+politely corresponds.]
+
+[Footnote 210: Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is
+interpreted in Latin, (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 39, 40.
+Bibliot. Arabico- Hispana, tom. ii. p. 18.) The Mozarabic
+liturgy, the ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been
+attacked by the popes, and exposed to the doubtful trials of the
+sword and of fire, (Marian. Hist. Hispan. tom. i. l. ix. c. 18,
+p. 378.) It was, or rather it is, in the Latin tongue; yet in the
+xith century it was found necessary (A. Ae. C. 1687, A.D. 1039)
+to transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the councils of
+Spain, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 547,) for the use of the
+bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.]
+
+[Footnote 211: About the middle of the xth century, the clergy of
+Cordova was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the
+intrepid envoy of the Emperor Otho I., (Vit. Johan. Gorz, in
+Secul. Benedict. V. No. 115, apud Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xii.
+p. 91.)]
+
+[Footnote 212: Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 1149, No. 8, 9.  He
+justly observes, that when Seville, &c., were retaken by
+Ferdinand of Castille, no Christians, except captives, were found
+in the place; and that the Mozarabic churches of Africa and
+Spain, described by James a Vitriaco, A.D. 1218, (Hist. Hierosol.
+c. 80, p. 1095, in Gest. Dei per Francos,) are copied from some
+older book.  I shall add, that the date of the Hegira 677 (A.D.
+1278) must apply to the copy, not the composition, of a treatise
+of a jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the
+Christians of Cordova, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 471;) and
+that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of
+Grenada, (A.D. 1313,) could either discountenance or tolerate,
+(tom. ii. p. 288.)]
+
+[Footnote 213: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288.  Leo
+Africanus would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have
+discovered any latent relics of the Christianity of Africa.]
+
+After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews and
+Christians of the Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience
+which was granted by the Arabian caliphs.  During the first age
+of the conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the Catholics,
+whose name of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the
+Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his inveterate
+enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of
+the Mahometan government. ^214 Yet this partial jealousy was
+healed by time and submission; the churches of Egypt were shared
+with the Catholics; ^215 and all the Oriental sects were included
+in the common benefits of toleration. The rank, the immunities,
+the domestic jurisdiction of the patriarchs, the bishops, and the
+clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate: the learning of
+individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries
+and physicians: they were enriched by the lucrative collection of
+the revenue; and their merit was sometimes raised to the command
+of cities and provinces.  A caliph of the house of Abbas was
+heard to declare that the Christians were most worthy of trust in
+the administration of Persia.  "The Moslems," said he, "will
+abuse their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen
+greatness; and the Jews are impatient for their approaching
+deliverance." ^216 But the slaves of despotism are exposed to the
+alternatives of favor and disgrace. The captive churches of the
+East have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry
+of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal restraints must be
+offensive to the pride, or the zeal, of the Christians. ^217
+About two hundred years after Mahomet, they were separated from
+their fellow- subjects by a turban or girdle of a less honorable
+color; instead of horses or mules. they were condemned to ride on
+asses, in the attitude of women. Their public and private
+building were measured by a diminutive standard; in the streets
+or the baths it is their duty to give way or bow down before the
+meanest of the people; and their testimony is rejected, if it may
+tend to the prejudice of a true believer.  The pomp of
+processions, the sound of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in
+their worship; a decent reverence for the national faith is
+imposed on their sermons and conversations; and the sacrilegious
+attempt to enter a mosch, or to seduce a Mussulman, will not be
+suffered to escape with impunity.  In a time, however, of
+tranquillity and justice, the Christians have never been
+compelled to renounce the Gospel, or to embrace the Koran; but
+the punishment of death is inflicted upon the apostates who have
+professed and deserted the law of Mahomet.  The martyrs of
+Cordova provoked the sentence of the cadhi, by the public
+confession of their inconstancy, or their passionate invectives
+against the person and religion of the prophet. ^218
+
+[Footnote 214: Absit (said the Catholic to the vizier of Bagdad)
+ut pari loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum praeter Arabas nullus
+alius rex est, et Graecos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello
+non desistunt, &c.  See in the Collections of Assemannus
+(Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 94 - 101) the state of the
+Nestorians under the caliphs.  That of the Jacobites is more
+concisely exposed in the Preliminary Dissertation of the second
+volume of Assemannus.]
+
+[Footnote 215: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384, 387, 388.
+Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 205, 206, 257, 332.  A taint
+of the Monothelite heresy might render the first of these Greek
+patriarchs less loyal to the emperors and less obnoxious to the
+Arabs.]
+
+[Footnote 216: Motadhed, who reigned from A.D. 892 to 902.  The
+Magians still held their name and rank among the religions of the
+empire, (Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97.)]
+
+[Footnote 217: Reland explains the general restraints of the
+Mahometan policy and jurisprudence, (Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 16 -
+20.) The oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel, (A.D. 847 -
+861,) which are still in force, are noticed by Eutychius, (Annal.
+tom. ii. p. 448,) and D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 640.) A
+persecution of the caliph Omar II. is related, and most probably
+magnified, by the Greek Theophanes (Chron p. 334.)]
+
+[Footnote 218: The martyrs of Cordova (A.D. 850, &c.) are
+commemorated and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a
+victim himself.  A synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously
+censured their rashness.  The moderate Fleury cannot reconcile
+their conduct with the discipline of antiquity, toutefois
+l'autorite de l'eglise, &c.  (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p.
+415 - 522, particularly p. 451, 508, 509.) Their authentic acts
+throw a strong, though transient, light on the Spanish church in
+the ixth century.]
+
+At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs
+were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe.  Their
+prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by
+the power of the nobles, the freedom of the commons, the
+privileges of the church, the votes of a senate, or the memory of
+a free constitution.  The authority of the companions of Mahomet
+expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian
+tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality and
+independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in
+the successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their
+actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that
+divine book.  They reigned by the right of conquest over the
+nations of the East, to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and
+who were accustomed to applaud in their tyrants the acts of
+violence and severity that were exercised at their own expense.
+Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two
+hundred days' journey from east to west, from the confines of
+Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  And if we
+retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their
+writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and
+compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will
+spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the
+march of a caravan. ^219 We should vainly seek the indissoluble
+union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus
+and the Antonines; but the progress of the Mahometan religion
+diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners
+and opinions.  The language and laws of the Koran were studied
+with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the
+Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of
+Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom
+in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris. ^220
+
+[Footnote 219: See the article Eslamiah, (as we say Christendom,)
+in the Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 325.) This chart of the
+Mahometan world is suited by the author, Ebn Alwardi, to the year
+of the Hegira 385 (A.D. 995.) Since that time, the losses in
+Spain have been overbalanced by the conquests in India, Tartary,
+and the European Turkey.]
+
+[Footnote 220: The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead
+language in the college of Mecca.  By the Danish traveller, this
+ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of
+Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of
+Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and
+Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p. 74, &c.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part I.
+
+The Two Sieges Of Constantinople By The Arabs. - Their
+Invasion Of France, And Defeat By Charles Martel. - Civil War Of
+The Ommiades And Abbassides. - Learning Of The Arabs. - Luxury Of
+The Caliphs. - Naval Enterprises On Crete, Sicily, And Rome. -
+Decay And Division Of The Empire Of The Caliphs. - Defeats And
+Victories Of The Greek Emperors.
+
+When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they must have
+been surprised at the ease and rapidity of their own success.
+But when they advanced in the career of victory to the banks of
+the Indus and the summit of the Pyrenees; when they had
+repeatedly tried the edge of their cimeters and the energy of
+their faith, they might be equally astonished that any nation
+could resist their invincible arms; that any boundary should
+confine the dominion of the successor of the prophet.  The
+confidence of soldiers and fanatics may indeed be excused, since
+the calm historian of the present hour, who strives to follow the
+rapid course of the Saracens, must study to explain by what means
+the church and state were saved from this impending, and, as it
+should seem, from this inevitable, danger.  The deserts of
+Scythia and Sarmatia might be guarded by their extent, their
+climate, their poverty, and the courage of the northern
+shepherds; China was remote and inaccessible; but the greatest
+part of the temperate zone was subject to the Mahometan
+conquerors, the Greeks were exhausted by the calamities of war
+and the loss of their fairest provinces, and the Barbarians of
+Europe might justly tremble at the precipitate fall of the Gothic
+monarchy.  In this inquiry I shall unfold the events that rescued
+our ancestors of Britain, and our neighbors of Gaul, from the
+civil and religious yoke of the Koran; that protected the majesty
+of Rome, and delayed the servitude of Constantinople; that
+invigorated the defence of the Christians, and scattered among
+their enemies the seeds of division and decay.
+
+Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his
+disciples appeared in arms under the walls of Constantinople. ^1
+They were animated by a genuine or fictitious saying of the
+prophet, that, to the first army which besieged the city of the
+Caesars, their sins were forgiven: the long series of Roman
+triumphs would be meritoriously transferred to the conquerors of
+New Rome; and the wealth of nations was deposited in this
+well-chosen seat of royalty and commerce.  No sooner had the
+caliph Moawiyah suppressed his rivals and established his throne,
+than he aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood, by the
+success and glory of this holy expedition; ^2 his preparations by
+sea and land were adequate to the importance of the object; his
+standard was intrusted to Sophian, a veteran warrior, but the
+troops were encouraged by the example and presence of Yezid, the
+son and presumptive heir of the commander of the faithful.  The
+Greeks had little to hope, nor had their enemies any reason of
+fear, from the courage and vigilance of the reigning emperor, who
+disgraced the name of Constantine, and imitated only the
+inglorious years of his grandfather Heraclius.  Without delay or
+opposition, the naval forces of the Saracens passed through the
+unguarded channel of the Hellespont, which even now, under the
+feeble and disorderly government of the Turks, is maintained as
+the natural bulwark of the capital. ^3 The Arabian fleet cast
+anchor, and the troops were disembarked near the palace of
+Hebdomon, seven miles from the city.  During many days, from the
+dawn of light to the evening, the line of assault was extended
+from the golden gate to the eastern promontory and the foremost
+warriors were impelled by the weight and effort of the succeeding
+columns.  But the besiegers had formed an insufficient estimate
+of the strength and resources of Constantinople.  The solid and
+lofty walls were guarded by numbers and discipline: the spirit of
+the Romans was rekindled by the last danger of their religion and
+empire: the fugitives from the conquered provinces more
+successfully renewed the defence of Damascus and Alexandria; and
+the Saracens were dismayed by the strange and prodigious effects
+of artificial fire.  This firm and effectual resistance diverted
+their arms to the more easy attempt of plundering the European
+and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis; and, after keeping the sea
+from the month of April to that of September, on the approach of
+winter they retreated fourscore miles from the capital, to the
+Isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established their magazine of
+spoil and provisions.  So patient was their perseverance, or so
+languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six
+following summers the same attack and retreat, with a gradual
+abatement of hope and vigor, till the mischances of shipwreck and
+disease, of the sword and of fire, compelled them to relinquish
+the fruitless enterprise.  They might bewail the loss, or
+commemorate the martyrdom, of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell
+in the siege of Constantinople; and the solemn funeral of Abu
+Ayub, or Job, excited the curiosity of the Christians themselves.
+
+That venerable Arab, one of the last of the companions of
+Mahomet, was numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of
+Medina, who sheltered the head of the flying prophet.  In his
+youth he fought, at Beder and Ohud, under the holy standard: in
+his mature age he was the friend and follower of Ali; and the
+last remnant of his strength and life was consumed in a distant
+and dangerous war against the enemies of the Koran.  His memory
+was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected and
+unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years, till
+the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second.  A
+seasonable vision (for such are the manufacture of every
+religion) revealed the holy spot at the foot of the walls and the
+bottom of the harbor; and the mosch of Ayub has been deservedly
+chosen for the simple and martial inauguration of the Turkish
+sultans. ^4
+
+[Footnote 1: Theophanes places the seven years of the siege of
+Constantinople in the year of our Christian aera, 673 (of the
+Alexandrian 665, Sept. 1,) and the peace of the Saracens, four
+years afterwards; a glaring inconsistency! which Petavius, Goar,
+and Pagi, (Critica, tom. iv. p. 63, 64,) have struggled to
+remove.  Of the Arabians, the Hegira 52 (A.D. 672, January 8) is
+assigned by Elmacin, the year 48 (A.D. 688, Feb. 20) by Abulfeda,
+whose testimony I esteem the most convenient and credible.]
+
+[Footnote 2: For this first siege of Constantinople, see
+Nicephorus, (Breviar. p. 21, 22;) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p.
+294;) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 437;) Zonaras, (Hist. tom. ii. l.
+xiv. p. 89;) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 56, 57;) Abulfeda,
+(Annal. Moslem. p. 107, 108, vers. Reiske;) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot.
+Orient. Constantinah;) Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol. ii.
+p. 127, 128.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The state and defence of the Dardanelles is exposed
+in the Memoirs of the Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 39 - 97,) who
+was sent to fortify them against the Russians.  From a principal
+actor, I should have expected more accurate details; but he seems
+to write for the amusement, rather than the instruction, of his
+reader.  Perhaps, on the approach of the enemy, the minister of
+Constantine was occupied, like that of Mustapha, in finding two
+Canary birds who should sing precisely the same note.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Demetrius Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p.
+105, 106. Rycaut's State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 10, 11.
+Voyages of Thevenot, part i. p. 189.  The Christians, who suppose
+that the martyr Abu Ayub is vulgarly confounded with the
+patriarch Job, betray their own ignorance rather than that of the
+Turks.]
+
+The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West,
+the reputation of the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade over
+the glories of the Saracens.  The Greek ambassador was favorably
+received at Damascus, a general council of the emirs or Koreish:
+a peace, or truce, of thirty years was ratified between the two
+empires; and the stipulation of an annual tribute, fifty horses
+of a noble breed, fifty slaves, and three thousand pieces of
+gold, degraded the majesty of the commander of the faithful. ^5
+The aged caliph was desirous of possessing his dominions, and
+ending his days in tranquillity and repose: while the Moors and
+Indians trembled at his name, his palace and city of Damascus was
+insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of Mount Libanus, the
+firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed and
+transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks. ^6 After the
+revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah was reduced to
+the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt: their distress and fear enforced
+their compliance with the pressing demands of the Christians; and
+the tribute was increased to a slave, a horse, and a thousand
+pieces of gold, for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days
+of the solar year. But as soon as the empire was again united by
+the arms and policy of Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge of
+servitude not less injurious to his conscience than to his pride;
+he discontinued the payment of the tribute; and the resentment of
+the Greeks was disabled from action by the mad tyranny of the
+second Justinian, the just rebellion of his subjects, and the
+frequent change of his antagonists and successors.  Till the
+reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with the free
+possession of the Persian and Roman treasures, in the coins of
+Chosroes and Caesar.  By the command of that caliph, a national
+mint was established, both for silver and gold, and the
+inscription of the Dinar, though it might be censured by some
+timorous casuists, proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet. ^8
+Under the reign of the caliph Walid, the Greek language and
+characters were excluded from the accounts of the public revenue.
+^9 If this change was productive of the invention or familiar use
+of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as they
+are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most
+important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the
+mathematical sciences. ^10
+
+[Footnote 5: Theophanes, though a Greek, deserves credit for
+these tributes, (Chronograph. p. 295, 296, 300, 301,) which are
+confirmed, with some variation, by the Arabic History of
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 128, vers. Pocock.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: The censure of Theophanes is just and pointed,
+(Chronograph. p. 302, 303.) The series of these events may be
+traced in the Annals of Theophanes, and in the Abridgment of the
+patriarch Nicephorus, p. 22, 24.]
+
+[Footnote 7: These domestic revolutions are related in a clear
+and natural style, in the second volume of Ockley's History of
+the Saracens, p. 253 - 370. Besides our printed authors, he draws
+his materials from the Arabic Mss. of Oxford, which he would have
+more deeply searched had he been confined to the Bodleian library
+instead of the city jail a fate how unworthy of the man and of
+his country!]
+
+[Footnote 8: Elmacin, who dates the first coinage A. H. 76, A.D.
+695, five or six years later than the Greek historians, has
+compared the weight of the best or common gold dinar to the
+drachm or dirhem of Egypt, (p. 77,) which may be equal to two
+pennies (48 grains) of our Troy weight, (Hooper's Inquiry into
+Ancient Measures, p. 24 - 36,) and equivalent to eight shillings
+of our sterling money.  From the same Elmacin and the Arabian
+physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems, as low as half a
+dirhem, may be deduced.  The piece of silver was the dirhem, both
+in value and weight; but an old, though fair coin, struck at
+Waset, A. H. 88, and preserved in the Bodleian library, wants
+four grains of the Cairo standard, (see the Modern Universal
+History, tom. i. p. 548 of the French translation.)
+
+Note: Up to this time the Arabs had used the Roman or the
+Persian coins or had minted others which resembled them.
+Nevertheless, it has been admitted of late years, that the
+Arabians, before this epoch, had caused coin to be minted, on
+which, preserving the Roman or the Persian dies, they added
+Arabian names or inscriptions.  Some of these exist in different
+collections.  We learn from Makrizi, an Arabian author of great
+learning and judgment, that in the year 18 of the Hegira, under
+the caliphate of Omar, the Arabs had coined money of this
+description.  The same author informs us that the caliph
+Abdalmalek caused coins to be struck representing himself with a
+sword by his side.  These types, so contrary to the notions of
+the Arabs, were disapproved by the most influential persons of
+the time, and the caliph substituted for them, after the year 76
+of the Hegira, the Mahometan coins with which we are acquainted.
+Consult, on the question of Arabic numismatics, the works of
+Adler, of Fraehn, of Castiglione, and of Marsden, who have
+treated at length this interesting point of historic antiquities.
+
+See, also, in the Journal Asiatique, tom. ii. p. 257, et seq., a
+paper of M. Silvestre de Sacy, entitled Des Monnaies des Khalifes
+avant l'An 75 de l'Hegire.  See, also the translation of a German
+paper on the Arabic medals of the Chosroes, by M. Fraehn. in the
+same Journal Asiatique tom. iv. p. 331 - 347.  St. Martin, vol.
+xii. p. 19 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Theophan.  Chronograph. p. 314.  This defect, if it
+really existed, must have stimulated the ingenuity of the Arabs
+to invent or borrow.]
+
+[Footnote 10: According to a new, though probable, notion,
+maintained by M de Villoison, (Anecdota Graeca, tom. ii. p. 152 -
+157,) our ciphers are not of Indian or Arabic invention.  They
+were used by the Greek and Latin arithmeticians long before the
+age of Boethius.  After the extinction of science in the West,
+they were adopted by the Arabic versions from the original Mss.,
+and restored to the Latins about the xith century.
+
+Note: Compare, on the Introduction of the Arabic numerals,
+Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe, p. 150, note,
+and the authors quoted therein. - M.]
+
+Whilst the caliph Walid sat idle on the throne of Damascus,
+whilst his lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana and
+Spain, a third army of Saracens overspread the provinces of Asia
+Minor, and approached the borders of the Byzantine capital.  But
+the attempt and disgrace of the second siege was reserved for his
+brother Soliman, whose ambition appears to have been quickened by
+a more active and martial spirit.  In the revolutions of the
+Greek empire, after the tyrant Justinian had been punished and
+avenged, an humble secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was
+promoted by chance or merit to the vacant purple.  He was alarmed
+by the sound of war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus
+with the tremendous news, that the Saracens were preparing an
+armament by sea and land, such as would transcend the experience
+of the past, or the belief of the present age. The precautions of
+Anastasius were not unworthy of his station, or of the impending
+danger.  He issued a peremptory mandate, that all persons who
+were not provided with the means of subsistence for a three
+years' siege should evacuate the city: the public granaries and
+arsenals were abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and
+strengthened; and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or
+fire, were stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of
+war, of which an additional number was hastily constructed.  To
+prevent is safer, as well as more honorable, than to repel, an
+attack; and a design was meditated, above the usual spirit of the
+Greeks, of burning the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress
+timber that had been hewn in Mount Libanus, and was piled along
+the sea-shore of Phoenicia, for the service of the Egyptian
+fleet.  This generous enterprise was defeated by the cowardice or
+treachery of the troops, who, in the new language of the empire,
+were styled of the Obsequian Theme. ^11 They murdered their
+chief, deserted their standard in the Isle of Rhodes, dispersed
+themselves over the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or
+reward by investing with the purple a simple officer of the
+revenue.  The name of Theodosius might recommend him to the
+senate and people; but, after some months, he sunk into a
+cloister, and resigned, to the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian,
+the urgent defence of the capital and empire.  The most
+formidable of the Saracens, Moslemah, the brother of the caliph,
+was advancing at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand
+Arabs and Persians, the greater part mounted on horses or camels;
+and the successful sieges of Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus, were
+of sufficient duration to exercise their skill and to elevate
+their hopes.  At the well-known passage of Abydus, on the
+Hellespont, the Mahometan arms were transported, for the first
+time, ^* from Asia to Europe. From thence, wheeling round the
+Thracian cities of the Propontis, Moslemah invested
+Constantinople on the land side, surrounded his camp with a ditch
+and rampart, prepared and planted his engines of assault, and
+declared, by words and actions, a patient resolution of expecting
+the return of seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the
+besieged prove equal to his own. ^! The Greeks would gladly have
+ransomed their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment of a
+piece of gold on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the
+liberal offer was rejected with disdain, and the presumption of
+Moslemah was exalted by the speedy approach and invincible force
+of the natives of Egypt and Syria.  They are said to have
+amounted to eighteen hundred ships: the number betrays their
+inconsiderable size; and of the twenty stout and capacious
+vessels, whose magnitude impeded their progress, each was manned
+with no more than one hundred heavy-armed soldiers.  This huge
+armada proceeded on a smooth sea, and with a gentle gale, towards
+the mouth of the Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was
+overshadowed, in the language of the Greeks, with a moving
+forest, and the same fatal night had been fixed by the Saracen
+chief for a general assault by sea and land.  To allure the
+confidence of the enemy, the emperor had thrown aside the chain
+that usually guarded the entrance of the harbor; but while they
+hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity, or apprehend
+the snare, the ministers of destruction were at hand.  The
+fire-ships of the Greeks were launched against them; the Arabs,
+their arms, and vessels, were involved in the same flames; the
+disorderly fugitives were dashed against each other or
+overwhelmed in the waves; and I no longer find a vestige of the
+fleet, that had threatened to extirpate the Roman name.  A still
+more fatal and irreparable loss was that of the caliph Soliman,
+who died of an indigestion, ^12 in his camp near Kinnisrin or
+Chalcis in Syria, as he was preparing to lead against
+Constantinople the remaining forces of the East. The brother of
+Moslemah was succeeded by a kinsman and an enemy; and the throne
+of an active and able prince was degraded by the useless and
+pernicious virtues of a bigot. ^!! While he started and satisfied
+the scruples of a blind conscience, the siege was continued
+through the winter by the neglect, rather than by the resolution
+of the caliph Omar. ^13 The winter proved uncommonly rigorous:
+above a hundred days the ground was covered with deep snow, and
+the natives of the sultry climes of Egypt and Arabia lay torpid
+and almost lifeless in their frozen camp.  They revived on the
+return of spring; a second effort had been made in their favor;
+and their distress was relieved by the arrival of two numerous
+fleets, laden with corn, and arms, and soldiers; the first from
+Alexandria, of four hundred transports and galleys; the second of
+three hundred and sixty vessels from the ports of Africa.  But
+the Greek fires were again kindled; and if the destruction was
+less complete, it was owing to the experience which had taught
+the Moslems to remain at a safe distance, or to the perfidy of
+the Egyptian mariners, who deserted with their ships to the
+emperor of the Christians.  The trade and navigation of the
+capital were restored; and the produce of the fisheries supplied
+the wants, and even the luxury, of the inhabitants.  But the
+calamities of famine and disease were soon felt by the troops of
+Moslemah, and as the former was miserably assuaged, so the latter
+was dreadfully propagated, by the pernicious nutriment which
+hunger compelled them to extract from the most unclean or
+unnatural food.  The spirit of conquest, and even of enthusiasm,
+was extinct: the Saracens could no longer struggle, beyond their
+lines, either single or in small parties, without exposing
+themselves to the merciless retaliation of the Thracian peasants.
+
+An army of Bulgarians was attracted from the Danube by the gifts
+and promises of Leo; and these savage auxiliaries made some
+atonement for the evils which they had inflicted on the empire,
+by the defeat and slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics.  A
+report was dexterously scattered, that the Franks, the unknown
+nations of the Latin world, were arming by sea and land in the
+defence of the Christian cause, and their formidable aid was
+expected with far different sensations in the camp and city.  At
+length, after a siege of thirteen months, ^14 the hopeless
+Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission of
+retreat. ^* The march of the Arabian cavalry over the Hellespont
+and through the provinces of Asia, was executed without delay or
+molestation; but an army of their brethren had been cut in pieces
+on the side of Bithynia, and the remains of the fleet were so
+repeatedly damaged by tempest and fire, that only five galleys
+entered the port of Alexandria to relate the tale of their
+various and almost incredible disasters. ^15
+
+[Footnote 11: In the division of the Themes, or provinces
+described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Thematibus, l. i.
+p. 9, 10,) the Obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and
+palace, was the fourth in the public order. Nice was the
+metropolis, and its jurisdiction extended from the Hellespont
+over the adjacent parts of Bithynia and Phrygia, (see the two
+maps prefixed by Delisle to the Imperium Orientale of Banduri.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare page 274.  It is singular that Gibbon should
+thus contradict himself in a few pages.  By his own account this
+was the second time. - M.]
+
+[Footnote !: The account of this siege in the Tarikh Tebry is a
+very unfavorable specimen of Asiatic history, full of absurd
+fables, and written with total ignorance of the circumstances of
+time and place.  Price, vol. i. p. 498 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of
+figs, which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was
+concluded with marrow and sugar.  In one of his pilgrimages to
+Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single meal, seventy pomegranates, a
+kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of the grapes of Tayef. If
+the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the appetite, rather
+than the luxury, of the sovereign of Asia, (Abulfeda, Annal.
+Moslem. p. 126.)
+
+Note: The Tarikh Tebry ascribes the death of Soliman to a
+pleurisy.  The same gross gluttony in which Soliman indulged,
+though not fatal to the life, interfered with the military
+duties, of his brother Moslemah.  Price, vol. i. p. 511. - M.]
+
+[Footnote !!: Major Price's estimate of Omar's character is much
+more favorable.  Among a race of sanguinary tyrants, Omar was
+just and humane. His virtues as well as his bigotry were active.
+- M.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See the article of Omar Ben Abdalaziz, in the
+Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 689, 690,) praeferens, says Elmacin,
+(p. 91,) religionem suam rebus suis mundanis.  He was so desirous
+of being with God, that he would not have anointed his ear (his
+own saying) to obtain a perfect cure of his last malady.  The
+caliph had only one shirt, and in an age of luxury, his annual
+expense was no more than two drachms, (Abulpharagius, p. 131.)
+Haud diu gavisus eo principe fuit urbis Muslemus, (Abulfeda, p.
+127.)]
+
+[Footnote 14: Both Nicephorus and Theophanes agree that the siege
+of Constantinople was raised the 15th of August, (A.D. 718;) but
+as the former, our best witness, affirms that it continued
+thirteen months, the latter must be mistaken in supposing that it
+began on the same day of the preceding year. I do not find that
+Pagi has remarked this inconsistency.]
+
+[Footnote *: The Tarikh Tebry embellishes the retreat of Moslemah
+with some extraordinary and incredible circumstances.  Price, p.
+514. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 15: In the second siege of Constantinople, I have
+followed Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 33 - 36,) Theophanes,
+(Chronograph, p. 324 - 334,) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 449 - 452,)
+Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 98 - 102,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen, p. 88,)
+Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 126,) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p.
+130,) the most satisfactory of the Arabs.]
+
+In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constantinople may be
+chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real
+efficacy of the Greek fire. ^16 The important secret of
+compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by
+Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from
+the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. ^17 The skill
+of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succor of fleets
+and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art
+was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the
+degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with
+the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigor of the Saracens. The
+historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition
+should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine
+guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this
+instance, so jealous of the truth.  From their obscure, and
+perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that the principal
+ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, ^18 or liquid
+bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, ^19 which
+springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in
+contact with the air.  The naphtha was mingled, I know not by
+what methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the
+pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs. ^20 From this
+mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion,
+proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in
+perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in
+descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it
+was nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand,
+urine, or vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the
+fury of this powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the
+Greeks the liquid, or the maritime, fire.  For the annoyance of
+the enemy, it was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in
+battles or in sieges.  It was either poured from the rampart in
+large boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or
+darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow,
+which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was
+deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more
+ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of
+copper which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully
+shaped into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a
+stream of liquid and consuming fire.  This important art was
+preserved at Constantinople, as the palladium of the state: the
+galleys and artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of
+Rome; but the composition of the Greek fire was concealed with
+the most jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was
+increased and prolonged by their ignorance and surprise.  In the
+treaties of the administration of the empire, the royal author
+^21 suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the
+indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians.
+They should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been
+revealed by an angel to the first and greatest of the
+Constantines, with a sacred injunction, that this gift of Heaven,
+this peculiar blessing of the Romans, should never be
+communicated to any foreign nation; that the prince and the
+subject were alike bound to religious silence under the temporal
+and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the
+impious attempt would provoke the sudden and supernatural
+vengeance of the God of the Christians.  By these precautions,
+the secret was confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans
+of the East; and at the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans,
+to whom every sea and every art were familiar, suffered the
+effects, without understanding the composition, of the Greek
+fire.  It was at length either discovered or stolen by the
+Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they
+retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads
+of the Christians.  A knight, who despised the swords and lances
+of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own
+fears, and those of his companions, at the sight and sound of the
+mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of the Greek fire,
+the feu Gregeois, as it is styled by the more early of the French
+writers.  It came flying through the air, says Joinville, ^22
+like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a
+hogshead, with the report of thunder and the velocity of
+lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by this
+deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or, as it might now be
+called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to the middle of the
+fourteenth century, ^23 when the scientific or casual compound of
+nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new revolution in the
+art of war and the history of mankind. ^24
+
+[Footnote 16: Our sure and indefatigable guide in the middle ages
+and Byzantine history, Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in
+several places of the Greek fire, and his collections leave few
+gleanings behind. See particularly Glossar. Med. et Infim.
+Graecitat. p. 1275, sub voce. Glossar. Med. et Infim.  Latinitat.
+
+Ignis Groecus.  Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 305, 306.
+Observations sur Joinville, p. 71, 72.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Theophanes styles him, (p. 295.) Cedrenus (p. 437)
+brings this artist from (the ruins of) Heliopolis in Egypt; and
+chemistry was indeed the peculiar science of the Egyptians.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The naphtha, the oleum incendiarium of the history
+of Jerusalem, (Gest. Dei per Francos, p. 1167,) the Oriental
+fountain of James de Vitry, (l. iii. c. 84,) is introduced on
+slight evidence and strong probability. Cinanmus (l. vi. p. 165)
+calls the Greek fire: and the naphtha is known to abound between
+the Tigris and the Caspian Sea. According to Pliny, (Hist. Natur.
+ii. 109,) it was subservient to the revenge of Medea, and in
+either etymology, (Procop. de Bell. Gothic. l. iv. c. 11,) may
+fairly signify this liquid bitumen.
+
+Note: It is remarkable that the Syrian historian Michel
+gives the name of naphtha to the newly-invented Greek fire, which
+seems to indicate that this substance formed the base of the
+destructive compound. St. Martin, tom. xi. p. 420. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: On the different sorts of oils and bitumens, see
+Dr. Watson's (the present bishop of Llandaff's) Chemical Essays,
+vol. iii. essay i., a classic book, the best adapted to infuse
+the taste and knowledge of chemistry. The less perfect ideas of
+the ancients may be found in Strabo (Geograph. l. xvi. p. 1078)
+and Pliny, (Hist. Natur. ii. 108, 109.) Huic (Naphthae) magna
+cognatio est ignium, transiliuntque protinus in eam undecunque
+visam.  Of our travellers I am best pleased with Otter, (tom. i.
+p. 153, 158.)]
+
+[Footnote 20: Anna Comnena has partly drawn aside the curtain.
+(Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 383.) Elsewhere (l. xi. p. 336) she
+mentions the property of burning. Leo, in the xixth chapter of
+his Tactics, (Opera Meursii, tom. vi. p. 843, edit. Lami,
+Florent. 1745,) speaks of the new invention.  These are genuine
+and Imperial testimonies.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii,
+c. xiii. p. 64, 65.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Histoire de St. Louis, p. 39.  Paris, 1668, p. 44.
+Paris, de l'Imprimerie Royale, 1761.  The former of these
+editions is precious for the observations of Ducange; the latter
+for the pure and original text of Joinville.  We must have
+recourse to that text to discover, that the feu Gregeois was shot
+with a pile or javelin, from an engine that acted like a sling.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established
+property of Fame, has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder
+above the xivth, (see Sir William Temple, Dutens, &c.,) and the
+Greek fire above the viith century, (see the Saluste du President
+des Brosses, tom. ii. p. 381.) But their evidence, which precedes
+the vulgar aera of the invention, is seldom clear or
+satisfactory, and subsequent writers may be suspected of fraud or
+credulity. In the earliest sieges, some combustibles of oil and
+sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has some affinities
+with gunpowder both in its nature and effects: for the antiquity
+of the first, a passage of Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv. c.
+11,) for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of
+Spain, (A.D. 1249, 1312, 1332.  Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. ii. p.
+6, 7, 8,) are the most difficult to elude.]
+
+[Footnote 24: That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of
+the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in
+a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the
+consequences of his own discovery, (Biog. Brit. vol. i. p. 430,
+new edition.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part II.
+
+Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs
+from the eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side
+of the Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and
+invaded by the conquerors of Spain. ^25 The decline of the French
+monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics.  The
+descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and
+ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the
+epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. ^26
+They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave
+without a name.  A country palace, in the neighborhood of
+Compiegne ^27 was allotted for their residence or prison: but
+each year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted in a
+wagon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give
+audience to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the
+mayor of the palace.  That domestic officer was become the
+minister of the nation and the master of the prince.  A public
+employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family:
+the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the
+guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble
+regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his
+bastards.  A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost
+dissolved; and the tributary dukes, and provincial counts, and
+the territorial lords, were tempted to despise the weakness of
+the monarch, and to imitate the ambition of the mayor.  Among
+these independent chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful
+was Eudes, duke of Aquitain, who in the southern provinces of
+Gaul usurped the authority, and even the title of king.  The
+Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks, assembled under the standard
+of this Christian hero: he repelled the first invasion of the
+Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army and
+his life under the walls of Thoulouse.  The ambition of his
+successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees
+with the means and the resolution of conquest. The advantageous
+situation which had recommended Narbonne ^28 as the first Roman
+colony, was again chosen by the Moslems: they claimed the
+province of Septimania or Languedoc as a just dependence of the
+Spanish monarchy: the vineyards of Gascony and the city of
+Bourdeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and
+Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne
+to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.
+
+[Footnote 25: For the invasion of France and the defeat of the
+Arabs by Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13,
+14) of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him
+the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan
+history of Novairi.  The Moslems are silent or concise in the
+account of their losses; but M Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130,
+131) has given a pure and simple account of all that he could
+collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjazi, and an anonymous writer.  The
+texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are
+inserted in the Collection of Bouquet, (tom. iii.,) and the
+Annals of Pagi, who (tom. iii. under the proper years) has
+restored the chronology, which is anticipated six years in the
+Annals of Baronius.  The Dictionary of Bayle (Abderame and
+Munuza) has more merit for lively reflection than original
+research.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Eginhart, de Vita Caroli Magni, c. ii. p. 13 - 78,
+edit. Schmink, Utrecht, 1711.  Some modern critics accuse the
+minister of Charlemagne of exaggerating the weakness of the
+Merovingians; but the general outline is just, and the French
+reader will forever repeat the beautiful lines of Boileau's
+Lutrin.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Mamaccae, on the Oyse, between Compiegne and Noyon,
+which Eginhart calls perparvi reditus villam, (see the notes, and
+the map of ancient France for Dom.  Bouquet's Collection.)
+Compendium, or Compiegne, was a palace of more dignity, (Hadrian.
+Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 152,) and that laughing
+philosopher, the Abbe Galliani, (Dialogues sur le Commerce des
+Bleds,) may truly affirm, that it was the residence of the rois
+tres Chretiens en tres chevelus.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Even before that colony, A. U. C. 630, (Velleius
+Patercul. i. 15,) In the time of Polybius, (Hist. l. iii. p. 265,
+edit. Gronov.) Narbonne was a Celtic town of the first eminence,
+and one of the most northern places of the known world,
+(D'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 473.)]
+
+But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of
+Abdalraman, or Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph
+Hashem to the wishes of the soldiers and people of Spain.  That
+veteran and daring commander adjudged to the obedience of the
+prophet whatever yet remained of France or of Europe; and
+prepared to execute the sentence, at the head of a formidable
+host, in the full confidence of surmounting all opposition either
+of nature or of man.  His first care was to suppress a domestic
+rebel, who commanded the most important passes of the Pyrenees:
+Manuza, a Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of
+Aquitain; and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest,
+devoted his beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African
+misbeliever. But the strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were
+invested by a superior force; the rebel was overtaken and slain
+in the mountains; and his widow was sent a captive to Damascus,
+to gratify the desires, or more probably the vanity, of the
+commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees, Abderame proceeded
+without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the siege of Arles.
+
+An army of Christians attempted the relief of the city: the tombs
+of their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century; and
+many thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid
+stream into the Mediterranean Sea.  The arms of Abderame were not
+less successful on the side of the ocean.  He passed without
+opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their waters in
+the Gulf of Bourdeaux; but he found, beyond those rivers, the
+camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had formed a second army and
+sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the Christians, that,
+according to their sad confession, God alone could reckon the
+number of the slain.  The victorious Saracen overran the
+provinces of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather
+than lost, in the modern appellations of Perigord, Saintonge, and
+Poitou: his standards were planted on the walls, or at least
+before the gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments
+overspread the kingdom of Burgundy as far as the well-known
+cities of Lyons and Besancon.  The memory of these devastations
+(for Abderame did not spare the country or the people) was long
+preserved by tradition; and the invasion of France by the Moors
+or Mahometans affords the groundwork of those fables, which have
+been so wildly disfigured in the romances of chivalry, and so
+elegantly adorned by the Italian muse.  In the decline of society
+and art, the deserted cities could supply a slender booty to the
+Saracens; their richest spoil was found in the churches and
+monasteries, which they stripped of their ornaments and delivered
+to the flames: and the tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers
+and Martin of Tours, forgot their miraculous powers in the
+defence of their own sepulchres. ^29 A victorious line of march
+had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of
+Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal
+space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland
+and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable
+than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have
+sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.
+Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in
+the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a
+circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of
+Mahomet. ^30
+
+[Footnote 29: With regard to the sanctuary of St. Martin of
+Tours, Roderic Ximenes accuses the Saracens of the deed.  Turonis
+civitatem, ecclesiam et palatia vastatione et incendio simili
+diruit et consumpsit.  The continuator of Fredegarius imputes to
+them no more than the intention.  Ad domum beatissimi Martini
+evertendam destinant.  At Carolus, &c.  The French annalist was
+more jealous of the honor of the saint.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosch
+would have produced a volume of controversy so elegant and
+ingenious as the sermons lately preached by Mr. White, the Arabic
+professor, at Mr. Bampton's lecture. His observations on the
+character and religion of Mahomet are always adapted to his
+argument, and generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains
+the part of a lively and eloquent advocate; and sometimes rises
+to the merit of an historian and philosopher.]
+
+From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius
+and fortune of one man.  Charles, the illegitimate son of the
+elder Pepin, was content with the titles of mayor or duke of the
+Franks; but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings.
+In a laborious administration of twenty-four years, he restored
+and supported the dignity of the throne, and the rebels of
+Germany and Gaul were successively crushed by the activity of a
+warrior, who, in the same campaign, could display his banner on
+the Elbe, the Rhone, and the shores of the ocean.  In the public
+danger he was summoned by the voice of his country; and his
+rival, the duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the
+fugitives and suppliants.  "Alas!" exclaimed the Franks, "what a
+misfortune! what an indignity!  We have long heard of the name
+and conquests of the Arabs: we were apprehensive of their attack
+from the East; they have now conquered Spain, and invade our
+country on the side of the West.  Yet their numbers, and (since
+they have no buckler) their arms, are inferior to our own." "If
+you follow my advice," replied the prudent mayor of the palace,
+"you will not interrupt their march, nor precipitate your attack.
+
+They are like a torrent, which it is dangerous to stem in its
+career.  The thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success,
+redouble their valor, and valor is of more avail than arms or
+numbers.  Be patient till they have loaded themselves with the
+encumbrance of wealth.  The possession of wealth will divide
+their councils and assure your victory." This subtile policy is
+perhaps a refinement of the Arabian writers; and the situation of
+Charles will suggest a more narrow and selfish motive of
+procrastination - the secret desire of humbling the pride and
+wasting the provinces of the rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet
+more probable, that the delays of Charles were inevitable and
+reluctant.  A standing army was unknown under the first and
+second race; more than half the kingdom was now in the hands of
+the Saracens: according to their respective situation, the Franks
+of Neustria and Austrasia were to conscious or too careless of
+the impending danger; and the voluntary aids of the Gepidae and
+Germans were separated by a long interval from the standard of
+the Christian general.  No sooner had he collected his forces,
+than he sought and found the enemy in the centre of France,
+between Tours and Poitiers.  His well-conducted march was covered
+with a range of hills, and Abderame appears to have been
+surprised by his unexpected presence. The nations of Asia,
+Africa, and Europe, advanced with equal ardor to an encounter
+which would change the history of the world.  In the six first
+days of desultory combat, the horsemen and archers of the East
+maintained their advantage: but in the closer onset of the
+seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by the strength and
+stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts and iron hands,
+^31 asserted the civil and religious freedom of their posterity.
+The epithet of Martel. the Hammer, which has been added to the
+name of Charles, is expressive of his weighty and irresistible
+strokes: the valor of Eudes was excited by resentment and
+emulation; and their companions, in the eye of history, are the
+true Peers and Paladins of French chivalry.  After a bloody
+field, in which Abderame was slain, the Saracens, in the close of
+the evening, retired to their camp.  In the disorder and despair
+of the night, the various tribes of Yemen and Damascus, of Africa
+and Spain, were provoked to turn their arms against each other:
+the remains of their host were suddenly dissolved, and each emir
+consulted his safety by a hasty and separate retreat.  At the
+dawn of the day, the stillness of a hostile camp was suspected by
+the victorious Christians: on the report of their spies, they
+ventured to explore the riches of the vacant tents; but if we
+except some celebrated relics, a small portion of the spoil was
+restored to the innocent and lawful owners. The joyful tidings
+were soon diffused over the Catholic world, and the monks of
+Italy could affirm and believe that three hundred and fifty, or
+three hundred and seventy-five, thousand of the Mahometans had
+been crushed by the hammer of Charles, ^32 while no more than
+fifteen hundred Christians were slain in the field of Tours.  But
+this incredible tale is sufficiently disproved by the caution of
+the French general, who apprehended the snares and accidents of a
+pursuit, and dismissed his German allies to their native forests.
+
+The inactivity of a conqueror betrays the loss of strength and
+blood, and the most cruel execution is inflicted, not in the
+ranks of battle, but on the backs of a flying enemy. Yet the
+victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain was
+recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the
+conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees
+by Charles Martel and his valiant race. ^33 It might have been
+expected that the savior of Christendom would have been
+canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy,
+who are indebted to his sword for their present existence.  But
+in the public distress, the mayor of the palace had been
+compelled to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the
+bishops and abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of
+the soldiers.  His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was
+remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic
+synod presumes to declare that his ancestor was damned; that on
+the opening of his tomb, the spectators were affrighted by a
+smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon; and that a saint
+of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and
+body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abyss of
+hell. ^34
+
+[Footnote 31: Gens Austriae membrorum pre-eminentia valida, et
+gens Germana corde et corpore praestantissima, quasi in ictu
+oculi, manu ferrea, et pectore arduo, Arabes extinxerunt,
+(Roderic. Toletan. c. xiv.)]
+
+[Footnote 32: These numbers are stated by Paul Warnefrid, the
+deacon of Aquileia, (de Gestis Langobard.  l. vi. p. 921, edit.
+Grot.,) and Anastasius, the librarian of the Roman church, (in
+Vit. Gregorii II.,) who tells a miraculous story of three
+consecrated sponges, which rendered invulnerable the French
+soldiers, among whom they had been shared It should seem, that in
+his letters to the pope, Eudes usurped the honor of the victory,
+from which he is chastised by the French annalists, who, with
+equal falsehood, accuse him of inviting the Saracens.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered
+by Pepin the son of Charles Martel, A.D. 755, (Pagi, Critica,
+tom. iii. p. 300.) Thirty-seven years afterwards, it was pillaged
+by a sudden inroad of the Arabs, who employed the captives in the
+construction of the mosch of Cordova, (De Guignes, Hist. des
+Huns, tom. i. p. 354.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the
+Germanic, the grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed
+by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and
+signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims and Rouen,
+(Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 741.  Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom.
+x. p. 514 - 516.) Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics,
+reject with contempt this episcopal fiction.]
+
+The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world,
+was less painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and
+progress of a domestic competitor.  Except among the Syrians, the
+caliphs of the house of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the
+public favor.  The life of Mahomet recorded their perseverance in
+idolatry and rebellion: their conversion had been reluctant,
+their elevation irregular and factious, and their throne was
+cemented with the most holy and noble blood of Arabia.  The best
+of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with his own
+title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a
+departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes
+of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the
+kindred of the apostle of God.  Of these the Fatimites were
+either rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas
+cherished, with courage and discretion, the hopes of their rising
+fortunes. From an obscure residence in Syria, they secretly
+despatched their agents and missionaries, who preached in the
+Eastern provinces their hereditary indefeasible right; and
+Mohammed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abbas,
+the uncle of the prophet, gave audience to the deputies of
+Chorasan, and accepted their free gift of four hundred thousand
+pieces of gold.  After the death of Mohammed, the oath of
+allegiance was administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a
+numerous band of votaries, who expected only a signal and a
+leader; and the governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his
+fruitless admonitions and the deadly slumber of the caliphs of
+Damascus, till he himself, with all his adherents, was driven
+from the city and palace of Meru, by the rebellious arms of Abu
+Moslem. ^35 That maker of kings, the author, as he is named, of
+the call of the Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his
+presumption of merit with the usual gratitude of courts.  A mean,
+perhaps a foreign, extraction could not repress the aspiring
+energy of Abu Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his
+wealth, prodigal of his own blood and of that of others, he could
+boast with pleasure, and possibly with truth, that he had
+destroyed six hundred thousand of his enemies; and such was the
+intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance, that he was never
+seen to smile except on a day of battle.  In the visible
+separation of parties, the green was consecrated to the
+Fatimites; the Ommiades were distinguished by the white; and the
+black, as the most adverse, was naturally adopted by the
+Abbassides. Their turbans and garments were stained with that
+gloomy color: two black standards, on pike staves nine cubits
+long, were borne aloft in the van of Abu Moslem; and their
+allegorical names of the night and the shadow obscurely
+represented the indissoluble union and perpetual succession of
+the line of Hashem.  From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East
+was convulsed by the quarrel of the white and the black factions:
+the Abbassides were most frequently victorious; but their public
+success was clouded by the personal misfortune of their chief.
+The court of Damascus, awakening from a long slumber, resolved to
+prevent the pilgrimage of Mecca, which Ibrahim had undertaken
+with a splendid retinue, to recommend himself at once to the
+favor of the prophet and of the people.  A detachment of cavalry
+intercepted his march and arrested his person; and the unhappy
+Ibrahim, snatched away from the promise of untasted royalty,
+expired in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two younger
+brothers, Saffah ^* and Almansor, eluded the search of the
+tyrant, and lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the people
+and the approach of his Eastern friends allowed them to expose
+their persons to the impatient public.  On Friday, in the dress
+of a caliph, in the colors of the sect, Saffah proceeded with
+religious and military pomp to the mosch: ascending the pulpit,
+he prayed and preached as the lawful successor of Mahomet; and
+after his departure, his kinsmen bound a willing people by an
+oath of fidelity.  But it was on the banks of the Zab, and not in
+the mosch of Cufa, that this important controversy was
+determined.  Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the
+white faction: the authority of established government; an army
+of a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, against a sixth part
+of that number; and the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan,
+the fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah.  Before his
+accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian
+warfare, the honorable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia; ^36 and
+he might have been ranked amongst the greatest princes, had not,
+says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that moment for the ruin
+of his family; a decree against which all human fortitude and
+prudence must struggle in vain.  The orders of Mervan were
+mistaken, or disobeyed: the return of his horse, from which he
+had dismounted on a necessary occasion, impressed the belief of
+his death; and the enthusiasm of the black squadrons was ably
+conducted by Abdallah, the uncle of his competitor.  After an
+irretrievab defeat, the caliph escaped to Mosul; but the colors
+of the Abbassides were displayed from the rampart; he suddenly
+repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his palace of
+Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of
+Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and
+fatal camp at Busir, on the banks of the Nile. ^37 His speed was
+urged by the incessant diligence of Abdallah, who in every step
+of the pursuit acquired strength and reputation: the remains of
+the white faction were finally vanquished in Egypt; and the
+lance, which terminated the life and anxiety of Mervan, was not
+less welcome perhaps to the unfortunate than to the victorious
+chief.  The merciless inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the
+most distant branches of the hostile race: their bones were
+scattered, their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of
+Hossein was abundantly revenged on the posterity of his tyrants.
+Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had yielded to the faith or
+clemency of their foes, were invited to a banquet at Damascus.
+The laws of hospitality were violated by a promiscuous massacre:
+the board was spread over their fallen bodies; and the festivity
+of the guests was enlivened by the music of their dying groans.
+By the event of the civil war, the dynasty of the Abbassides was
+firmly established; but the Christians only could triumph in the
+mutual hatred and common loss of the disciples of Mahomet. ^38
+
+[Footnote 35: The steed and the saddle which had carried any of
+his wives were instantly killed or burnt, lest they should
+afterwards be mounted by a male. Twelve hundred mules or camels
+were required for his kitchen furniture; and the daily
+consumption amounted to three thousand cakes, a hundred sheep,
+besides oxen, poultry, &c., (Abul pharagius, Hist. Dynast. p.
+140.)]
+
+[Footnote *: He is called Abdullah or Abul Abbas in the Tarikh
+Tebry. Price vol. i. p. 600.  Saffah or Saffauh (the Sanguinary)
+was a name which be required after his bloody reign, (vol. ii. p.
+1.) - M.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Al Hemar.  He had been governor of Mesopotamia, and
+the Arabic proverb praises the courage of that warlike breed of
+asses who never fly from an enemy.  The surname of Mervan may
+justify the comparison of Homer, (Iliad, A. 557, &c.,) and both
+will silence the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and
+ignoble emblem, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 558.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of
+Busir, or Busiris, so famous in Greek fable.  The first, where
+Mervan was slain was to the west of the Nile, in the province of
+Fium, or Arsinoe; the second in the Delta, in the Sebennytic
+nome; the third near the pyramids; the fourth, which was
+destroyed by Dioclesian, (see above, vol. ii. p. 130,) in the
+Thebais.  I shall here transcribe a note of the learned and
+orthodox Michaelis: Videntur in pluribus Aegypti superioris
+urbibus Busiri Coptoque arma sumpsisse Christiani, libertatemque
+de religione sentiendi defendisse, sed succubuisse quo in bello
+Coptus et Busiris diruta, et circa Esnam magna strages edita.
+Bellum narrant sed causam belli ignorant scriptores Byzantini,
+alioqui Coptum et Busirim non rebellasse dicturi, sed causam
+Christianorum suscepturi, (Not. 211, p. 100.) For the geography
+of the four Busirs, see Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt. p. 9, vers.
+Michaelis, Gottingae, 1776, in 4to.,) Michaelis, (Not. 122 - 127,
+p. 58 - 63,) and D'Anville, (Memoire sua l'Egypte, p. 85, 147,
+205.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 136 - 145,)
+Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 392, vers. Pocock,) Elmacin,
+(Hist. Saracen. p. 109 - 121,) Abulpharagius, (Hist. Dynast. p.
+134 - 140,) Roderic of Toledo, (Hist. Arabum, c. xviii. p. 33,)
+Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 356, 357, who speaks of the
+Abbassides) and the Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot, in the articles
+Ommiades, Abbassides, Moervan, Ibrahim, Saffah, Abou Moslem.]
+
+Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war
+might have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation,
+if the consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve
+the power and unity of the empire of the Saracens.  In the
+proscription of the Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of
+Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of his enemies, who hunted the
+wandering exile from the banks of the Euphrates to the valleys of
+Mount Atlas.  His presence in the neighborhood of Spain revived
+the zeal of the white faction. The name and cause of the
+Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians: the West
+had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the abdicated
+family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance of
+their lands and the offices of government.  Strongly prompted by
+gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of
+the caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in
+his desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence
+were almost the same.  The acclamations of the people saluted his
+landing on the coast of Andalusia: and, after a successful
+struggle, Abdalrahman established the throne of Cordova, and was
+the father of the Ommiades of Spain, who reigned above two
+hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees. ^39 He
+slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded
+his dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in salt and
+camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the palace
+of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he
+was removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary.
+Their mutual designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated
+without effect; but instead of opening a door to the conquest of
+Europe, Spain was dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy,
+engaged in perpetual hostility with the East, and inclined to
+peace and friendship with the Christian sovereigns of
+Constantinople and France.  The example of the Ommiades was
+imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the Edrissites
+of Mauritania, and the more powerful fatimites of Africa and
+Egypt.  In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed
+by three caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who reigned at
+Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova, excommunicating each other, and
+agreed only in a principle of discord, that a sectary is more
+odious and criminal than an unbeliever. ^40
+
+[Footnote 39: For the revolution of Spain, consult Roderic of
+Toledo, (c. xviii. p. 34, &c.,) the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana,
+(tom. ii. p. 30, 198,) and Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de
+l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 180 - 197, 205, 272, 323, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: I shall not stop to refute the strange errors and
+fancies of Sir William Temple (his Works, vol. iii. p. 371 - 374,
+octavo edition) and Voltaire (Histoire Generale, c. xxviii. tom.
+ii. p. 124, 125, edition de Lausanne) concerning the division of
+the Saracen empire.  The mistakes of Voltaire proceeded from the
+want of knowledge or reflection; but Sir William was deceived by
+a Spanish impostor, who has framed an apocryphal history of the
+conquest of Spain by the Arabs.]
+
+Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the
+Abbassides were never tempted to reside either in the birthplace
+or the city of the prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice,
+and polluted with the blood, of the Ommiades; and, after some
+hesitation, Almansor, the brother and successor of Saffah, laid
+the foundations of Bagdad, ^41 the Imperial seat of his posterity
+during a reign of five hundred years. ^42 The chosen spot is on
+the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the
+ruins of Modain: the double wall was of a circular form; and such
+was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial
+town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by
+eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and
+the adjacent villages.  In this city of peace, ^43 amidst the
+riches of the East, the Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence
+and frugality of the first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the
+magnificence of the Persian kings.  After his wars and buildings,
+Almansor left behind him in gold and silver about thirty millions
+sterling: ^44 and this treasure was exhausted in a few years by
+the vices or virtues of his children.  His son Mahadi, in a
+single pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of
+gold.  A pious and charitable motive may sanctify the foundation
+of cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed along a
+measured road of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels,
+laden with snow, could serve only to astonish the natives of
+Arabia, and to refresh the fruits and liquors of the royal
+banquet. ^45 The courtiers would surely praise the liberality of
+his grandson Almamon, who gave away four fifths of the income of
+a province, a sum of two millions four hundred thousand gold
+dinars, before he drew his foot from the stirrup.  At the
+nuptials of the same prince, a thousand pearls of the largest
+size were showered on the head of the bride, ^46 and a lottery of
+lands and houses displayed the capricious bounty of fortune.  The
+glories of the court were brightened, rather than impaired, in
+the decline of the empire, and a Greek ambassador might admire,
+or pity, the magnificence of the feeble Moctader. "The caliph's
+whole army," says the historian Abulfeda, "both horse and foot,
+was under arms, which together made a body of one hundred and
+sixty thousand men.  His state officers, the favorite slaves,
+stood near him in splendid apparel, their belts glittering with
+gold and gems.  Near them were seven thousand eunuchs, four
+thousand of them white, the remainder black.  The porters or
+door-keepers were in number seven hundred.  Barges and boats,
+with the most superb decorations, were seen swimming upon the
+Tigris.  Nor was the palace itself less splendid, in which were
+hung up thirty-eight thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand
+five hundred of which were of silk embroidered with gold.  The
+carpets on the floor were twenty-two thousand.  A hundred lions
+were brought out, with a keeper to each lion. ^47 Among the other
+spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and
+silver spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on
+the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same
+precious metals, as well as the leaves of the tree.  While the
+machinery affected spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled
+their natural harmony. Through this scene of magnificence, the
+Greek ambassador was led by the vizier to the foot of the
+caliph's throne." ^48 In the West, the Ommiades of Spain
+supported, with equal pomp, the title of commander of the
+faithful.  Three miles from Cordova, in honor of his favorite
+sultana, the third and greatest of the Abdalrahmans constructed
+the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra.  Twenty-five years, and
+above three millions sterling, were employed by the founder: his
+liberal taste invited the artists of Constantinople, the most
+skilful sculptors and architects of the age; and the buildings
+were sustained or adorned by twelve hundred columns of Spanish
+and African, of Greek and Italian marble.  The hall of audience
+was incrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the
+centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of
+birds and quadrupeds.  In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of
+these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate,
+was replenished not with water, but with the purest quicksilver.
+The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black
+eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three hundred persons: and he
+was attended to the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse,
+whose belts and cimeters were studded with gold. ^49
+
+[Footnote 41: The geographer D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre,
+p. 121 - 123,) and the Orientalist D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque, p.
+167, 168,) may suffice for the knowledge of Bagdad.  Our
+travellers, Pietro della Valle, (tom. i. p. 688 - 698,)
+Tavernier, (tom. i. p. 230 - 238,) Thevenot, (part ii. p. 209 -
+212,) Otter, (tom. i. p. 162 - 168,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en
+Arabie, tom. ii. p. 239 - 271,) have seen only its decay; and the
+Nubian geographer, (p. 204,) and the travelling Jew, Benjamin of
+Tuleda (Itinerarium, p. 112 - 123, a Const. l'Empereur, apud
+Elzevir, 1633,) are the only writers of my acquaintance, who have
+known Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The foundations of Bagdad were laid A. H. 145, A.D.
+762. Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to
+death by the Tartars, A. H. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of
+February.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem.  Urbs pacis, or, as
+it is more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers,
+(Irenopolis.) There is some dispute concerning the etymology of
+Bagdad, but the first syllable is allowed to signify a garden in
+the Persian tongue; the garden of Dad, a Christian hermit, whose
+cell had been the only habitation on the spot.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Reliquit in aerario sexcenties millies mille
+stateres. et quater et vicies millies mille aureos aureos.
+Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 126.  I have reckoned the gold pieces
+at eight shillings, and the proportion to the silver as twelve to
+one.  But I will never answer for the numbers of Erpenius; and
+the Latins are scarcely above the savages in the language of
+arithmetic.]
+
+[Footnote 45: D'Herbelot, p. 530.  Abulfeda, p. 154.  Nivem
+Meccam apportavit, rem ibi aut nunquam aut rarissime visam.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Abulfeda (p. 184, 189) describes the splendor and
+liberality of Almamon.  Milton has alluded to this Oriental
+custom: -
+
+Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
+
+Showers on her kings Barbaric pearls and gold.
+
+I have used the modern word lottery to express the word of the
+Roman emperors, which entitled to some prize the person who
+caught them, as they were thrown among the crowd.]
+
+[Footnote 47: When Bell of Antermony (Travels, vol. i. p. 99)
+accompanied the Russian ambassador to the audience of the
+unfortunate Shah Hussein of Persia, two lions were introduced, to
+denote the power of the king over the fiercest animals.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Abulfeda, p. 237.  D'Herbelot, p. 590.  This
+embassy was received at Bagdad, A. H. 305, A.D. 917.  In the
+passage of Abulfeda, I have used, with some variations, the
+English translation of the learned and amiable Mr. Harris of
+Salisbury, (Philological Enquiries p. 363, 364.)]
+
+[Footnote 49: Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne,
+tom. i. p. 330 - 336.  A just idea of the taste and architecture
+of the Arabians of Spain may be conceived from the description
+and plates of the Alhambra of Grenada, (Swinburne's Travels, p.
+171 - 188.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part III.
+
+In a private condition, our desires are perpetually
+repressed by poverty and subordination; but the lives and labors
+of millions are devoted to the service of a despotic prince,
+whose laws are blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly
+gratified.  Our imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture;
+and whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there are few
+among us who would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and
+the cares of royalty.  It may therefore be of some use to borrow
+the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has
+perhaps excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an
+authentic memorial which was found in the closet of the deceased
+caliph.  "I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or
+peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and
+respected by my allies.  Riches and honors, power and pleasure,
+have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to
+have been wanting to my felicity.  In this situation, I have
+diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which
+have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen: - O man!  place
+not thy confidence in this present world!" ^50 The luxury of the
+caliphs, so useless to their private happiness, relaxed the
+nerves, and terminated the progress, of the Arabian empire.
+Temporal and spiritual conquest had been the sole occupation of
+the first successors of Mahomet; and after supplying themselves
+with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue was scrupulously
+devoted to that salutary work.  The Abbassides were impoverished
+by the multitude of their wants, and their contempt of oeconomy.
+Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure,
+their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp
+and pleasure: the rewards of valor were embezzled by women and
+eunuchs, and the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the
+palace.  A similar temper was diffused among the subjects of the
+caliph.  Their stern enthusiasm was softened by time and
+prosperity. they sought riches in the occupations of industry,
+fame in the pursuits of literature, and happiness in the
+tranquillity of domestic life.  War was no longer the passion of
+the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the repetition of
+donatives, were insufficient to allure the posterity of those
+voluntary champions who had crowded to the standard of Abubeker
+and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of paradise.
+
+[Footnote 50: Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330.  This confession,
+the complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world, (read
+Prior's verbose but eloquent poem,) and the happy ten days of the
+emperor Seghed, (Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly
+quoted by the detractors of human life. Their expectations are
+commonly immoderate, their estimates are seldom impartial. If I
+may speak of myself, (the only person of whom I can speak with
+certainty,) my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the
+scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to
+add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the
+present composition.]
+
+Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems
+were confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the
+eloquence and poetry of their native tongue.  A people
+continually exposed to the dangers of the field must esteem the
+healing powers of medicine, or rather of surgery; but the
+starving physicians of Arabia murmured a complaint that exercise
+and temperance deprived them of the greatest part of their
+practice. ^51 After their civil and domestic wars, the subjects
+of the Abbassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found
+leisure and felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane
+science.  This spirit was first encouraged by the caliph
+Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the Mahometan law, had
+applied himself with success to the study of astronomy.  But when
+the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh of the Abbassides,
+he completed the designs of his grandfather, and invited the
+muses from their ancient seats.  His ambassadors at
+Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt,
+collected the volumes of Grecian science at his command they were
+translated by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic
+language: his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these
+instructive writings; and the successor of Mahomet assisted with
+pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the
+learned. "He was not ignorant," says Abulpharagius, "that they
+are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose
+lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties.
+
+The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the
+industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal
+appetites.  Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless
+emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive:
+^52 these fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior
+fierceness of the lions and tigers; and in their amorous
+enjoyments they are much inferior to the vigor of the grossest
+and most sordid quadrupeds.  The teachers of wisdom are the true
+luminaries and legislators of a world, which, without their aid,
+would again sink in ignorance and barbarism." ^53 The zeal and
+curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the
+line of Abbas: their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the
+Ommiades of Spain, were the patrons of the learned, as well as
+the commanders of the faithful; the same royal prerogative was
+claimed by their independent emirs of the provinces; and their
+emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from
+Samarcand and Bochara to Fez and Cordova.  The vizier of a sultan
+consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the
+foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an
+annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars.  The fruits of
+instruction were communicated, perhaps at different times, to six
+thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to
+that of the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for the
+indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors
+was repaid with adequate stipends.  In every city the productions
+of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity
+of the studious and the vanity of the rich.  A private doctor
+refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the
+carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.
+The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred
+thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound,
+which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of
+Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can
+believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six
+hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in
+the mere catalogue.  Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent
+towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more
+than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries
+were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom.  The age of
+Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the
+great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and
+most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of
+science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental
+studies have languished and declined. ^54
+
+[Footnote 51: The Guliston (p. 29) relates the conversation of
+Mahomet and a physician, (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius,
+Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p. 814.) The prophet himself was skilled
+in the art of medicine; and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p.
+394 - 405) has given an extract of the aphorisms which are extant
+under his name.]
+
+[Footnote 52: See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist.
+des Insectes, tom. v. Memoire viii.) These hexagons are closed by
+a pyramid; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid,
+such as would accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity
+possible of materials, were determined by a mathematician, at 109
+degrees 26 minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for the
+smaller.  The actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70
+degrees 32 minutes.  Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at
+the expense of the artist he bees are not masters of transcendent
+geometry.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died A. H.
+462, A.D. 069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with
+this curious passage, as well as with the text of Pocock's
+Specimen Historiae Arabum.  A number of literary anecdotes of
+philosophers, physicians, &c., who have flourished under each
+caliph, form the principal merit of the Dynasties of
+Abulpharagius.]
+
+[Footnote 54: These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the
+Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p. 38, 71, 201, 202,) Leo
+Africanus, (de Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot.
+Graec. tom. xiii. p. 259 - 293, particularly p. 274,) and
+Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 274, 275, 536, 537,) besides
+the chronological remarks of Abulpharagius.]
+
+In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the
+far greater part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only
+of local value or imaginary merit. ^55 The shelves were crowded
+with orators and poets, whose style was adapted to the taste and
+manners of their countrymen; with general and partial histories,
+which each revolving generation supplied with a new harvest of
+persons and events; with codes and commentaries of jurisprudence,
+which derived their authority from the law of the prophet; with
+the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and with
+the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and
+moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the
+different estimates of sceptics or believers.  The works of
+speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of
+philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic.  The sages of
+Greece were translated and illustrated in the Arabic language,
+and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered
+in the versions of the East, ^56 which possessed and studied the
+writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apollonius, of
+Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. ^57 Among the ideal systems
+which have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians
+adopted the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or
+alike obscure for the readers of every age.  Plato wrote for the
+Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely blended with
+the language and religion of Greece.  After the fall of that
+religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their obscurity,
+prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental sects, and their
+founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain
+to the Latin schools. ^58 The physics, both of the Academy and
+the Lycaeum, as they are built, not on observation, but on
+argument, have retarded the progress of real knowledge.  The
+metaphysics of infinite, or finite, spirit, have too often been
+enlisted in the service of superstition.  But the human faculties
+are fortified by the art and practice of dialectics; the ten
+predicaments of Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas, ^59
+and his syllogism is the keenest weapon of dispute.  It was
+dexterously wielded in the schools of the Saracens, but as it is
+more effectual for the detection of error than for the
+investigation of truth, it is not surprising that new generations
+of masters and disciples should still revolve in the same circle
+of logical argument. The mathematics are distinguished by a
+peculiar privilege, that, in the course of ages, they may always
+advance, and can never recede.  But the ancient geometry, if I am
+not misinformed, was resumed in the same state by the Italians of
+the fifteenth century; and whatever may be the origin of the
+name, the science of algebra is ascribed to the Grecian
+Diophantus by the modest testimony of the Arabs themselves. ^60
+They cultivated with more success the sublime science of
+astronomy, which elevates the mind of man to disdain his
+diminutive planet and momentary existence.  The costly
+instruments of observation were supplied by the caliph Almamon,
+and the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same spacious
+level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and a
+second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately
+measured a degree of the great circle of the earth, and
+determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire circumference
+of our globe. ^61 From the reign of the Abbassides to that of the
+grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the aid of
+glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical tables of
+Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, ^62 correct some minute errors,
+without daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy, without
+advancing a step towards the discovery of the solar system.  In
+the Eastern courts, the truths of science could be recommended
+only by ignorance and folly, and the astronomer would have been
+disregarded, had he not debased his wisdom or honesty by the vain
+predictions of astrology. ^63 But in the science of medicine, the
+Arabians have been deservedly applauded.  The names of Mesua and
+Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked with the Grecian
+masters; in the city of Bagdad, eight hundred and sixty
+physicians were licensed to exercise their lucrative profession:
+^64 in Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was intrusted to
+the skill of the Saracens, ^65 and the school of Salerno, their
+legitimate offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of
+the healing art. ^66 The success of each professor must have been
+influenced by personal and accidental causes; but we may form a
+less fanciful estimate of their general knowledge of anatomy, ^67
+botany, ^68 and chemistry, ^69 the threefold basis of their
+theory and practice.  A superstitious reverence for the dead
+confined both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection of
+apes and quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known
+in the time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame
+was reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern
+artists.  Botany is an active science, and the discoveries of the
+torrid zone might enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two
+thousand plants.  Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted
+in the temples and monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience
+had been acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures; but
+the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the
+industry of the Saracens.  They first invented and named the
+alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the substances
+of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and
+affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous
+minerals into soft and salutary medicines.  But the most eager
+search of Arabian chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and
+the elixir of immortal health: the reason and the fortunes of
+thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the
+consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of
+mystery, fable, and superstition.
+
+[Footnote 55: The Arabic catalogue of the Escurial will give a
+just idea of the proportion of the classes.  In the library of
+Cairo, the Mss of astronomy and medicine amounted to 6500, with
+two fair globes, the one of brass, the other of silver, (Bibliot.
+Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 417.)]
+
+[Footnote 56: As, for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh
+books (the eighth is still wanting) of the Conic Sections of
+Apollonius Pergaeus, which were printed from the Florence Ms.
+1661, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 559.) Yet the fifth
+book had been previously restored by the mathematical divination
+of Viviani, (see his Eloge in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 59, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 57: The merit of these Arabic versions is freely
+discussed by Renaudot, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p. 812 -
+816,) and piously defended by Casiri, (Bibliot. Arab. Hispana,
+tom. i. p. 238 - 240.) Most of the versions of Plato, Aristotle,
+Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are ascribed to Honain, a physician of
+the Nestorian sect, who flourished at Bagdad in the court of the
+caliphs, and died A.D. 876.  He was at the head of a school or
+manufacture of translations, and the works of his sons and
+disciples were published under his name.  See Abulpharagius,
+(Dynast. p. 88, 115, 171 - 174, and apud Asseman. Bibliot.
+Orient. tom. ii. p. 438,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p.
+456,) Asseman.  (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 164,) and Casiri,
+(Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238, &c. 251, 286 - 290, 302,
+304, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 58: See Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 181, 214,
+236, 257, 315, 388, 396, 438, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The most elegant commentary on the Categories or
+Predicaments of Aristotle may be found in the Philosophical
+Arrangements of Mr. James Harris, (London, 1775, in octavo,) who
+labored to revive the studies of Grecian literature and
+philosophy.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 81, 222.  Bibliot. Arab.
+Hisp. tom. i. p. 370, 371.  In quem (says the primate of the
+Jacobites) si immiserit selector, oceanum hoc in genere
+(algebrae) inveniet.  The time of Diophantus of Alexandria is
+unknown; but his six books are still extant, and have been
+illustrated by the Greek Planudes and the Frenchman Meziriac,
+(Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. iv. p. 12 - 15.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 210, 211, vers. Reiske)
+describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan, and the best
+historians.  This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal
+or Hashemite cubits which Arabia had derived from the sacred and
+legal practice both of Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is
+repeated 400 times in each basis of the great pyramid, and seems
+to indicate the primitive and universal measures of the East.
+See the Metrologie of the laborions.  M. Paucton, p. 101 - 195.]
+
+[Footnote 62: See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the
+preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma
+Dissertationum, Oxon. 1767.]
+
+[Footnote 63: The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar,
+and the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most
+certain predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter
+and the sun, (Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161 - 163.) For the state
+and science of the Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en
+Perse, tom. iii. p. 162 - 203.)]
+
+[Footnote 64: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438.  The
+original relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless,
+practitioner.]
+
+[Footnote 65: In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was
+cured by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom.
+i. p. 318.)]
+
+[Footnote 66: The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the
+Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and
+judgment by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii.
+p. 932 - 940) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii.
+p. 119 - 127.)]
+
+[Footnote 67: See a good view of the progress of anatomy in
+Wotton, (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208 -
+256.) His reputation has been unworthily depreciated by the wits
+in the controversy of Boyle and Bentley.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275.  Al
+Beithar, of Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into
+Africa, Persia, and India.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17,
+&c.) allows the original merit of the Arabians.  Yet he quotes
+the modest confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century,
+(D'Herbelot, p. 387,) that he had drawn most of his science,
+perhaps the transmutation of metals, from the ancient sages.
+Whatever might be the origin or extent of their knowledge, the
+arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to have been known in Egypt
+at least three hundred years before Mahomet, (Wotton's
+Reflections, p. 121 - 133.  Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens et
+les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376 - 429.)
+
+Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p.
+336) rejects the claim of the Arabians as inventors of the
+science of chemistry. "The formation and realization of the
+notions of analysis and affinity were important steps in chemical
+science; which, as I shall hereafter endeavor to show it remained
+for the chemists of Europe to make at a much later period." - M.]
+
+But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal
+benefits of a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the
+knowledge of antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of
+thought.  Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the
+Arabians disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek
+interpreters were chosen among their Christian subjects; they
+formed their translations, sometimes on the original text, more
+frequently perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of
+astronomers and physicians, there is no example of a poet, an
+orator, or even an historian, being taught to speak the language
+of the Saracens. ^70 The mythology of Homer would have provoked
+the abhorrence of those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy
+ignorance the colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of
+Carthage and Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in
+oblivion; and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced
+to a short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the
+Persian kings.  Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may
+have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am
+not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of
+whose language I am ignorant.  Yet I know that the classics have
+much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to
+learn; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions
+of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just
+delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative
+and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry. ^71
+The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous
+complexion.  The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the
+blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious
+freedom.  Their moral and political writings might have gradually
+unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal
+spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian
+sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their
+prophet an impostor. ^72 The instinct of superstition was alarmed
+by the introduction even of the abstract sciences; and the more
+rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious
+curiosity of Almamon. ^73 To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision
+of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe
+the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people.  And the
+sword of the Saracens became less formidable when their youth was
+drawn away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the
+faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity
+of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly
+imparted the sacred fire to the Barbarians of the East. ^74
+
+[Footnote 70: Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 26, 148) mentions a
+Syriac version of Homer's two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian
+Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or
+Edessa towards the end of the viiith century. His work would be a
+literary curiosity.  I have read somewhere, but I do not believe,
+that Plutarch's Lives were translated into Turkish for the use of
+Mahomet the Second.]
+
+[Footnote 71: I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William
+Jones's Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in
+octavo,) which was composed in the youth of that wonderful
+linguist.  At present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment,
+he would perhaps abate of the fervent, and even partial, praise
+which he has bestowed on the Orientals.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been
+accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians,
+and the Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle's Dictionary.) Each
+of these sects would agree, that in two instances out of three,
+his contempt was reasonable.]
+
+[Footnote 73: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque, Orientale, p. 546.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the
+emperor refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of
+the caliph Almamon.  This absurd scruple is expressed almost in
+the same words by the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post
+Theophanem, p. 118.)]
+
+In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the
+Greeks had stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and
+enlarging their limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by
+Mohadi, the third caliph of the new dynasty, who seized, in his
+turn, the favorable opportunity, while a woman and a child, Irene
+and Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of
+ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris
+to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of Harun, ^75 or
+Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful.  His
+encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
+informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of
+her troops and provinces.  With the consent or connivance of
+their sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace;
+and the exchange of some royal gifts could not disguise the
+annual tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was
+imposed on the Roman empire.  The Saracens had too rashly
+advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land: their
+retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and
+plentiful markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper, that
+their weary forces might be surrounded and destroyed in their
+necessary passage between a slippery mountain and the River
+Sangarius. Five years after this expedition, Harun ascended the
+throne of his father and his elder brother; the most powerful and
+vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious in the West, as the
+ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most childish readers,
+as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales.  His title to the
+name of Al Rashid (the Just) is sullied by the extirpation of the
+generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen
+to the complaint of a poor widow who had been pillaged by his
+troops, and who dared, in a passage of the Koran, to threaten the
+inattentive despot with the judgment of God and posterity.  His
+court was adorned with luxury and science; but, in a reign of
+three-and-twenty years, Harun repeatedly visited his provinces
+from Chorasan to Egypt; nine times he performed the pilgrimage of
+Mecca; eight times he invaded the territories of the Romans; and
+as often as they declined the payment of the tribute, they were
+taught to feel that a month of depredation was more costly than a
+year of submission.  But when the unnatural mother of Constantine
+was deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus, resolved to
+obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace.  The epistle of
+the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the
+game of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece.
+"The queen (he spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and
+herself as a pawn.  That pusillanimous female submitted to pay a
+tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from the
+Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits of your injustice, or
+abide the determination of the sword." At these words the
+ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
+throne.  The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his
+cimeter, samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he
+cut asunder the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the
+edge, or endangering the temper, of his blade.  He then dictated
+an epistle of tremendous brevity: "In the name of the most
+merciful God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to
+Nicephorus, the Roman dog.  I have read thy letter, O thou son of
+an unbelieving mother.  Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold,
+my reply." It was written in characters of blood and fire on the
+plains of Phrygia; and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could
+only be checked by the arts of deceit and the show of repentance.
+
+The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the
+campaign, to his favorite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: ^76
+but the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the
+season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus
+was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander of
+the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of
+Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted;
+and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field
+of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects.  Yet
+the emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was
+resolved on victory.  One hundred and thirty-five thousand
+regular soldiers received pay, and were inscribed in the military
+roll; and above three hundred thousand persons of every
+denomination marched under the black standard of the Abbassides.
+They swept the surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra,
+and invested the Pontic Heraclea, ^77 once a flourishing state,
+now a paltry town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her
+antique walls, a month's siege against the forces of the East.
+The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been
+conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue
+of Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and
+the lion's hide, were sculptured in massy gold.  The progress of
+desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of
+Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty
+defiance.  In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left
+forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was
+marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three
+sons. ^78 Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove
+the dishonor of the Roman name.  After the death of their father,
+the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the
+conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the
+restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign
+science.
+
+[Footnote 75: See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in
+the Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431 - 433, under his proper title;
+and in the relative articles to which M. D'Herbelot refers.  That
+learned collector has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental
+chronicles of their instructive and amusing anecdotes.]
+
+[Footnote 76: For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium,
+consult D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24 - 27.) The
+Arabian Nights represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in
+Bagdad.  He respected the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the
+vices of the inhabitants had driven him from the city, (Abulfed.
+Annal. p. 167.)]
+
+[Footnote 77: M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from
+Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or
+Eregri.  His eye surveyed the present state, his reading
+collected the antiquities, of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom.
+iii. lettre xvi. p. 23 - 35.) We have a separate history of
+Heraclea in the fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by
+Photius.]
+
+[Footnote 78: The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman
+empire are related by Theophanes, (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407,
+408.) Zonaras, (tom. iii. l. xv. p. 115, 124,) Cedrenus, (p. 477,
+478,) Eutycaius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 407,) Elmacin, (Hist.
+Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 147, 151,)
+and Abulfeda, (p. 156, 166 - 168.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part IV.
+
+Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the
+Stammerer at Constantinople, the islands of Crete ^79 and Sicily
+were subdued by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is
+disdained by their own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of
+Jupiter and Minos, but it has not been overlooked by the
+Byzantine historians, who now begin to cast a clearer light on
+the affairs of their own times. ^80 A band of Andalusian
+volunteers, discontented with the climate or government of Spain,
+explored the adventures of the sea; but as they sailed in no more
+than ten or twenty galleys, their warfare must be branded with
+the name of piracy.  As the subjects and sectaries of the white
+party, they might lawfully invade the dominions of the black
+caliphs.  A rebellious faction introduced them into Alexandria;
+^81 they cut in pieces both friends and foes, pillaged the
+churches and the moschs, sold above six thousand Christian
+captives, and maintained their station in the capital of Egypt,
+till they were oppressed by the forces and the presence of
+Almamon himself.  From the mouth of the Nile to the Hellespont,
+the islands and sea-coasts both of the Greeks and Moslems were
+exposed to their depredations; they saw, they envied, they tasted
+the fertility of Crete, and soon returned with forty galleys to a
+more serious attack.  The Andalusians wandered over the land
+fearless and unmolested; but when they descended with their
+plunder to the sea-shore, their vessels were in flames, and their
+chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of the mischief.
+Their clamors accused his madness or treachery.  "Of what do you
+complain?" replied the crafty emir.  "I have brought you to a
+land flowing with milk and honey.  Here is your true country;
+repose from your toils, and forget the barren place of your
+nativity." "And our wives and children?" "Your beauteous captives
+will supply the place of your wives, and in their embraces you
+will soon become the fathers of a new progeny." The first
+habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart, in the Bay
+of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable
+position in the eastern parts; and the name of Candax, their
+fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole island, under
+the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia.  The hundred cities
+of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only
+one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance
+of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The Saracens of
+Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the timbers of
+Mount Ida were launched into the main.  During a hostile period
+of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes of
+Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with fruitless
+curses and ineffectual arms.
+
+[Footnote 79: The authors from whom I have learned the most of
+the ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations,
+&c., c. 3 - 20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom.
+i. lettre ii. et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom.
+iii. p. 343 - 544.) Although Crete is styled by Homer, by
+Dionysius, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass,
+or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.]
+
+[Footnote 80: The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence
+is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of
+Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil, the
+Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1 - 162, a Francisc.
+Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily is related,
+l. ii. p. 46 - 52.  To these we may add the secondary evidence of
+Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,
+(Compend. p. 506 - 508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud
+Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern
+Greeks are such notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a
+plurality of names.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251 - 256, 268
+- 270) had described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in
+Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of
+Crete.]
+
+The loss of Sicily ^82 was occasioned by an act of
+superstitious rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from
+her cloister, was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of
+his tongue.  Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the
+Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a
+fleet of one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse
+and ten thousand foot.  They landed at Mazara near the ruins of
+the ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse
+^83 was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before
+her walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity
+of feeding on the flesh of their own horses.  In their turn they
+were relieved by a powerful reenforcement of their brethren of
+Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was
+gradually reduced, and the commodious harbor of Palermo was
+chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the
+Saracens.  Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which
+she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar.  In the last and fatal
+siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which
+had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage.  They
+stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and
+catapultoe, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the
+place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial
+fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a
+church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop
+and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast
+into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of
+death or apostasy.  His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint
+may be read as the epitaph of his country. ^84 From the Roman
+conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the
+primitive Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined.  Yet the
+relics were still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed
+five thousand pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at
+one million of pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand
+pounds sterling,) and the captives must outnumber the seventeen
+thousand Christians, who were transported from the sack of
+Tauromenium into African servitude.  In Sicily, the religion and
+language of the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility
+of the rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were
+circumcised and clothed on the same day with the son of the
+Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbors of
+Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of
+Calabria and Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the
+suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and
+apostles.  Had the Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen
+an easy and glorious accession to the empire of the prophet.  But
+the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the
+Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their
+emirs of Sicily aspired to independence; and the design of
+conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of predatory
+inroads. ^85
+
+[Footnote 82: Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51.  This history of the loss
+of Sicily is no longer extant.  Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom.
+vii. p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the
+Italian chronicles.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede
+would adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date
+(A.D. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen.  But I must gently
+reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit
+of modern knights and ancient republicans.]
+
+[Footnote 84: The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is
+transcribed and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719,
+&c.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p.
+190 - 192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the
+demons.]
+
+[Footnote 85: The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily
+are given in Abulfeda, (Annal' Moslem. p. 271 - 273,) and in the
+first volume of Muratori's Scriptores Rerum Italicarum.  M. de
+Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some
+important facts.]
+
+In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome
+awakens a solemn and mournful recollection.  A fleet of Saracens
+from the African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber,
+and to approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was
+revered as the metropolis of the Christian world.  The gates and
+ramparts were guarded by a trembling people; but the tombs and
+temples of St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the
+suburbs of the Vatican and of the Ostian way.  Their invisible
+sanctity had protected them against the Goths, the Vandals, and
+the Lombards; but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the
+legend; and their rapacious spirit was approved and animated by
+the precepts of the Koran.  The Christian idols were stripped of
+their costly offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the
+shrine of St. Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were left
+entire, their deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather
+than the scruples, of the Saracens.  In their course along the
+Appian way, they pillaged Fundi and besieged Gayeta; but they had
+turned aside from the walls of Rome, and by their divisions, the
+Capitol was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca.  The
+same danger still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and
+their domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African
+emir.  They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but
+the Carlovingian standard was overthrown by a detachment of the
+Barbarians: they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors;
+but the attempt was treasonable, and the succor remote and
+precarious. ^86 Their distress appeared to receive some
+aggravation from the death of their spiritual and temporal chief;
+but the pressing emergency superseded the forms and intrigues of
+an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth ^87
+was the safety of the church and city.  This pontiff was born a
+Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in
+his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect,
+like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads
+above the fragments of the Roman forum.  The first days of his
+reign were consecrated to the purification and removal of relics,
+to prayers and processions, and to all the solemn offices of
+religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and
+restore the hopes, of the multitude.  The public defence had been
+long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the
+distress and poverty of the times.  As far as the scantiness of
+his means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the
+ancient walls were repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen
+towers, in the most accessible stations, were built or renewed;
+two of these commanded on either side of the Tyber; and an iron
+chain was drawn across the stream to impede the ascent of a
+hostile navy.  The Romans were assured of a short respite by the
+welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that
+a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had
+perished in the waves.
+
+[Footnote 86: One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister
+militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring,
+Quia Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent,
+sed magis quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt.  Quare non
+advocamus Graecos, et cum eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum
+regem et gentem de nostro regno et dominatione expellimus?
+Anastasius in Leone IV. p. 199.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124)
+appears to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo
+IV.  I have borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the
+forum has furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]
+
+But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them
+with redoubled violence.  The Aglabite, ^88 who reigned in
+Africa, had inherited from his father a treasure and an army: a
+fleet of Arabs and Moors, after a short refreshment in the
+harbors of Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of the Tyber,
+sixteen miles from the city: and their discipline and numbers
+appeared to threaten, not a transient inroad, but a serious
+design of conquest and dominion.  But the vigilance of Leo had
+formed an alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free
+and maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the
+hour of danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under
+the command of Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble
+and valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the
+Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius was invited to
+the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff affected to inquire
+their errand, and to accept with joy and surprise their
+providential succor.  The city bands, in arms, attended their
+father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his generous
+deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with
+martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the
+same God who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of
+the sea, would strengthen the hands of his champions against the
+adversaries of his holy name.  After a similar prayer, and with
+equal resolution, the Moslems advanced to the attack of the
+Christian galleys, which preserved their advantageous station
+along the coast.  The victory inclined to the side of the allies,
+when it was less gloriously decided in their favor by a sudden
+tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the stoutest
+mariners.  The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,
+while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the
+rocks and islands of a hostile shore.  Those who escaped from
+shipwreck and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the
+hands of their implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet
+reduced the dangerous multitude of captives; and the remainder
+was more usefully employed, to restore the sacred edifices which
+they had attempted to subvert.  The pontiff, at the head of the
+citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the shrines of
+the apostles; and, among the spoils of this naval victory,
+thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were suspended
+round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee.  The reign of Leo
+the Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman
+state. The churches were renewed and embellished: near four
+thousand pounds of silver were consecrated to repair the losses
+of St. Peter; and his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of
+gold of the weight of two hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed
+with the portraits of the pope and emperor, and encircled with a
+string of pearls.  Yet this vain magnificence reflects less glory
+on the character of Leo than the paternal care with which he
+rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the
+wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his new foundation of
+Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea- shore. ^89 By his
+liberality, a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children,
+was planted in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber:
+the falling city was restored for their use, the fields and
+vineyards were divided among the new settlers: their first
+efforts were assisted by a gift of horses and cattle; and the
+hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to
+live and die under the standard of St. Peter.  The nations of the
+West and North who visited the threshold of the apostles had
+gradually formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican,
+and their various habitations were distinguished, in the language
+of the times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the
+Lombards and Saxons.  But this venerable spot was still open to
+sacrilegious insult: the design of enclosing it with walls and
+towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity
+would supply: and the pious labor of four years was animated in
+every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the
+indefatigable pontiff.  The love of fame, a generous but worldly
+passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which
+he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was
+tempered with Christian penance and humility.  The boundary was
+trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and
+ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and
+litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the
+ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian
+care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the
+new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and
+impregnable. ^90
+
+[Footnote 88: De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p.
+363, 364. Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, sous la
+Domination des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25.  I observe, and cannot
+reconcile, the difference of these writers in the succession of
+the Aglabites.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106,
+108) has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and
+the other places of the Roman duchy.]
+
+[Footnote 90: The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent
+concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans.  The Latin
+chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of
+Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the
+popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman
+church.  His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four pages, (p. 175
+- 199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of superstitious
+trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was much oftener
+in a church than in a camp.]
+
+The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was
+one of the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at
+Constantinople during the middle age.  In offensive or defensive
+war, he marched in person five times against the Saracens,
+formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his losses and
+defeats.  In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into
+Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual
+birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father Harun was
+attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and
+concubines.  The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that
+moment the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in
+favor of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree
+of filial affection.  These solicitations determined the emperor
+to wound his pride in so sensible a part.  Sozopetra was levelled
+with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated
+with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were
+forced away from the adjacent territory.  Among these a matron of
+the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of
+Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her
+kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal.  Under
+the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the
+youngest had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and
+Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military
+talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,
+^91 the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or
+fought against the enemies of the Koran.  In this personal
+quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited
+from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his cavalry
+might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the
+hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the
+expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling,
+or one hundred thousand pounds of gold.  From Tarsus, the place
+of assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the
+high road of Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the
+centre, and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the
+trial of the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory,
+or fail with the least reproach.  In the revenge of his injury,
+the caliph prepared to retaliate a similar affront.  The father
+of Theophilus was a native of Amorium ^92 in Phrygia: the
+original seat of the Imperial house had been adorned with
+privileges and monuments; and, whatever might be the indifference
+of the people, Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value
+in the eyes of the sovereign and his court.  The name of Amorium
+was inscribed on the shields of the Saracens; and their three
+armies were again united under the walls of the devoted city.  It
+had been proposed by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium,
+to remove the inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to
+the vain resentment of the Barbarians.  The emperor embraced the
+more generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the
+country of his ancestors.  When the armies drew near, the front
+of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely
+planted with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was
+not glorious on either side to the national troops.  The Arabs
+were broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand
+Persians, who had obtained service and settlement in the
+Byzantine empire.  The Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but
+it was by the arrows of the Turkish cavalry; and had not their
+bowstrings been damped and relaxed by the evening rain, very few
+of the Christians could have escaped with the emperor from the
+field of battle.  They breathed at Dorylaeum, at the distance of
+three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons,
+forgave the common flight both of the prince and people.  After
+this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the
+fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his
+prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be
+the witnesses of his great revenge.  They had nearly been the
+witnesses of his shame.  The vigorous assaults of fifty- five
+days were encountered by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison,
+and a desperate people; and the Saracens must have raised the
+siege, if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part
+of the wall, a place which was decorated with the statues of a
+lion and a bull.  The vow of Motassem was accomplished with
+unrelenting rigor: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction,
+he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the neighborhood of
+Bagdad, while the unfortunate ^93 Theophilus implored the tardy
+and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks.
+Yet in the siege of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had
+perished: their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty
+thousand Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of
+captives, who were treated as the most atrocious criminals.
+Mutual necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of
+prisoners: ^94 but in the national and religious conflict of the
+two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
+Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge
+of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite
+torture; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible
+satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were
+flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil. ^95 To a
+point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
+hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions.  The same
+caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve
+the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had
+tumbled into a ditch.  On which of these actions did he reflect
+with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of
+death? ^96
+
+[Footnote 91: The same number was applied to the following
+circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the
+Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days;
+left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight
+millions of gold.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers,
+and to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries.  After the vith
+century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis
+of the new Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p.
+234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read
+Ammeria, not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer. (p.
+236.)]
+
+[Footnote 93: In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan.
+l. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his
+ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de
+victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat
+assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of
+these singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in
+Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day's journey
+westward of Tarsus, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p.
+91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred
+women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for
+an equal number of Greeks.  They passed each other in the middle
+of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends,
+they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison.  Many of the
+prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same
+year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two
+martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph's order.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61,
+p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity
+as pirates and renegadoes.]
+
+[Footnote 96: For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see
+the Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77 - 84,) Genesius (l.
+iii. p. 24 - 34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528 - 532,) Elmacin, (Hist.
+Saracen, p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda,
+(Annal. Moslem. p. 191,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639,
+640.)]
+
+With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of
+his family and nation expired.  When the Arabian conquerors had
+spread themselves over the East, and were mingled with the
+servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost
+the freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of
+the South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice;
+the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary
+forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the
+North, of which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production.
+Of the Turks ^97 who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the
+robust youths, either taken in war or purchased in trade, were
+educated in the exercises of the field, and the profession of the
+Mahometan faith.  The Turkish guards stood in arms round the
+throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion
+of the palace and the provinces.  Motassem, the first author of
+this dangerous example, introduced into the capital above fifty
+thousand Turks: their licentious conduct provoked the public
+indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced
+the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence
+and the camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris,
+about twelve leagues above the city of Peace. ^98 His son
+Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his
+subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and
+these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the
+rich promise of a revolution.  At the instigation, or at least in
+the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour
+of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same
+swords which he had recently distributed among the guards of his
+life and throne.  To this throne, yet streaming with a father's
+blood, Montasser was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six
+months, he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience.  If he
+wept at the sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime
+and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if his days were abridged
+by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide, who
+exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had lost both this
+world and the world to come.  After this act of treason, the
+ensigns of royalty, the garment and walking-staff of Mahomet,
+were given and torn away by the foreign mercenaries, who in four
+years created, deposed, and murdered, three commanders of the
+faithful.  As often as the Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage,
+or avarice, these caliphs were dragged by the feet, exposed naked
+to the scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and compelled to
+purchase, by the abdication of their dignity, a short reprieve of
+inevitable fate. ^99 At length, however, the fury of the tempest
+was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to the less
+turbulent residence of Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks was
+curbed with a firmer and more skilful hand, and their numbers
+were divided and destroyed in foreign warfare.  But the nations
+of the East had been taught to trample on the successors of the
+prophet; and the blessings of domestic peace were obtained by the
+relaxation of strength and discipline.  So uniform are the
+mischiefs of military despotism, that I seem to repeat the story
+of the praetorians of Rome. ^100
+
+[Footnote 97: M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes
+stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks
+he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche,
+or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from
+China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides,
+&c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1 - 33, 124 - 131.)]
+
+[Footnote 98: He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into
+the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at
+first sight, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808.
+D'Anville, l'Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]
+
+[Footnote 99: Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz:
+Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et
+spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo
+aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat.  Adstantium
+aliquis misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis
+manibus avertere studebat ..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit,
+totoque triduo cibo potuque prohibitus ..... Suffocatus, &c.
+(Abulfeda, p. 206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi
+perpetuis ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus
+conculcabant, (p. 208.)]
+
+[Footnote 100: See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel,
+Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the
+Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of
+Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]
+
+While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business,
+the pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with
+concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the congenial
+spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in this world or
+in the next.  How carefully soever the book of prophecy had been
+sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes, and (if we may
+profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might believe
+that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
+Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time,
+would reveal a still more perfect and permanent law.  In the two
+hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the
+neighborhood of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of
+Carmath, assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the
+Guide, the Director, the Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost,
+the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had conversed with him
+in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed the son of
+Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In his
+mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more
+spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and
+pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden
+food; and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily
+repetition of fifty prayers.  The idleness and ferment of the
+rustic crowd awakened the attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a
+timid persecution assisted the progress of the new sect; and the
+name of the prophet became more revered after his person had been
+withdrawn from the world.  His twelve apostles dispersed
+themselves among the Bedoweens, "a race of men," says Abulfeda,
+"equally devoid of reason and of religion;" and the success of
+their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution.
+The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed
+the title of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of
+the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since
+they vowed a blind and absolute submission to their Imam, who was
+called to the prophetic office by the voice of God and the
+people.  Instead of the legal tithes, he claimed the fifth of
+their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were no more
+than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and
+concealed by an oath of secrecy.  After a bloody conflict, they
+prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf: far
+and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,
+or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and
+these rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and
+seven thousand fanatics.  The mercenaries of the caliph were
+dismayed at the approach of an enemy who neither asked nor
+accepted quarter; and the difference between, them in fortitude
+and patience, is expressive of the change which three centuries
+of prosperity had effected in the character of the Arabians.
+Such troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of Racca
+and Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad
+was filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the
+veils of his palace.  In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu
+Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five
+hundred horse.  By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had
+been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was
+expected every hour by the commander of the faithful.  His
+lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of
+his danger, and recommended a speedy escape.  "Your master," said
+the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, "is at the head of
+thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in
+his host: " at the same instant, turning to three of his
+companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his
+breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast
+himself headlong down a precipice.  They obeyed without a murmur.
+
+"Relate," continued the imam, "what you have seen: before the
+evening your general shall be chained among my dogs." Before the
+evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The
+rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the
+worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty
+thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a
+death of hunger and thirst.  Another year they suffered the
+pilgrims to proceed without interruption; but, in the festival of
+devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and trampled on the
+most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty thousand
+citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred
+precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead
+bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden
+spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was
+divided among these impious sectaries; and the black stone, the
+first monument of the nation, was borne away in triumph to their
+capital. After this deed of sacrilege and cruelty, they continued
+to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt: but the vital
+principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root.  Their
+scruples, or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca,
+and restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to
+inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords
+they were finally extirpated.  The sect of the Carmathians may be
+considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of
+the empire of the caliphs. ^101
+
+[Footnote 101: For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin,
+(Hist. Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,)
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 179 - 182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem.
+p. 218, 219, &c., 245, 265, 274.) and D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque
+Orientale, p. 256 - 258, 635.) I find some inconsistencies of
+theology and chronology, which it would not be easy nor of much
+importance to reconcile.
+
+Note: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 44, &c.
+- M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.
+
+Part V.
+
+The third and most obvious cause was the weight and
+magnitude of the empire itself.  The caliph Almamon might proudly
+assert, that it was easier for him to rule the East and the West,
+than to manage a chess-board of two feet square: ^102 yet I
+suspect that in both those games he was guilty of many fatal
+mistakes; and I perceive, that in the distant provinces the
+authority of the first and most powerful of the Abbassides was
+already impaired.  The analogy of despotism invests the
+representative with the full majesty of the prince; the division
+and balance of powers might relax the habits of obedience, might
+encourage the passive subject to inquire into the origin and
+administration of civil government.  He who is born in the purple
+is seldom worthy to reign; but the elevation of a private man, of
+a peasant, perhaps, or a slave, affords a strong presumption of
+his courage and capacity.  The viceroy of a remote kingdom
+aspires to secure the property and inheritance of his precarious
+trust; the nations must rejoice in the presence of their
+sovereign; and the command of armies and treasures are at once
+the object and the instrument of his ambition.  A change was
+scarcely visible as long as the lieutenants of the caliph were
+content with their vicarious title; while they solicited for
+themselves or their sons a renewal of the Imperial grant, and
+still maintained on the coin and in the public prayers the name
+and prerogative of the commander of the faithful.  But in the
+long and hereditary exercise of power, they assumed the pride and
+attributes of royalty; the alternative of peace or war, of reward
+or punishment, depended solely on their will; and the revenues of
+their government were reserved for local services or private
+magnificence.  Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the
+successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious
+gift of an elephant, or a cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings,
+or some pounds of musk and amber. ^103
+
+[Footnote 102: Hyde, Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 57, in Hist.
+Shahiludii.]
+
+[Footnote 103: The dynasties of the Arabian empire may be studied
+in the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, under the
+proper years, in the dictionary of D'Herbelot, under the proper
+names.  The tables of M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.)
+exhibit a general chronology of the East, interspersed with some
+historical anecdotes; but his attachment to national blood has
+sometimes confounded the order of time and place.]
+
+After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual
+supremacy of the Abbassides, the first symptoms of disobedience
+broke forth in the province of Africa.  Ibrahim, the son of
+Aglab, the lieutenant of the vigilant and rigid Harun, bequeathed
+to the dynasty of the Aglabites the inheritance of his name and
+power.  The indolence or policy of the caliphs dissembled the
+injury and loss, and pursued only with poison the founder of the
+Edrisites, ^104 who erected the kingdom and city of Fez on the
+shores of the Western ocean. ^105 In the East, the first dynasty
+was that of the Taherites; ^106 the posterity of the valiant
+Taher, who, in the civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served
+with too much zeal and success the cause of Almamon, the younger
+brother.  He was sent into honorable exile, to command on the
+banks of the Oxus; and the independence of his successors, who
+reigned in Chorasan till the fourth generation, was palliated by
+their modest and respectful demeanor, the happiness of their
+subjects and the security of their frontier.  They were
+supplanted by one of those adventures so frequent in the annals
+of the East, who left his trade of a brazier (from whence the
+name of Soffarides) for the profession of a robber.  In a
+nocturnal visit to the treasure of the prince of Sistan, Jacob,
+the son of Leith, stumbled over a lump of salt, which he unwarily
+tasted with his tongue.  Salt, among the Orientals, is the symbol
+of hospitality, and the pious robber immediately retired without
+spoil or damage. The discovery of this honorable behavior
+recommended Jacob to pardon and trust; he led an army at first
+for his benefactor, at last for himself, subdued Persia, and
+threatened the residence of the Abbassides. On his march towards
+Bagdad, the conqueror was arrested by a fever.  He gave audience
+in bed to the ambassador of the caliph; and beside him on a table
+were exposed a naked cimeter, a crust of brown bread, and a bunch
+of onions.  "If I die," said he, "your master is delivered from
+his fears.  If I live, this must determine between us.  If I am
+vanquished, I can return without reluctance to the homely fare of
+my youth." From the height where he stood, the descent would not
+have been so soft or harmless: a timely death secured his own
+repose and that of the caliph, who paid with the most lavish
+concessions the retreat of his brother Amrou to the palaces of
+Shiraz and Ispahan.  The Abbassides were too feeble to contend,
+too proud to forgive: they invited the powerful dynasty of the
+Samanides, who passed the Oxus with ten thousand horse so poor,
+that their stirrups were of wood: so brave, that they vanquished
+the Soffarian army, eight times more numerous than their own.
+The captive Amrou was sent in chains, a grateful offering to the
+court of Bagdad; and as the victor was content with the
+inheritance of Transoxiana and Chorasan, the realms of Persia
+returned for a while to the allegiance of the caliphs.  The
+provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered by their
+Turkish slaves of the race of Toulon and Ilkshid. ^107 These
+Barbarians, in religion and manners the countrymen of Mahomet,
+emerged from the bloody factions of the palace to a provincial
+command and an independent throne: their names became famous and
+formidable in their time; but the founders of these two potent
+dynasties confessed, either in words or actions, the vanity of
+ambition.  The first on his death-bed implored the mercy of God
+to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of his own power: the second,
+in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and eight thousand
+slaves, concealed from every human eye the chamber where he
+attempted to sleep.  Their sons were educated in the vices of
+kings; and both Egypt and Syria were recovered and possessed by
+the Abbassides during an interval of thirty years.  In the
+decline of their empire, Mesopotamia, with the important cities
+of Mosul and Aleppo, was occupied by the Arabian princes of the
+tribe of Hamadan.  The poets of their court could repeat without
+a blush, that nature had formed their countenances for beauty,
+their tongues for eloquence, and their hands for liberality and
+valor: but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of the
+Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide.
+
+At the same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped
+by the dynasty of the Bowides, by the sword of three brothers,
+who, under various names, were styled the support and columns of
+the state, and who, from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, would
+suffer no tyrants but themselves.  Under their reign, the
+language and genius of Persia revived, and the Arabs, three
+hundred and four years after the death of Mahomet, were deprived
+of the sceptre of the East.
+
+[Footnote 104: The Aglabites and Edrisites are the professed
+subject of M. de Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne
+sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 1 - 63.)]
+
+[Footnote 105: To escape the reproach of error, I must criticize
+the inaccuracies of M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 359) concerning the
+Edrisites. 1. The dynasty and city of Fez could not be founded in
+the year of the Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous
+child of a descendant of Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year
+168.  2. This founder, Edris, the son of Edris, instead of living
+to the improbable age of 120 years, A. H. 313, died A. H. 214, in
+the prime of manhood.  3. The dynasty ended A. H. 307,
+twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of
+the Huns. See the accurate Annals of Abulfeda p. 158, 159, 185,
+238.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The dynasties of the Taherites and Soffarides,
+with the rise of that of the Samanines, are described in the
+original history and Latin version of Mirchond: yet the most
+interesting facts had already been drained by the diligence of M.
+D'Herbelot.]
+
+[Footnote 107: M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 124 -
+154) has exhausted the Toulunides and Ikshidites of Egypt, and
+thrown some light on the Carmathians and Hamadanites.]
+
+Rahadi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the
+thirty-ninth of the successors of Mahomet, was the last who
+deserved the title of commander of the faithful; ^108 the last
+(says Abulfeda) who spoke to the people, or conversed with the
+learned; the last who, in the expense of his household,
+represented the wealth and magnificence of the ancient caliphs.
+After him, the lords of the Eastern world were reduced to the
+most abject misery, and exposed to the blows and insults of a
+servile condition.  The revolt of the provinces circumscribed
+their dominions within the walls of Bagdad: but that capital
+still contained an innumerable multitude, vain of their past
+fortune, discontented with their present state, and oppressed by
+the demands of a treasury which had formerly been replenished by
+the spoil and tribute of nations.  Their idleness was exercised
+by faction and controversy.  Under the mask of piety, the rigid
+followers of Hanbal ^109 invaded the pleasures of domestic life,
+burst into the houses of plebeians and princes, the wine, broke
+the instruments, beat the musicians, and dishonored, with
+infamous suspicions, the associates of every handsome youth.  In
+each profession, which allowed room for two persons, the one was
+a votary, the other an antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides
+were awakened by the clamorous grief of the sectaries, who denied
+their title, and cursed their progenitors.  A turbulent people
+could only be repressed by a military force; but who could
+satisfy the avarice or assert the discipline of the mercenaries
+themselves?  The African and the Turkish guards drew their swords
+against each other, and the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra,
+^110 imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the
+sanctuary of the mosch and harem.  If the caliphs escaped to the
+camp or court of any neighboring prince, their deliverance was a
+change of servitude, till they were prompted by despair to invite
+the Bowides, the sultans of Persia, who silenced the factions of
+Bagdad by their irresistible arms.  The civil and military powers
+were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second of the three brothers,
+and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by
+his generosity for the private expense of the commander of the
+faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of the
+ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling
+multitude, the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon,
+by the command of the stranger, and the rude hands of his
+Dilamites.  His palace was pillaged, his eyes were put out, and
+the mean ambition of the Abbassides aspired to the vacant station
+of danger and disgrace.  In the school of adversity, the
+luxurious caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the
+primitive times.  Despoiled of their armor and silken robes, they
+fasted, they prayed, they studied the Koran and the tradition of
+the Sonnites: they performed, with zeal and knowledge, the
+functions of their ecclesiastical character.  The respect of
+nations still waited on the successors of the apostle, the
+oracles of the law and conscience of the faithful; and the
+weakness or division of their tyrants sometimes restored the
+Abbassides to the sovereignty of Bagdad.  But their misfortunes
+had been imbittered by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or
+spurious progeny of Ali.  Arising from the extremity of Africa,
+these successful rivals extinguished, in Egypt and Syria, both
+the spiritual and temporal authority of the Abbassides; and the
+monarch of the Nile insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of
+the Tigris.
+
+[Footnote 108: Hic est ultimus chalifah qui multum atque saepius
+pro concione peroraret .... Fuit etiam ultimus qui otium cum
+eruditis et facetis hominibus fallere hilariterque agere soleret.
+
+Ultimus tandem chalifarum cui sumtus, stipendia, reditus, et
+thesauri, culinae, caeteraque omnis aulica pompa priorum
+chalifarum ad instar comparata fuerint. Videbimus enim paullo
+post quam indignis et servilibius ludibriis exagitati, quam ad
+humilem fortunam altimumque contemptum abjecti fuerint hi quondam
+potentissimi totius terrarum Orientalium orbis domini.  Abulfed.
+Annal. Moslem. p. 261.  I have given this passage as the manner
+and tone of Abulfeda, but the cast of Latin eloquence belongs
+more properly to Reiske. The Arabian historian (p. 255, 257, 261
+- 269, 283, &c.) has supplied me with the most interesting facts
+of this paragraph.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Their master, on a similar occasion, showed
+himself of a more indulgent and tolerating spirit.  Ahmed Ebn
+Hanbal, the head of one of the four orthodox sects, was born at
+Bagdad A. H. 164, and died there A. H. 241. He fought and
+suffered in the dispute concerning the creation of the Koran.]
+
+[Footnote 110: The office of vizier was superseded by the emir al
+Omra, Imperator Imperatorum, a title first instituted by Radhi,
+and which merged at length in the Bowides and Seljukides:
+vectigalibus, et tributis, et curiis per omnes regiones
+praefecit, jussitque in omnibus suggestis nominis ejus in
+concionibus mentionem fieri, (Abulpharagius, Dynart. p 199.) It
+is likewise mentioned by Elmacin, (p. 254, 255.)]
+
+In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which
+elapsed after the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile
+transactions of the two nations were confined to some inroads by
+sea and land, the fruits of their close vicinity and indelible
+hatred.  But when the Eastern world was convulsed and broken, the
+Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest
+and revenge.  The Byzantine empire, since the accession of the
+Basilian race, had reposed in peace and dignity; and they might
+encounter with their entire strength the front of some petty
+emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his national
+foes of the Mahometan faith.  The lofty titles of the morning
+star, and the death of the Saracens, ^111 were applied in the
+public acclamations to Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in
+the camp, as he was unpopular in the city. In the subordinate
+station of great domestic, or general of the East, he reduced the
+Island of Crete, and extirpated the nest of pirates who had so
+long defied, with impunity, the majesty of the empire. ^112 His
+military genius was displayed in the conduct and success of the
+enterprise, which had so often failed with loss and dishonor.
+The Saracens were confounded by the landing of his troops on safe
+and level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to the shore.
+Seven months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of
+the native Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their
+brethren of Africa and Spain; and after the massy wall and double
+ditch had been stormed by the Greeks a hopeless conflict was
+still maintained in the streets and houses of the city. ^* The
+whole island was subdued in the capital, and a submissive people
+accepted, without resistance, the baptism of the conqueror. ^113
+Constantinople applauded the long-forgotten pomp of a triumph;
+but the Imperial diadem was the sole reward that could repay the
+services, or satisfy the ambition, of Nicephorus.
+
+[Footnote 111: Liutprand, whose choleric temper was imbittered by
+his uneasy situation, suggests the names of reproach and contempt
+more applicable to Nicephorus than the vain titles of the Greeks,
+Ecce venit stella matutina, surgit Eous, reverberat obtutu solis
+radios, pallida Saracenorum mors, Nicephorus.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Notwithstanding the insinuation of Zonaras, &c.,
+(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 197,) it is an undoubted fact, that Crete
+was completely and finally subdued by Nicephorus Phocas, (Pagi,
+Critica, tom. iii. p. 873 - 875. Meursius, Creta, l. iii. c. 7,
+tom. iii. p. 464, 465.)]
+
+[Footnote *: The Acroases of Theodorus, de expugnatione Cretae,
+miserable iambics, relate the whole campaign.  Whoever would
+fairly estimate the merit of the poetic deacon, may read the
+description of the slinging a jackass into the famishing city.
+The poet is in a transport at the wit of the general, and revels
+in the luxury of antithesis.  Theodori Acroases, lib. iii. 172,
+in Niebuhr's Byzant. Hist. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 113: A Greek Life of St. Nicon the Armenian was found
+in the Sforza library, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit
+Sirmond, for the use of Cardinal Baronius.  This contemporary
+legend casts a ray of light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the 10th
+century.  He found the newly-recovered island, foedis detestandae
+Agarenorum superstitionis vestigiis adhuc plenam ac refertam ....
+but the victorious missionary, perhaps with some carnal aid, ad
+baptismum omnes veraeque fidei disciplinam pepulit.  Ecclesiis
+per totam insulam aedificatis, &c., (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 961.)]
+
+After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal
+descent of the Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively
+married Nicephorus Phocas and his assassin John Zimisces, the two
+heroes of the age.  They reigned as the guardians and colleagues
+of her infant sons; and the twelve years of their military
+command form the most splendid period of the Byzantine annals.
+The subjects and confederates, whom they led to war, appeared, at
+least in the eyes of an enemy, two hundred thousand strong; and
+of these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses: ^114 a
+train of four thousand mules attended their march; and their
+evening camp was regularly fortified with an enclosure of iron
+spikes.  A series of bloody and undecisive combats is nothing
+more than an anticipation of what would have been effected in a
+few years by the course of nature; but I shall briefly prosecute
+the conquests of the two emperors from the hills of Cappadocia to
+the desert of Bagdad.  The sieges of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, in
+Cilicia, first exercised the skill and perseverance of their
+troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not hesitate to bestow
+the name of Romans. In the double city of Mopsuestia, which is
+divided by the River Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems were
+predestined to death or slavery, ^115 a surprising degree of
+population, which must at least include the inhabitants of the
+dependent districts.  They were surrounded and taken by assault;
+but Tarsus was reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no
+sooner had the Saracens yielded on honorable terms than they were
+mortified by the distant and unprofitable view of the naval
+succors of Egypt.  They were dismissed with a safe-conduct to the
+confines of Syria: a part of the old Christians had quietly lived
+under their dominion; and the vacant habitations were replenished
+by a new colony.  But the mosch was converted into a stable; the
+pulpit was delivered to the flames; many rich crosses of gold and
+gems, the spoils of Asiatic churches, were made a grateful
+offering to the piety or avarice of the emperor; and he
+transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were fixed
+in the walls of Constantinople, an eternal monument of his
+victory.  After they had forced and secured the narrow passes of
+Mount Amanus, the two Roman princes repeatedly carried their arms
+into the heart of Syria. Yet, instead of assaulting the walls of
+Antioch, the humanity or superstition of Nicephorus appeared to
+respect the ancient metropolis of the East: he contented himself
+with drawing round the city a line of circumvallation; left a
+stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without
+impatience, the return of spring.  But in the depth of winter, in
+a dark and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three
+hundred soldiers, approached the rampart, applied his
+scaling-ladders, occupied two adjacent towers, stood firm against
+the pressure of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till
+he was relieved by the tardy, though effectual, support of his
+reluctant chief.  The first tumult of slaughter and rapine
+subsided; the reign of Caesar and of Christ was restored; and the
+efforts of a hundred thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria
+and the fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before the
+walls of Antioch.  The royal city of Aleppo was subject to
+Seifeddowlat, of the dynasty of Hamadan, who clouded his past
+glory by the precipitate retreat which abandoned his kingdom and
+capital to the Roman invaders.  In his stately palace, that stood
+without the walls of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a
+well-furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen hundred
+mules, and three hundred bags of silver and gold.  But the walls
+of the city withstood the strokes of their battering-rams: and
+the besiegers pitched their tents on the neighboring mountain of
+Jaushan.  Their retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen
+and mercenaries; the guard of the gates and ramparts was
+deserted; and while they furiously charged each other in the
+market-place, they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a
+common enemy.  The male sex was exterminated by the sword; ten
+thousand youths were led into captivity; the weight of the
+precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of the beasts of
+burden; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after a
+licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from
+the naked and bleeding city.  In their Syrian inroads they
+commanded the husbandmen to cultivate their lands, that they
+themselves, in the ensuing season, might reap the benefit; more
+than a hundred cities were reduced to obedience; and eighteen
+pulpits of the principal moschs were committed to the flames to
+expiate the sacrilege of the disciples of Mahomet.  The classic
+names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for a moment in
+the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the
+paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive
+people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable
+fortress of Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phoenicia.  Since the
+days of Heraclius, the Euphrates, below the passage of Mount
+Taurus, had been impervious, and almost invisible, to the Greeks.
+
+The river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and
+the historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the
+once famous cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, ^116
+and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in the neighborhood
+of the Tigris.  His ardor was quickened by the desire of grasping
+the virgin treasures of Ecbatana, ^117 a well-known name, under
+which the Byzantine writer has concealed the capital of the
+Abbassides.  The consternation of the fugitives had already
+diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad
+had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of
+domestic tyrants.  The prayers of the people, and the stern
+demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to
+provide for the defence of the city.  The helpless Mothi replied,
+that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn
+from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which
+he was unable to support.  The emir was inexorable; the furniture
+of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand
+pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the
+apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the
+Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and
+the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils,
+returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the
+silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and
+silver.  Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by
+this transient hurricane.  After the departure of the Greeks, the
+fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects
+disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems
+again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the
+saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a
+Saracen to an orthodox master; and the numbers and spirit of the
+Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state.
+
+Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia
+and the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and
+useful accession to the Roman empire. ^118
+
+[Footnote 114: Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 278, 279.  Liutprand
+was disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that
+Nicephorus led against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Ducenta fere millia hominum numerabat urbs
+(Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 231) of Mopsuestia, or Masifa,
+Mampsysta, Mansista, Mamista, as it is corruptly, or perhaps more
+correctly, styled in the middle ages, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p.
+580.) Yet I cannot credit this extreme populousness a few years
+after the testimony of the emperor Leo, (Tactica, c. xviii. in
+Meursii Oper. tom. vi. p. 817.)]
+
+[Footnote 116: The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names
+of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and
+Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers.
+Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris;
+of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore,
+reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe praestans.]
+
+[Footnote 117: Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam
+everteret .... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe
+existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud
+Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only
+with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the
+true Ecbatana, (D'Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or
+Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city.  The name
+of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a
+more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the
+royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and
+Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of
+Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras
+(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199 - l. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend.
+p. 649 - 684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the
+Ms. history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the
+Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version,
+(Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.)
+
+Note: The whole original work of Leo the Deacon has been
+published by Hase, and is inserted in the new edition of the
+Byzantine historians.  M Lassen has added to the Arabian
+authorities of this period some extracts from Kemaleddin's
+account of the treaty for the surrender of Aleppo. - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.
+
+Part I.
+
+Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century. - Extent
+And Division. - Wealth And Revenue. - Palace Of Constantinople. -
+Titles And Offices. - Pride And Power Of The Emperors. - Tactics
+Of The Greeks, Arabs, And Franks. - Loss Of The Latin Tongue. -
+Studies And Solitude Of The Greeks.
+
+A ray of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of
+the tenth century.  We open with curiosity and respect the royal
+volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, ^1 which he composed at a
+mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to
+unfold the state of the eastern empire, both in peace and war,
+both at home and abroad.  In the first of these works he minutely
+describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of
+Constantinople, according to his own practice, and that of his
+predecessors. ^2 In the second, he attempts an accurate survey of
+the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of
+Europe and Asia. ^3 The system of Roman tactics, the discipline
+and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and
+sea, are explained in the third of these didactic collections,
+which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. ^4 In the
+fourth, of the administration of the empire, he reveals the
+secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile
+intercourse with the nations of the earth.  The literary labors
+of the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and
+history, might redound to the benefit of the subject and the
+honor of the Macedonian princes.  The sixty books of the
+Basilics, ^5 the code and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were
+gradually framed in the three first reigns of that prosperous
+dynasty.  The art of agriculture had amused the leisure, and
+exercised the pens, of the best and wisest of the ancients; and
+their chosen precepts are comprised in the twenty books of the
+Geoponics ^6 of Constantine. At his command, the historical
+examples of vice and virtue were methodized in fifty-three books,
+^7 and every citizen might apply, to his contemporaries or
+himself, the lesson or the warning of past times. From the august
+character of a legislator, the sovereign of the East descends to
+the more humble office of a teacher and a scribe; and if his
+successors and subjects were regardless of his paternal cares, we
+may inherit and enjoy the everlasting legacy.
+
+[Footnote 1: The epithet of Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple,
+is elegantly defined by Claudian: -
+
+Ardua privatos nescit fortuna Penates;
+Et regnum cum luce dedit.  Cognata potestas
+Excepit Tyrio venerabile pignus in ostro.
+
+And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many
+passages expressive of the same idea.]
+
+[Footnote 2: A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae
+et Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda,
+Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid
+edition by Leich and Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such
+lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or
+worthless object of their toil.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See, in the first volume of Banduri's Imperium
+Orientale, Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1 - 24, de
+Administrando Imperio, p. 45 - 127, edit. Venet.  The text of the
+old edition of Meursius is corrected from a Ms. of the royal
+library of Paris, which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen, (Epist.
+ad Polybium, p. 10,) and the sense is illustrated by two maps of
+William Deslisle, the prince of geographers till the appearance
+of the greater D'Anville.]
+
+[Footnote 4: The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published
+with the aid of some new Mss. in the great edition of the works
+of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531 - 920,
+1211 - 1417, Florent. 1745,) yet the text is still corrupt and
+mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty.  The Imperial
+library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new
+editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.)]
+
+[Footnote 5: On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot.
+Graec. tom. xii. p. 425 - 514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris
+Romani, p. 396 - 399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli,
+tom. i. p. 450 - 458,) as historical civilians, may be usefully
+consulted: xli. books of this Greek code have been published,
+with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris,
+1647,) in seven tomes in folio; iv. other books have been since
+discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman's Novus Thesaurus
+Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v.  Of the whole work, the sixty books,
+John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,) an eclogue or
+synopsis.  The cxiii. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found
+in the Corpus Juris Civilis.]
+
+[Footnote 6: I have used the last and best edition of the
+Geoponics, (by Nicolas Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.)
+I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the
+long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two
+books of Hippiatrica, or Horse-physic, were published at Paris,
+1530, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 493 - 500.)]
+
+[Footnote 7: Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been
+preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus,
+Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and
+de Virtutibus et Vitiis, (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris,
+1634.)]
+
+A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift,
+and the gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these
+Imperial treasures we may still deplore our poverty and
+ignorance; and the fading glories of their authors will be
+obliterated by indifference or contempt.  The Basilics will sink
+to a broken copy, a partial and mutilated version, in the Greek
+language, of the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old
+civilians is often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and
+the absolute prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest
+for money, enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of
+private life.  In the historical book, a subject of Constantine
+might admire the inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might
+learn to what a pitch of energy and elevation the human character
+had formerly aspired.  But a contrary effect must have been
+produced by a new edition of the lives of the saints, which the
+great logothete, or chancellor of the empire, was directed to
+prepare; and the dark fund of superstition was enriched by the
+fabulous and florid legends of Simon the Metaphrast. ^8 The
+merits and miracles of the whole calendar are of less account in
+the eyes of a sage, than the toil of a single husbandman, who
+multiplies the gifts of the Creator, and supplies the food of his
+brethren.  Yet the royal authors of the Geoponics were more
+seriously employed in expounding the precepts of the destroying
+art, which had been taught since the days of Xenophon, ^9 as the
+art of heroes and kings.  But the Tactics of Leo and Constantine
+are mingled with the baser alloy of the age in which they lived.
+It was destitute of original genius; they implicitly transcribe
+the rules and maxims which had been confirmed by victories.  It
+was unskilled in the propriety of style and method; they blindly
+confound the most distant and discordant institutions, the
+phalanx of Sparta and that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and
+Trajan, of Augustus and Theodosius.  Even the use, or at least
+the importance, of these military rudiments may be fairly
+questioned: their general theory is dictated by reason; but the
+merit, as well as difficulty, consists in the application. The
+discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather than by
+study: the talents of a commander are appropriated to those calm,
+though rapid, minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of
+armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter
+the glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics
+may be numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of
+criticism.  The book of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet
+imperfect, of the despicable pageantry which had infected the
+church and state since the gradual decay of the purity of the one
+and the power of the other.  A review of the themes or provinces
+might promise such authentic and useful information, as the
+curiosity of government only can obtain, instead of traditionary
+fables on the origin of the cities, and malicious epigrams on the
+vices of their inhabitants. ^10 Such information the historian
+would have been pleased to record; nor should his silence be
+condemned if the most interesting objects, the population of the
+capital and provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues, the
+numbers of subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial
+standard, have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son
+Constantine.  His treatise of the public administration is
+stained with the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by
+peculiar merit; the antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or
+fabulous; but the geography and manners of the Barbaric world are
+delineated with curious accuracy.  Of these nations, the Franks
+alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe,
+the metropolis of the East.  The ambassador of the great Otho, a
+bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about
+the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his
+narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices
+and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character
+of freedom and genius. ^11 From this scanty fund of foreign and
+domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of
+the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil
+government and military force, the character and literature, of
+the Greeks in a period of six hundred years, from the reign of
+Heraclius to his successful invasion of the Franks or Latins.
+
+[Footnote 8: The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are
+described by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418 - 460.)
+This biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose
+paraphrase of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts.  His
+Greek rhetoric is again paraphrased in the Latin version of
+Surius, and scarcely a thread can be now visible of the original
+texture.]
+
+[Footnote 9: According to the first book of the Cyropaedia,
+professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were
+already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood.
+
+A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not
+unworthy of a scholar.  His industry might discover some new
+Mss., and his learning might illustrate the military history of
+the ancients.  But this scholar should be likewise a soldier; and
+alas!  Quintus Icilius is no more.
+
+Note: M. Guichardt, author of Memoires Militaires sur les
+Grecs et sur les Romains.  See Gibbon's Extraits Raisonnees de
+mes Lectures, Misc. Works vol. v. p. 219. - M]
+
+[Footnote 10: After observing that the demerit of the
+Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he
+inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus.
+
+The sting is precisely the same with the French epigram
+against Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean Freron - Eh bien?  Le
+serpent en mourut.  But as the Paris wits are seldom read in the
+Anthology, I should be curious to learn, through what channel it
+was conveyed for their imitation, (Constantin. Porphyrogen. de
+Themat. c. ii. Brunck Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodaei
+Anthologia, l. ii. p. 244.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: The Legatio Liutprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad
+Nicephorum Phocam is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum
+Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i.]
+
+After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the
+swarms of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany over-spread the
+provinces and extinguished the empire of ancient Rome.  The
+weakness of Constantinople was concealed by extent of dominion:
+her limits were inviolate, or at least entire; and the kingdom of
+Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and
+Italy.  But the possession of these new conquests was transient
+and precarious; and almost a moiety of the Eastern empire was
+torn away by the arms of the Saracens.  Syria and Egypt were
+oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of
+Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province
+which had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain.  The
+islands of the Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval
+powers; and it was from their extreme stations, the harbors of
+Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel
+emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital.  The
+remaining provinces, under the obedience of the emperors, were
+cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of the presidents,
+the consulars, and the counts were superseded by the institution
+of the themes, ^12 or military governments, which prevailed under
+the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the
+royal author.  Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and
+seventeen in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful
+or capricious: the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but
+some particular names, that sound the most strangely to our ear,
+were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that
+were maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the
+respective divisions. The vanity of the Greek princes most
+eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and the memory of lost
+dominion.  A new Mesopotamia was created on the western side of
+the Euphrates: the appellation and praetor of Sicily were
+transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the
+duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the
+theme of Lombardy.  In the decline of the Arabian empire, the
+successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid
+advantages.  The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and
+Basil the Second, revived the fame, and enlarged the boundaries,
+of the Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the metropolis of
+Antioch, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the
+allegiance of Christ and Caesar: one third of Italy was annexed
+to the throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was
+destroyed; and the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty
+extended their sway from the sources of the Tigris to the
+neighborhood of Rome.  In the eleventh century, the prospect was
+again clouded by new enemies and new misfortunes: the relics of
+Italy were swept away by the Norman adventures; and almost all
+the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the Roman trunk by the
+Turkish conquerors.  After these losses, the emperors of the
+Comnenian family continued to reign from the Danube to
+Peloponnesus, and from Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the
+winding stream of the Meander.  The spacious provinces of Thrace,
+Macedonia, and Greece, were obedient to their sceptre; the
+possession of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete, was accompanied by the
+fifty islands of the Aegean or Holy Sea; ^13 and the remnant of
+their empire transcends the measure of the largest of the
+European kingdoms.
+
+[Footnote 12: See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i.
+p. 1 - 30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a
+legion, from whence the name was easily transferred to its post
+or province, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some
+etymologies are attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian,
+Thracesian, themes.]
+
+[Footnote 13: It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the
+corrupt names of Archipelago, l'Archipel, and the Arches, have
+been transformed by geographers and seamen, (D'Anville,
+Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 281. Analyse de la Carte de la
+Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks or caloyers in all the
+islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos, (Observations de
+Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the epithet of
+holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the
+Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of
+goats, to the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph.
+Antiq. tom. i. p. 829.)]
+
+The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that
+of all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest
+city, ^14 the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and
+populous state.  With the decline and fall of the empire, the
+cities of the West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins of
+Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts of
+Paris and London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the
+situation and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces and
+churches, and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people.  Her
+treasures might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled,
+and still promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the
+Persian and Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian.  The provinces
+were less fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few
+cities, could be discovered which had not been violated by some
+fierce Barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless
+to possess.  From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was
+sinking below its former level; the powers of destruction were
+more active than those of improvement; and the calamities of war
+were imbittered by the more permanent evils of civil and
+ecclesiastical tyranny.  The captive who had escaped from the
+Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of
+his sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer,
+and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents
+and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal
+service of mankind.  Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire
+were still the most dexterous and diligent of nations; their
+country was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil,
+climate, and situation; and, in the support and restoration of
+the arts, their patient and peaceful temper was more useful than
+the warlike spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe.  The provinces
+that still adhered to the empire were repeopled and enriched by
+the misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost.  From the
+yoke of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa
+retired to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of
+their brethren: the movable wealth, which eludes the search of
+oppression, accompanied and alleviated their exile, and
+Constantinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of
+Alexandria and Tyre.  The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled
+from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably
+entertained: their followers were encouraged to build new cities
+and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe and
+Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of
+these national colonies.  Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had
+seated themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were
+gradually reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as
+long as they were separated from the Greeks, their posterity
+supplied a race of faithful and obedient soldiers.  Did we
+possess sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of
+the Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a
+chosen example: it is fortunate enough that the clearest light
+should be thrown on the most interesting province, and the name
+of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic reader.
+
+[Footnote 14: According to the Jewish traveller who had visited
+Europe and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the
+great city of the Ismaelites, (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, par
+Baratier, tom. l. c. v. p. 46.)]
+
+As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the
+Iconoclasts, Greece, and even Peloponnesus, ^15 were overrun by
+some Sclavonian bands who outstripped the royal standard of
+Bulgaria.  The strangers of old, Cadmus, and Danaus, and Pelops,
+had planted in that fruitful soil the seeds of policy and
+learning; but the savages of the north eradicated what yet
+remained of their sickly and withered roots.  In this irruption,
+the country and the inhabitants were transformed; the Grecian
+blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus
+were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves.  By the
+diligence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure
+purified from the Barbarians; and the humble remnant was bound by
+an oath of obedience, tribute, and military service, which they
+often renewed and often violated. The siege of Patras was formed
+by a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and
+the Saracens of Africa.  In their last distress, a pious fiction
+of the approach of the praetor of Corinth revived the courage of
+the citizens.  Their sally was bold and successful; the strangers
+embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory of the day was
+ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the foremost
+ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle.  The shrine
+which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of
+victory, and the captive race was forever devoted to the service
+and vassalage of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt
+of two Sclavonian tribes, in the neighborhood of Helos and
+Lacedaemon, the peace of the peninsula was often disturbed.  They
+sometimes insulted the weakness, and sometimes resisted the
+oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at length the
+approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull to
+define the rites and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi,
+whose annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of
+gold.  From these strangers the Imperial geographer has
+accurately distinguished a domestic, and perhaps original, race,
+who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the
+much-injured Helots.  The liberality of the Romans, and
+especially of Augustus, had enfranchised the maritime cities from
+the dominion of Sparta; and the continuance of the same benefit
+ennobled them with the title of Eleuthero, or Free-Laconians. ^16
+In the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the
+name of Mainotes, under which they dishonor the claim of liberty
+by the inhuman pillage of all that is shipwrecked on their rocky
+shores. Their territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives,
+extended to the Cape of Malea: they accepted a chief or prince
+from the Byzantine praetor, and a light tribute of four hundred
+pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity, rather than of
+their dependence.  The freemen of Laconia assumed the character
+of Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks.  By
+the zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of
+Christ: but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by
+these rustic votaries five hundred years after they were
+proscribed in the Roman world.  In the theme of Peloponnesus, ^17
+forty cities were still numbered, and the declining state of
+Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be suspended in the tenth
+century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between their antique
+splendor and their present desolation.  The duty of military
+service, either in person or by substitute, was imposed on the
+lands or benefices of the province; a sum of five pieces of gold
+was assessed on each of the substantial tenants; and the same
+capitation was shared among several heads of inferior value.  On
+the proclamation of an Italian war, the Peloponnesians excused
+themselves by a voluntary oblation of one hundred pounds of gold,
+(four thousand pounds sterling,) and a thousand horses with their
+arms and trappings.  The churches and monasteries furnished their
+contingent; a sacrilegious profit was extorted from the sale of
+ecclesiastical honors; and the indigent bishop of Leucadia ^18
+was made responsible for a pension of one hundred pieces of gold.
+^19
+
+[Footnote 15: Says Constantine, (Thematibus, l. ii. c. vi. p.
+25,) in a style as barbarous as the idea, which he confirms, as
+usual, by a foolish epigram. The epitomizer of Strabo likewise
+observes, (l. vii. p. 98, edit. Hudson. edit. Casaub. 1251;) a
+passage which leads Dodwell a weary dance (Geograph, Minor. tom.
+ii. dissert. vi. p. 170 - 191) to enumerate the inroads of the
+Sclavi, and to fix the date (A.D. 980) of this petty geographer.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Strabon. Geograph. l. viii. p. 562.  Pausanius,
+Graec. Descriptio, l. c 21, p. 264, 265.  Pliny, Hist. Natur. l.
+iv. c. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Constantin. de Administrando Imperio, l. ii. c. 50,
+51, 52.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The rock of Leucate was the southern promontory of
+his island and diocese.  Had he been the exclusive guardian of
+the Lover's Leap so well known to the readers of Ovid (Epist.
+Sappho) and the Spectator, he might have been the richest prelate
+of the Greek church.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Leucatensis mihi juravit episcopus, quotannis
+ecclesiam suam debere Nicephoro aureos centum persolvere,
+similiter et ceteras plus minusve secundum vires suos, (Liutprand
+in Legat. p. 489.)]
+
+But the wealth of the province, and the trust of the
+revenue, were founded on the fair and plentiful produce of trade
+and manufacturers; and some symptoms of liberal policy may be
+traced in a law which exempts from all personal taxes the
+mariners of Peloponnesus, and the workmen in parchment and
+purple.  This denomination may be fairly applied or extended to
+the manufacturers of linen, woollen, and more especially of silk:
+the two former of which had flourished in Greece since the days
+of Homer; and the last was introduced perhaps as early as the
+reign of Justinian.  These arts, which were exercised at Corinth,
+Thebes, and Argos, afforded food and occupation to a numerous
+people: the men, women, and children were distributed according
+to their age and strength; and, if many of these were domestic
+slaves, their masters, who directed the work and enjoyed the
+profit, were of a free and honorable condition.  The gifts which
+a rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the
+emperor Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the
+Grecian looms.  Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a
+pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock's tail, of a
+magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the
+triple name of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the
+prophet Elijah.  She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen,
+of various use and denomination: the silk was painted with the
+Tyrian dye, and adorned by the labors of the needle; and the
+linen was so exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be
+rolled in the hollow of a cane. ^20 In his description of the
+Greek manufactures, an historian of Sicily discriminates their
+price, according to the weight and quality of the silk, the
+closeness of the texture, the beauty of the colors, and the taste
+and materials of the embroidery.  A single, or even a double or
+treble thread was thought sufficient for ordinary sale; but the
+union of six threads composed a piece of stronger and more costly
+workmanship.  Among the colors, he celebrates, with affectation
+of eloquence, the fiery blaze of the scarlet, and the softer
+lustre of the green.  The embroidery was raised either in silk or
+gold: the more simple ornament of stripes or circles was
+surpassed by the nicer imitation of flowers: the vestments that
+were fabricated for the palace or the altar often glittered with
+precious stones; and the figures were delineated in strings of
+Oriental pearls. ^21 Till the twelfth century, Greece alone, of
+all the countries of Christendom, was possessed of the insect who
+is taught by nature, and of the workmen who are instructed by
+art, to prepare this elegant luxury.  But the secret had been
+stolen by the dexterity and diligence of the Arabs: the caliphs
+of the East and West scorned to borrow from the unbelievers their
+furniture and apparel; and two cities of Spain, Almeria and
+Lisbon, were famous for the manufacture, the use, and, perhaps,
+the exportation, of silk.  It was first introduced into Sicily by
+the Normans; and this emigration of trade distinguishes the
+victory of Roger from the uniform and fruitless hostilities of
+every age.  After the sack of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, his
+lieutenant embarked with a captive train of weavers and
+artificers of both sexes, a trophy glorious to their master, and
+disgraceful to the Greek emperor. ^22 The king of Sicily was not
+insensible of the value of the present; and, in the restitution
+of the prisoners, he excepted only the male and female
+manufacturers of Thebes and Corinth, who labor, says the
+Byzantine historian, under a barbarous lord, like the old
+Eretrians in the service of Darius. ^23 A stately edifice, in the
+palace of Palermo, was erected for the use of this industrious
+colony; ^24 and the art was propagated by their children and
+disciples to satisfy the increasing demand of the western world.
+The decay of the looms of Sicily may be ascribed to the troubles
+of the island, and the competition of the Italian cities.  In the
+year thirteen hundred and fourteen, Lucca alone, among her sister
+republics, enjoyed the lucrative monopoly. ^25 A domestic
+revolution dispersed the manufacturers to Florence, Bologna,
+Venice, Milan, and even the countries beyond the Alps; and
+thirteen years after this event the statutes of Modena enjoin the
+planting of mulberry-trees, and regulate the duties on raw silk.
+^26 The northern climates are less propitious to the education of
+the silkworm; but the industry of France and England ^27 is
+supplied and enriched by the productions of Italy and China.
+
+[Footnote 20: See Constantine, (in Vit. Basil. c. 74, 75, 76, p.
+195, 197, in Script. post Theophanem,) who allows himself to use
+many technical or barbarous words: barbarous, says he.  Ducange
+labors on some: but he was not a weaver.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The manufactures of Palermo, as they are described
+by Hugo Falcandus, (Hist. Sicula in proem. in Muratori Script.
+Rerum Italicarum, tom. v. p. 256,) is a copy of those of Greece.
+Without transcribing his declamatory sentences, which I have
+softened in the text, I shall observe, that in this passage the
+strange word exarentasmata is very properly changed for
+exanthemata by Carisius, the first editor Falcandus lived about
+the year 1190.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Inde ad interiora Graeciae progressi, Corinthum,
+Thebas, Athenas, antiqua nobilitate celebres, expugnant; et,
+maxima ibidem praeda direpta, opifices etiam, qui sericos pannos
+texere solent, ob ignominiam Imperatoris illius, suique principis
+gloriam, captivos deducunt.  Quos Rogerius, in Palermo Siciliae,
+metropoli collocans, artem texendi suos edocere praecepit; et
+exhinc praedicta ars illa, prius a Graecis tantum inter
+Christianos habita, Romanis patere coepit ingeniis, (Otho
+Frisingen. de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in Muratori
+Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 668.) This exception allows the bishop
+to celebrate Lisbon and Almeria in sericorum pannorum opificio
+praenobilissimae, (in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom.
+ix. p. 415.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: Nicetas in Manuel, l. ii. c. 8. p. 65.  He
+describes these Greeks as skilled.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Hugo Falcandus styles them nobiles officinas.  The
+Arabs had not introduced silk, though they had planted canes and
+made sugar in the plain of Palermo.]
+
+[Footnote 25: See the Life of Castruccio Casticani, not by
+Machiavel, but by his more authentic biographer Nicholas Tegrimi.
+
+Muratori, who has inserted it in the xith volume of his
+Scriptores, quotes this curious passage in his Italian
+Antiquities, (tom. i. dissert. xxv. p. 378.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: From the Ms. statutes, as they are quoted by
+Muratori in his Italian Antiquities, (tom. ii. dissert. xxv. p.
+46 - 48.)]
+
+[Footnote 27: The broad silk manufacture was established in
+England in the year 1620, (Anderson's Chronological Deduction,
+vol. ii. p. 4: ) but it is to the revocation of the edict of
+Nantes that we owe the Spitalfields colony.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.
+
+Part II.
+
+I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty
+memorials of the times will not afford any just estimate of the
+taxes, the revenue, and the resources of the Greek empire.  From
+every province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of gold and silver
+discharged into the Imperial reservoir a copious and perennial
+stream.  The separation of the branches from the trunk increased
+the relative magnitude of Constantinople; and the maxims of
+despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital to the
+palace, and the palace to the royal person.  A Jewish traveller,
+who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his
+admiration of the Byzantine riches.  "It is here," says Benjamin
+of Tudela, "in the queen of cities, that the tributes of the
+Greek empire are annually deposited and the lofty towers are
+filled with precious magazines of silk, purple, and gold.  It is
+said, that Constantinople pays each day to her sovereign twenty
+thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the shops, taverns,
+and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of Russia and
+Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by sea and
+land." ^28 In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew is
+doubtless respectable; but as the three hundred and sixty-five
+days would produce a yearly income exceeding seven millions
+sterling, I am tempted to retrench at least the numerous
+festivals of the Greek calendar.  The mass of treasure that was
+saved by Theodora and Basil the Second will suggest a splendid,
+though indefinite, idea of their supplies and resources.  The
+mother of Michael, before she retired to a cloister, attempted to
+check or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful son, by a free
+and faithful account of the wealth which he inherited; one
+hundred and nine thousand pounds of gold, and three hundred
+thousand of silver, the fruits of her own economy and that of her
+deceased husband. ^29 The avarice of Basil is not less renowned
+than his valor and fortune: his victorious armies were paid and
+rewarded without breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand
+pounds of gold, (about eight millions sterling,) which he had
+buried in the subterraneous vaults of the palace. ^30 Such
+accumulation of treasure is rejected by the theory and practice
+of modern policy; and we are more apt to compute the national
+riches by the use and abuse of the public credit.  Yet the maxims
+of antiquity are still embraced by a monarch formidable to his
+enemies; by a republic respectable to her allies; and both have
+attained their respective ends of military power and domestic
+tranquillity.
+
+[Footnote 28: Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, tom. i. c. 5, p. 44 -
+52.  The Hebrew text has been translated into French by that
+marvellous child Baratier, who has added a volume of crude
+learning.  The errors and fictions of the Jewish rabbi are not a
+sufficient ground to deny the reality of his travels.
+
+Note: I am inclined, with Buegnot (Les Juifs d'Occident,
+part iii. p. 101 et seqq.) and Jost (Geschichte der Israeliter,
+vol. vi. anhang. p. 376) to consider this work a mere
+compilation, and to doubt the reality of the travels. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 29: See the continuator of Theophanes, (l. iv. p. 107,)
+Cedremis, (p. 544,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 157.)]
+
+[Footnote 30: Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 225,) instead of
+pounds, uses the more classic appellation of talents, which, in a
+literal sense and strict computation, would multiply sixty fold
+the treasure of Basil.]
+
+Whatever might be consumed for the present wants, or
+reserved for the future use, of the state, the first and most
+sacred demand was for the pomp and pleasure of the emperor, and
+his discretion only could define the measure of his private
+expense.  The princes of Constantinople were far removed from the
+simplicity of nature; yet, with the revolving seasons, they were
+led by taste or fashion to withdraw to a purer air, from the
+smoke and tumult of the capital.  They enjoyed, or affected to
+enjoy, the rustic festival of the vintage: their leisure was
+amused by the exercise of the chase and the calmer occupation of
+fishing, and in the summer heats, they were shaded from the sun,
+and refreshed by the cooling breezes from the sea.  The coasts
+and islands of Asia and Europe were covered with their
+magnificent villas; but, instead of the modest art which secretly
+strives to hide itself and to decorate the scenery of nature, the
+marble structure of their gardens served only to expose the
+riches of the lord, and the labors of the architect.  The
+successive casualties of inheritance and forfeiture had rendered
+the sovereign proprietor of many stately houses in the city and
+suburbs, of which twelve were appropriated to the ministers of
+state; but the great palace, ^31 the centre of the Imperial
+residence, was fixed during eleven centuries to the same
+position, between the hippodrome, the cathedral of St. Sophia,
+and the gardens, which descended by many a terrace to the shores
+of the Propontis. The primitive edifice of the first Constantine
+was a copy, or rival, of ancient Rome; the gradual improvements
+of his successors aspired to emulate the wonders of the old
+world, ^32 and in the tenth century, the Byzantine palace excited
+the admiration, at least of the Latins, by an unquestionable
+preeminence of strength, size, and magnificence. ^33 But the toil
+and treasure of so many ages had produced a vast and irregular
+pile: each separate building was marked with the character of the
+times and of the founder; and the want of space might excuse the
+reigning monarch, who demolished, perhaps with secret
+satisfaction, the works of his predecessors.  The economy of the
+emperor Theophilus allowed a more free and ample scope for his
+domestic luxury and splendor.  A favorite ambassador, who had
+astonished the Abbassides themselves by his pride and liberality,
+presented on his return the model of a palace, which the caliph
+of Bagdad had recently constructed on the banks of the Tigris.
+The model was instantly copied and surpassed: the new buildings
+of Theophilus ^34 were accompanied with gardens, and with five
+churches, one of which was conspicuous for size and beauty: it
+was crowned with three domes, the roof of gilt brass reposed on
+columns of Italian marble, and the walls were incrusted with
+marbles of various colors.  In the face of the church, a
+semicircular portico, of the figure and name of the Greek sigma,
+was supported by fifteen columns of Phrygian marble, and the
+subterraneous vaults were of a similar construction.  The square
+before the sigma was decorated with a fountain, and the margin of
+the basin was lined and encompassed with plates of silver.  In
+the beginning of each season, the basin, instead of water, was
+replenished with the most exquisite fruits, which were abandoned
+to the populace for the entertainment of the prince.  He enjoyed
+this tumultuous spectacle from a throne resplendent with gold and
+gems, which was raised by a marble staircase to the height of a
+lofty terrace.  Below the throne were seated the officers of his
+guards, the magistrates, the chiefs of the factions of the
+circus; the inferior steps were occupied by the people, and the
+place below was covered with troops of dancers, singers, and
+pantomimes.  The square was surrounded by the hall of justice,
+the arsenal, and the various offices of business and pleasure;
+and the purple chamber was named from the annual distribution of
+robes of scarlet and purple by the hand of the empress herself.
+The long series of the apartments was adapted to the seasons, and
+decorated with marble and porphyry, with painting, sculpture, and
+mosaics, with a profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones.
+His fanciful magnificence employed the skill and patience of such
+artists as the times could afford: but the taste of Athens would
+have despised their frivolous and costly labors; a golden tree,
+with its leaves and branches, which sheltered a multitude of
+birds warbling their artificial notes, and two lions of massy
+gold, and of natural size, who looked and roared like their
+brethren of the forest.  The successors of Theophilus, of the
+Basilian and Comnenian dynasties, were not less ambitious of
+leaving some memorial of their residence; and the portion of the
+palace most splendid and august was dignified with the title of
+the golden triclinium. ^35 With becoming modesty, the rich and
+noble Greeks aspired to imitate their sovereign, and when they
+passed through the streets on horseback, in their robes of silk
+and embroidery, they were mistaken by the children for kings. ^36
+A matron of Peloponnesus, ^37 who had cherished the infant
+fortunes of Basil the Macedonian, was excited by tenderness or
+vanity to visit the greatness of her adopted son.  In a journey
+of five hundred miles from Patras to Constantinople, her age or
+indolence declined the fatigue of a horse or carriage: the soft
+litter or bed of Danielis was transported on the shoulders of ten
+robust slaves; and as they were relieved at easy distances, a
+band of three hundred were selected for the performance of this
+service.  She was entertained in the Byzantine palace with filial
+reverence, and the honors of a queen; and whatever might be the
+origin of her wealth, her gifts were not unworthy of the regal
+dignity.  I have already described the fine and curious
+manufactures of Peloponnesus, of linen, silk, and woollen; but
+the most acceptable of her presents consisted in three hundred
+beautiful youths, of whom one hundred were eunuchs; ^38 "for she
+was not ignorant," says the historian, "that the air of the
+palace is more congenial to such insects, than a shepherd's dairy
+to the flies of the summer." During her lifetime, she bestowed
+the greater part of her estates in Peloponnesus, and her
+testament instituted Leo, the son of Basil, her universal heir.
+After the payment of the legacies, fourscore villas or farms were
+added to the Imperial domain; and three thousand slaves of
+Danielis were enfranchised by their new lord, and transplanted as
+a colony to the Italian coast.  From this example of a private
+matron, we may estimate the wealth and magnificence of the
+emperors.  Yet our enjoyments are confined by a narrow circle;
+and, whatsoever may be its value, the luxury of life is possessed
+with more innocence and safety by the master of his own, than by
+the steward of the public, fortune.
+
+[Footnote 31: For a copious and minute description of the
+Imperial palace, see the Constantinop. Christiana (l. ii. c. 4,
+p. 113 - 123) of Ducange, the Tillemont of the middle ages.
+Never has laborious Germany produced two antiquarians more
+laborious and accurate than these two natives of lively France.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The Byzantine palace surpasses the Capitol, the
+palace of Pergamus, the Rufinian wood, the temple of Adrian at
+Cyzicus, the pyramids, the Pharus, &c., according to an epigram
+(Antholog. Graec. l. iv. p. 488, 489. Brodaei, apud Wechel)
+ascribed to Julian, ex-praefect of Egypt. Seventy-one of his
+epigrams, some lively, are collected in Brunck, (Analect. Graec.
+tom. ii. p. 493 - 510; but this is wanting.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Constantinopolitanum Palatium non pulchritudine
+solum, verum stiam fortitudine, omnibus quas unquam videram
+munitionibus praestat, (Liutprand, Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 465.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: See the anonymous continuator of Theophanes, (p.
+59, 61, 86,) whom I have followed in the neat and concise
+abstract of Le Beau, (Hint. du Bas Empire, tom. xiv. p. 436,
+438.)]
+
+[Footnote 35: In aureo triclinio quae praestantior est pars
+potentissimus (the usurper Romanus) degens caeteras partes
+(filiis) distribuerat, (Liutprand. Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 469.) For
+this last signification of Triclinium see Ducange (Gloss. Graec.
+et Observations sur Joinville, p. 240) and Reiske, (ad
+Constantinum de Ceremoniis, p. 7.)]
+
+[Footnote 36: In equis vecti (says Benjamin of Tudela) regum
+filiis videntur persimiles.  I prefer the Latin version of
+Constantine l'Empereur (p. 46) to the French of Baratier, (tom.
+i. p. 49.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: See the account of her journey, munificence, and
+testament, in the life of Basil, by his grandson Constantine, (p.
+74, 75, 76, p. 195 - 197.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: Carsamatium. Graeci vocant, amputatis virilibus et
+virga, puerum eunuchum quos Verdunenses mercatores obinmensum
+lucrum facere solent et in Hispaniam ducere, (Liutprand, l. vi.
+c. 3, p. 470.) - The last abomination of the abominable
+slave-trade!  Yet I am surprised to find, in the xth century,
+such active speculations of commerce in Lorraine.]
+
+In an absolute government, which levels the distinctions of
+noble and plebeian birth, the sovereign is the sole fountain of
+honor; and the rank, both in the palace and the empire, depends
+on the titles and offices which are bestowed and resumed by his
+arbitrary will.  Above a thousand years, from Vespasian to
+Alexius Comnenus, ^39 the Caesar was the second person, or at
+least the second degree, after the supreme title of Augustus was
+more freely communicated to the sons and brothers of the reigning
+monarch.  To elude without violating his promise to a powerful
+associate, the husband of his sister, and, without giving himself
+an equal, to reward the piety of his brother Isaac, the crafty
+Alexius interposed a new and supereminent dignity. The happy
+flexibility of the Greek tongue allowed him to compound the names
+of Augustus and Emperor (Sebastos and Autocrator,) and the union
+produces the sonorous title of Sebastocrator.  He was exalted
+above the Caesar on the first step of the throne: the public
+acclamations repeated his name; and he was only distinguished
+from the sovereign by some peculiar ornaments of the head and
+feet.  The emperor alone could assume the purple or red buskins,
+and the close diadem or tiara, which imitated the fashion of the
+Persian kings. ^40 It was a high pyramidal cap of cloth or silk,
+almost concealed by a profusion of pearls and jewels: the crown
+was formed by a horizontal circle and two arches of gold: at the
+summit, the point of their intersection, was placed a globe or
+cross, and two strings or lappets of pearl depended on either
+cheek.  Instead of red, the buskins of the Sebastocrator and
+Caesar were green; and on their open coronets or crowns, the
+precious gems were more sparingly distributed. Beside and below
+the Caesar the fancy of Alexius created the Panhypersebastos and
+the Protosebastos, whose sound and signification will satisfy a
+Grecian ear. They imply a superiority and a priority above the
+simple name of Augustus; and this sacred and primitive title of
+the Roman prince was degraded to the kinsmen and servants of the
+Byzantine court.  The daughter of Alexius applauds, with fond
+complacency, this artful gradation of hopes and honors; but the
+science of words is accessible to the meanest capacity; and this
+vain dictionary was easily enriched by the pride of his
+successors.  To their favorite sons or brothers, they imparted
+the more lofty appellation of Lord or Despot, which was
+illustrated with new ornaments, and prerogatives, and placed
+immediately after the person of the emperor himself.  The five
+titles of, 1. Despot; 2. Sebastocrator; 3. Caesar; 4.
+Panhypersebastos; and, 5. Protosebastos; were usually confined to
+the princes of his blood: they were the emanations of his
+majesty; but as they exercised no regular functions, their
+existence was useless, and their authority precarious.
+
+[Footnote 39: See the Alexiad (l. iii. p. 78, 79) of Anna
+Comnena, who, except in filial piety, may be compared to
+Mademoiselle de Montpensier.  In her awful reverence for titles
+and forms, she styles her father, the inventor of this royal
+art.]
+
+[Footnote 40: See Reiske, and Ceremoniale, p. 14, 15.  Ducange
+has given a learned dissertation on the crowns of Constantinople,
+Rome, France, &c., (sur Joinville, xxv. p. 289 - 303;) but of his
+thirty-four models, none exactly tally with Anne's description.]
+
+But in every monarchy the substantial powers of government
+must be divided and exercised by the ministers of the palace and
+treasury, the fleet and army.  The titles alone can differ; and
+in the revolution of ages, the counts and praefects, the praetor
+and quaestor, insensibly descended, while their servants rose
+above their heads to the first honors of the state.  1. In a
+monarchy, which refers every object to the person of the prince,
+the care and ceremonies of the palace form the most respectable
+department.  The Curopalata, ^41 so illustrious in the age of
+Justinian, was supplanted by the Protovestiare, whose primitive
+functions were limited to the custody of the wardrobe.  From
+thence his jurisdiction was extended over the numerous menials of
+pomp and luxury; and he presided with his silver wand at the
+public and private audience.  2. In the ancient system of
+Constantine, the name of Logothete, or accountant, was applied to
+the receivers of the finances: the principal officers were
+distinguished as the Logothetes of the domain, of the posts, the
+army, the private and public treasure; and the great Logothete,
+the supreme guardian of the laws and revenues, is compared with
+the chancellor of the Latin monarchies. ^42 His discerning eye
+pervaded the civil administration; and he was assisted, in due
+subordination, by the eparch or praefect of the city, the first
+secretary, and the keepers of the privy seal, the archives, and
+the red or purple ink which was reserved for the sacred signature
+of the emperor alone. ^43 The introductor and interpreter of
+foreign ambassadors were the great Chiauss ^44 and the Dragoman,
+^45 two names of Turkish origin, and which are still familiar to
+the Sublime Porte.  3. From the humble style and service of
+guards, the Domestics insensibly rose to the station of generals;
+the military themes of the East and West, the legions of Europe
+and Asia, were often divided, till the great Domestic was finally
+invested with the universal and absolute command of the land
+forces.  The Protostrator, in his original functions, was the
+assistant of the emperor when he mounted on horseback: he
+gradually became the lieutenant of the great Domestic in the
+field; and his jurisdiction extended over the stables, the
+cavalry, and the royal train of hunting and hawking.  The
+Stratopedarch was the great judge of the camp: the Protospathaire
+commanded the guards; the Constable, ^46 the great Aeteriarch,
+and the Acolyth, were the separate chiefs of the Franks, the
+Barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the mercenary strangers,
+who, a the decay of the national spirit, formed the nerve of the
+Byzantine armies.  4. The naval powers were under the command of
+the great Duke; in his absence they obeyed the great Drungaire of
+the fleet; and, in his place, the Emir, or Admiral, a name of
+Saracen extraction, ^47 but which has been naturalized in all the
+modern languages of Europe.  Of these officers, and of many more
+whom it would be useless to enumerate, the civil and military
+hierarchy was framed.  Their honors and emoluments, their dress
+and titles, their mutual salutations and respective preeminence,
+were balanced with more exquisite labor than would have fixed the
+constitution of a free people; and the code was almost perfect
+when this baseless fabric, the monument of pride and servitude,
+was forever buried in the ruins of the empire. ^48
+
+[Footnote 41:  Par exstans curis, solo diademate dispar,
+          Ordine pro rerum vocitatus Cura-Palati,
+
+says the African Corippus, (de Laudibus Justini, l. i. 136,) and
+in the same century (the vith) Cassiodorus represents him, who,
+virga aurea decoratus, inter numerosa obsequia primus ante pedes
+regis incederet (Variar. vii. 5.) But this great officer,
+(unknown,) exercising no function, was cast down by the modern
+Greeks to the xvth rank, (Codin. c. 5, p. 65.)]
+
+[Footnote 42: Nicetas (in Manuel, l. vii. c. 1) defines him.  Yet
+the epithet was added by the elder Andronicus, (Ducange, tom. i.
+p. 822, 823.)]
+
+[Footnote 43: From Leo I. (A.D. 470) the Imperial ink, which is
+still visible on some original acts, was a mixture of vermilion
+and cinnabar, or purple. The emperor's guardians, who shared in
+this prerogative, always marked in green ink the indiction and
+the month.  See the Dictionnaire Diplomatique, (tom. i. p. 511 -
+513) a valuable abridgment.]
+
+[Footnote 44: The sultan sent to Alexius, (Anna Comnena, l. vi.
+p. 170. Ducange ad loc.;) and Pachymer often speaks, (l. vii. c.
+1, l. xii. c. 30, l. xiii. c. 22.) The Chiaoush basha is now at
+the head of 700 officers, (Rycaut's Ottoman Empire, p. 349,
+octavo edition.)]
+
+[Footnote 45: Tagerman is the Arabic name of an interpreter,
+(D'Herbelot, p. 854, 855;), says Codinus, (c. v. No. 70, p. 67.)
+See Villehardouin, (No. 96,) Bus, (Epist. iv. p. 338,) and
+Ducange, (Observations sur Villehardouin, and Gloss. Graec. et
+Latin)]
+
+[Footnote 46: A corruption from the Latin Comes stabuli, or the
+French Connetable.  In a military sense, it was used by the
+Greeks in the eleventh century, at least as early as in France.]
+
+[Footnote 47: It was directly borrowed from the Normans.  In the
+xiith century, Giannone reckons the admiral of Sicily among the
+great officers.]
+
+[Footnote 48: This sketch of honors and offices is drawn from
+George Cordinus Curopalata, who survived the taking of
+Constantinople by the Turks: his elaborate, though trifling, work
+(de Officiis Ecclesiae et Aulae C. P.) has been illustrated by
+the notes of Goar, and the three books of Gretser, a learned
+Jesuit.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.
+
+Part III.
+
+The most lofty titles, and the most humble postures, which
+devotion has applied to the Supreme Being, have been prostituted
+by flattery and fear to creatures of the same nature with
+ourselves.  The mode of adoration, ^49 of falling prostrate on
+the ground, and kissing the feet of the emperor, was borrowed by
+Diocletian from Persian servitude; but it was continued and
+aggravated till the last age of the Greek monarchy. Excepting
+only on Sundays, when it was waived, from a motive of religious
+pride, this humiliating reverence was exacted from all who
+entered the royal presence, from the princes invested with the
+diadem and purple, and from the ambassadors who represented their
+independent sovereigns, the caliphs of Asia, Egypt, or Spain, the
+kings of France and Italy, and the Latin emperors of ancient
+Rome. In his transactions of business, Liutprand, bishop of
+Cremona, ^50 asserted the free spirit of a Frank and the dignity
+of his master Otho.  Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the
+abasement of his first audience.  When he approached the throne,
+the birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which
+were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold.  With
+his two companions Liutprand was compelled to bow and to fall
+prostrate; and thrice to touch the ground with his forehead.  He
+arose, but in the short interval, the throne had been hoisted
+from the floor to the ceiling, the Imperial figure appeared in
+new and more gorgeous apparel, and the interview was concluded in
+haughty and majestic silence.  In this honest and curious
+narrative, the Bishop of Cremona represents the ceremonies of the
+Byzantine court, which are still practised in the Sublime Porte,
+and which were preserved in the last age by the dukes of Muscovy
+or Russia.  After a long journey by sea and land, from Venice to
+Constantinople, the ambassador halted at the golden gate, till he
+was conducted by the formal officers to the hospitable palace
+prepared for his reception; but this palace was a prison, and his
+jealous keepers prohibited all social intercourse either with
+strangers or natives.  At his first audience, he offered the
+gifts of his master, slaves, and golden vases, and costly armor.
+The ostentatious payment of the officers and troops displayed
+before his eyes the riches of the empire: he was entertained at a
+royal banquet, ^51 in which the ambassadors of the nations were
+marshalled by the esteem or contempt of the Greeks: from his own
+table, the emperor, as the most signal favor, sent the plates
+which he had tasted; and his favorites were dismissed with a robe
+of honor. ^52 In the morning and evening of each day, his civil
+and military servants attended their duty in the palace; their
+labors were repaid by the sight, perhaps by the smile, of their
+lord; his commands were signified by a nod or a sign: but all
+earthly greatness stood silent and submissive in his presence.
+In his regular or extraordinary processions through the capital,
+he unveiled his person to the public view: the rites of policy
+were connected with those of religion, and his visits to the
+principal churches were regulated by the festivals of the Greek
+calendar.  On the eve of these processions, the gracious or
+devout intention of the monarch was proclaimed by the heralds.
+The streets were cleared and purified; the pavement was strewed
+with flowers; the most precious furniture, the gold and silver
+plate, and silken hangings, were displayed from the windows and
+balconies, and a severe discipline restrained and silenced the
+tumult of the populace.  The march was opened by the military
+officers at the head of their troops: they were followed in long
+order by the magistrates and ministers of the civil government:
+the person of the emperor was guarded by his eunuchs and
+domestics, and at the church door he was solemnly received by the
+patriarch and his clergy.  The task of applause was not abandoned
+to the rude and spontaneous voices of the crowd. The most
+convenient stations were occupied by the bands of the blue and
+green factions of the circus; and their furious conflicts, which
+had shaken the capital, were insensibly sunk to an emulation of
+servitude.  From either side they echoed in responsive melody the
+praises of the emperor; their poets and musicians directed the
+choir, and long life ^53 and victory were the burden of every
+song.  The same acclamations were performed at the audience, the
+banquet, and the church; and as an evidence of boundless sway,
+they were repeated in the Latin, ^54 Gothic, Persian, French, and
+even English language, ^55 by the mercenaries who sustained the
+real or fictitious character of those nations.  By the pen of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus, this science of form and flattery
+has been reduced into a pompous and trifling volume, ^56 which
+the vanity of succeeding times might enrich with an ample
+supplement.  Yet the calmer reflection of a prince would surely
+suggest that the same acclamations were applied to every
+character and every reign: and if he had risen from a private
+rank, he might remember, that his own voice had been the loudest
+and most eager in applause, at the very moment when he envied the
+fortune, or conspired against the life, of his predecessor. ^57
+
+[Footnote 49: The respectful salutation of carrying the hand to
+the mouth, ad os, is the root of the Latin word adoro, adorare.
+See our learned Selden, (vol. iii. p. 143 - 145, 942,) in his
+Titles of Honor.  It seems, from the 1st book of Herodotus, to be
+of Persian origin.]
+
+[Footnote 50: The two embassies of Liutprand to Constantinople,
+all that he saw or suffered in the Greek capital, are pleasantly
+described by himself (Hist. l. vi. c. 1 - 4, p. 469 - 471.
+Legatio ad Nicephorum Phocam, p. 479 - 489.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: Among the amusements of the feast, a boy balanced,
+on his forehead, a pike, or pole, twenty-four feet long, with a
+cross bar of two cubits a little below the top.  Two boys, naked,
+though cinctured, (campestrati,) together, and singly, climbed,
+stood, played, descended, &c., ita me stupidum reddidit: utrum
+mirabilius nescio, (p. 470.) At another repast a homily of
+Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles was read elata voce non
+Latine, (p. 483.)]
+
+[Footnote 52: Gala is not improbably derived from Cala, or
+Caloat, in Arabic a robe of honor, (Reiske, Not. in Ceremon. p.
+84.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: It is explained, (Codin, c. 7. Ducange, Gloss.
+Graec. tom. i. p. 1199.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: (Ceremon. c. 75, p. 215.) The want of the Latin 'V'
+obliged the Greeks to employ their 'beta'; nor do they regard
+quantity. Till he recollected the true language, these strange
+sentences might puzzle a professor.]
+
+[Footnote 55: (Codin.p. 90.) I wish he had preserved the words,
+however corrupt, of their English acclamation.]
+
+[Footnote 56: For all these ceremonies, see the professed work of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus with the notes, or rather
+dissertations, of his German editors, Leich and Reiske.  For the
+rank of standing courtiers, p. 80, not. 23, 62; for the
+adoration, except on Sundays, p. 95, 240, not. 131; the
+processions, p. 2, &c., not. p. 3, &c.; the acclamations passim
+not. 25 &c.; the factions and Hippodrome, p. 177 - 214, not. 9,
+93, &c.; the Gothic games, p. 221, not. 111; vintage, p. 217, not
+109: much more information is scattered over the work.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Et privato Othoni et nuper eadem dicenti nota
+adulatio, (Tacit. Hist. 1,85.)]
+
+The princes of the North, of the nations, says Constantine,
+without faith or fame, were ambitious of mingling their blood
+with the blood of the Caesars, by their marriage with a royal
+virgin, or by the nuptials of their daughters with a Roman
+prince. ^58 The aged monarch, in his instructions to his son,
+reveals the secret maxims of policy and pride; and suggests the
+most decent reasons for refusing these insolent and unreasonable
+demands. Every animal, says the discreet emperor, is prompted by
+the distinction of language, religion, and manners.  A just
+regard to the purity of descent preserves the harmony of public
+and private life; but the mixture of foreign blood is the
+fruitful source of disorder and discord.  Such had ever been the
+opinion and practice of the sage Romans: their jurisprudence
+proscribed the marriage of a citizen and a stranger: in the days
+of freedom and virtue, a senator would have scorned to match his
+daughter with a king: the glory of Mark Antony was sullied by an
+Egyptian wife: ^59 and the emperor Titus was compelled, by
+popular censure, to dismiss with reluctance the reluctant
+Berenice. ^60 This perpetual interdict was ratified by the
+fabulous sanction of the great Constantine.  The ambassadors of
+the nations, more especially of the unbelieving nations, were
+solemnly admonished, that such strange alliances had been
+condemned by the founder of the church and city.  The irrevocable
+law was inscribed on the altar of St. Sophia; and the impious
+prince who should stain the majesty of the purple was excluded
+from the civil and ecclesiastical communion of the Romans.  If
+the ambassadors were instructed by any false brethren in the
+Byzantine history, they might produce three memorable examples of
+the violation of this imaginary law: the marriage of Leo, or
+rather of his father Constantine the Fourth, with the daughter of
+the king of the Chozars, the nuptials of the granddaughter of
+Romanus with a Bulgarian prince, and the union of Bertha of
+France or Italy with young Romanus, the son of Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus himself.  To these objections three answers were
+prepared, which solved the difficulty and established the law. I.
+
+The deed and the guilt of Constantine Copronymus were
+acknowledged. The Isaurian heretic, who sullied the baptismal
+font, and declared war against the holy images, had indeed
+embraced a Barbarian wife.  By this impious alliance he
+accomplished the measure of his crimes, and was devoted to the
+just censure of the church and of posterity.  II.  Romanus could
+not be alleged as a legitimate emperor; he was a plebeian
+usurper, ignorant of the laws, and regardless of the honor, of
+the monarchy.  His son Christopher, the father of the bride, was
+the third in rank in the college of princes, at once the subject
+and the accomplice of a rebellious parent. The Bulgarians were
+sincere and devout Christians; and the safety of the empire, with
+the redemption of many thousand captives, depended on this
+preposterous alliance.  Yet no consideration could dispense from
+the law of Constantine: the clergy, the senate, and the people,
+disapproved the conduct of Romanus; and he was reproached, both
+in his life and death, as the author of the public disgrace.
+III.  For the marriage of his own son with the daughter of Hugo,
+king of Italy, a more honorable defence is contrived by the wise
+Porphyrogenitus.  Constantine, the great and holy, esteemed the
+fidelity and valor of the Franks; ^61 and his prophetic spirit
+beheld the vision of their future greatness.  They alone were
+excepted from the general prohibition: Hugo, king of France, was
+the lineal descendant of Charlemagne; ^62 and his daughter Bertha
+inherited the prerogatives of her family and nation.  The voice
+of truth and malice insensibly betrayed the fraud or error of the
+Imperial court.  The patrimonial estate of Hugo was reduced from
+the monarchy of France to the simple county of Arles; though it
+was not denied, that, in the confusion of the times, he had
+usurped the sovereignty of Provence, and invaded the kingdom of
+Italy.  His father was a private noble; and if Bertha derived her
+female descent from the Carlovingian line, every step was
+polluted with illegitimacy or vice.  The grandmother of Hugo was
+the famous Valdrada, the concubine, rather than the wife, of the
+second Lothair; whose adultery, divorce, and second nuptials, had
+provoked against him the thunders of the Vatican.  His mother, as
+she was styled, the great Bertha, was successively the wife of
+the count of Arles and of the marquis of Tuscany: France and
+Italy were scandalized by her gallantries; and, till the age of
+threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous
+servants of her ambition.  The example of maternal incontinence
+was copied by the king of Italy; and the three favorite
+concubines of Hugo were decorated with the classic names of
+Venus, Juno, and Semele. ^63 The daughter of Venus was granted to
+the solicitations of the Byzantine court: her name of Bertha was
+changed to that of Eudoxia; and she was wedded, or rather
+betrothed, to young Romanus, the future heir of the empire of the
+East.  The consummation of this foreign alliance was suspended by
+the tender age of the two parties; and, at the end of five years,
+the union was dissolved by the death of the virgin spouse.  The
+second wife of the emperor Romanus was a maiden of plebeian, but
+of Roman, birth; and their two daughters, Theophano and Anne,
+were given in marriage to the princes of the earth.  The eldest
+was bestowed, as the pledge of peace, on the eldest son of the
+great Otho, who had solicited this alliance with arms and
+embassies.  It might legally be questioned how far a Saxon was
+entitled to the privilege of the French nation; but every scruple
+was silenced by the fame and piety of a hero who had restored the
+empire of the West. After the death of her father-in-law and
+husband, Theophano governed Rome, Italy, and Germany, during the
+minority of her son, the third Otho; and the Latins have praised
+the virtues of an empress, who sacrificed to a superior duty the
+remembrance of her country. ^64 In the nuptials of her sister
+Anne, every prejudice was lost, and every consideration of
+dignity was superseded, by the stronger argument of necessity and
+fear.  A Pagan of the North, Wolodomir, great prince of Russia,
+aspired to a daughter of the Roman purple; and his claim was
+enforced by the threats of war, the promise of conversion, and
+the offer of a powerful succor against a domestic rebel. A victim
+of her religion and country, the Grecian princess was torn from
+the palace of her fathers, and condemned to a savage reign, and a
+hopeless exile on the banks of the Borysthenes, or in the
+neighborhood of the Polar circle. ^65 Yet the marriage of Anne
+was fortunate and fruitful: the daughter of her grandson
+Joroslaus was recommended by her Imperial descent; and the king
+of France, Henry I., sought a wife on the last borders of Europe
+and Christendom. ^66
+
+[Footnote 58: The xiiith chapter, de Administratione Imperii, may
+be explained and rectified by the Familiae Byzantinae of
+Ducange.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Sequiturque nefas Aegyptia conjux, (Virgil, Aeneid,
+viii. 688.) Yet this Egyptian wife was the daughter of a long
+line of kings. Quid te mutavit (says Antony in a private letter
+to Augustus) an quod reginam ineo? Uxor mea est, (Sueton. in
+August. c. 69.) Yet I much question (for I cannot stay to
+inquire) whether the triumvir ever dared to celebrate his
+marriage either with Roman or Egyptian rites.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Berenicem invitus invitam dimisit, (Suetonius in
+Tito, c. 7.) Have I observed elsewhere, that this Jewish beauty
+was at this time above fifty years of age?  The judicious Racine
+has most discreetly suppressed both her age and her country.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Constantine was made to praise the the Franks, with
+whom he claimed a private and public alliance.  The French
+writers (Isaac Casaubon in Dedicat. Polybii) are highly delighted
+with these compliments.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Administrat. Imp.
+c. 36) exhibits a pedigree and life of the illustrious King Hugo.
+A more correct idea may be formed from the Criticism of Pagi, the
+Annals of Muratori, and the Abridgment of St. Marc, A.D. 925 -
+946.]
+
+[Footnote 63: After the mention of the three goddesses, Luitprand
+very naturally adds, et quoniam non rex solus iis abutebatur,
+earum nati ex incertis patribus originera ducunt, (Hist. l. iv.
+c. 6: ) for the marriage of the younger Bertha, see Hist. l. v.
+c. 5; for the incontinence of the elder, dulcis exercipio
+Hymenaei, l. ii. c. 15; for the virtues and vices of Hugo, l.
+iii. c. 5.  Yet it must not be forgot, that the bishop of Cremona
+was a lover of scandal.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Licet illa Imperatrix Graeca sibi et aliis fuisset
+satis utilis, et optima, &c., is the preamble of an inimical
+writer, apud Pagi, tom. iv. A.D. 989, No. 3.  Her marriage and
+principal actions may be found in Muratori, Pagi, and St. Marc,
+under the proper years.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 699.  Zonaras, tom. i. p.
+221. Elmacin, Hist. Saracenica, l. iii. c. 6.  Nestor apud
+Levesque, tom. ii. p. 112 Pagi, Critica, A.D. 987, No. 6: a
+singular concourse!  Wolodomir and Anne are ranked among the
+saints of the Russian church.  Yet we know his vices, and are
+ignorant of her virtues.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Henricus primus duxit uxorem Scythicam, Russam,
+filiam regis Jeroslai.  An embassy of bishops was sent into
+Russia, and the father gratanter filiam cum multis donis misit.
+This event happened in the year 1051.  See the passages of the
+original chronicles in Bouquet's Historians of France, (tom. xi.
+p. 29, 159, 161, 319, 384, 481.) Voltaire might wonder at this
+alliance; but he should not have owned his ignorance of the
+country, religion, &c., of Jeroslaus - a name so conspicuous in
+the Russian annals.]
+
+In the Byzantine palace, the emperor was the first slave of
+the ceremonies which he imposed, of the rigid forms which
+regulated each word and gesture, besieged him in the palace, and
+violated the leisure of his rural solitude.  But the lives and
+fortunes of millions hung on his arbitrary will; and the firmest
+minds, superior to the allurements of pomp and luxury, may be
+seduced by the more active pleasure of commanding their equals.
+The legislative and executive powers were centred in the person
+of the monarch, and the last remains of the authority of the
+senate were finally eradicated by Leo the philosopher. ^67 A
+lethargy of servitude had benumbed the minds of the Greeks: in
+the wildest tumults of rebellion they never aspired to the idea
+of a free constitution; and the private character of the prince
+was the only source and measure of their public happiness.
+Superstition rivetted their chains; in the church of St. Sophia
+he was solemnly crowned by the patriarch; at the foot of the
+altar, they pledged their passive and unconditional obedience to
+his government and family.  On his side he engaged to abstain as
+much as possible from the capital punishments of death and
+mutilation; his orthodox creed was subscribed with his own hand,
+and he promised to obey the decrees of the seven synods, and the
+canons of the holy church. ^68 But the assurance of mercy was
+loose and indefinite: he swore, not to his people, but to an
+invisible judge; and except in the inexpiable guilt of heresy,
+the ministers of heaven were always prepared to preach the
+indefeasible right, and to absolve the venial transgressions, of
+their sovereign.  The Greek ecclesiastics were themselves the
+subjects of the civil magistrate: at the nod of a tyrant, the
+bishops were created, or transferred, or deposed, or punished
+with an ignominious death: whatever might be their wealth or
+influence, they could never succeed like the Latin clergy in the
+establishment of an independent republic; and the patriarch of
+Constantinople condemned, what he secretly envied, the temporal
+greatness of his Roman brother.  Yet the exercise of boundless
+despotism is happily checked by the laws of nature and necessity.
+In proportion to his wisdom and virtue, the master of an empire
+is confined to the path of his sacred and laborious duty.  In
+proportion to his vice and folly, he drops the sceptre too
+weighty for his hands; and the motions of the royal image are
+ruled by the imperceptible thread of some minister or favorite,
+who undertakes for his private interest to exercise the task of
+the public oppression.  In some fatal moment, the most absolute
+monarch may dread the reason or the caprice of a nation of
+slaves; and experience has proved, that whatever is gained in the
+extent, is lost in the safety and solidity, of regal power.
+
+[Footnote 67: A constitution of Leo the Philosopher (lxxviii.) ne
+senatus consulta amplius fiant, speaks the language of naked
+despotism.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Codinus (de Officiis, c. xvii. p. 120, 121) gives
+an idea of this oath so strong to the church, so weak to the
+people.]
+
+Whatever titles a despot may assume, whatever claims he may
+assert, it is on the sword that he must ultimately depend to
+guard him against his foreign and domestic enemies.  From the age
+of Charlemagne to that of the Crusades, the world (for I overlook
+the remote monarchy of China) was occupied and disputed by the
+three great empires or nations of the Greeks, the Saracens, and
+the Franks.  Their military strength may be ascertained by a
+comparison of their courage, their arts and riches, and their
+obedience to a supreme head, who might call into action all the
+energies of the state.  The Greeks, far inferior to their rivals
+in the first, were superior to the Franks, and at least equal to
+the Saracens, in the second and third of these warlike
+qualifications.
+
+The wealth of the Greeks enabled them to purchase the
+service of the poorer nations, and to maintain a naval power for
+the protection of their coasts and the annoyance of their
+enemies. ^69 A commerce of mutual benefit exchanged the gold of
+Constantinople for the blood of Sclavonians and Turks, the
+Bulgarians and Russians: their valor contributed to the victories
+of Nicephorus and Zimisces; and if a hostile people pressed too
+closely on the frontier, they were recalled to the defence of
+their country, and the desire of peace, by the well-managed
+attack of a more distant tribe. ^70 The command of the
+Mediterranean, from the mouth of the Tanais to the columns of
+Hercules, was always claimed, and often possessed, by the
+successors of Constantine. Their capital was filled with naval
+stores and dexterous artificers: the situation of Greece and
+Asia, the long coasts, deep gulfs, and numerous islands,
+accustomed their subjects to the exercise of navigation; and the
+trade of Venice and Amalfi supplied a nursery of seamen to the
+Imperial fleet. ^71 Since the time of the Peloponnesian and Punic
+wars, the sphere of action had not been enlarged; and the science
+of naval architecture appears to have declined.  The art of
+constructing those stupendous machines which displayed three, or
+six, or ten, ranges of oars, rising above, or falling behind,
+each other, was unknown to the ship-builders of Constantinople,
+as well as to the mechanicians of modern days. ^72 The Dromones,
+^73 or light galleys of the Byzantine empire, were content with
+two tier of oars; each tier was composed of five-and-twenty
+benches; and two rowers were seated on each bench, who plied
+their oars on either side of the vessel.  To these we must add
+the captain or centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect
+with his armor-bearer on the poop, two steersmen at the helm, and
+two officers at the prow, the one to manage the anchor, the other
+to point and play against the enemy the tube of liquid fire.  The
+whole crew, as in the infancy of the art, performed the double
+service of mariners and soldiers; they were provided with
+defensive and offensive arms, with bows and arrows, which they
+used from the upper deck, with long pikes, which they pushed
+through the portholes of the lower tier.  Sometimes, indeed, the
+ships of war were of a larger and more solid construction; and
+the labors of combat and navigation were more regularly divided
+between seventy soldiers and two hundred and thirty mariners.
+But for the most part they were of the light and manageable size;
+and as the Cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed with
+its ancient terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles
+over land across the Isthmus of Corinth. ^74 The principles of
+maritime tactics had not undergone any change since the time of
+Thucydides: a squadron of galleys still advanced in a crescent,
+charged to the front, and strove to impel their sharp beaks
+against the feeble sides of their antagonists.  A machine for
+casting stones and darts was built of strong timbers, in the
+midst of the deck; and the operation of boarding was effected by
+a crane that hoisted baskets of armed men.  The language of
+signals, so clear and copious in the naval grammar of the
+moderns, was imperfectly expressed by the various positions and
+colors of a commanding flag.  In the darkness of the night, the
+same orders to chase, to attack, to halt, to retreat, to break,
+to form, were conveyed by the lights of the leading galley.  By
+land, the fire-signals were repeated from one mountain to
+another; a chain of eight stations commanded a space of five
+hundred miles; and Constantinople in a few hours was apprised of
+the hostile motions of the Saracens of Tarsus. ^75 Some estimate
+may be formed of the power of the Greek emperors, by the curious
+and minute detail of the armament which was prepared for the
+reduction of Crete.  A fleet of one hundred and twelve galleys,
+and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style, was equipped in
+the capital, the islands of the Aegean Sea, and the seaports of
+Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four thousand
+mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers, seven
+hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites,
+whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of
+Libanus. Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at
+thirty-four centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six
+thousand pounds sterling.  Our fancy is bewildered by the endless
+recapitulation of arms and engines, of clothes and linen, of
+bread for the men and forage for the horses, and of stores and
+utensils of every description, inadequate to the conquest of a
+petty island, but amply sufficient for the establishment of a
+flourishing colony. ^76
+
+[Footnote 69: If we listen to the threats of Nicephorus to the
+ambassador of Otho, Nec est in mari domino tuo classium numerus.
+Navigantium fortitudo mihi soli inest, qui eum classibus
+aggrediar, bello maritimas ejus civitates demoliar; et quae
+fluminibus sunt vicina redigam in favillam.  (Liutprand in Legat.
+ad Nicephorum Phocam, in Muratori Scriptores Rerum Italicarum,
+tom. ii. pars i. p. 481.) He observes in another place, qui
+caeteris praestant Venetici sunt et Amalphitani.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Nec ipsa capiet eum (the emperor Otho) in qua ortus
+est pauper et pellicea Saxonia: pecunia qua pollemus omnes
+nationes super eum invitabimus: et quasi Keramicum confringemus,
+(Liutprand in Legat. p. 487.) The two books, de Administrando
+Imperio, perpetually inculcate the same policy.]
+
+[Footnote 71: The xixth chapter of the Tactics of Leo, (Meurs.
+Opera, tom. vi. p. 825 - 848,) which is given more correct from a
+manuscript of Gudius, by the laborious Fabricius, (Bibliot.
+Graec. tom. vi. p. 372 - 379,) relates to the Naumachia, or naval
+war.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Even of fifteen and sixteen rows of oars, in the
+navy of Demetrius Poliorcetes.  These were for real use: the
+forty rows of Ptolemy Philadelphus were applied to a floating
+palace, whose tonnage, according to Dr. Arbuthnot, (Tables of
+Ancient Coins, &c., p. 231 - 236,) is compared as 4 1/2 to 1 with
+an English 100 gun ship.]
+
+[Footnote 73: The Dromones of Leo, &c., are so clearly described
+with two tier of oars, that I must censure the version of
+Meursius and Fabricius, who pervert the sense by a blind
+attachment to the classic appellation of Triremes.  The Byzantine
+historians are sometimes guilty of the same inaccuracy.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Constantin. Porphyrogen. in Vit. Basil. c. lxi. p.
+185.  He calmly praises the stratagem; but the sailing round
+Peloponnesus is described by his terrified fancy as a
+circumnavigation of a thousand miles.]
+
+[Footnote 75: The continuator of Theophanes (l. iv. p. 122, 123)
+names the successive stations, the castle of Lulum near Tarsus,
+Mount Argaeus Isamus, Aegilus, the hill of Mamas, Cyrisus,
+Mocilus, the hill of Auxentius, the sun-dial of the Pharus of the
+great palace.  He affirms that the news were transmitted in an
+indivisible moment of time.  Miserable amplification, which, by
+saying too much, says nothing.  How much more forcible and
+instructive would have been the definition of three, or six, or
+twelve hours!]
+
+[Footnote 76: See the Ceremoniale of Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
+l. ii. c. 44, p. 176 - 192.  A critical reader will discern some
+inconsistencies in different parts of this account; but they are
+not more obscure or more stubborn than the establishment and
+effectives, the present and fit for duty, the rank and file and
+the private, of a modern return, which retain in proper hands the
+knowledge of these profitable mysteries.]
+
+The invention of the Greek fire did not, like that of gun
+powder, produce a total revolution in the art of war.  To these
+liquid combustibles the city and empire of Constantine owed their
+deliverance; and they were employed in sieges and sea-fights with
+terrible effect.  But they were either less improved, or less
+susceptible of improvement: the engines of antiquity, the
+catapultae, balistae, and battering-rams, were still of most
+frequent and powerful use in the attack and defence of
+fortifications; nor was the decision of battles reduced to the
+quick and heavy fire of a line of infantry, whom it were
+fruitless to protect with armor against a similar fire of their
+enemies. Steel and iron were still the common instruments of
+destruction and safety; and the helmets, cuirasses, and shields,
+of the tenth century did not, either in form or substance,
+essentially differ from those which had covered the companions of
+Alexander or Achilles. ^77 But instead of accustoming the modern
+Greeks, like the legionaries of old, to the constant and easy use
+of this salutary weight, their armor was laid aside in light
+chariots, which followed the march, till, on the approach of an
+enemy, they resumed with haste and reluctance the unusual
+encumbrance. Their offensive weapons consisted of swords,
+battle-axes, and spears; but the Macedonian pike was shortened a
+fourth of its length, and reduced to the more convenient measure
+of twelve cubits or feet.  The sharpness of the Scythian and
+Arabian arrows had been severely felt; and the emperors lament
+the decay of archery as a cause of the public misfortunes, and
+recommend, as an advice and a command, that the military youth,
+till the age of forty, should assiduously practise the exercise
+of the bow. ^78 The bands, or regiments, were usually three
+hundred strong; and, as a medium between the extremes of four and
+sixteen, the foot soldiers of Leo and Constantine were formed
+eight deep; but the cavalry charged in four ranks, from the
+reasonable consideration, that the weight of the front could not
+be increased by any pressure of the hindmost horses.  If the
+ranks of the infantry or cavalry were sometimes doubled, this
+cautious array betrayed a secret distrust of the courage of the
+troops, whose numbers might swell the appearance of the line, but
+of whom only a chosen band would dare to encounter the spears and
+swords of the Barbarians.  The order of battle must have varied
+according to the ground, the object, and the adversary; but their
+ordinary disposition, in two lines and a reserve, presented a
+succession of hopes and resources most agreeable to the temper as
+well as the judgment of the Greeks. ^79 In case of a repulse, the
+first line fell back into the intervals of the second; and the
+reserve, breaking into two divisions, wheeled round the flanks to
+improve the victory or cover the retreat.  Whatever authority
+could enact was accomplished, at least in theory, by the camps
+and marches, the exercises and evolutions, the edicts and books,
+of the Byzantine monarch. ^80 Whatever art could produce from the
+forge, the loom, or the laboratory, was abundantly supplied by
+the riches of the prince, and the industry of his numerous
+workmen.  But neither authority nor art could frame the most
+important machine, the soldier himself; and if the ceremonies of
+Constantine always suppose the safe and triumphal return of the
+emperor, ^81 his tactics seldom soar above the means of escaping
+a defeat, and procrastinating the war. ^82 Notwithstanding some
+transient success, the Greeks were sunk in their own esteem and
+that of their neighbors.  A cold hand and a loquacious tongue was
+the vulgar description of the nation: the author of the tactics
+was besieged in his capital; and the last of the Barbarians, who
+trembled at the name of the Saracens, or Franks, could proudly
+exhibit the medals of gold and silver which they had extorted
+from the feeble sovereign of Constantinople.  What spirit their
+government and character denied, might have been inspired in some
+degree by the influence of religion; but the religion of the
+Greeks could only teach them to suffer and to yield.  The emperor
+Nicephorus, who restored for a moment the discipline and glory of
+the Roman name, was desirous of bestowing the honors of martyrdom
+on the Christians who lost their lives in a holy war against the
+infidels.  But this political law was defeated by the opposition
+of the patriarch, the bishops, and the principal senators; and
+they strenuously urged the canons of St. Basil, that all who were
+polluted by the bloody trade of a soldier should be separated,
+during three years, from the communion of the faithful. ^83
+
+[Footnote 77: See the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters, and, in
+the Tactics of Leo, with the corresponding passages in those of
+Constantine.]
+
+[Footnote 78: (Leo, Tactic. p. 581 Constantin. p 1216.) Yet such
+were not the maxims of the Greeks and Romans, who despised the
+loose and distant practice of archery.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Compare the passages of the Tactics, p. 669 and
+721, and the xiith with the xviiith chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 80: In the preface to his Tactics, Leo very freely
+deplores the loss of discipline and the calamities of the times,
+and repeats, without scruple, (Proem. p. 537,) the reproaches,
+nor does it appear that the same censures were less deserved in
+the next generation by the disciples of Constantine.]
+
+[Footnote 81: See in the Ceremonial (l. ii. c. 19, p. 353) the
+form of the emperor's trampling on the necks of the captive
+Saracens, while the singers chanted, "Thou hast made my enemies
+my footstool!" and the people shouted forty times the kyrie
+eleison.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Leo observes (Tactic. p. 668) that a fair open
+battle against any nation whatsoever: the words are strong, and
+the remark is true: yet if such had been the opinion of the old
+Romans, Leo had never reigned on the shores of the Thracian
+Bosphorus.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 202, 203) and
+Cedrenus, (Compend p. 668,) who relate the design of Nicephorus,
+most unfortunately apply the epithet to the opposition of the
+patriarch.]
+
+These scruples of the Greeks have been compared with the
+tears of the primitive Moslems when they were held back from
+battle; and this contrast of base superstition and high-spirited
+enthusiasm, unfolds to a philosophic eye the history of the rival
+nations.  The subjects of the last caliphs ^84 had undoubtedly
+degenerated from the zeal and faith of the companions of the
+prophet.  Yet their martial creed still represented the Deity as
+the author of war: ^85 the vital though latent spark of
+fanaticism still glowed in the heart of their religion, and among
+the Saracens, who dwelt on the Christian borders, it was
+frequently rekindled to a lively and active flame.  Their regular
+force was formed of the valiant slaves who had been educated to
+guard the person and accompany the standard of their lord: but
+the Mussulman people of Syria and Cilicia, of Africa and Spain,
+was awakened by the trumpet which proclaimed a holy war against
+the infidels. The rich were ambitious of death or victory in the
+cause of God; the poor were allured by the hopes of plunder; and
+the old, the infirm, and the women, assumed their share of
+meritorious service by sending their substitutes, with arms and
+horses, into the field.  These offensive and defensive arms were
+similar in strength and temper to those of the Romans, whom they
+far excelled in the management of the horse and the bow: the
+massy silver of their belts, their bridles, and their swords,
+displayed the magnificence of a prosperous nation; and except
+some black archers of the South, the Arabs disdained the naked
+bravery of their ancestors.  Instead of wagons, they were
+attended by a long train of camels, mules, and asses: the
+multitude of these animals, whom they bedecked with flags and
+streamers, appeared to swell the pomp and magnitude of their
+host; and the horses of the enemy were often disordered by the
+uncouth figure and odious smell of the camels of the East.
+Invincible by their patience of thirst and heat, their spirits
+were frozen by a winter's cold, and the consciousness of their
+propensity to sleep exacted the most rigorous precautions against
+the surprises of the night.  Their order of battle was a long
+square of two deep and solid lines; the first of archers, the
+second of cavalry.  In their engagements by sea and land, they
+sustained with patient firmness the fury of the attack, and
+seldom advanced to the charge till they could discern and oppress
+the lassitude of their foes.  But if they were repulsed and
+broken, they knew not how to rally or renew the combat; and their
+dismay was heightened by the superstitious prejudice, that God
+had declared himself on the side of their enemies.  The decline
+and fall of the caliphs countenanced this fearful opinion; nor
+were there wanting, among the Mahometans and Christians, some
+obscure prophecies ^86 which prognosticated their alternate
+defeats.  The unity of the Arabian empire was dissolved, but the
+independent fragments were equal to populous and powerful
+kingdoms; and in their naval and military armaments, an emir of
+Aleppo or Tunis might command no despicable fund of skill, and
+industry, and treasure.  In their transactions of peace and war
+with the Saracens, the princes of Constantinople too often felt
+that these Barbarians had nothing barbarous in their discipline;
+and that if they were destitute of original genius, they had been
+endowed with a quick spirit of curiosity and imitation.  The
+model was indeed more perfect than the copy; their ships, and
+engines, and fortifications, were of a less skilful construction;
+and they confess, without shame, that the same God who has given
+a tongue to the Arabians, had more nicely fashioned the hands of
+the Chinese, and the heads of the Greeks. ^87
+
+[Footnote 84: The xviith chapter of the tactics of the different
+nations is the most historical and useful of the whole collection
+of Leo.  The manners and arms of the Saracens (Tactic. p. 809 -
+817, and a fragment from the Medicean Ms. in the preface of the
+vith volume of Meursius) the Roman emperor was too frequently
+called upon to study.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Leon. Tactic. p. 809.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Liutprand (p. 484, 485) relates and interprets the
+oracles of the Greeks and Saracens, in which, after the fashion
+of prophecy, the past is clear and historical, the future is
+dark, enigmatical, and erroneous. From this boundary of light and
+shade an impartial critic may commonly determine the date of the
+composition.]
+
+[Footnote 87: The sense of this distinction is expressed by
+Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 2, 62, 101;) but I cannot recollect the
+passage in which it is conveyed by this lively apothegm.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.
+
+Part IV.
+
+A name of some German tribes between the Rhine and the Weser
+had spread its victorious influence over the greatest part of
+Gaul, Germany, and Italy; and the common appellation of Franks
+^88 was applied by the Greeks and Arabians to the Christians of
+the Latin church, the nations of the West, who stretched beyond
+their knowledge to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  The vast
+body had been inspired and united by the soul of Charlemagne; but
+the division and degeneracy of his race soon annihilated the
+Imperial power, which would have rivalled the Caesars of
+Byzantium, and revenged the indignities of the Christian name.
+The enemies no longer feared, nor could the subjects any longer
+trust, the application of a public revenue, the labors of trade
+and manufactures in the military service, the mutual aid of
+provinces and armies, and the naval squadrons which were
+regularly stationed from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the
+Tyber.  In the beginning of the tenth century, the family of
+Charlemagne had almost disappeared; his monarchy was broken into
+many hostile and independent states; the regal title was assumed
+by the most ambitious chiefs; their revolt was imitated in a long
+subordination of anarchy and discord, and the nobles of every
+province disobeyed their sovereign, oppressed their vassals, and
+exercised perpetual hostilities against their equals and
+neighbors.  Their private wars, which overturned the fabric of
+government, fomented the martial spirit of the nation.  In the
+system of modern Europe, the power of the sword is possessed, at
+least in fact, by five or six mighty potentates; their operations
+are conducted on a distant frontier, by an order of men who
+devote their lives to the study and practice of the military art:
+the rest of the country and community enjoys in the midst of war
+the tranquillity of peace, and is only made sensible of the
+change by the aggravation or decrease of the public taxes.  In
+the disorders of the tenth and eleventh centuries, every peasant
+was a soldier, and every village a fortification; each wood or
+valley was a scene of murder and rapine; and the lords of each
+castle were compelled to assume the character of princes and
+warriors.  To their own courage and policy they boldly trusted
+for the safety of their family, the protection of their lands,
+and the revenge of their injuries; and, like the conquerors of a
+larger size, they were too apt to transgress the privilege of
+defensive war.  The powers of the mind and body were hardened by
+the presence of danger and necessity of resolution: the same
+spirit refused to desert a friend and to forgive an enemy; and,
+instead of sleeping under the guardian care of a magistrate, they
+proudly disdained the authority of the laws.  In the days of
+feudal anarchy, the instruments of agriculture and art were
+converted into the weapons of bloodshed: the peaceful occupations
+of civil and ecclesiastical society were abolished or corrupted;
+and the bishop who exchanged his mitre for a helmet, was more
+forcibly urged by the manners of the times than by the obligation
+of his tenure. ^89
+
+[Footnote 88: Ex Francis, quo nomine tam Latinos quam Teutones
+comprehendit, ludum habuit, (Liutprand in Legat ad Imp.
+Nicephorum, p. 483, 484.) This extension of the name may be
+confirmed from Constantine (de Administrando Imperio, l. 2, c.
+27, 28) and Eutychius, (Annal. tom. i. p. 55, 56,) who both lived
+before the Crusades.  The testimonies of Abulpharagius (Dynast.
+p. 69) and Abulfeda (Praefat. ad Geograph.) are more recent]
+
+[Footnote 89: On this subject of ecclesiastical and beneficiary
+discipline, Father Thomassin, (tom. iii. l. i. c. 40, 45, 46, 47)
+may be usefully consulted.  A general law of Charlemagne exempted
+the bishops from personal service; but the opposite practice,
+which prevailed from the ixth to the xvth century, is
+countenanced by the example or silence of saints and doctors ....
+You justify your cowardice by the holy canons, says Ratherius of
+Verona; the canons likewise forbid you to whore, and yet - ]
+
+The love of freedom and of arms was felt, with conscious
+pride, by the Franks themselves, and is observed by the Greeks
+with some degree of amazement and terror.  "The Franks," says the
+emperor Constantine, "are bold and valiant to the verge of
+temerity; and their dauntless spirit is supported by the contempt
+of danger and death.  In the field and in close onset, they press
+to the front, and rush headlong against the enemy, without
+deigning to compute either his numbers or their own.  Their ranks
+are formed by the firm connections of consanguinity and
+friendship; and their martial deeds are prompted by the desire of
+saving or revenging their dearest companions.  In their eyes, a
+retreat is a shameful flight; and flight is indelible infamy."
+^90 A nation endowed with such high and intrepid spirit, must
+have been secure of victory if these advantages had not been
+counter-balanced by many weighty defects.  The decay of their
+naval power left the Greeks and Saracens in possession of the
+sea, for every purpose of annoyance and supply.  In the age which
+preceded the institution of knighthood, the Franks were rude and
+unskilful in the service of cavalry; ^91 and in all perilous
+emergencies, their warriors were so conscious of their ignorance,
+that they chose to dismount from their horses and fight on foot.
+Unpractised in the use of pikes, or of missile weapons, they were
+encumbered by the length of their swords, the weight of their
+armor, the magnitude of their shields, and, if I may repeat the
+satire of the meagre Greeks, by their unwieldy intemperance.
+Their independent spirit disdained the yoke of subordination, and
+abandoned the standard of their chief, if he attempted to keep
+the field beyond the term of their stipulation or service.  On
+all sides they were open to the snares of an enemy less brave but
+more artful than themselves.  They might be bribed, for the
+Barbarians were venal; or surprised in the night, for they
+neglected the precautions of a close encampment or vigilant
+sentinels.  The fatigues of a summer's campaign exhausted their
+strength and patience, and they sunk in despair if their
+voracious appetite was disappointed of a plentiful supply of wine
+and of food.  This general character of the Franks was marked
+with some national and local shades, which I should ascribe to
+accident rather than to climate, but which were visible both to
+natives and to foreigners.  An ambassador of the great Otho
+declared, in the palace of Constantinople, that the Saxons could
+dispute with swords better than with pens, and that they
+preferred inevitable death to the dishonor of turning their backs
+to an enemy. ^92 It was the glory of the nobles of France, that,
+in their humble dwellings, war and rapine were the only pleasure,
+the sole occupation, of their lives. They affected to deride the
+palaces, the banquets, the polished manner of the Italians, who
+in the estimate of the Greeks themselves had degenerated from the
+liberty and valor of the ancient Lombards. ^93
+
+[Footnote 90: In the xviiith chapter of his Tactics, the emperor
+Leo has fairly stated the military vices and virtues of the
+Franks (whom Meursius ridiculously translates by Galli) and the
+Lombards or Langobards.  See likewise the xxvith Dissertation of
+Muratori de Antiquitatibus Italiae Medii Aevi.]
+
+[Footnote 91: Domini tui milites (says the proud Nicephorus)
+equitandi ignari pedestris pugnae sunt inscii: scutorum
+magnitudo, loricarum gravitudo, ensium longitudo galearumque
+pondus neutra parte pugnare cossinit; ac subridens, impedit,
+inquit, et eos gastrimargia, hoc est ventris ingluvies, &c.
+Liutprand in Legat. p. 480 481]
+
+[Footnote 92: In Saxonia certe scio .... decentius ensibus
+pugnare quam calanis, et prius mortem obire quam hostibus terga
+dare, (Liutprand, p 482.)]
+
+[Footnote 93: Leonis Tactica, c. 18, p. 805.  The emperor Leo
+died A.D. 911: an historical poem, which ends in 916, and appears
+to have been composed in 910, by a native of Venetia,
+discriminates in these verses the manners of Italy and France:
+
+ - Quid inertia bello
+
+Pectora (Ubertus ait) duris praetenditis armis,
+
+O Itali?  Potius vobis sacra pocula cordi;
+
+Saepius et stomachum nitidis laxare saginis
+
+Elatasque domos rutilo fulcire metallo.
+
+Non eadem Gallos similis vel cura remordet:
+
+Vicinas quibus est studium devincere terras,
+
+Depressumque larem spoliis hinc inde coactis
+
+Sustentare -
+
+(Anonym. Carmen Panegyricum de Laudibus Berengarii Augusti, l. n.
+in Muratori Script. Rerum Italic. tom. ii. pars i. p. 393.)]
+
+By the well-known edict of Caracalla, his subjects, from
+Britain to Egypt, were entitled to the name and privileges of
+Romans, and their national sovereign might fix his occasional or
+permanent residence in any province of their common country.  In
+the division of the East and West, an ideal unity was
+scrupulously observed, and in their titles, laws, and statutes,
+the successors of Arcadius and Honorius announced themselves as
+the inseparable colleagues of the same office, as the joint
+sovereigns of the Roman world and city, which were bounded by the
+same limits.  After the fall of the Western monarchy, the majesty
+of the purple resided solely in the princes of Constantinople;
+and of these, Justinian was the first who, after a divorce of
+sixty years, regained the dominion of ancient Rome, and asserted,
+by the right of conquest, the august title of Emperor of the
+Romans. ^94 A motive of vanity or discontent solicited one of his
+successors, Constans the Second, to abandon the Thracian
+Bosphorus, and to restore the pristine honors of the Tyber: an
+extravagant project, (exclaims the malicious Byzantine,) as if he
+had despoiled a beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or
+rather to expose, the deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit
+matron. ^95 But the sword of the Lombards opposed his settlement
+in Italy: he entered Rome not as a conqueror, but as a fugitive,
+and, after a visit of twelve days, he pillaged, and forever
+deserted, the ancient capital of the world. ^96 The final revolt
+and separation of Italy was accomplished about two centuries
+after the conquests of Justinian, and from his reign we may date
+the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue.  That legislator had
+composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a
+language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of
+the Roman government, the consecrated idiom of the palace and
+senate of Constantinople, of the campus and tribunals of the
+East. ^97 But this foreign dialect was unknown to the people and
+soldiers of the Asiatic provinces, it was imperfectly understood
+by the greater part of the interpreters of the laws and the
+ministers of the state.  After a short conflict, nature and habit
+prevailed over the obsolete institutions of human power: for the
+general benefit of his subjects, Justinian promulgated his novels
+in the two languages: the several parts of his voluminous
+jurisprudence were successively translated; ^98 the original was
+forgotten, the version was studied, and the Greek, whose
+intrinsic merit deserved indeed the preference, obtained a legal,
+as well as popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy.  The
+birth and residence of succeeding princes estranged them from the
+Roman idiom: Tiberius by the Arabs, ^99 and Maurice by the
+Italians, ^100 are distinguished as the first of the Greek
+Caesars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire: the silent
+revolution was accomplished before the death of Heraclius; and
+the ruins of the Latin speech were darkly preserved in the terms
+of jurisprudence and the acclamations of the palace.  After the
+restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne and the Othos,
+the names of Franks and Latins acquired an equal signification
+and extent; and these haughty Barbarians asserted, with some
+justice, their superior claim to the language and dominion of
+Rome.  They insulted the alien of the East who had renounced the
+dress and idiom of Romans; and their reasonable practice will
+justify the frequent appellation of Greeks. ^101 But this
+contemptuous appellation was indignantly rejected by the prince
+and people to whom it was applied.  Whatsoever changes had been
+introduced by the lapse of ages, they alleged a lineal and
+unbroken succession from Augustus and Constantine; and, in the
+lowest period of degeneracy and decay, the name of Romans adhered
+to the last fragments of the empire of Constantinople. ^102
+
+[Footnote 94: Justinian, says the historian Agathias, (l. v. p.
+157,). Yet the specific title of Emperor of the Romans was not
+used at Constantinople, till it had been claimed by the French
+and German emperors of old Rome.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Constantine Manasses reprobates this design in his
+barbarous verse, and it is confirmed by Theophanes, Zonaras,
+Cedrenus, and the Historia Miscella: voluit in urbem Romam
+Imperium transferre, (l. xix. p. 157 in tom. i. pars i. of the
+Scriptores Rer. Ital. of Muratori.)]
+
+[Footnote 96: Paul. Diacon. l. v. c. 11, p. 480.  Anastasius in
+Vitis Pontificum, in Muratori's Collection, tom. iii. pars i. p.
+141.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Consult the preface of Ducange, (ad Gloss, Graec.
+Medii Aevi) and the Novels of Justinian, (vii. lxvi.)]
+
+[Footnote 98: (Matth. Blastares, Hist. Juris, apud Fabric.
+Bibliot. Graec. tom. xii. p. 369.) The Code and Pandects (the
+latter by Thalelaeus) were translated in the time of Justinian,
+(p. 358, 366.) Theophilus one of the original triumvirs, has left
+an elegant, though diffuse, paraphrase of the Institutes.  On the
+other hand, Julian, antecessor of Constantinople, (A.D. 570,)
+cxx. Novellas Graecas eleganti Latinitate donavit (Heineccius,
+Hist. J. R. p. 396) for the use of Italy and Africa.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Abulpharagius assigns the viith Dynasty to the
+Franks or Romans, the viiith to the Greeks, the ixth to the
+Arabs.  A tempore Augusti Caesaris donec imperaret Tiberius
+Caesar spatio circiter annorum 600 fuerunt Imperatores C. P.
+Patricii, et praecipua pars exercitus Romani: extra quod,
+conciliarii, scribae et populus, omnes Graeci fuerunt: deinde
+regnum etiam Graecanicum factum est, (p. 96, vers. Pocock.) The
+Christian and ecclesiastical studies of Abulpharagius gave him
+some advantage over the more ignorant Moslems.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Primus ex Graecorum genere in Imperio confirmatus
+est; or according to another Ms. of Paulus Diaconus, (l. iii. c.
+15, p. 443,) in Orasorum Imperio.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Quia linguam, mores, vestesque mutastis, putavit
+Sanctissimus Papa. (an audacious irony,) ita vos (vobis)
+displicere Romanorum nomen. His nuncios, rogabant Nicephorum
+Imperatorem Graecorum, ut cum Othone Imperatore Romanorum
+amicitiam faceret, (Liutprand in Legatione, p. 486.)
+
+Note: Sicut et vestem.  These words follow in the text of
+Liutprand, (apud Murat. Script. Ital. tom. ii. p. 486, to which
+Gibbon refers.) But with some inaccuracy or confusion, which
+rarely occurs in Gibbon's references, the rest of the quotation,
+which as it stands is unintelligible, does not appear - M.]
+
+[Footnote 102: By Laonicus Chalcocondyles, who survived the last
+siege of Constantinople, the account is thus stated, (l. i. p.
+3.) Constantine transplanted his Latins of Italy to a Greek city
+of Thrace: they adopted the language and manners of the natives,
+who were confounded with them under the name of Romans.  The
+kings of Constantinople, says the historian.]
+
+While the government of the East was transacted in Latin,
+the Greek was the language of literature and philosophy; nor
+could the masters of this rich and perfect idiom be tempted to
+envy the borrowed learning and imitative taste of their Roman
+disciples.  After the fall of Paganism, the loss of Syria and
+Egypt, and the extinction of the schools of Alexandria and
+Athens, the studies of the Greeks insensibly retired to some
+regular monasteries, and above all, to the royal college of
+Constantinople, which was burnt in the reign of Leo the Isaurian.
+^103 In the pompous style of the age, the president of that
+foundation was named the Sun of Science: his twelve associates,
+the professors in the different arts and faculties, were the
+twelve signs of the zodiac; a library of thirty-six thousand five
+hundred volumes was open to their inquiries; and they could show
+an ancient manuscript of Homer, on a roll of parchment one
+hundred and twenty feet in length, the intestines, as it was
+fabled, of a prodigious serpent. ^104 But the seventh and eight
+centuries were a period of discord and darkness: the library was
+burnt, the college was abolished, the Iconoclasts are represented
+as the foes of antiquity; and a savage ignorance and contempt of
+letters has disgraced the princes of the Heraclean and Isaurian
+dynasties. ^105
+
+[Footnote 103: See Ducange, (C. P. Christiana, l. ii. p. 150,
+151,) who collects the testimonies, not of Theophanes, but at
+least of Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xv. p. 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 454,)
+Michael Glycas, (p. 281,) Constantine Manasses, (p. 87.) After
+refuting the absurd charge against the emperor, Spanheim, (Hist.
+Imaginum, p. 99 - 111,) like a true advocate, proceeds to doubt
+or deny the reality of the fire, and almost of the library.]
+
+[Footnote 104: According to Malchus, (apud Zonar. l. xiv. p. 53,)
+this Homer was burnt in the time of Basiliscus.  The Ms. might be
+renewed - But on a serpent's skin?  Most strange and incredible!]
+
+[Footnote 105: The words of Zonaras, and of Cedrenus, are strong
+words, perhaps not ill suited to those reigns.]
+
+In the ninth century we trace the first dawnings of the
+restoration of science. ^106 After the fanaticism of the Arabs
+had subsided, the caliphs aspired to conquer the arts, rather
+than the provinces, of the empire: their liberal curiosity
+rekindled the emulation of the Greeks, brushed away the dust from
+their ancient libraries, and taught them to know and reward the
+philosophers, whose labors had been hitherto repaid by the
+pleasure of study and the pursuit of truth.  The Caesar Bardas,
+the uncle of Michael the Third, was the generous protector of
+letters, a title which alone has preserved his memory and excused
+his ambition.  A particle of the treasures of his nephew was
+sometimes diverted from the indulgence of vice and folly; a
+school was opened in the palace of Magnaura; and the presence of
+Bardas excited the emulation of the masters and students.  At
+their head was the philosopher Leo, archbishop of Thessalonica:
+his profound skill in astronomy and the mathematics was admired
+by the strangers of the East; and this occult science was
+magnified by vulgar credulity, which modestly supposes that all
+knowledge superior to its own must be the effect of inspiration
+or magic.  At the pressing entreaty of the Caesar, his friend,
+the celebrated Photius, ^107 renounced the freedom of a secular
+and studious life, ascended the patriarchal throne, and was
+alternately excommunicated and absolved by the synods of the East
+and West.  By the confession even of priestly hatred, no art or
+science, except poetry, was foreign to this universal scholar,
+who was deep in thought, indefatigable in reading, and eloquent
+in diction.  Whilst he exercised the office of protospathaire or
+captain of the guards, Photius was sent ambassador to the caliph
+of Bagdad. ^108 The tedious hours of exile, perhaps of
+confinement, were beguiled by the hasty composition of his
+Library, a living monument of erudition and criticism.  Two
+hundred and fourscore writers, historians, orators, philosophers,
+theologians, are reviewed without any regular method: he abridges
+their narrative or doctrine, appreciates their style and
+character, and judges even the fathers of the church with a
+discreet freedom, which often breaks through the superstition of
+the times.  The emperor Basil, who lamented the defects of his
+own education, intrusted to the care of Photius his son and
+successor, Leo the philosopher; and the reign of that prince and
+of his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus forms one of the most
+prosperous aeras of the Byzantine literature.  By their
+munificence the treasures of antiquity were deposited in the
+Imperial library; by their pens, or those of their associates,
+they were imparted in such extracts and abridgments as might
+amuse the curiosity, without oppressing the indolence, of the
+public.  Besides the Basilics, or code of laws, the arts of
+husbandry and war, of feeding or destroying the human species,
+were propagated with equal diligence; and the history of Greece
+and Rome was digested into fifty-three heads or titles, of which
+two only (of embassies, and of virtues and vices) have escaped
+the injuries of time. In every station, the reader might
+contemplate the image of the past world, apply the lesson or
+warning of each page, and learn to admire, perhaps to imitate,
+the examples of a brighter period.  I shall not expatiate on the
+works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by the assiduous study of the
+ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance and
+gratitude of the moderns.  The scholars of the present age may
+still enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of
+Stobaeus, the grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the
+Chiliads of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred narratives in
+twelve thousand verses, and the commentaries on Homer of
+Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who, from his horn of
+plenty, has poured the names and authorities of four hundred
+writers. From these originals, and from the numerous tribe of
+scholiasts and critics, ^109 some estimate may be formed of the
+literary wealth of the twelfth century: Constantinople was
+enlightened by the genius of Homer and Demosthenes, of Aristotle
+and Plato: and in the enjoyment or neglect of our present riches,
+we must envy the generation that could still peruse the history
+of Theopompus, the orations of Hyperides, the comedies of
+Menander, ^110 and the odes of Alcaeus and Sappho.  The frequent
+labor of illustration attests not only the existence, but the
+popularity, of the Grecian classics: the general knowledge of the
+age may be deduced from the example of two learned females, the
+empress Eudocia, and the princess Anna Comnena, who cultivated,
+in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. ^111 The
+vulgar dialect of the city was gross and barbarous: a more
+correct and elaborate style distinguished the discourse, or at
+least the compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes
+affected to copy the purity of the Attic models.
+
+[Footnote 106: See Zonaras (l. xvi. p. 160, 161) and Cedrenus,
+(p. 549, 550.) Like Friar Bacon, the philosopher Leo has been
+transformed by ignorance into a conjurer; yet not so
+undeservedly, if he be the author of the oracles more commonly
+ascribed to the emperor of the same name.  The physics of Leo in
+Ms. are in the library of Vienna, (Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec.
+tom. vi. p 366, tom. xii. p. 781.) Qui serant!]
+
+[Footnote 107: The ecclesiastical and literary character of
+Photius is copiously discussed by Hanckius (de Scriptoribus
+Byzant. p. 269, 396) and Fabricius.]
+
+[Footnote 108: It can only mean Bagdad, the seat of the caliphs
+and the relation of his embassy might have been curious and
+instructive.  But how did he procure his books?  A library so
+numerous could neither be found at Bagdad, nor transported with
+his baggage, nor preserved in his memory. Yet the last, however
+incredible, seems to be affirmed by Photius himself.  Camusat
+(Hist. Critique des Journaux, p. 87 - 94) gives a good account of
+the Myriobiblon.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Of these modern Greeks, see the respective
+articles in the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius - a laborious
+work, yet susceptible of a better method and many improvements;
+of Eustathius, (tom. i. p. 289 - 292, 306 - 329,) of the Pselli,
+(a diatribe of Leo Allatius, ad calcem tom. v., of Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus, tom. vi. p. 486 - 509) of John Stobaeus, (tom.
+viii., 665 - 728,) of Suidas, (tom. ix. p. 620 - 827,) John
+Tzetzes, (tom. xii. p. 245 - 273.) Mr. Harris, in his
+Philological Arrangements, opus senile, has given a sketch of
+this Byzantine learning, (p. 287 - 300.)]
+
+[Footnote 110: From the obscure and hearsay evidence, Gerard
+Vossius (de Poetis Graecis, c. 6) and Le Clerc (Bibliotheque
+Choisie, tom. xix. p. 285) mention a commentary of Michael
+Psellus on twenty-four plays of Menander, still extant in Ms. at
+Constantinople.  Yet such classic studies seem incompatible with
+the gravity or dulness of a schoolman, who pored over the
+categories, (de Psellis, p. 42;) and Michael has probably been
+confounded with Homerus Sellius, who wrote arguments to the
+comedies of Menander.  In the xth century, Suidas quotes fifty
+plays, but he often transcribes the old scholiast of
+Aristophanes.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Anna Comnena may boast of her Greek style, and
+Zonaras her contemporary, but not her flatterer, may add with
+truth. The princess was conversant with the artful dialogues of
+Plato; and had studied quadrivium of astrology, geometry,
+arithmetic, and music, (see he preface to the Alexiad, with
+Ducange's notes)]
+
+In our modern education, the painful though necessary
+attainment of two languages, which are no longer living, may
+consume the time and damp the ardor of the youthful student.  The
+poets and orators were long imprisoned in the barbarous dialects
+of our Western ancestors, devoid of harmony or grace; and their
+genius, without precept or example, was abandoned to the rule and
+native powers of their judgment and fancy.  But the Greeks of
+Constantinople, after purging away the impurities of their vulgar
+speech, acquired the free use of their ancient language, the most
+happy composition of human art, and a familiar knowledge of the
+sublime masters who had pleased or instructed the first of
+nations.  But these advantages only tend to aggravate the
+reproach and shame of a degenerate people.  They held in their
+lifeless hands the riches of their fathers, without inheriting
+the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony:
+they read, they praised, they compiled, but their languid souls
+seemed alike incapable of thought and action.  In the revolution
+of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the
+dignity or promote the happiness of mankind.  Not a single idea
+has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a
+succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic
+teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition
+of history, philosophy, or literature, has been saved from
+oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of
+original fancy, or even of successful imitation.  In prose, the
+least offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from
+censure by their naked and unpresuming simplicity: but the
+orators, most eloquent ^112 in their own conceit, are the
+farthest removed from the models whom they affect to emulate.  In
+every page our taste and reason are wounded by the choice of
+gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff and intricate phraseology,
+the discord of images, the childish play of false or unseasonable
+ornament, and the painful attempt to elevate themselves, to
+astonish the reader, and to involve a trivial meaning in the
+smoke of obscurity and exaggeration. Their prose is soaring to
+the vicious affectation of poetry: their poetry is sinking below
+the flatness and insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric
+muses, were silent and inglorious: the bards of Constantinople
+seldom rose above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale; they
+forgot even the rules of prosody; and with the melody of Homer
+yet sounding in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and
+syllables in the impotent strains which have received the name of
+political or city verses. ^113 The minds of the Greek were bound
+in the fetters of a base and imperious superstition which extends
+her dominion round the circle of profane science. Their
+understandings were bewildered in metaphysical controversy: in
+the belief of visions and miracles, they had lost all principles
+of moral evidence, and their taste was vitiates by the homilies
+of the monks, an absurd medley of declamation and Scripture.
+Even these contemptible studies were no longer dignified by the
+abuse of superior talents: the leaders of the Greek church were
+humbly content to admire and copy the oracles of antiquity, nor
+did the schools of pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of
+Athanasius and Chrysostom. ^114
+
+[Footnote 112: To censure the Byzantine taste.  Ducange (Praefat.
+Gloss. Graec. p. 17) strings the authorities of Aulus Gellius,
+Jerom, Petronius George Hamartolus, Longinus; who give at once
+the precept and the example.]
+
+[Footnote 113: The versus politici, those common prostitutes, as,
+from their easiness, they are styled by Leo Allatius, usually
+consist of fifteen syllables.  They are used by Constantine
+Manasses, John Tzetzes, &c. (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iii. p.
+i. p. 345, 346, edit. Basil, 1762.)]
+
+[Footnote 114: As St. Bernard of the Latin, so St. John
+Damascenus in the viiith century is revered as the last father of
+the Greek, church.]
+
+In all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the
+emulation of states and individuals is the most powerful spring
+of the efforts and improvements of mankind.  The cities of
+ancient Greece were cast in the happy mixture of union and
+independence, which is repeated on a larger scale, but in a
+looser form, by the nations of modern Europe; the union of
+language, religion, and manners, which renders them the
+spectators and judges of each other's merit; ^115 the
+independence of government and interest, which asserts their
+separate freedom, and excites them to strive for preeminence in
+the career of glory.  The situation of the Romans was less
+favorable; yet in the early ages of the republic, which fixed the
+national character, a similar emulation was kindled among the
+states of Latium and Italy; and in the arts and sciences, they
+aspired to equal or surpass their Grecian masters.  The empire of
+the Caesars undoubtedly checked the activity and progress of the
+human mind; its magnitude might indeed allow some scope for
+domestic competition; but when it was gradually reduced, at first
+to the East and at last to Greece and Constantinople, the
+Byzantine subjects were degraded to an abject and languid temper,
+the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state.  From
+the North they were oppressed by nameless tribes of Barbarians,
+to whom they scarcely imparted the appellation of men.  The
+language and religion of the more polished Arabs were an
+insurmountable bar to all social intercourse.  The conquerors of
+Europe were their brethren in the Christian faith; but the speech
+of the Franks or Latins was unknown, their manners were rude, and
+they were rarely connected, in peace or war, with the successors
+of Heraclius.  Alone in the universe, the self-satisfied pride of
+the Greeks was not disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit;
+and it is no wonder if they fainted in the race, since they had
+neither competitors to urge their speed, nor judges to crown
+their victory.  The nations of Europe and Asia were mingled by
+the expeditions to the Holy Land; and it is under the Comnenian
+dynasty that a faint emulation of knowledge and military virtue
+was rekindled in the Byzantine empire. [Footnote 115: Hume's
+Essays, vol. i. p. 125]
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.
+
+Part I.
+
+Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians. - Their Persecution
+By The Greek Emperors. - Revolt In Armenia &c. - Transplantation
+Into Thrace. - Propagation In The West. - The Seeds, Character,
+And Consequences Of The Reformation.
+
+In the profession of Christianity, the variety of national
+characters may be clearly distinguished.  The natives of Syria
+and Egypt abandoned their lives to lazy and contemplative
+devotion: Rome again aspired to the dominion of the world; and
+the wit of the lively and loquacious Greeks was consumed in the
+disputes of metaphysical theology.  The incomprehensible
+mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, instead of commanding
+their silent submission, were agitated in vehement and subtile
+controversies, which enlarged their faith at the expense,
+perhaps, of their charity and reason.  From the council of Nice
+to the end of the seventh century, the peace and unity of the
+church was invaded by these spiritual wars; and so deeply did
+they affect the decline and fall of the empire, that the
+historian has too often been compelled to attend the synods, to
+explore the creeds, and to enumerate the sects, of this busy
+period of ecclesiastical annals.  From the beginning of the
+eighth century to the last ages of the Byzantine empire, the
+sound of controversy was seldom heard: curiosity was exhausted,
+zeal was fatigued, and, in the decrees of six councils, the
+articles of the Catholic faith had been irrevocably defined. The
+spirit of dispute, however vain and pernicious, requires some
+energy and exercise of the mental faculties; and the prostrate
+Greeks were content to fast, to pray, and to believe in blind
+obedience to the patriarch and his clergy. During a long dream of
+superstition, the Virgin and the Saints, their visions and
+miracles, their relics and images, were preached by the monks,
+and worshipped by the people; and the appellation of people might
+be extended, without injustice, to the first ranks of civil
+society.  At an unseasonable moment, the Isaurian emperors
+attempted somewhat rudely to awaken their subjects: under their
+influence reason might obtain some proselytes, a far greater
+number was swayed by interest or fear; but the Eastern world
+embraced or deplored their visible deities, and the restoration
+of images was celebrated as the feast of orthodoxy.  In this
+passive and unanimous state the ecclesiastical rulers were
+relieved from the toil, or deprived of the pleasure, of
+persecution.  The Pagans had disappeared; the Jews were silent
+and obscure; the disputes with the Latins were rare and remote
+hostilities against a national enemy; and the sects of Egypt and
+Syria enjoyed a free toleration under the shadow of the Arabian
+caliphs.  About the middle of the seventh century, a branch of
+Manichaeans was selected as the victims of spiritual tyranny;
+their patience was at length exasperated to despair and
+rebellion; and their exile has scattered over the West the seeds
+of reformation.  These important events will justify some inquiry
+into the doctrine and story of the Paulicians; ^1 and, as they
+cannot plead for themselves, our candid criticism will magnify
+the good, and abate or suspect the evil, that is reported by
+their adversaries.
+
+[Footnote 1: The errors and virtues of the Paulicians are
+weighed, with his usual judgment and candor, by the learned
+Mosheim, (Hist. Ecclesiast. seculum ix. p. 311, &c.) He draws his
+original intelligence from Photius (contra Manichaeos, l. i.) and
+Peter Siculus, (Hist. Manichaeorum.) The first of these accounts
+has not fallen into my hands; the second, which Mosheim prefers,
+I have read in a Latin version inserted in the Maxima Bibliotheca
+Patrum, (tom. xvi. p. 754 - 764,) from the edition of the Jesuit
+Raderus, (Ingolstadii, 1604, in 4to.)
+
+Note: Compare Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 461 - 471.  Mr.
+Hallam justly observes that this chapter "appears to be accurate
+as well as luminous, and is at least far superior to any modern
+work on the subject." - M.]
+
+The Gnostics, who had distracted the infancy, were oppressed
+by the greatness and authority, of the church.  Instead of
+emulating or surpassing the wealth, learning, and numbers of the
+Catholics, their obscure remnant was driven from the capitals of
+the East and West, and confined to the villages and mountains
+along the borders of the Euphrates.  Some vestige of the
+Marcionites may be detected in the fifth century; ^2 but the
+numerous sects were finally lost in the odious name of the
+Manichaeans; and these heretics, who presumed to reconcile the
+doctrines of Zoroaster and Christ, were pursued by the two
+religions with equal and unrelenting hatred.  Under the grandson
+of Heraclius, in the neighborhood of Samosata, more famous for
+the birth of Lucian than for the title of a Syrian kingdom, a
+reformer arose, esteemed by the Paulicians as the chosen
+messenger of truth.  In his humble dwelling of Mananalis,
+Constantine entertained a deacon, who returned from Syrian
+captivity, and received the inestimable gift of the New
+Testament, which was already concealed from the vulgar by the
+prudence of the Greek, and perhaps of the Gnostic, clergy. ^3
+These books became the measure of his studies and the rule of his
+faith; and the Catholics, who dispute his interpretation,
+acknowledge that his text was genuine and sincere.  But he
+attached himself with peculiar devotion to the writings and
+character of St. Paul: the name of the Paulicians is derived by
+their enemies from some unknown and domestic teacher; but I am
+confident that they gloried in their affinity to the apostle of
+the Gentiles.  His disciples, Titus, Timothy, Sylvanus, Tychicus,
+were represented by Constantine and his fellow-laborers: the
+names of the apostolic churches were applied to the congregations
+which they assembled in Armenia and Cappadocia; and this innocent
+allegory revived the example and memory of the first ages.  In
+the Gospel, and the Epistles of St. Paul, his faithful follower
+investigated the Creed of primitive Christianity; and, whatever
+might be the success, a Protestant reader will applaud the
+spirit, of the inquiry. But if the Scriptures of the Paulicians
+were pure, they were not perfect. Their founders rejected the two
+Epistles of St. Peter, ^4 the apostle of the circumcision, whose
+dispute with their favorite for the observance of the law could
+not easily be forgiven. ^5 They agreed with their Gnostic
+brethren in the universal contempt for the Old Testament, the
+books of Moses and the prophets, which have been consecrated by
+the decrees of the Catholic church. With equal boldness, and
+doubtless with more reason, Constantine, the new Sylvanus,
+disclaimed the visions, which, in so many bulky and splendid
+volumes, had been published by the Oriental sects; ^6 the
+fabulous productions of the Hebrew patriarchs and the sages of
+the East; the spurious gospels, epistles, and acts, which in the
+first age had overwhelmed the orthodox code; the theology of
+Manes, and the authors of the kindred heresies; and the thirty
+generations, or aeons, which had been created by the fruitful
+fancy of Valentine.  The Paulicians sincerely condemned the
+memory and opinions of the Manichaean sect, and complained of the
+injustice which impressed that invidious name on the simple
+votaries of St. Paul and of Christ.
+
+[Footnote 2: In the time of Theodoret, the diocese of Cyrrhus, in
+Syria, contained eight hundred villages.  Of these, two were
+inhabited by Arians and Eunomians, and eight by Marcionites, whom
+the laborious bishop reconciled to the Catholic church, (Dupin,
+Bibliot. Ecclesiastique, tom. iv. p. 81, 82.)]
+
+[Footnote 3: Nobis profanis ista (sacra Evangelia) legere non
+licet sed sacerdotibus duntaxat, was the first scruple of a
+Catholic when he was advised to read the Bible, (Petr. Sicul. p.
+761.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: In rejecting the second Epistle of St. Peter, the
+Paulicians are justified by some of the most respectable of the
+ancients and moderns, (see Wetstein ad loc., Simon, Hist.
+Critique du Nouveau Testament, c. 17.) They likewise overlooked
+the Apocalypse, (Petr. Sicul. p. 756;) but as such neglect is not
+imputed as a crime, the Greeks of the ixth century must have been
+careless of the credit and honor of the Revelations.]
+
+[Footnote 5: This contention, which has not escaped the malice of
+Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the
+apostles.  By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented
+as a sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles
+and the correction of the Jews, (Middleton's Works, vol. ii. p. 1
+- 20.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: Those who are curious of this heterodox library, may
+consult the researches of Beausobre, (Hist. Critique du
+Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 305 - 437.) Even in Africa, St. Austin
+could describe the Manichaean books, tam multi, tam grandes, tam
+pretiosi codices, (contra Faust. xiii. 14;) but he adds, without
+pity, Incendite omnes illas membranas: and his advice had been
+rigorously followed.]
+
+Of the ecclesiastical chain, many links had been broken by
+the Paulician reformers; and their liberty was enlarged, as they
+reduced the number of masters, at whose voice profane reason must
+bow to mystery and miracle.  The early separation of the Gnostics
+had preceded the establishment of the Catholic worship; and
+against the gradual innovations of discipline and doctrine they
+were as strongly guarded by habit and aversion, as by the silence
+of St. Paul and the evangelists.  The objects which had been
+transformed by the magic of superstition, appeared to the eyes of
+the Paulicians in their genuine and naked colors.  An image made
+without hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to
+whose skill alone the wood and canvas must be indebted for their
+merit or value.  The miraculous relics were a heap of bones and
+ashes, destitute of life or virtue, or of any relation, perhaps,
+with the person to whom they were ascribed.  The true and
+vivifying cross was a piece of sound or rotten timber, the body
+and blood of Christ, a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, the gifts
+of nature and the symbols of grace. The mother of God was
+degraded from her celestial honors and immaculate virginity; and
+the saints and angels were no longer solicited to exercise the
+laborious office of meditation in heaven, and ministry upon
+earth.  In the practice, or at least in the theory, of the
+sacraments, the Paulicians were inclined to abolish all visible
+objects of worship, and the words of the gospel were, in their
+judgment, the baptism and communion of the faithful. They
+indulged a convenient latitude for the interpretation of
+Scripture: and as often as they were pressed by the literal
+sense, they could escape to the intricate mazes of figure and
+allegory.  Their utmost diligence must have been employed to
+dissolve the connection between the Old and the New Testament;
+since they adored the latter as the oracles of God, and abhorred
+the former as the fabulous and absurd invention of men or
+daemons.  We cannot be surprised, that they should have found in
+the Gospel the orthodox mystery of the Trinity: but, instead of
+confessing the human nature and substantial sufferings of Christ,
+they amused their fancy with a celestial body that passed through
+the virgin like water through a pipe; with a fantastic
+crucifixion, that eluded the vain and important malice of the
+Jews.  A creed thus simple and spiritual was not adapted to the
+genius of the times; ^7 and the rational Christian, who might
+have been contented with the light yoke and easy burden of Jesus
+and his apostles, was justly offended, that the Paulicians should
+dare to violate the unity of God, the first article of natural
+and revealed religion.  Their belief and their trust was in the
+Father, of Christ, of the human soul, and of the invisible world.
+
+But they likewise held the eternity of matter; a stubborn and
+rebellious substance, the origin of a second principle of an
+active being, who has created this visible world, and exercises
+his temporal reign till the final consummation of death and sin.
+^8 The appearances of moral and physical evil had established the
+two principles in the ancient philosophy and religion of the
+East; from whence this doctrine was transfused to the various
+swarms of the Gnostics.  A thousand shades may be devised in the
+nature and character of Ahriman, from a rival god to a
+subordinate daemon, from passion and frailty to pure and perfect
+malevolence: but, in spite of our efforts, the goodness, and the
+power, of Ormusd are placed at the opposite extremities of the
+line; and every step that approaches the one must recede in equal
+proportion from the other. ^9
+
+[Footnote 7: The six capital errors of the Paulicians are defined
+by Peter (p. 756,) with much prejudice and passion.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Primum illorum axioma est, duo rerum esse principia;
+Deum malum et Deum bonum, aliumque hujus mundi conditorem et
+princi pem, et alium futuri aevi, (Petr. Sicul. 765.)]
+
+[Footnote 9: Two learned critics, Beausobre (Hist. Critique du
+Manicheisme, l. i. iv. v. vi.) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
+Eccles. and de Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum, sec. i. ii.
+iii.,) have labored to explore and discriminate the various
+systems of the Gnostics on the subject of the two principles.]
+
+The apostolic labors of Constantine Sylvanus soon multiplied
+the number of his disciples, the secret recompense of spiritual
+ambition.  The remnant of the Gnostic sects, and especially the
+Manichaeans of Armenia, were united under his standard; many
+Catholics were converted or seduced by his arguments; and he
+preached with success in the regions of Pontus ^10 and
+Cappadocia, which had long since imbibed the religion of
+Zoroaster. The Paulician teachers were distinguished only by
+their Scriptural names, by the modest title of Fellow-pilgrims,
+by the austerity of their lives, their zeal or knowledge, and the
+credit of some extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit.  But they
+were incapable of desiring, or at least of obtaining, the wealth
+and honors of the Catholic prelacy; such anti- Christian pride
+they bitterly censured; and even the rank of elders or presbyters
+was condemned as an institution of the Jewish synagogue.  The new
+sect was loosely spread over the provinces of Asia Minor to the
+westward of the Euphrates; six of their principal congregations
+represented the churches to which St. Paul had addressed his
+epistles; and their founder chose his residence in the
+neighborhood of Colonia, ^11 in the same district of Pontus which
+had been celebrated by the altars of Bellona ^12 and the miracles
+of Gregory. ^13 After a mission of twenty-seven years, Sylvanus,
+who had retired from the tolerating government of the Arabs, fell
+a sacrifice to Roman persecution.  The laws of the pious
+emperors, which seldom touched the lives of less odious heretics,
+proscribed without mercy or disguise the tenets, the books, and
+the persons of the Montanists and Manichaeans: the books were
+delivered to the flames; and all who should presume to secrete
+such writings, or to profess such opinions, were devoted to an
+ignominious death. ^14 A Greek minister, armed with legal and
+military powers, appeared at Colonia to strike the shepherd, and
+to reclaim, if possible, the lost sheep.  By a refinement of
+cruelty, Simeon placed the unfortunate Sylvanus before a line of
+his disciples, who were commanded, as the price of their pardon
+and the proof of their repentance, to massacre their spiritual
+father.  They turned aside from the impious office; the stones
+dropped from their filial hands, and of the whole number, only
+one executioner could be found, a new David, as he is styled by
+the Catholics, who boldly overthrew the giant of heresy.  This
+apostate (Justin was his name) again deceived and betrayed his
+unsuspecting brethren, and a new conformity to the acts of St.
+Paul may be found in the conversion of Simeon: like the apostle,
+he embraced the doctrine which he had been sent to persecute,
+renounced his honors and fortunes, and required among the
+Paulicians the fame of a missionary and a martyr.  They were not
+ambitious of martyrdom, ^15 but in a calamitous period of one
+hundred and fifty years, their patience sustained whatever zeal
+could inflict; and power was insufficient to eradicate the
+obstinate vegetation of fanaticism and reason.  From the blood
+and ashes of the first victims, a succession of teachers and
+congregations repeatedly arose: amidst their foreign hostilities,
+they found leisure for domestic quarrels: they preached, they
+disputed, they suffered; and the virtues, the apparent virtues,
+of Sergius, in a pilgrimage of thirty-three years, are
+reluctantly confessed by the orthodox historians. ^16 The native
+cruelty of Justinian the Second was stimulated by a pious cause;
+and he vainly hoped to extinguish, in a single conflagration, the
+name and memory of the Paulicians. By their primitive simplicity,
+their abhorrence of popular superstition, the Iconoclast princes
+might have been reconciled to some erroneous doctrines; but they
+themselves were exposed to the calumnies of the monks, and they
+chose to be the tyrants, lest they should be accused as the
+accomplices, of the Manichaeans.  Such a reproach has sullied the
+clemency of Nicephorus, who relaxed in their favor the severity
+of the penal statutes, nor will his character sustain the honor
+of a more liberal motive.  The feeble Michael the First, the
+rigid Leo the Armenian, were foremost in the race of persecution;
+but the prize must doubtless be adjudged to the sanguinary
+devotion of Theodora, who restored the images to the Oriental
+church.  Her inquisitors explored the cities and mountains of the
+Lesser Asia, and the flatterers of the empress have affirmed
+that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were
+extirpated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames.  Her guilt or
+merit has perhaps been stretched beyond the measure of truth: but
+if the account be allowed, it must be presumed that many simple
+Iconoclasts were punished under a more odious name; and that some
+who were driven from the church, unwillingly took refuge in the
+bosom of heresy.
+
+[Footnote 10: The countries between the Euphrates and the Halys
+were possessed above 350 years by the Medes (Herodot. l. i. c.
+103) and Persians; and the kings of Pontus were of the royal race
+of the Achaemenides, (Sallust. Fragment. l. iii. with the French
+supplement and notes of the president de Brosses.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: Most probably founded by Pompey after the conquest
+of Pontus. This Colonia, on the Lycus, above Neo-Caesarea, is
+named by the Turks Coulei-hisar, or Chonac, a populous town in a
+strong country, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 34.
+Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xxi. p. 293.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: The temple of Bellona, at Comana in Pontus was a
+powerful and wealthy foundation, and the high priest was
+respected as the second person in the kingdom.  As the sacerdotal
+office had been occupied by his mother's family, Strabo (l. xii.
+p. 809, 835, 836, 837) dwells with peculiar complacency on the
+temple, the worship, and festival, which was twice celebrated
+every year.  But the Bellona of Pontus had the features and
+character of the goddess, not of war, but of love.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Gregory, bishop of Neo-Caesarea, (A.D. 240 - 265,)
+surnamed Thaumaturgus, or the Wonder-worker.  An hundred years
+afterwards, the history or romance of his life was composed by
+Gregory of Nyssa, his namesake and countryman, the brother of the
+great St. Basil.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Hoc caeterum ad sua egregia facinora, divini atque
+orthodoxi Imperatores addiderunt, ut Manichaeos Montanosque
+capitali puniri sententia juberent, eorumque libros, quocunque in
+loco inventi essent, flammis tradi; quod siquis uspiam eosdem
+occultasse deprehenderetur, hunc eundem mortis poenae addici,
+ejusque bona in fiscum inferri, (Petr. Sicul. p. 759.) What more
+could bigotry and persecution desire?]
+
+[Footnote 15: It should seem, that the Paulicians allowed
+themselves some latitude of equivocation and mental reservation;
+till the Catholics discovered the pressing questions, which
+reduced them to the alternative of apostasy or martyrdom, (Petr.
+Sicul. p. 760.)]
+
+[Footnote 16: The persecution is told by Petrus Siculus (p. 579 -
+763) with satisfaction and pleasantry.  Justus justa persolvit.
+See likewise Cedrenus, (p. 432 - 435.)]
+
+The most furious and desperate of rebels are the sectaries
+of a religion long persecuted, and at length provoked.  In a holy
+cause they are no longer susceptible of fear or remorse: the
+justice of their arms hardens them against the feelings of
+humanity; and they revenge their fathers' wrongs on the children
+of their tyrants.  Such have been the Hussites of Bohemia and the
+Calvinists of France, and such, in the ninth century, were the
+Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces. ^17 They were
+first awakened to the massacre of a governor and bishop, who
+exercised the Imperial mandate of converting or destroying the
+heretics; and the deepest recesses of Mount Argaeus protected
+their independence and revenge.  A more dangerous and consuming
+flame was kindled by the persecution of Theodora, and the revolt
+of Carbeas, a valiant Paulician, who commanded the guards of the
+general of the East.  His father had been impaled by the Catholic
+inquisitors; and religion, or at least nature, might justify his
+desertion and revenge.  Five thousand of his brethren were united
+by the same motives; they renounced the allegiance of
+anti-Christian Rome; a Saracen emir introduced Carbeas to the
+caliph; and the commander of the faithful extended his sceptre to
+the implacable enemy of the Greeks.  In the mountains between
+Siwas and Trebizond he founded or fortified the city of Tephrice,
+^18 which is still occupied by a fierce or licentious people, and
+the neighboring hills were covered with the Paulician fugitives,
+who now reconciled the use of the Bible and the sword.  During
+more than thirty years, Asia was afflicted by the calamities of
+foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads, the disciples
+of St. Paul were joined with those of Mahomet; and the peaceful
+Christians, the aged parent and tender virgin, who were delivered
+into barbarous servitude, might justly accuse the intolerant
+spirit of their sovereign.  So urgent was the mischief, so
+intolerable the shame, that even the dissolute Michael, the son
+of Theodora, was compelled to march in person against the
+Paulicians: he was defeated under the walls of Samosata; and the
+Roman emperor fled before the heretics whom his mother had
+condemned to the flames.  The Saracens fought under the same
+banners, but the victory was ascribed to Carbeas; and the captive
+generals, with more than a hundred tribunes, were either released
+by his avarice, or tortured by his fanaticism.  The valor and
+ambition of Chrysocheir, ^19 his successor, embraced a wider
+circle of rapine and revenge.  In alliance with his faithful
+Moslems, he boldly penetrated into the heart of Asia; the troops
+of the frontier and the palace were repeatedly overthrown; the
+edicts of persecution were answered by the pillage of Nice and
+Nicomedia, of Ancyra and Ephesus; nor could the apostle St. John
+protect from violation his city and sepulchre.  The cathedral of
+Ephesus was turned into a stable for mules and horses; and the
+Paulicians vied with the Saracens in their contempt and
+abhorrence of images and relics.  It is not unpleasing to observe
+the triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which had
+disdained the prayers of an injured people.  The emperor Basil,
+the Macedonian, was reduced to sue for peace, to offer a ransom
+for the captives, and to request, in the language of moderation
+and charity, that Chrysocheir would spare his fellow-Christians,
+and content himself with a royal donative of gold and silver and
+silk garments.  "If the emperor," replied the insolent fanatic,
+"be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East, and reign
+without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants of
+the Lord will precipitate him from the throne." The reluctant
+Basil suspended the treaty, accepted the defiance, and led his
+army into the land of heresy, which he wasted with fire and
+sword.  The open country of the Paulicians was exposed to the
+same calamities which they had inflicted; but when he had
+explored the strength of Tephrice, the multitude of the
+Barbarians, and the ample magazines of arms and provisions, he
+desisted with a sigh from the hopeless siege.  On his return to
+Constantinople, he labored, by the foundation of convents and
+churches, to secure the aid of his celestial patrons, of Michael
+the archangel and the prophet Elijah; and it was his daily prayer
+that he might live to transpierce, with three arrows, the head of
+his impious adversary.  Beyond his expectations, the wish was
+accomplished: after a successful inroad, Chrysocheir was
+surprised and slain in his retreat; and the rebel's head was
+triumphantly presented at the foot of the throne.  On the
+reception of this welcome trophy, Basil instantly called for his
+bow, discharged three arrows with unerring aim, and accepted the
+applause of the court, who hailed the victory of the royal
+archer.  With Chrysocheir, the glory of the Paulicians faded and
+withered: ^20 on the second expedition of the emperor, the
+impregnable Tephrice, was deserted by the heretics, who sued for
+mercy or escaped to the borders.  The city was ruined, but the
+spirit of independence survived in the mountains: the Paulicians
+defended, above a century, their religion and liberty, infested
+the Roman limits, and maintained their perpetual alliance with
+the enemies of the empire and the gospel.
+
+[Footnote 17: Petrus Siculus, (p. 763, 764,) the continuator of
+Theophanes, (l. iv. c. 4, p. 103, 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 541, 542,
+545,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 156,) describe the revolt
+and exploits of Carbeas and his Paulicians.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Otter (Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, tom. ii.) is
+probably the only Frank who has visited the independent
+Barbarians of Tephrice now Divrigni, from whom he fortunately
+escaped in the train of a Turkish officer.]
+
+[Footnote 19: In the history of Chrysocheir, Genesius (Chron. p.
+67 - 70, edit. Venet.) has exposed the nakedness of the empire.
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 37 - 43, p. 166 -
+171) has displayed the glory of his grandfather.  Cedrenus (p.
+570 - 573) is without their passions or their knowledge.]
+
+[Footnote 20: How elegant is the Greek tongue, even in the mouth
+of Cedrenus!]
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.
+
+Part II.
+
+About the middle of the eight century, Constantine, surnamed
+Copronymus by the worshippers of images, had made an expedition
+into Armenia, and found, in the cities of Melitene and
+Theodosiopolis, a great number of Paulicians, his kindred
+heretics.  As a favor, or punishment, he transplanted them from
+the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and by
+this emigration their doctrine was introduced and diffused in
+Europe. ^21 If the sectaries of the metropolis were soon mingled
+with the promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep
+root in a foreign soil.  The Paulicians of Thrace resisted the
+storms of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with
+their Armenian brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their
+preachers, who solicited, not without success, the infant faith
+of the Bulgarians. ^22 In the tenth century, they were restored
+and multiplied by a more powerful colony, which John Zimisces ^23
+transported from the Chalybian hills to the valleys of Mount
+Haemus.  The Oriental clergy who would have preferred the
+destruction, impatiently sighed for the absence, of the
+Manichaeans: the warlike emperor had felt and esteemed their
+valor: their attachment to the Saracens was pregnant with
+mischief; but, on the side of the Danube, against the Barbarians
+of Scythia, their service might be useful, and their loss would
+be desirable. Their exile in a distant land was softened by a
+free toleration: the Paulicians held the city of Philippopolis
+and the keys of Thrace; the Catholics were their subjects; the
+Jacobite emigrants their associates: they occupied a line of
+villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; and many native
+Bulgarians were associated to the communion of arms and heresy.
+As long as they were awed by power and treated with moderation,
+their voluntary bands were distinguished in the armies of the
+empire; and the courage of these dogs, ever greedy of war, ever
+thirsty of human blood, is noticed with astonishment, and almost
+with reproach, by the pusillanimous Greeks.  The same spirit
+rendered them arrogant and contumacious: they were easily
+provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were often
+violated by the faithless bigotry of the government and clergy.
+In the midst of the Norman war, two thousand five hundred
+Manichaeans deserted the standard of Alexius Comnenus, ^24 and
+retired to their native homes.  He dissembled till the moment of
+revenge; invited the chiefs to a friendly conference; and
+punished the innocent and guilty by imprisonment, confiscation,
+and baptism.  In an interval of peace, the emperor undertook the
+pious office of reconciling them to the church and state: his
+winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis; and the thirteenth
+apostle, as he is styled by his pious daughter, consumed whole
+days and nights in theological controversy.  His arguments were
+fortified, their obstinacy was melted, by the honors and rewards
+which he bestowed on the most eminent proselytes; and a new city,
+surrounded with gardens, enriched with immunities, and dignified
+with his own name, was founded by Alexius for the residence of
+his vulgar converts.  The important station of Philippopolis was
+wrested from their hands; the contumacious leaders were secured
+in a dungeon, or banished from their country; and their lives
+were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of an
+emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt
+alive before the church of St. Sophia. ^25 But the proud hope of
+eradicating the prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned by
+the invincible zeal of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or
+refused to obey. After the departure and death of Alexius, they
+soon resumed their civil and religious laws.  In the beginning of
+the thirteenth century, their pope or primate (a manifest
+corruption) resided on the confines of Bulgaria, Croatia, and
+Dalmatia, and governed, by his vicars, the filial congregations
+of Italy and France. ^26 From that aera, a minute scrutiny might
+prolong and perpetuate the chain of tradition.  At the end of the
+last age, the sect or colony still inhabited the valleys of Mount
+Haemus, where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently
+tormented by the Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The
+modern Paulicians have lost all memory of their origin; and their
+religion is disgraced by the worship of the cross, and the
+practice of bloody sacrifice, which some captives have imported
+from the wilds of Tartary. ^27
+
+[Footnote 21: Copronymus transported his heretics; and thus says
+Cedrenus, (p. 463,) who has copied the annals of Theophanes.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Petrus Siculus, who resided nine months at Tephrice
+(A.D. 870) for the ransom of captives, (p. 764,) was informed of
+their intended mission, and addressed his preservative, the
+Historia Manichaeorum to the new archbishop of the Bulgarians,
+(p. 754.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: The colony of Paulicians and Jacobites transplanted
+by John Zimisces (A.D. 970) from Armenia to Thrace, is mentioned
+by Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 209) and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad,
+l. xiv. p. 450, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (l. v. p. 131, l. vi.
+p. 154, 155, l. xiv. p. 450 - 457, with the Annotations of
+Ducange) records the transactions of her apostolic father with
+the Manichaeans, whose abominable heresy she was desirous of
+refuting.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Basil, a monk, and the author of the Bogomiles, a
+sect of Gnostics, who soon vanished, (Anna Comnena, Alexiad, l.
+xv. p. 486 - 494 Mosheim, Hist. Ecclesiastica, p. 420.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: Matt. Paris, Hist. Major, p. 267.  This passage of
+our English historian is alleged by Ducange in an excellent note
+on Villehardouin (No. 208,) who found the Paulicians at
+Philippopolis the friends of the Bulgarians.]
+
+[Footnote 27: See Marsigli, Stato Militare dell' Imperio
+Ottomano, p. 24.]
+
+In the West, the first teachers of the Manichaean theology
+had been repulsed by the people, or suppressed by the prince.
+The favor and success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and
+twelfth centuries must be imputed to the strong, though secret,
+discontent which armed the most pious Christians against the
+church of Rome.  Her avarice was oppressive, her despotism
+odious; less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the worship of
+saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and
+scandalous: she had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine
+of transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more
+corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of
+the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who
+wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword.  Three
+different roads might introduce the Paulicians into the heart of
+Europe.  After the conversion of Hungary, the pilgrims who
+visited Jerusalem might safely follow the course of the Danube:
+in their journey and return they passed through Philippopolis;
+and the sectaries, disguising their name and heresy, might
+accompany the French or German caravans to their respective
+countries.  The trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast
+of the Adriatic, and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to
+foreigners of every climate and religion.  Under the Byzantine
+standard, the Paulicians were often transported to the Greek
+provinces of Italy and Sicily: in peace and war, they freely
+conversed with strangers and natives, and their opinions were
+silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the kingdoms beyond the
+Alps. ^28 It was soon discovered, that many thousand Catholics of
+every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichaean
+heresy; and the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans
+was the first act and signal of persecution.  The Bulgarians, ^29
+a name so innocent in its origin, so odious in its application,
+spread their branches over the face of Europe.  United in common
+hatred of idolatry and Rome, they were connected by a form of
+episcopal and presbyterian government; their various sects were
+discriminated by some fainter or darker shades of theology; but
+they generally agreed in the two principles, the contempt of the
+Old Testament and the denial of the body of Christ, either on the
+cross or in the eucharist.  A confession of simple worship and
+blameless manners is extorted from their enemies; and so high was
+their standard of perfection, that the increasing congregations
+were divided into two classes of disciples, of those who
+practised, and of those who aspired.  It was in the country of
+the Albigeois, ^30 in the southern provinces of France, that the
+Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes
+of martyrdom and revenge which had been displayed in the
+neighborhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth
+century on the banks of the Rhone.  The laws of the Eastern
+emperors were revived by Frederic the Second.  The insurgents of
+Tephrice were represented by the barons and cities of Languedoc:
+Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary fame of Theodora.  It
+was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the heroes of
+the Crusades, and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by
+the founders of the Inquisition; ^31 an office more adapted to
+confirm, than to refute, the belief of an evil principle.  The
+visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were
+extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by
+flight, concealment, or Catholic conformity. But the invincible
+spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the
+Western world.  In the state, in the church, and even in the
+cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of
+St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the
+Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the
+visions of the Gnostic theology. ^* The struggles of Wickliff in
+England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but
+the names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced with
+gratitude as the deliverers of nations.
+
+[Footnote 28: The introduction of the Paulicians into Italy and
+France is amply discussed by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii
+Aevi, tom. v. dissert. lx. p. 81 - 152) and Mosheim, (p. 379 -
+382, 419 - 422.) Yet both have overlooked a curious passage of
+William the Apulian, who clearly describes them in a battle
+between the Greeks and Normans, A.D. 1040, (in Muratori, Script.
+Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 256: )
+
+Cum Graecis aderant quidam, quos pessimus error
+
+Fecerat amentes, et ab ipso nomen habebant.]
+
+But he is so ignorant of their doctrine as to make them a kind of
+Sabellians or Patripassians.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Bulgari, Boulgres, Bougres, a national appellation,
+has been applied by the French as a term of reproach to usurers
+and unnatural sinners. The Paterini, or Patelini, has been made
+to signify a smooth and flattering hypocrite, such as l'Avocat
+Patelin of that original and pleasant farce, (Ducange, Gloss.
+Latinitat. Medii et Infimi Aevi.) The Manichaeans were likewise
+named Cathari or the pure, by corruption. Gazari, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Of the laws, crusade, and persecution against the
+Albigeois, a just, though general, idea is expressed by Mosheim,
+(p. 477 - 481.) The detail may be found in the ecclesiastical
+historians, ancient and modern, Catholics and Protestants; and
+amongst these Fleury is the most impartial and moderate.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The Acts (Liber Sententiarum) of the Inquisition of
+Tholouse (A.D. 1307 - 1323) have been published by Limborch,
+(Amstelodami, 1692,) with a previous History of the Inquisition
+in general.  They deserved a more learned and critical editor.
+As we must not calumniate even Satan, or the Holy Office, I will
+observe, that of a list of criminals which fills nineteen folio
+pages, only fifteen men and four women were delivered to the
+secular arm.]
+
+[Footnote *: The popularity of "Milner's History of the Church"
+with some readers, may make it proper to observe, that his
+attempt to exculpate the Paulicians from the charge of Gnosticism
+or Manicheism is in direct defiance, if not in ignorance, of all
+the original authorities.  Gibbon himself, it appears, was not
+acquainted with the work of Photius, "Contra Manicheos
+Repullulantes," the first book of which was edited by Montfaucon,
+Bibliotheca Coisliniana, pars ii. p. 349, 375, the whole by Wolf,
+in his Anecdota Graeca. Hamburg 1722.  Compare a very sensible
+tract.  Letter to Rev. S. R. Maitland, by J G. Dowling, M. A.
+London, 1835. - M.]
+
+A philosopher, who calculates the degree of their merit and
+the value of their reformation, will prudently ask from what
+articles of faith, above or against our reason, they have
+enfranchised the Christians; for such enfranchisement is
+doubtless a benefit so far as it may be compatible with truth and
+piety.  After a fair discussion, we shall rather be surprised by
+the timidity, than scandalized by the freedom, of our first
+reformers. ^32 With the Jews, they adopted the belief and defence
+of all the Hebrew Scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the
+garden of Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they
+were bound, like the Catholics, to justify against the Jews the
+abolition of a divine law.  In the great mysteries of the Trinity
+and Incarnation the reformers were severely orthodox: they freely
+adopted the theology of the four, or the six first councils; and
+with the Athanasian creed, they pronounced the eternal damnation
+of all who did not believe the Catholic faith.
+Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine
+into the body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the
+power of argument and pleasantry; but instead of consulting the
+evidence of their senses, of their sight, their feeling, and
+their taste, the first Protestants were entangled in their own
+scruples, and awed by the words of Jesus in the institution of
+the sacrament.  Luther maintained a corporeal, and Calvin a real,
+presence of Christ in the eucharist; and the opinion of
+Zuinglius, that it is no more than a spiritual communion, a
+simple memorial, has slowly prevailed in the reformed churches.
+^33 But the loss of one mystery was amply compensated by the
+stupendous doctrines of original sin, redemption, faith, grace,
+and predestination, which have been strained from the epistles of
+St. Paul.  These subtile questions had most assuredly been
+prepared by the fathers and schoolmen; but the final improvement
+and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers, who
+enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation.
+Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the
+Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a
+wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
+
+[Footnote 32: The opinions and proceedings of the reformers are
+exposed in the second part of the general history of Mosheim; but
+the balance, which he has held with so clear an eye, and so
+steady a hand, begins to incline in favor of his Lutheran
+brethren.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Under Edward VI. our reformation was more bold and
+perfect, but in the fundamental articles of the church of
+England, a strong and explicit declaration against the real
+presence was obliterated in the original copy, to please the
+people or the Lutherans, or Queen Elizabeth, (Burnet's History of
+the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 82, 128, 302.)]
+
+Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and
+important; and the philosopher must own his obligations to these
+fearless enthusiasts. ^34 I. By their hands the lofty fabric of
+superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the intercesson of
+the Virgin, has been levelled with the ground.  Myriads of both
+sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and
+labors of social life.  A hierarchy of saints and angels, of
+imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their
+temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial
+happiness; their images and relics were banished from the church;
+and the credulity of the people was no longer nourished with the
+daily repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of
+Paganism was supplied by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer
+and thanksgiving, the most worthy of man, the least unworthy of
+the Deity.  It only remains to observe, whether such sublime
+simplicity be consistent with popular devotion; whether the
+vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not be
+inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in languor and
+indifference.  II.  The chain of authority was broken, which
+restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave
+from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils,
+were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world;
+and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the
+Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience.  This freedom,
+however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the
+Reformation.  The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding
+the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal
+rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of
+the magistrate to punish heretics with death.  The pious or
+personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus ^35 the guilt
+of his own rebellion; ^36 and the flames of Smithfield, in which
+he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists
+by the zeal of Cranmer. ^37 The nature of the tiger wa s the
+same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A
+spiritual and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman
+pontiff; the Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank,
+without revenue or jurisdiction.  His decrees were consecrated by
+the antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments and
+disputes were submitted to the people; and their appeal to
+private judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity
+and enthusiasm.  Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret
+reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the
+reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and
+the disciples of Erasmus ^38 diffused a spirit of freedom and
+moderation.  The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a
+common benefit, an inalienable right: ^39 the free governments of
+Holland ^40 and England ^41 introduced the practice of
+toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws has been
+enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times.  In the
+exercise, the mind has understood the limits of its powers, and
+the words and shadows that might amuse the child can no longer
+satisfy his manly reason.  The volumes of controversy are
+overspread with cobwebs: the doctrine of a Protestant church is
+far removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members;
+and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed
+with a sigh, or a smile, by the modern clergy.  Yet the friends
+of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry
+and scepticism. The predictions of the Catholics are
+accomplished: the web of mystery is unravelled by the Arminians,
+Arians, and Socinians, whose number must not be computed from
+their separate congregations; and the pillars of Revelation are
+shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance
+of religion, who indulge the license without the temper of
+philosophy. ^42 ^*
+
+[Footnote 34: "Had it not been for such men as Luther and
+myself," said the fanatic Whiston to Halley the philosopher, "you
+would now be kneeling before an image of St. Winifred."]
+
+[Footnote 35: The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique
+of Chauffepie is the best account which I have seen of this
+shameful transaction.  See likewise the Abbe d'Artigny, Nouveaux
+Memoires d'Histoire, &c., tom. ii. p. 55 - 154.]
+
+[Footnote 36: I am more deeply scandalized at the single
+execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in
+the Auto de Fes of Spain and Portugal.  1. The zeal of Calvin
+seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps
+envy.  He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the
+judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred
+trust of a private correspondence.  2. The deed of cruelty was
+not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state.
+In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger,
+who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes.  3. A
+Catholic inquisition yields the same obedience which he requires,
+but Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done
+by; a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in
+Nicocle, tom. i. p. 93, edit. Battie) four hundred years before
+the publication of the Gospel.
+
+Note: Gibbon has not accurately rendered the sense of this
+passage, which does not contain the maxim of charity Do unto
+others as you would they should do unto you, but simply the maxim
+of justice, Do not to others the which would offend you if they
+should do it to you. - G.]
+
+[Footnote 37: See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84 - 86.  The sense and
+humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the
+primate.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational
+theology. After a slumber of a hundred years, it was revived by
+the Arminians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc; in
+England by Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of Cambridge,
+(Burnet, Hist. of Own Times, vol. i. p. 261 - 268, octavo
+edition.) Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 39: I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of
+the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly
+defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and
+philosophers.]
+
+[Footnote 40: See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on
+the Religion of the United Provinces.  I am not satisfied with
+Grotius, (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. l. i. p. 13, 14, edit. in
+12mo.,) who approves the Imperial laws of persecution, and only
+condemns the bloody tribunal of the inquisition.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p.
+53, 54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the
+Revolution.  The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the
+Trinity, would still have a tolerable scope for persecution if
+the national spirit were not more effectual than a hundred
+statutes.]
+
+[Footnote 42: I shall recommend to public animadversion two
+passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of
+his opinions.  At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of
+Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276) the priest, at the second
+(vol. ii. p. 484) the magistrate, may tremble!]
+
+[Footnote *: There is something ludicrous, if it were not
+offensive, in Gibbon holding up to "public animadversion" the
+opinions of any believer in Christianity, however imperfect his
+creed.  The observations which the whole of this passage on the
+effects of the reformation, in which much truth and justice is
+mingled with much prejudice, would suggest, could not possibly be
+compressed into a note; and would indeed embrace the whole
+religious and irreligious history of the time which has elapsed
+since Gibbon wrote. - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.
+
+Part I.
+
+The Bulgarians. - Origin, Migrations, And Settlement Of The
+Hungarians. - Their Inroads In The East And West. - The Monarchy
+Of Russia. - Geography And Trade. - Wars Of The Russians Against
+The Greek Empire. - Conversion Of The Barbarians.
+
+Under the reign of Constantine the grandson of Heraclius,
+the ancient barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often
+restored, was irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of
+Barbarians.  Their progress was favored by the caliphs, their
+unknown and accidental auxiliaries: the Roman legions were
+occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa,
+the Caesars were twice reduced to the danger and disgrace of
+defending their capital against the Saracens.  If, in the account
+of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and
+original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will
+hide my transgression, or solicit my excuse.  In the East, in the
+West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and
+in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity:
+the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be
+imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold
+the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world.  But the
+same labor would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages,
+who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from
+the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual
+emigration. ^1 Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful,
+their actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valor
+brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was
+neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty
+of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly
+attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared
+without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the
+despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan
+under the dominion of a foreign tyrant.  From the antiquities of,
+I.  Bulgarians, II.  Hungarians, and, III.  Russians, I shall
+content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be
+remembered.  The conquests of the, IV.  Normans, and the monarchy
+of the, V.  Turks, will naturally terminate in the memorable
+Crusades to the Holy Land, and the double fall of the city and
+empire of Constantine.
+
+[Footnote 1: All the passages of the Byzantine history which
+relate to the Barbarians are compiled, methodized, and
+transcribed, in a Latin version, by the laborious John Gotthelf
+Stritter, in his "Memoriae Populorum, ad Danubium, Pontum
+Euxinum, Paludem Maeotidem, Caucasum, Mare Caspium, et inde Magis
+ad Septemtriones incolentium." Petropoli, 1771 - 1779; in four
+tomes, or six volumes, in 4to.  But the fashion has not enhanced
+the price of these raw materials.]
+
+I.  In his march to Italy, Theodoric ^2 the Ostrogoth had
+trampled on the arms of the Bulgarians.  After this defeat, the
+name and the nation are lost during a century and a half; and it
+may be suspected that the same or a similar appellation was
+revived by strange colonies from the Borysthenes, the Tanais, or
+the Volga.  A king of the ancient Bulgaria, bequeathed to his
+five sons a last lesson of moderation and concord.  It was
+received as youth has ever received the counsels of age and
+experience: the five princes buried their father; divided his
+subjects and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each
+other; and wandered in quest of fortune till we find the most
+adventurous in the heart of Italy, under the protection of the
+exarch of Ravenna. ^4 But the stream of emigration was directed
+or impelled towards the capital.  The modern Bulgaria, along the
+southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with the name and image
+which it has retained to the present hour: the new conquerors
+successively acquired, by war or treaty, the Roman provinces of
+Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epirus; ^5 the ecclesiastical
+supremacy was translated from the native city of Justinian; and,
+in their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or
+Achrida, was honored with the throne of a king and a patriarch.
+^6 The unquestionable evidence of language attests the descent of
+the Bulgarians from the original stock of the Sclavonian, or more
+properly Slavonian, race; ^7 and the kindred bands of Servians,
+Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Walachians, ^8 &c., followed
+either the standard or the example of the leading tribe.  From
+the Euxine to the Adriatic, in the state of captives, or
+subjects, or allies, or enemies, of the Greek empire, they
+overspread the land; and the national appellation of the slaves
+^9 has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification
+of glory to that of servitude. ^10 Among these colonies, the
+Chrobatians, ^11 or Croats, who now attend the motions of an
+Austrian army, are the descendants of a mighty people, the
+conquerors and sovereigns of Dalmatia.  The maritime cities, and
+of these the infant republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and
+instructions of the Byzantine court: they were advised by the
+magnanimous Basil to reserve a small acknowledgment of their
+fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease, by an annual
+tribute, the wrath of these irresistible Barbarians. The kingdom
+of Crotia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords; and
+their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and one
+hundred thousand foot.  A long sea-coast, indented with capacious
+harbors, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of
+the Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to
+the practice of navigation.  The boats or brigantines of the
+Croats were constructed after the fashion of the old Liburnians:
+one hundred and eighty vessels may excite the idea of a
+respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at the allowance of
+ten, or twenty, or forty, men for each of these ships of war.
+They were gradually converted to the more honorable service of
+commerce; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and
+dangerous; and it was not before the close of the tenth century
+that the freedom and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually
+vindicated by the Venetian republic. ^12 The ancestors of these
+Dalmatian kings were equally removed from the use and abuse of
+navigation: they dwelt in the White Croatia, in the inland
+regions of Silesia and Little Poland, thirty days' journey,
+according to the Greek computation, from the sea of darkness.
+
+[Footnote 2: Hist. vol. iv. p. 11.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Theophanes, p. 296 - 299. Anastasius, p. 113.
+Nicephorus, C. P. p. 22, 23.  Theophanes places the old Bulgaria
+on the banks of the Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of
+all geographical credit by discharging that river into the Euxine
+Sea.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Paul. Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 29, p.
+881, 882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian
+and the above- mentioned Greeks, is easily reconciled by Camillo
+Pellegrino (de Ducatu Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the
+Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 186, 187) and Beretti,
+(Chorograph. Italiae Medii Aevi, p. 273, &c.  This Bulgarian
+colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned
+the Latin, without forgetting their native language.]
+
+[Footnote 5: These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are
+assigned to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs of Rome and
+Constantinople, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 869, No. 75.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida,
+are clearly expressed in Cedrenus, (p. 713.) The removal of an
+archbishop or patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnidus, and
+at length to Ternovo, has produced some perplexity in the ideas
+or language of the Greeks, (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. ii. c. 2, p.
+14, 15.  Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. l. i. c. 19,
+23;) and a Frenchman (D'Anville) is more accurately skilled in
+the geography of their own country, (Hist. de l'Academie des
+Inscriptions, tom. xxxi.)]
+
+[Footnote 7: Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the
+identity of the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians,
+Bulgarians, Poles, (de Rebus Turcicis, l. x. p. 283,) and
+elsewhere of the Bohemians, (l. ii. p. 38.) The same author has
+marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians.
+
+Note: The Slavonian languages are no doubt Indo-European,
+though an original branch of that great family, comprehending the
+various dialects named by Gibbon and others.  Shafarik, t. 33. -
+M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 8: See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de
+Originibus Sclavicis, Vindobonae, 1745, in four parts, or two
+volumes in folio.  His collections and researches are useful to
+elucidate the antiquities of Bohemia and the adjacent countries;
+but his plan is narrow, his style barbarous, his criticism
+shallow, and the Aulic counsellor is not free from the prejudices
+of a Bohemian.
+
+Note: We have at length a profound and satisfactory work on
+the Slavonian races.  Shafarik, Slawische Alterthumer.  B. 2,
+Leipzig, 1843. - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable
+derivation from Slava, laus, gloria, a word of familiar use in
+the different dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the
+termination of the most illustrious names, (de Originibus
+Sclavicis, pars. i. p. 40, pars. iv. p. 101, 102)]
+
+[Footnote 10: This conversion of a national into an appellative
+name appears to have arisen in the viiith century, in the
+Oriental France, where the princes and bishops were rich in
+Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian, (exclaims Jordan,) but
+of Sorabian race.  From thence the word was extended to the
+general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style of
+the last Byzantines, (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries and
+Ducange.) The confusion of the Servians with the Latin Servi, was
+still more fortunate and familiar, (Constant. Porphyr. de
+Administrando, Imperio, c. 32, p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most
+accurate for his own times, most fabulous for preceding ages,
+describes the Sclavonians of Dalmatia, (c. 29 - 36.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: See the anonymous Chronicle of the xith century,
+ascribed to John Sagorninus, (p. 94 - 102,) and that composed in
+the xivth by the Doge Andrew Dandolo, (Script. Rerum. Ital. tom.
+xii. p. 227 - 230,) the two oldest monuments of the history of
+Venice.]
+
+The glory of the Bulgarians ^13 was confined to a narrow
+scope both of time and place.  In the ninth and tenth centuries,
+they reigned to the south of the Danube; but the more powerful
+nations that had followed their emigration repelled all return to
+the north and all progress to the west. Yet in the obscure
+catalogue of their exploits, they might boast an honor which had
+hitherto been appropriated to the Goths: that of slaying in
+battle one of the successors of Augustus and Constantine.  The
+emperor Nicephorus had lost his fame in the Arabian, he lost his
+life in the Sclavonian, war.  In his first operations he advanced
+with boldness and success into the centre of Bulgaria, and burnt
+the royal court, which was probably no more than an edifice and
+village of timber.  But while he searched the spoil and refused
+all offers of treaty, his enemies collected their spirits and
+their forces: the passes of retreat were insuperably barred; and
+the trembling Nicephorus was heard to exclaim, "Alas, alas!
+unless we could assume the wings of birds, we cannot hope to
+escape." Two days he waited his fate in the inactivity of
+despair; but, on the morning of the third, the Bulgarians
+surprised the camp, and the Roman prince, with the great officers
+of the empire, were slaughtered in their tents.  The body of
+Valens had been saved from insult; but the head of Nicephorus was
+exposed on a spear, and his skull, enchased with gold, was often
+replenished in the feasts of victory.  The Greeks bewailed the
+dishonor of the throne; but they acknowledged the just punishment
+of avarice and cruelty.  This savage cup was deeply tinctured
+with the manners of the Scythian wilderness; but they were
+softened before the end of the same century by a peaceful
+intercourse with the Greeks, the possession of a cultivated
+region, and the introduction of the Christian worship.  The
+nobles of Bulgaria were educated in the schools and palace of
+Constantinople; and Simeon, ^14 a youth of the royal line, was
+instructed in the rhetoric of Demosthenes and the logic of
+Aristotle.  He relinquished the profession of a monk for that of
+a king and warrior; and in his reign of more than forty years,
+Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth.
+The Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked, derived a faint
+consolation from indulging themselves in the reproaches of
+perfidy and sacrilege.  They purchased the aid of the Pagan
+Turks; but Simeon, in a second battle, redeemed the loss of the
+first, at a time when it was esteemed a victory to elude the arms
+of that formidable nation.  The Servians were overthrown, made
+captive and dispersed; and those who visited the country before
+their restoration could discover no more than fifty vagrants,
+without women or children, who extorted a precarious subsistence
+from the chase.  On classic ground, on the banks of Achelous, the
+greeks were defeated; their horn was broken by the strength of
+the Barbaric Hercules. ^15 He formed the siege of Constantinople;
+and, in a personal conference with the emperor, Simeon imposed
+the conditions of peace.  They met with the most jealous
+precautions: the royal gallery was drawn close to an artificial
+and well-fortified platform; and the majesty of the purple was
+emulated by the pomp of the Bulgarian.  "Are you a Christian?"
+said the humble Romanus: "it is your duty to abstain from the
+blood of your fellow- Christians.  Has the thirst of riches
+seduced you from the blessings of peace? Sheathe your sword, open
+your hand, and I will satiate the utmost measure of your
+desires." The reconciliation was sealed by a domestic alliance;
+the freedom of trade was granted or restored; the first honors of
+the court were secured to the friends of Bulgaria, above the
+ambassadors of enemies or strangers; ^16 and her princes were
+dignified with the high and invidious title of Basileus, or
+emperor.  But this friendship was soon disturbed: after the death
+of Simeon, the nations were again in arms; his feeble successors
+were divided and extinguished; and, in the beginning of the
+eleventh century, the second Basil, who was born in the purple,
+deserved the appellation of conqueror of the Bulgarians.  His
+avarice was in some measure gratified by a treasure of four
+hundred thousand pounds sterling, (ten thousand pounds' weight of
+gold,) which he found in the palace of Lychnidus.  His cruelty
+inflicted a cool and exquisite vengeance on fifteen thousand
+captives who had been guilty of the defence of their country.
+They were deprived of sight; but to one of each hundred a single
+eye was left, that he might conduct his blind century to the
+presence of their king.  Their king is said to have expired of
+grief and horror; the nation was awed by this terrible example;
+the Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and
+circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs
+bequeathed to their children the advice of patience and the duty
+of revenge.
+
+[Footnote 13: The first kingdom of the Bulgarians may be found,
+under the proper dates, in the Annals of Cedrenus and Zonaras.
+The Byzantine materials are collected by Stritter, (Memoriae
+Populorum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 441 - 647;) and the series of
+their kings is disposed and settled by Ducange, (Fam. Byzant. p.
+305 - 318.)
+
+[Footnote 14: Simeonem semi-Graecum esse aiebant, eo quod a
+pueritia Byzantii Demosthenis rhetoricam et Aristotelis
+syllogismos didicerat, (Liutprand, l. iii. c. 8.) He says in
+another place, Simeon, fortis bella tor, Bulgariae praeerat;
+Christianus, sed vicinis Graecis valde inimicus, (l. i. c. 2.)]
+
+[Footnote 15: -     Rigidum fera dextera cornu
+               Dum tenet, infregit, truncaque a fronte revellit.
+Ovid (Metamorph. ix. 1 - 100) has boldly painted the combat of
+the river god and the hero; the native and the stranger.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The ambassador of Otho was provoked by the Greek
+excuses, cum Christophori filiam Petrus Bulgarorum Vasileus
+conjugem duceret, Symphona, id est consonantia scripto juramento
+firmata sunt, ut omnium gentium Apostolis, id est nunciis, penes
+nos Bulgarorum Apostoli praeponantur, honorentur, diligantur,
+(Liutprand in Legatione, p. 482.) See the Ceremoniale of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus, tom. i. p. 82, tom. ii. p. 429, 430,
+434, 435, 443, 444, 446, 447, with the annotations of Reiske.]
+
+II.  When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over
+Europe, above nine hundred years after the Christian aera, they
+were mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of
+the Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the
+world. ^17 Since the introduction of letters, they have explored
+their own antiquities with a strong and laudable impulse of
+patriotic curiosity. ^18 Their rational criticism can no longer
+be amused with a vain pedigree of Attila and the Huns; but they
+complain that their primitive records have perished in the Tartar
+war; that the truth or fiction of their rustic songs is long
+since forgotten; and that the fragments of a rude chronicle ^19
+must be painfully reconciled with the contemporary though foreign
+intelligence of the imperial geographer. ^20 Magiar is the
+national and oriental denomination of the Hungarians; but, among
+the tribes of Scythia, they are distinguished by the Greeks under
+the proper and peculiar name of Turks, as the descendants of that
+mighty people who had conquered and reigned from China to the
+Volga.  The Pannonian colony preserved a correspondence of trade
+and amity with the eastern Turks on the confines of Persia and
+after a separation of three hundred and fifty years, the
+missionaries of the king of Hungary discovered and visited their
+ancient country near the banks of the Volga.  They were
+hospitably entertained by a people of Pagans and Savages who
+still bore the name of Hungarians; conversed in their native
+tongue, recollected a tradition of their long-lost brethren, and
+listened with amazement to the marvellous tale of their new
+kingdom and religion.  The zeal of conversion was animated by the
+interest of consanguinity; and one of the greatest of their
+princes had formed the generous, though fruitless, design of
+replenishing the solitude of Pannonia by this domestic colony
+from the heart of Tartary. ^21 From this primitive country they
+were driven to the West by the tide of war and emigration, by the
+weight of the more distant tribes, who at the same time were
+fugitives and conquerors. ^* Reason or fortune directed their
+course towards the frontiers of the Roman empire: they halted in
+the usual stations along the banks of the great rivers; and in
+the territories of Moscow, Kiow, and Moldavia, some vestiges have
+been discovered of their temporary residence.  In this long and
+various peregrination, they could not always escape the dominion
+of the stronger; and the purity of their blood was improved or
+sullied by the mixture of a foreign race: from a motive of
+compulsion, or choice, several tribes of the Chazars were
+associated to the standard of their ancient vassals; introduced
+the use of a second language; and obtained by their superior
+renown the most honorable place in the front of battle.  The
+military force of the Turks and their allies marched in seven
+equal and artificial divisions; each division was formed of
+thirty thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven warriors, and the
+proportion of women, children, and servants, supposes and
+requires at least a million of emigrants.  Their public counsels
+were directed by seven vayvods, or hereditary chiefs; but the
+experience of discord and weakness recommended the more simple
+and vigorous administration of a single person. The sceptre,
+which had been declined by the modest Lebedias, was granted to
+the birth or merit of Almus and his son Arpad, and the authority
+of the supreme khan of the Chazars confirmed the engagement of
+the prince and people; of the people to obey his commands, of the
+prince to consult their happiness and glory.
+
+[Footnote 17: A bishop of Wurtzburgh submitted his opinion to a
+reverend abbot; but he more gravely decided, that Gog and Magog
+were the spiritual persecutors of the church; since Gog signifies
+the root, the pride of the Heresiarchs, and Magog what comes from
+the root, the propagation of their sects.  Yet these men once
+commanded the respect of mankind, (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xi.
+p. 594, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 18: The two national authors, from whom I have derived
+the mos assistance, are George Pray (Dissertationes and Annales
+veterum Hun garorum, &c., Vindobonae, 1775, in folio) and Stephen
+Katona, (Hist. Critica Ducum et Regum Hungariae Stirpis
+Arpadianae, Paestini, 1778 - 1781, 5 vols. in octavo.) The first
+embraces a large and often conjectural space; the latter, by his
+learning, judgment, and perspicuity, deserves the name of a
+critical historian.
+
+Note: Compare Engel Geschichte des Ungrischen Reichs und
+seiner Neben lander, Halle, 1797, and Mailath, Geschichte der
+Magyaren, Wien, 1828.  In an appendix to the latter work will be
+found a brief abstract of the speculations (for it is difficult
+to consider them more) which have been advanced by the learned,
+on the origin of the Magyar and Hungarian names. Compare vol. vi.
+p. 35, note. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The author of this Chronicle is styled the notary
+of King Bela. Katona has assigned him to the xiith century, and
+defends his character against the hypercriticism of Pray.  This
+rude annalist must have transcribed some historical records,
+since he could affirm with dignity, rejectis falsis fabulis
+rusticorum, et garrulo cantu joculatorum.  In the xvth century,
+these fables were collected by Thurotzius, and embellished by the
+Italian Bonfinius. See the Preliminary Discourse in the Hist.
+Critica Ducum, p. 7 - 33.]
+
+[Footnote 20: See Constantine de Administrando Imperio, c. 3, 4,
+13, 38 - 42, Katona has nicely fixed the composition of this work
+to the years 949, 950, 951, (p. 4 - 7.) The critical historian
+(p. 34 - 107) endeavors to prove the existence, and to relate the
+actions, of a first duke Almus the father of Arpad, who is
+tacitly rejected by Constantine.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Pray (Dissert. p. 37 - 39, &c.) produces and
+illustrates the original passages of the Hungarian missionaries,
+Bonfinius and Aeneas Sylvius.]
+
+[Footnote *: In the deserts to the south-east of Astrakhan have
+been found the ruins of a city named Madchar, which proves the
+residence of the Hungarians or Magiar in those regions.  Precis
+de la Geog. Univ. par Malte Brun, vol. i. p. 353. - G.
+
+This is contested by Klaproth in his Travels, c. xxi.
+Madschar, (he states) in old Tartar, means "stone building." This
+was a Tartar city mentioned by the Mahometan writers. - M.]
+
+With this narrative we might be reasonably content, if the
+penetration of modern learning had not opened a new and larger
+prospect of the antiquities of nations.  The Hungarian language
+stands alone, and as it were insulated, among the Sclavonian
+dialects; but it bears a close and clear affinity to the idioms
+of the Fennic race, ^22 of an obsolete and savage race, which
+formerly occupied the northern regions of Asia and Europe. ^* The
+genuine appellation of Ugri or Igours is found on the western
+confines of China; ^23 their migration to the banks of the Irtish
+is attested by Tartar evidence; ^24 a similar name and language
+are detected in the southern parts of Siberia; ^25 and the
+remains of the Fennic tribes are widely, though thinly scattered
+from the sources of the Oby to the shores of Lapland. ^26 The
+consanguinity of the Hungarians and Laplanders would display the
+powerful energy of climate on the children of a common parent;
+the lively contrast between the bold adventurers who are
+intoxicated with the wines of the Danube, and the wretched
+fugitives who are immersed beneath the snows of the polar circle.
+
+Arms and freedom have ever been the ruling, though too often the
+unsuccessful, passion of the Hungarians, who are endowed by
+nature with a vigorous constitution of soul and body. ^27 Extreme
+cold has diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of
+the Laplanders; and the arctic tribes, alone among the sons of
+men, are ignorant of war, and unconscious of human blood; a happy
+ignorance, if reason and virtue were the guardians of their
+peace! ^28
+
+[Footnote 22: Fischer in the Quaestiones Petropolitanae, de
+Origine Ungrorum, and Pray, Dissertat. i. ii. iii. &c., have
+drawn up several comparative tables of the Hungarian with the
+Fennic dialects.  The affinity is indeed striking, but the lists
+are short; the words are purposely chosen; and I read in the
+learned Bayer, (Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. x. p. 374,) that
+although the Hungarian has adopted many Fennic words, (innumeras
+voces,) it essentially differs toto genio et natura.]
+
+[Footnote *: The connection between the Magyar language and that
+of the Finns is now almost generally admitted.  Klaproth, Asia
+Polyglotta, p. 188, &c. Malte Bran, tom. vi. p. 723, &c. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 23: In the religion of Turfan, which is clearly and
+minutely described by the Chinese Geographers, (Gaubil, Hist. du
+Grand Gengiscan, 13; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 31,
+&c.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: Hist. Genealogique des Tartars, par Abulghazi
+Bahadur Khan partie ii. p. 90 - 98.]
+
+[Footnote 25: In their journey to Pekin, both Isbrand Ives
+(Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. ii. p. 920,
+921) and Bell (Travels, vol. i p. 174) found the Vogulitz in the
+neighborhood of Tobolsky.  By the tortures of the etymological
+art, Ugur and Vogul are reduced to the same name; the
+circumjacent mountains really bear the appellation of Ugrian; and
+of all the Fennic dialects, the Vogulian is the nearest to the
+Hungarian, (Fischer, Dissert. i. p. 20 - 30.  Pray. Dissert. ii.
+p. 31 - 34.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: The eight tribes of the Fennic race are described
+in the curious work of M. Leveque, (Hist. des Peuples soumis a la
+Domination de la Russie, tom. ii. p. 361 - 561.)]
+
+[Footnote 27: This picture of the Hungarians and Bulgarians is
+chiefly drawn from the Tactics of Leo, p. 796 - 801, and the
+Latin Annals, which are alleged by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori,
+A.D. 889, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 6, in 12mo.
+Gustavus Adolphus attempted, without success, to form a regiment
+of Laplanders. Grotius says of these arctic tribes, arma arcus et
+pharetra, sed adversus feras, (Annal. l. iv. p. 236;) and
+attempts, after the manner of Tacitus, to varnish with philosophy
+their brutal ignorance.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.
+
+Part II.
+
+It is the observation of the Imperial author of the Tactics,
+^29 that all the Scythian hordes resembled each other in their
+pastoral and military life, that they all practised the same
+means of subsistence, and employed the same instruments of
+destruction.  But he adds, that the two nations of Bulgarians and
+Hungarians were superior to their brethren, and similar to each
+other in the improvements, however rude, of their discipline and
+government: their visible likeness determines Leo to confound his
+friends and enemies in one common description; and the picture
+may be heightened by some strokes from their contemporaries of
+the tenth century.  Except the merit and fame of military
+prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and
+contemptible to these Barbarians, whose native fierceness was
+stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and freedom.  The
+tents of the Hungarians were of leather, their garments of fur;
+they shaved their hair, and scarified their faces: in speech they
+were slow, in action prompt, in treaty perfidious; and they
+shared the common reproach of Barbarians, too ignorant to
+conceive the importance of truth, too proud to deny or palliate
+the breach of their most solemn engagements.  Their simplicity
+has been praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they
+had never known; whatever they saw they coveted; their desires
+were insatiate, and their sole industry was the hand of violence
+and rapine.  By the definition of a pastoral nation, I have
+recalled a long description of the economy, the warfare, and the
+government that prevail in that state of society; I may add, that
+to fishing, as well as to the chase, the Hungarians were indebted
+for a part of their subsistence; and since they seldom cultivated
+the ground, they must, at least in their new settlements, have
+sometimes practised a slight and unskilful husbandry.  In their
+emigrations, perhaps in their expeditions, the host was
+accompanied by thousands of sheep and oxen which increased the
+cloud of formidable dust, and afforded a constant and wholesale
+supply of milk and animal food.  A plentiful command of forage
+was the first care of the general, and if the flocks and herds
+were secure of their pastures, the hardy warrior was alike
+insensible of danger and fatigue.  The confusion of men and
+cattle that overspread the country exposed their camp to a
+nocturnal surprise, had not a still wider circuit been occupied
+by their light cavalry, perpetually in motion to discover and
+delay the approach of the enemy.  After some experience of the
+Roman tactics, they adopted the use of the sword and spear, the
+helmet of the soldier, and the iron breastplate of his steed: but
+their native and deadly weapon was the Tartar bow: from the
+earliest infancy their children and servants were exercised in
+the double science of archery and horsemanship; their arm was
+strong; their aim was sure; and in the most rapid career, they
+were taught to throw themselves backwards, and to shoot a volley
+of arrows into the air.  In open combat, in secret ambush, in
+flight, or pursuit, they were equally formidable; an appearance
+of order was maintained in the foremost ranks, but their charge
+was driven forwards by the impatient pressure of succeeding
+crowds.  They pursued, headlong and rash, with loosened reins and
+horrific outcries; but, if they fled, with real or dissembled
+fear, the ardor of a pursuing foe was checked and chastised by
+the same habits of irregular speed and sudden evolution.  In the
+abuse of victory, they astonished Europe, yet smarting from the
+wounds of the Saracen and the Dane: mercy they rarely asked, and
+more rarely bestowed: both sexes were accused is equally
+inaccessible to pity, and their appetite for raw flesh might
+countenance the popular tale, that they drank the blood, and
+feasted on the hearts of the slain.  Yet the Hungarians were not
+devoid of those principles of justice and humanity, which nature
+has implanted in every bosom.  The license of public and private
+injuries was restrained by laws and punishments; and in the
+security of an open camp, theft is the most tempting and most
+dangerous offence.  Among the Barbarians there were many, whose
+spontaneous virtue supplied their laws and corrected their
+manners, who performed the duties, and sympathized with the
+affections, of social life.
+
+[Footnote 29: Leo has observed, that the government of the Turks
+was monarchical, and that their punishments were rigorous,
+(Tactic. p. 896) Rhegino (in Chron. A.D. 889) mentions theft as a
+capital crime, and his jurisprudence is confirmed by the original
+code of St. Stephen, (A.D. 1016.) If a slave were guilty, he was
+chastised, for the first time, with the loss of his nose, or a
+fine of five heifers; for the second, with the loss of his ears,
+or a similar fine; for the third, with death; which the freeman
+did not incur till the fourth offence, as his first penalty was
+the loss of liberty, (Katona, Hist. Regum Hungar tom. i. p. 231,
+232.)]
+
+After a long pilgrimage of flight or victory, the Turkish
+hordes approached the common limits of the French and Byzantine
+empires.  Their first conquests and final settlements extended on
+either side of the Danube above Vienna, below Belgrade, and
+beyond the measure of the Roman province of Pannonia, or the
+modern kingdom of Hungary. ^30 That ample and fertile land was
+loosely occupied by the Moravians, a Sclavonian name and tribe,
+which were driven by the invaders into the compass of a narrow
+province. Charlemagne had stretched a vague and nominal empire as
+far as the edge of Transylvania; but, after the failure of his
+legitimate line, the dukes of Moravia forgot their obedience and
+tribute to the monarchs of Oriental France.  The bastard Arnulph
+was provoked to invite the arms of the Turks: they rushed through
+the real or figurative wall, which his indiscretion had thrown
+open; and the king of Germany has been justly reproached as a
+traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical society of the
+Christians.  During the life of Arnulph, the Hungarians were
+checked by gratitude or fear; but in the infancy of his son Lewis
+they discovered and invaded Bavaria; and such was their Scythian
+speed, that in a single day a circuit of fifty miles was stripped
+and consumed.  In the battle of Augsburgh the Christians
+maintained their advantage till the seventh hour of the day, they
+were deceived and vanquished by the flying stratagems of the
+Turkish cavalry. The conflagration spread over the provinces of
+Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia; and the Hungarians ^31 promoted
+the reign of anarchy, by forcing the stoutest barons to
+discipline their vassals and fortify their castles. The origin of
+walled towns is ascribed to this calamitous period; nor could any
+distance be secure against an enemy, who, almost at the same
+instant, laid in ashes the Helvetian monastery of St. Gall, and
+the city of Bremen, on the shores of the northern ocean.  Above
+thirty years the Germanic empire, or kingdom, was subject to the
+ignominy of tribute; and resistance was disarmed by the menace,
+the serious and effectual menace of dragging the women and
+children into captivity, and of slaughtering the males above the
+age of ten years.  I have neither power nor inclination to follow
+the Hungarians beyond the Rhine; but I must observe with
+surprise, that the southern provinces of France were blasted by
+the tempest, and that Spain, behind her Pyrenees, was astonished
+at the approach of these formidable strangers. ^32 The vicinity
+of Italy had tempted their early inroads; but from their camp on
+the Brenta, they beheld with some terror the apparent strength
+and populousness of the new discovered country.  They requested
+leave to retire; their request was proudly rejected by the
+Italian king; and the lives of twenty thousand Christians paid
+the forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of
+the West, the royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendor;
+and the preeminence of Rome itself was only derived from the
+relics of the apostles.  The Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in
+flames; forty-three churches were consumed; and, after the
+massacre of the people, they spared about two hundred wretches
+who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a vague
+exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country.  In these
+annual excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome and
+Capua, the churches, that yet escaped, resounded with a fearful
+litany: "O, save and deliver us from the arrows of the
+Hungarians!" But the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the
+torrent rolled forwards, till it was stopped by the extreme land
+of Calabria. ^33 A composition was offered and accepted for the
+head of each Italian subject; and ten bushels of silver were
+poured forth in the Turkish camp.  But falsehood is the natural
+antagonist of violence; and the robbers were defrauded both in
+the numbers of the assessment and the standard of the metal.  On
+the side of the East, the Hungarians were opposed in doubtful
+conflict by the equal arms of the Bulgarians, whose faith forbade
+an alliance with the Pagans, and whose situation formed the
+barrier of the Byzantine empire.  The barrier was overturned; the
+emperor of Constantinople beheld the waving banners of the Turks;
+and one of their boldest warriors presumed to strike a battle-axe
+into the golden gate.  The arts and treasures of the Greeks
+diverted the assault; but the Hungarians might boast, in their
+retreat, that they had imposed a tribute on the spirit of
+Bulgaria and the majesty of the Caesars. ^34 The remote and rapid
+operations of the same campaign appear to magnify the power and
+numbers of the Turks; but their courage is most deserving of
+praise, since a light troop of three or four hundred horse would
+often attempt and execute the most daring inroads to the gates of
+Thessalonica and Constantinople.  At this disastrous aera of the
+ninth and tenth centuries, Europe was afflicted by a triple
+scourge from the North, the East, and the South: the Norman, the
+Hungarian, and the Saracen, sometimes trod the same ground of
+desolation; and these savage foes might have been compared by
+Homer to the two lions growling over the carcass of a mangled
+stag. ^35 [Footnote 30: See Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungar. p. 321 -
+352.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Hungarorum gens, cujus omnes fere nationes expertae
+saevitium &c., is the preface of Liutprand, (l. i. c. 2,) who
+frequently expatiated on the calamities of his own times.  See l.
+i. c. 5, l. ii. c. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7; l. iii. c. 1, &c., l. v. c.
+8, 15, in Legat. p. 485.  His colors are glaring but his
+chronology must be rectified by Pagi and Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The three bloody reigns of Arpad, Zoltan, and
+Toxus, are critically illustrated by Katona, (Hist. Ducum, &c. p.
+107 - 499.) His diligence has searched both natives and
+foreigners; yet to the deeds of mischief, or glory, I have been
+able to add the destruction of Bremen, (Adam Bremensis, i. 43.)]
+
+[Footnote 33: Muratori has considered with patriotic care the
+danger and resources of Modena.  The citizens besought St.
+Geminianus, their patron, to avert, by his intercession, the
+rabies, flagellum, &c.
+
+Nunc te rogamus, licet servi pessimi,
+Ab Ungerorum nos defendas jaculis.
+
+The bishop erected walls for the public defence, not contra
+dominos serenos, (Antiquitat. Ital. Med. Aevi, tom. i. dissertat.
+i. p. 21, 22,) and the song of the nightly watch is not without
+elegance or use, (tom. iii. dis. xl. p. 709.) The Italian
+annalist has accurately traced the series of their inroads,
+(Annali d' Italia, tom. vii. p. 365, 367, 398, 401, 437, 440,
+tom. viii. p. 19, 41, 52, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: Both the Hungarian and Russian annals suppose, that
+they besieged, or attacked, or insulted Constantinople, (Pray,
+dissertat. x. p. 239.  Katona, Hist. Ducum, p. 354 - 360;) and
+the fact is almost confessed by the Byzantine historians, (Leo
+Grammaticus, p. 506.  Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 629: ) yet, however
+glorious to the nation, it is denied or doubted by the critical
+historian, and even by the notary of Bela.  Their scepticism is
+meritorious; they could not safely transcribe or believe the
+rusticorum fabulas: but Katona might have given due attention to
+the evidence of Liutprand, Bulgarorum gentem atque daecorum
+tributariam fecerant, (Hist. l. ii. c. 4, p. 435.)]
+
+[Footnote 35: - Iliad, xvi. 756.]
+
+The deliverance of Germany and Christendom was achieved by
+the Saxon princes, Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, who, in
+two memorable battles, forever broke the power of the Hungarians.
+^36 The valiant Henry was roused from a bed of sickness by the
+invasion of his country; but his mind was vigorous and his
+prudence successful.  "My companions," said he, on the morning of
+the combat, "maintain your ranks, receive on your bucklers the
+first arrows of the Pagans, and prevent their second discharge by
+the equal and rapid career of your lances." They obeyed and
+conquered: and the historical picture of the castle of Merseburgh
+expressed the features, or at least the character, of Henry, who,
+in an age of ignorance, intrusted to the finer arts the
+perpetuity of his name. ^37 At the end of twenty years, the
+children of the Turks who had fallen by his sword invaded the
+empire of his son; and their force is defined, in the lowest
+estimate, at one hundred thousand horse.  They were invited by
+domestic faction; the gates of Germany were treacherously
+unlocked; and they spread, far beyond the Rhine and the Meuse,
+into the heart of Flanders.  But the vigor and prudence of Otho
+dispelled the conspiracy; the princes were made sensible that
+unless they were true to each other, their religion and country
+were irrecoverably lost; and the national powers were reviewed in
+the plains of Augsburgh.  They marched and fought in eight
+legions, according to the division of provinces and tribes; the
+first, second, and third, were composed of Bavarians; the fourth,
+of Franconians; the fifth, of Saxons, under the immediate command
+of the monarch; the sixth and seventh consisted of Swabians; and
+the eighth legion, of a thousand Bohemians, closed the rear of
+the host.  The resources of discipline and valor were fortified
+by the arts of superstition, which, on this occasion, may deserve
+the epithets of generous and salutary.  The soldiers were
+purified with a fast; the camp was blessed with the relics of
+saints and martyrs; and the Christian hero girded on his side the
+sword of Constantine, grasped the invincible spear of
+Charlemagne, and waved the banner of St. Maurice, the praefect of
+the Thebaean legion.  But his firmest confidence was placed in
+the holy lance, ^38 whose point was fashioned of the nails of the
+cross, and which his father had extorted from the king of
+Burgundy, by the threats of war, and the gift of a province.  The
+Hungarians were expected in the front; they secretly passed the
+Lech, a river of Bavaria that falls into the Danube; turned the
+rear of the Christian army; plundered the baggage, and disordered
+the legion of Bohemia and Swabia.  The battle was restored by the
+Franconians, whose duke, the valiant Conrad, was pierced with an
+arrow as he rested from his fatigues: the Saxons fought under the
+eyes of their king; and his victory surpassed, in merit and
+importance, the triumphs of the last two hundred years.  The loss
+of the Hungarians was still greater in the flight than in the
+action; they were encompassed by the rivers of Bavaria; and their
+past cruelties excluded them from the hope of mercy. Three
+captive princes were hanged at Ratisbon, the multitude of
+prisoners was slain or mutilated, and the fugitives, who presumed
+to appear in the face of their country, were condemned to
+everlasting poverty and disgrace. ^39 Yet the spirit of the
+nation was humbled, and the most accessible passes of Hungary
+were fortified with a ditch and rampart.  Adversity suggested the
+counsels of moderation and peace: the robbers of the West
+acquiesced in a sedentary life; and the next generation was
+taught, by a discerning prince, that far more might be gained by
+multiplying and exchanging the produce of a fruitful soil. The
+native race, the Turkish or Fennic blood, was mingled with new
+colonies of Scythian or Sclavonian origin; ^40 many thousands of
+robust and industrious captives had been imported from all the
+countries of Europe; ^41 and after the marriage of Geisa with a
+Bavarian princess, he bestowed honors and estates on the nobles
+of Germany. ^42 The son of Geisa was invested with the regal
+title, and the house of Arpad reigned three hundred years in the
+kingdom of Hungary. But the freeborn Barbarians were not dazzled
+by the lustre of the diadem, and the people asserted their
+indefeasible right of choosing, deposing, and punishing the
+hereditary servant of the state.
+
+[Footnote 36: They are amply and critically discussed by Katona,
+(Hist. Dacum, p. 360 - 368, 427 - 470.) Liutprand (l. ii. c. 8,
+9) is the best evidence for the former, and Witichind (Annal.
+Saxon. l. iii.) of the latter; but the critical historian will
+not even overlook the horn of a warrior, which is said to be
+preserved at Jaz-berid.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Hunc vero triumphum, tam laude quam memoria dignum,
+ad Meresburgum rex in superiori coenaculo domus per Zeus, id est,
+picturam, notari praecepit, adeo ut rem veram potius quam
+verisimilem videas: a high encomium, (Liutprand, l. ii. c. 9.)
+Another palace in Germany had been painted with holy subjects by
+the order of Charlemagne; and Muratori may justly affirm, nulla
+saecula fuere in quibus pictores desiderati fuerint, (Antiquitat.
+Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. ii. dissert. xxiv. p. 360, 361.) Our
+domestic claims to antiquity of ignorance and original
+imperfection (Mr. Walpole's lively words) are of a much more
+recent date, (Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. p. 2, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 929, No. 2 - 5.
+The lance of Christ is taken from the best evidence, Liutprand,
+(l. iv. c. 12,) Sigebert, and the Acts of St. Gerard: but the
+other military relics depend on the faith of the Gesta Anglorum
+post Bedam, l. ii. c. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungariae, p. 500, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Among these colonies we may distinguish, 1. The
+Chazars, or Cabari, who joined the Hungarians on their march,
+(Constant. de Admin. Imp. c. 39, 40, p. 108, 109.) 2. The
+Jazyges, Moravians, and Siculi, whom they found in the land; the
+last were perhaps a remnant of the Huns of Attila, and were
+intrusted with the guard of the borders.  3. The Russians, who,
+like the Swiss in France, imparted a general name to the royal
+porters.  4. The Bulgarians, whose chiefs (A.D. 956) were
+invited, cum magna multitudine Hismahelitarum. Had any of those
+Sclavonians embraced the Mahometan religion?  5. The Bisseni and
+Cumans, a mixed multitude of Patzinacites, Uzi, Chazars, &c., who
+had spread to the Lower Danube.  The last colony of 40,000
+Cumans, A.D. 1239, was received and converted by the kings of
+Hungary, who derived from that tribe a new regal appellation,
+(Pray, Dissert. vi. vii. p. 109 - 173.  Katona, Hist. Ducum, p.
+95 - 99, 259 - 264, 476, 479 - 483, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 41: Christiani autem, quorum pars major populi est, qui
+ex omni parte mundi illuc tracti sunt captivi, &c.  Such was the
+language of Piligrinus, the first missionary who entered Hungary,
+A.D. 973.  Pars major is strong.  Hist. Ducum, p. 517.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The fideles Teutonici of Geisa are authenticated in
+old charters: and Katona, with his usual industry, has made a
+fair estimate of these colonies, which had been so loosely
+magnified by the Italian Ranzanus, (Hist. Critic. Ducum. p, 667 -
+681.)]
+
+III.  The name of Russians ^43 was first divulged, in the
+ninth century, by an embassy of Theophilus, emperor of the East,
+to the emperor of the West, Lewis, the son of Charlemagne.  The
+Greeks were accompanied by the envoys of the great duke, or
+chagan, or czar, of the Russians.  In their journey to
+Constantinople, they had traversed many hostile nations; and they
+hoped to escape the dangers of their return, by requesting the
+French monarch to transport them by sea to their native country.
+A closer examination detected their origin: they were the
+brethren of the Swedes and Normans, whose name was already odious
+and formidable in France; and it might justly be apprehended,
+that these Russian strangers were not the messengers of peace,
+but the emissaries of war.  They were detained, while the Greeks
+were dismissed; and Lewis expected a more satisfactory account,
+that he might obey the laws of hospitality or prudence, according
+to the interest of both empires. ^44 This Scandinavian origin of
+the people, or at least the princes, of Russia, may be confirmed
+and illustrated by the national annals ^45 and the general
+history of the North.  The Normans, who had so long been
+concealed by a veil of impenetrable darkness, suddenly burst
+forth in the spirit of naval and military enterprise.  The vast,
+and, as it is said, the populous regions of Denmark, Sweden, and
+Norway, were crowded with independent chieftains and desperate
+adventurers, who sighed in the laziness of peace, and smiled in
+the agonies of death.  Piracy was the exercise, the trade, the
+glory, and the virtue, of the Scandinavian youth.  Impatient of a
+bleak climate and narrow limits, they started from the banquet,
+grasped their arms, sounded their horn, ascended their vessels,
+and explored every coast that promised either spoil or
+settlement. The Baltic was the first scene of their naval
+achievements they visited the eastern shores, the silent
+residence of Fennic and Sclavonic tribes, and the primitive
+Russians of the Lake Ladoga paid a tribute, the skins of white
+squirrels, to these strangers, whom they saluted with the title
+of Varangians ^46 or Corsairs.  Their superiority in arms,
+discipline, and renown, commanded the fear and reverence of the
+natives.  In their wars against the more inland savages, the
+Varangians condescended to serve as friends and auxiliaries, and
+gradually, by choice or conquest, obtained the dominion of a
+people whom they were qualified to protect.  Their tyranny was
+expelled, their valor was again recalled, till at length Ruric, a
+Scandinavian chief, became the father of a dynasty which reigned
+above seven hundred years. His brothers extended his influence:
+the example of service and usurpation was imitated by his
+companions in the southern provinces of Russia; and their
+establishments, by the usual methods of war and assassination,
+were cemented into the fabric of a powerful monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 43: Among the Greeks, this national appellation has a
+singular form, as an undeclinable word, of which many fanciful
+etymologies have been suggested.  I have perused, with pleasure
+and profit, a dissertation de Origine Russorum (Comment. Academ.
+Petropolitanae, tom. viii. p. 388 - 436) by Theophilus Sigefrid
+Bayer, a learned German, who spent his life and labors in the
+service of Russia.  A geographical tract of D'Anville, de
+l'Empire de Russie, son Origine, et ses Accroissemens, (Paris,
+1772, in 12mo.,) has likewise been of use.
+
+Note: The later antiquarians of Russia and Germany appear to
+aquiesce in the authority of the monk Nestor, the earliest
+annalist of Russia, who derives the Russians, or Vareques, from
+Scandinavia.  The names of the first founders of the Russian
+monarchy are Scandinavian or Norman. Their language (according to
+Const. Porphyrog. de Administrat. Imper. c. 9) differed
+essentially from the Sclavonian.  The author of the Annals of St.
+Bertin, who first names the Russians (Rhos) in the year 839 of
+his Annals, assigns them Sweden for their country.  So Liutprand
+calls the Russians the same people as the Normans.  The Fins,
+Laplanders, and Esthonians, call the Swedes, to the present day,
+Roots, Rootsi, Ruotzi, Rootslaue.  See Thunman, Untersuchungen
+uber der Geschichte des Estlichen Europaischen Volker, p. 374.
+Gatterer, Comm. Societ. Regbcient. Gotting. xiii. p. 126.
+Schlozer, in his Nestor. Koch. Revolut. de 'Europe, vol. i. p.
+60.  Malte-Brun, Geograph. vol. vi. p. 378. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 44: See the entire passage (dignum, says Bayer, ut
+aureis in tabulis rigatur) in the Annales Bertiniani Francorum,
+(in Script. Ital. Muratori, tom. ii. pars i. p. 525,) A.D. 839,
+twenty-two years before the aera of Ruric.  In the xth century,
+Liutprand (Hist. l. v. c. 6) speaks of the Russians and Normans
+as the same Aquilonares homines of a red complexion.]
+
+[Footnote 45: My knowledge of these annals is drawn from M.
+Leveque, Histoire de Russie.  Nestor, the first and best of these
+ancient annalists, was a monk of Kiow, who died in the beginning
+of the xiith century; but his Chronicle was obscure, till it was
+published at Petersburgh, 1767, in 4to. Leveque, Hist. de Russie,
+tom. i. p. xvi.  Coxe's Travels, vol. ii. p. 184.
+
+Note: The late M. Schlozer has translated and added a
+commentary to the Annals of Nestor;" and his work is the mine
+from which henceforth the history of the North must be drawn. -
+G.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Theophil. Sig. Bayer de Varagis, (for the name is
+differently spelt,) in Comment. Academ. Petropolitanae, tom. iv.
+p. 275 - 311.]
+
+As long as the descendants of Ruric were considered as
+aliens and conquerors, they ruled by the sword of the Varangians,
+distributed estates and subjects to their faithful captains, and
+supplied their numbers with fresh streams of adventurers from the
+Baltic coast. ^47 But when the Scandinavian chiefs had struck a
+deep and permanent root into the soil, they mingled with the
+Russians in blood, religion, and language, and the first
+Waladimir had the merit of delivering his country from these
+foreign mercenaries.  They had seated him on the throne; his
+riches were insufficient to satisfy their demands; but they
+listened to his pleasing advice, that they should seek, not a
+more grateful, but a more wealthy, master; that they should
+embark for Greece, where, instead of the skins of squirrels, silk
+and gold would be the recompense of their service.  At the same
+time, the Russian prince admonished his Byzantine ally to
+disperse and employ, to recompense and restrain, these impetuous
+children of the North. Contemporary writers have recorded the
+introduction, name, and character, of the Varangians: each day
+they rose in confidence and esteem; the whole body was assembled
+at Constantinople to perform the duty of guards; and their
+strength was recruited by a numerous band of their countrymen
+from the Island of Thule.  On this occasion, the vague
+appellation of Thule is applied to England; and the new
+Varangians were a colony of English and Danes who fled from the
+yoke of the Norman conqueror. The habits of pilgrimage and piracy
+had approximated the countries of the earth; these exiles were
+entertained in the Byzantine court; and they preserved, till the
+last age of the empire, the inheritance of spotless loyalty, and
+the use of the Danish or English tongue.  With their broad and
+double-edged battle-axes on their shoulders, they attended the
+Greek emperor to the temple, the senate, and the hippodrome; he
+slept and feasted under their trusty guard; and the keys of the
+palace, the treasury, and the capital, were held by the firm and
+faithful hands of the Varangians. ^48
+
+[Footnote 47: Yet, as late as the year 1018, Kiow and Russia were
+still guarded ex fugitivorum servorum robore, confluentium et
+maxime Danorum. Bayer, who quotes (p. 292) the Chronicle of
+Dithmar of Merseburgh, observes, that it was unusual for the
+Germans to enlist in a foreign service.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Ducange has collected from the original authors the
+state and history of the Varangi at Constantinople, (Glossar.
+Med. et Infimae Graecitatis, sub voce.  Med. et Infimae
+Latinitatis, sub voce Vagri. Not. ad Alexiad.  Annae Comnenae, p.
+256, 257, 258.  Notes sur Villehardouin, p. 296 - 299.) See
+likewise the annotations of Reiske to the Ceremoniale Aulae
+Byzant. of Constantine, tom. ii. p. 149, 150.  Saxo Grammaticus
+affirms that they spoke Danish; but Codinus maintains them till
+the fifteenth century in the use of their native English.]
+
+In the tenth century, the geography of Scythia was extended
+far beyond the limits of ancient knowledge; and the monarchy of
+the Russians obtains a vast and conspicuous place in the map of
+Constantine. ^49 The sons of Ruric were masters of the spacious
+province of Wolodomir, or Moscow; and, if they were confined on
+that side by the hordes of the East, their western frontier in
+those early days was enlarged to the Baltic Sea and the country
+of the Prussians.  Their northern reign ascended above the
+sixtieth degree of latitude over the Hyperborean regions, which
+fancy had peopled with monsters, or clouded with eternal
+darkness.  To the south they followed the course of the
+Borysthenes, and approached with that river the neighborhood of
+the Euxine Sea.  The tribes that dwelt, or wandered, in this
+ample circuit were obedient to the same conqueror, and insensibly
+blended into the same nation.  The language of Russia is a
+dialect of the Sclavonian; but in the tenth century, these two
+modes of speech were different from each other; and, as the
+Sclavonian prevailed in the South, it may be presumed that the
+original Russians of the North, the primitive subjects of the
+Varangian chief, were a portion of the Fennic race.  With the
+emigration, union, or dissolution, of the wandering tribes, the
+loose and indefinite picture of the Scythian desert has
+continually shifted.  But the most ancient map of Russia affords
+some places which still retain their name and position; and the
+two capitals, Novogorod ^50 and Kiow, ^51 are coeval with the
+first age of the monarchy. Novogorod had not yet deserved the
+epithet of great, nor the alliance of the Hanseatic League, which
+diffused the streams of opulence and the principles of freedom.
+Kiow could not yet boast of three hundred churches, an
+innumerable people, and a degree of greatness and splendor which
+was compared with Constantinople by those who had never seen the
+residence of the Caesars.  In their origin, the two cities were
+no more than camps or fairs, the most convenient stations in
+which the Barbarians might assemble for the occasional business
+of war or trade.  Yet even these assemblies announce some
+progress in the arts of society; a new breed of cattle was
+imported from the southern provinces; and the spirit of
+commercial enterprise pervaded the sea and land, from the Baltic
+to the Euxine, from the mouth of the Oder to the port of
+Constantinople.  In the days of idolatry and barbarism, the
+Sclavonic city of Julin was frequented and enriched by the
+Normans, who had prudently secured a free mart of purchase and
+exchange. ^52 From this harbor, at the entrance of the Oder, the
+corsair, or merchant, sailed in forty-three days to the eastern
+shores of the Baltic, the most distant nations were intermingled,
+and the holy groves of Curland are said to have been decorated
+with Grecian and Spanish gold. ^53 Between the sea and Novogorod
+an easy intercourse was discovered; in the summer, through a
+gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter season, over
+the hard and level surface of boundless snows.  From the
+neighborhood of that city, the Russians descended the streams
+that fall into the Borysthenes; their canoes, of a single tree,
+were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every species, the
+spoil of their beehives, and the hides of their cattle; and the
+whole produce of the North was collected and discharged in the
+magazines of Kiow.  The month of June was the ordinary season of
+the departure of the fleet: the timber of the canoes was framed
+into the oars and benches of more solid and capacious boats; and
+they proceeded without obstacle down the Borysthenes, as far as
+the seven or thirteen ridges of rocks, which traverse the bed,
+and precipitate the waters, of the river. At the more shallow
+falls it was sufficient to lighten the vessels; but the deeper
+cataracts were impassable; and the mariners, who dragged their
+vessels and their slaves six miles over land, were exposed in
+this toilsome journey to the robbers of the desert. ^54 At the
+first island below the falls, the Russians celebrated the
+festival of their escape: at a second, near the mouth of the
+river, they repaired their shattered vessels for the longer and
+more perilous voyage of the Black Sea.  If they steered along the
+coast, the Danube was accessible; with a fair wind they could
+reach in thirty-six or forty hours the opposite shores of
+Anatolia; and Constantinople admitted the annual visit of the
+strangers of the North. They returned at the stated season with a
+rich cargo of corn, wine, and oil, the manufactures of Greece,
+and the spices of India.  Some of their countrymen resided in the
+capital and provinces; and the national treaties protected the
+persons, effects, and privileges, of the Russian merchant. ^55
+
+[Footnote 49: The original record of the geography and trade of
+Russia is produced by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
+(de Administrat. Imperii, c. 2, p. 55, 56, c. 9, p. 59 - 61, c.
+13, p. 63 - 67, c. 37, p. 106, c. 42, p. 112, 113,) and
+illustrated by the diligence of Bayer, (de Geographia Russiae
+vicinarumque Regionum circiter A. C. 948, in Comment. Academ.
+Petropol. tom. ix. p. 367 - 422, tom. x. p. 371 - 421,) with the
+aid of the chronicles and traditions of Russia, Scandinavia, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 50: The haughty proverb, "Who can resist God and the
+great Novogorod?" is applied by M. Leveque (Hist. de Russie, tom.
+i. p. 60) even to the times that preceded the reign of Ruric.  In
+the course of his history he frequently celebrates this republic,
+which was suppressed A.D. 1475, (tom. ii. p. 252 - 266.) That
+accurate traveller Adam Olearius describes (in 1635) the remains
+of Novogorod, and the route by sea and land of the Holstein
+ambassadors, tom. i. p. 123 - 129.]
+
+[Footnote 51: In hac magna civitate, quae est caput regni, plus
+trecentae ecclesiae habentur et nundinae octo, populi etiam
+ignota manus (Eggehardus ad A.D. 1018, apud Bayer, tom. ix. p.
+412.) He likewise quotes (tom. x. p. 397) the words of the Saxon
+annalist, Cujus (Russioe) metropolis est Chive, aemula sceptri
+Constantinopolitani, quae est clarissimum decus Graeciae. The
+fame of Kiow, especially in the xith century, had reached the
+German and Arabian geographers.]
+
+[Footnote 52: In Odorae ostio qua Scythicas alluit paludes,
+nobilissima civitas Julinum, celeberrimam, Barbaris et Graecis
+qui sunt in circuitu, praestans stationem, est sane maxima omnium
+quas Europa claudit civitatum, (Adam Bremensis, Hist. Eccles. p.
+19;) a strange exaggeration even in the xith century.  The trade
+of the Baltic, and the Hanseatic League, are carefully treated in
+Anderson's Historical Deduction of Commerce; at least, in our
+language, I am not acquainted with any book so satisfactory.
+
+Note: The book of authority is the "Geschichte des
+Hanseatischen Bundes," by George Sartorius, Gottingen, 1803, or
+rather the later edition of that work by M. Lappenberg, 2 vols.
+4to., Hamburgh, 1830. - M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 53: According to Adam of Bremen, (de Situ Daniae, p.
+58,) the old Curland extended eight days' journey along the
+coast; and by Peter Teutoburgicus, (p. 68, A.D. 1326,) Memel is
+defined as the common frontier of Russia, Curland, and Prussia.
+Aurum ibi plurimum, (says Adam,) divinis auguribus atque
+necromanticis omnes domus sunt plenae .... a toto orbe ibi
+responsa petuntur, maxime ab Hispanis (forsan Zupanis, id est
+regulis Lettoviae) et Graecis.  The name of Greeks was applied to
+the Russians even before their conversion; an imperfect
+conversion, if they still consulted the wizards of Curland,
+(Bayer, tom. x. p. 378, 402, &c.  Grotius, Prolegomen. ad Hist.
+Goth. p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: Constantine only reckons seven cataracts, of which
+he gives the Russian and Sclavonic names; but thirteen are
+enumerated by the Sieur de Beauplan, a French engineer, who had
+surveyed the course and navigation of the Dnieper, or
+Borysthenes, (Description de l'Ukraine, Rouen, 1660, a thin
+quarto;) but the map is unluckily wanting in my copy.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Nestor, apud Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p.
+78 - 80. From the Dnieper, or Borysthenes, the Russians went to
+Black Bulgaria, Chazaria, and Syria.  To Syria, how?  where?
+when?  The alteration is slight; the position of Suania, between
+Chazaria and Lazica, is perfectly suitable; and the name was
+still used in the xith century, (Cedren. tom. ii. p. 770.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.
+
+Part III.
+
+But the same communication which had been opened for the
+benefit, was soon abused for the injury, of mankind.  In a period
+of one hundred and ninety years, the Russians made four attempts
+to plunder the treasures of Constantinople: the event was
+various, but the motive, the means, and the object, were the same
+in these naval expeditions. ^56 The Russian traders had seen the
+magnificence, and tasted the luxury of the city of the Caesars.
+A marvellous tale, and a scanty supply, excited the desires of
+their savage countrymen: they envied the gifts of nature which
+their climate denied; they coveted the works of art, which they
+were too lazy to imitate and too indigent to purchase; the
+Varangian princes unfurled the banners of piratical adventure,
+and their bravest soldiers were drawn from the nations that dwelt
+in the northern isles of the ocean. ^57 The image of their naval
+armaments was revived in the last century, in the fleets of the
+Cossacks, which issued from the Borysthenes, to navigate the same
+seas for a similar purpose. ^58 The Greek appellation of
+monoxyla, or single canoes, might justly be applied to the bottom
+of their vessels.  It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech
+or willow, but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and
+continued on either side with planks, till it attained the length
+of sixty, and the height of about twelve, feet.  These boats were
+built without a deck, but with two rudders and a mast; to move
+with sails and oars; and to contain from forty to seventy men,
+with their arms, and provisions of fresh water and salt fish. The
+first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred boats; but
+when the national force was exerted, they might arm against
+Constantinople a thousand or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet
+was not much inferior to the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was
+magnified in the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real
+proportion of its strength and numbers.  Had the Greek emperors
+been endowed with foresight to discern, and vigor to prevent,
+perhaps they might have sealed with a maritime force the mouth of
+the Borysthenes.  Their indolence abandoned the coast of Anatolia
+to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after an interval of
+six hundred years, again infested the Euxine; but as long as the
+capital was respected, the sufferings of a distant province
+escaped the notice both of the prince and the historian. The
+storm which had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond, at
+length burst on the Bosphorus of Thrace; a strait of fifteen
+miles, in which the rude vessels of the Russians might have been
+stopped and destroyed by a more skilful adversary.  In their
+first enterprise ^59 under the princes of Kiow, they passed
+without opposition, and occupied the port of Constantinople in
+the absence of the emperor Michael, the son of Theophilus.
+Through a crowd of perils, he landed at the palace-stairs, and
+immediately repaired to a church of the Virgin Mary. ^60 By the
+advice of the patriarch, her garment, a precious relic, was drawn
+from the sanctuary and dipped in the sea; and a seasonable
+tempest, which determined the retreat of the Russians, was
+devoutly ascribed to the mother of God. ^61 The silence of the
+Greeks may inspire some doubt of the truth, or at least of the
+importance, of the second attempt by Oleg, the guardian of the
+sons of Ruric. ^62 A strong barrier of arms and fortifications
+defended the Bosphorus: they were eluded by the usual expedient
+of drawing the boats over the isthmus; and this simple operation
+is described in the national chronicles, as if the Russian fleet
+had sailed over dry land with a brisk and favorable gale.  The
+leader of the third armament, Igor, the son of Ruric, had chosen
+a moment of weakness and decay, when the naval powers of the
+empire were employed against the Saracens.  But if courage be not
+wanting, the instruments of defence are seldom deficient.
+Fifteen broken and decayed galleys were boldly launched against
+the enemy; but instead of the single tube of Greek fire usually
+planted on the prow, the sides and stern of each vessel were
+abundantly supplied with that liquid combustible. The engineers
+were dexterous; the weather was propitious; many thousand
+Russians, who chose rather to be drowned than burnt, leaped into
+the sea; and those who escaped to the Thracian shore were
+inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and soldiers. Yet one third
+of the canoes escaped into shallow water; and the next spring
+Igor was again prepared to retrieve his disgrace and claim his
+revenge. ^63 After a long peace, Jaroslaus, the great grandson of
+Igor, resumed the same project of a naval invasion.  A fleet,
+under the command of his son, was repulsed at the entrance of the
+Bosphorus by the same artificial flames.  But in the rashness of
+pursuit, the vanguard of the Greeks was encompassed by an
+irresistible multitude of boats and men; their provision of fire
+was probably exhausted; and twenty- four galleys were either
+taken, sunk, or destroyed. ^64
+
+[Footnote 56: The wars of the Russians and Greeks in the ixth,
+xth, and xith centuries, are related in the Byzantine annals,
+especially those of Zonaras and Cedrenus; and all their
+testimonies are collected in the Russica of Stritter, tom. ii.
+pars ii. p. 939 - 1044.]
+
+[Footnote 57:  Cedrenus in Compend. p. 758]
+
+[Footnote 58: See Beauplan, (Description de l'Ukraine, p. 54 -
+61: ) his descriptions are lively, his plans accurate, and except
+the circumstances of fire-arms, we may read old Russians for
+modern Cosacks.]
+
+[Footnote 59: It is to be lamented, that Bayer has only given a
+Dissertation de Russorum prima Expeditione Constantinopolitana,
+(Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. vi. p. 265 - 391.) After
+disentangling some chronological intricacies, he fixes it in the
+years 864 or 865, a date which might have smoothed some doubts
+and difficulties in the beginning of M. Leveque's history.]
+
+[Footnote 60: When Photius wrote his encyclic epistle on the
+conversion of the Russians, the miracle was not yet sufficiently
+ripe.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Leo Grammaticus, p. 463, 464.  Constantini
+Continuator in Script. post Theophanem, p. 121, 122.  Symeon
+Logothet. p. 445, 446. Georg. Monach. p. 535, 536.  Cedrenus,
+tom. ii. p. 551.  Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 62: See Nestor and Nicon, in Leveque's Hist. de Russie,
+tom. i. p. 74 - 80.  Katona (Hist. Ducum, p. 75 - 79) uses his
+advantage to disprove this Russian victory, which would cloud the
+siege of Kiow by the Hungarians.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Leo Grammaticus, p. 506, 507.  Incert. Contin. p.
+263, 264 Symeon Logothet. p. 490, 491.  Georg. Monach. p. 588,
+589.  Cedren tom. ii. p. 629.  Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 190, 191, and
+Liutprand, l. v. c. 6, who writes from the narratives of his
+father-in-law, then ambassador at Constantinople, and corrects
+the vain exaggeration of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 64: I can only appeal to Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 758,
+759) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 253, 254;) but they grow more
+weighty and credible as they draw near to their own times.]
+
+Yet the threats or calamities of a Russian war were more
+frequently diverted by treaty than by arms.  In these naval
+hostilities, every disadvantage was on the side of the Greeks;
+their savage enemy afforded no mercy: his poverty promised no
+spoil; his impenetrable retreat deprived the conqueror of the
+hopes of revenge; and the pride or weakness of empire indulged an
+opinion, that no honor could be gained or lost in the intercourse
+with Barbarians.  At first their demands were high and
+inadmissible, three pounds of gold for each soldier or mariner of
+the fleet: the Russian youth adhered to the design of conquest
+and glory; but the counsels of moderation were recommended by the
+hoary sages.  "Be content," they said, "with the liberal offers
+of Caesar; it is not far better to obtain without a combat the
+possession of gold, silver, silks, and all the objects of our
+desires?  Are we sure of victory?  Can we conclude a treaty with
+the sea?  We do not tread on the land; we float on the abyss of
+water, and a common death hangs over our heads." ^65 The memory
+of these Arctic fleets that seemed to descend from the polar
+circle left deep impression of terror on the Imperial city.  By
+the vulgar of every rank, it was asserted and believed, that an
+equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed
+with a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should
+become masters of Constantinople. ^66 In our own time, a Russian
+armament, instead of sailing from the Borysthenes, has
+circumnavigated the continent of Europe; and the Turkish capital
+has been threatened by a squadron of strong and lofty ships of
+war, each of which, with its naval science and thundering
+artillery, could have sunk or scattered a hundred canoes, such as
+those of their ancestors.  Perhaps the present generation may yet
+behold the accomplishment of the prediction, of a rare
+prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date
+unquestionable.
+
+[Footnote 65: Nestor, apud Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p.
+87.]
+
+[Footnote 66: This brazen statue, which had been brought from
+Antioch, and was melted down by the Latins, was supposed to
+represent either Joshua or Bellerophon, an odd dilemma.  See
+Nicetas Choniates, (p. 413, 414,) Codinus, (de Originibus C. P.
+p. 24,) and the anonymous writer de Antiquitat.  C. P. (Banduri,
+Imp. Orient. tom. i. p. 17, 18,) who lived about the year 1100.
+They witness the belief of the prophecy the rest is immaterial.]
+
+By land the Russians were less formidable than by sea; and
+as they fought for the most part on foot, their irregular legions
+must often have been broken and overthrown by the cavalry of the
+Scythian hordes.  Yet their growing towns, however slight and
+imperfect, presented a shelter to the subject, and a barrier to
+the enemy: the monarchy of Kiow, till a fatal partition, assumed
+the dominion of the North; and the nations from the Volga to the
+Danube were subdued or repelled by the arms of Swatoslaus, ^67
+the son of Igor, the son of Oleg, the son of Ruric.  The vigor of
+his mind and body was fortified by the hardships of a military
+and savage life. Wrapped in a bear-skin, Swatoslaus usually slept
+on the ground, his head reclining on a saddle; his diet was
+coarse and frugal, and, like the heroes of Homer, ^68 his meat
+(it was often horse-flesh) was broiled or roasted on the coals.
+The exercise of war gave stability and discipline to his army;
+and it may be presumed, that no soldier was permitted to
+transcend the luxury of his chief.  By an embassy from
+Nicephorus, the Greek emperor, he was moved to undertake the
+conquest of Bulgaria; and a gift of fifteen hundred pounds of
+gold was laid at his feet to defray the expense, or reward the
+toils, of the expedition.  An army of sixty thousand men was
+assembled and embarked; they sailed from the Borysthenes to the
+Danube; their landing was effected on the Maesian shore; and,
+after a sharp encounter, the swords of the Russians prevailed
+against the arrows of the Bulgarian horse.  The vanquished king
+sunk into the grave; his children were made captive; and his
+dominions, as far as Mount Haemus, were subdued or ravaged by the
+northern invaders.  But instead of relinquishing his prey, and
+performing his engagements, the Varangian prince was more
+disposed to advance than to retire; and, had his ambition been
+crowned with success, the seat of empire in that early period
+might have been transferred to a more temperate and fruitful
+climate.  Swatoslaus enjoyed and acknowledged the advantages of
+his new position, in which he could unite, by exchange or rapine,
+the various productions of the earth.  By an easy navigation he
+might draw from Russia the native commodities of furs, wax, and
+hydromed: Hungary supplied him with a breed of horses and the
+spoils of the West; and Greece abounded with gold, silver, and
+the foreign luxuries, which his poverty had affected to disdain.
+The bands of Patzinacites, Chozars, and Turks, repaired to the
+standard of victory; and the ambassador of Nicephorus betrayed
+his trust, assumed the purple, and promised to share with his new
+allies the treasures of the Eastern world. From the banks of the
+Danube the Russian prince pursued his march as far as Adrianople;
+a formal summons to evacuate the Roman province was dismissed
+with contempt; and Swatoslaus fiercely replied, that
+Constantinople might soon expect the presence of an enemy and a
+master.
+
+[Footnote 67: The life of Swatoslaus, or Sviatoslaf, or
+Sphendosthlabus, is extracted from the Russian Chronicles by M.
+Levesque, (Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 94 - 107.)]
+
+[Footnote 68: This resemblance may be clearly seen in the ninth
+book of the Iliad, (205 - 221,) in the minute detail of the
+cookery of Achilles.  By such a picture, a modern epic poet would
+disgrace his work, and disgust his reader; but the Greek verses
+are harmonious - a dead language can seldom appear low or
+familiar; and at the distance of two thousand seven hundred
+years, we are amused with the primitive manners of antiquity.]
+
+Nicephorus could no longer expel the mischief which he had
+introduced; but his throne and wife were inherited by John
+Zimisces, ^69 who, in a diminutive body, possessed the spirit and
+abilities of a hero.  The first victory of his lieutenants
+deprived the Russians of their foreign allies, twenty thousand of
+whom were either destroyed by the sword, or provoked to revolt,
+or tempted to desert.  Thrace was delivered, but seventy thousand
+Barbarians were still in arms; and the legions that had been
+recalled from the new conquests of Syria, prepared, with the
+return of the spring, to march under the banners of a warlike
+prince, who declared himself the friend and avenger of the
+injured Bulgaria.  The passes of Mount Haemus had been left
+unguarded; they were instantly occupied; the Roman vanguard was
+formed of the immortals, (a proud imitation of the Persian
+style;) the emperor led the main body of ten thousand five
+hundred foot; and the rest of his forces followed in slow and
+cautious array, with the baggage and military engines.  The first
+exploit of Zimisces was the reduction of Marcianopolis, or
+Peristhlaba, ^70 in two days; the trumpets sounded; the walls
+were scaled; eight thousand five hundred Russians were put to the
+sword; and the sons of the Bulgarian king were rescued from an
+ignominious prison, and invested with a nominal diadem. After
+these repeated losses, Swatoslaus retired to the strong post of
+Drista, on the banks of the Danube, and was pursued by an enemy
+who alternately employed the arms of celerity and delay.  The
+Byzantine galleys ascended the river, the legions completed a
+line of circumvallation; and the Russian prince was encompassed,
+assaulted, and famished, in the fortifications of the camp and
+city.  Many deeds of valor were performed; several desperate
+sallies were attempted; nor was it till after a siege of
+sixty-five days that Swatoslaus yielded to his adverse fortune.
+The liberal terms which he obtained announce the prudence of the
+victor, who respected the valor, and apprehended the despair, of
+an unconquered mind.  The great duke of Russia bound himself, by
+solemn imprecations, to relinquish all hostile designs; a safe
+passage was opened for his return; the liberty of trade and
+navigation was restored; a measure of corn was distributed to
+each of his soldiers; and the allowance of twenty-two thousand
+measures attests the loss and the remnant of the Barbarians.
+After a painful voyage, they again reached the mouth of the
+Borysthenes; but their provisions were exhausted; the season was
+unfavorable; they passed the winter on the ice; and, before they
+could prosecute their march, Swatoslaus was surprised and
+oppressed by the neighboring tribes with whom the Greeks
+entertained a perpetual and useful correspondence. ^71 Far
+different was the return of Zimisces, who was received in his
+capital like Camillus or Marius, the saviors of ancient Rome.
+But the merit of the victory was attributed by the pious emperor
+to the mother of God; and the image of the Virgin Mary, with the
+divine infant in her arms, was placed on a triumphal car, adorned
+with the spoils of war, and the ensigns of Bulgarian royalty.
+Zimisces made his public entry on horseback; the diadem on his
+head, a crown of laurel in his hand; and Constantinople was
+astonished to applaud the martial virtues of her sovereign. ^72
+
+[Footnote 69: This singular epithet is derived from the Armenian
+language. As I profess myself equally ignorant of these words, I
+may be indulged in the question in the play, "Pray, which of you
+is the interpreter?" From the context, they seem to signify
+Adolescentulus, (Leo Diacon l. iv. Ms. apud Ducange, Glossar.
+Graec. p. 1570.)
+
+Note: Cerbied. the learned Armenian, gives another
+derivation. There is a city called Tschemisch-gaizag, which means
+a bright or purple sandal, such as women wear in the East.  He
+was called Tschemisch-ghigh, (for so his name is written in
+Armenian, from this city, his native place.) Hase. Note to Leo
+Diac. p. 454, in Niebuhr's Byzant. Hist. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 70: In the Sclavonic tongue, the name of Peristhlaba
+implied the great or illustrious city, says Anna Comnena,
+(Alexiad, l. vii. p. 194.) From its position between Mount Haemus
+and the Lower Danube, it appears to fill the ground, or at least
+the station, of Marcianopolis.  The situation of Durostolus, or
+Dristra, is well known and conspicuous, (Comment. Academ.
+Petropol. tom. ix. p. 415, 416.  D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne,
+tom. i. p. 307, 311.)]
+
+[Footnote 71: The political management of the Greeks, more
+especially with the Patzinacites, is explained in the seven first
+chapters, de Administratione Imperii.]
+
+[Footnote 72: In the narrative of this war, Leo the Deacon (apud
+Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 968 - 973) is more authentic and
+circumstantial than Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 660 - 683) and Zonaras,
+(tom. ii. p. 205 - 214.) These declaimers have multiplied to
+308,000 and 330,000 men, those Russian forces, of which the
+contemporary had given a moderate and consistent account.]
+
+Photius of Constantinople, a patriarch, whose ambition was
+equal to his curiosity, congratulates himself and the Greek
+church on the conversion of the Russians. ^73 Those fierce and
+bloody Barbarians had been persuaded, by the voice of reason and
+religion, to acknowledge Jesus for their God, the Christian
+missionaries for their teachers, and the Romans for their friends
+and brethren.  His triumph was transient and premature.  In the
+various fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian
+chiefs might allow themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of
+baptism; and a Greek bishop, with the name of metropolitan, might
+administer the sacraments in the church of Kiow, to a
+congregation of slaves and natives.  But the seed of the gospel
+was sown on a barren soil: many were the apostates, the converts
+were few; and the baptism of Olga may be fixed as the aera of
+Russian Christianity. ^74 A female, perhaps of the basest origin,
+who could revenge the death, and assume the sceptre, of her
+husband Igor, must have been endowed with those active virtues
+which command the fear and obedience of Barbarians.  In a moment
+of foreign and domestic peace, she sailed from Kiow to
+Constantinople; and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has
+described, with minute diligence, the ceremonial of her reception
+in his capital and palace.  The steps, the titles, the
+salutations, the banquet, the presents, were exquisitely adjusted
+to gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due reverence to the
+superior majesty of the purple. ^75 In the sacrament of baptism,
+she received the venerable name of the empress Helena; and her
+conversion might be preceded or followed by her uncle, two
+interpreters, sixteen damsels of a higher, and eighteen of a
+lower rank, twenty-two domestics or ministers, and forty-four
+Russian merchants, who composed the retinue of the great princess
+Olga.  After her return to Kiow and Novogorod, she firmly
+persisted in her new religion; but her labors in the propagation
+of the gospel were not crowned with success; and both her family
+and nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the gods of
+their fathers.  Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn
+and ridicule of his companions; and her grandson Wolodomir
+devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and decorate the monuments
+of ancient worship.  The savage deities of the North were still
+propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice of the victim, a
+citizen was preferred to a stranger, a Christian to an idolater;
+and the father, who defended his son from the sacerdotal knife,
+was involved in the same doom by the rage of a fanatic tumult.
+Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga had made a deep,
+though secret, impression in the minds of the prince and people:
+the Greek missionaries continued to preach, to dispute, and to
+baptize: and the ambassadors or merchants of Russia compared the
+idolatry of the woods with the elegant superstition of
+Constantinople.  They had gazed with admiration on the dome of
+St. Sophia: the lively pictures of saints and martyrs, the riches
+of the altar, the number and vestments of the priests, the pomp
+and order of the ceremonies; they were edified by the alternate
+succession of devout silence and harmonious song; nor was it
+difficult to persuade them, that a choir of angels descended each
+day from heaven to join in the devotion of the Christians. ^76
+But the conversion of Wolodomir was determined, or hastened, by
+his desire of a Roman bride.  At the same time, and in the city
+of Cherson, the rites of baptism and marriage were celebrated by
+the Christian pontiff: the city he restored to the emperor Basil,
+the brother of his spouse; but the brazen gates were transported,
+as it is said, to Novogorod, and erected before the first church
+as a trophy of his victory and faith. ^77 At his despotic
+command, Peround, the god of thunder, whom he had so long adored,
+was dragged through the streets of Kiow; and twelve sturdy
+Barbarians battered with clubs the misshapen image, which was
+indignantly cast into the waters of the Borysthenes.  The edict
+of Wolodomir had proclaimed, that all who should refuse the rites
+of baptism would be treated as the enemies of God and their
+prince; and the rivers were instantly filled with many thousands
+of obedient Russians, who acquiesced in the truth and excellence
+of a doctrine which had been embraced by the great duke and his
+boyars.  In the next generation, the relics of Paganism were
+finally extirpated; but as the two brothers of Wolodomir had died
+without baptism, their bones were taken from the grave, and
+sanctified by an irregular and posthumous sacrament.
+
+[Footnote 73: Phot. Epistol. ii. No. 35, p. 58, edit. Montacut.
+It was unworthy of the learning of the editor to mistake the
+Russian nation, for a war-cry of the Bulgarians, nor did it
+become the enlightened patriarch to accuse the Sclavonian
+idolaters.  They were neither Greeks nor Atheists.]
+
+[Footnote 74: M. Levesque has extracted, from old chronicles and
+modern researches, the most satisfactory account of the religion
+of the Slavi, and the conversion of Russia, (Hist. de Russie,
+tom. i. p. 35 - 54, 59, 92, 92, 113 - 121, 124 - 129, 148, 149,
+&c.)]
+
+[Footnote 75: See the Ceremoniale Aulae Byzant. tom. ii. c. 15,
+p. 343 - 345: the style of Olga, or Elga.  For the chief of
+Barbarians the Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an
+Athenian magistrate, with a female termination, which would have
+astonished the ear of Demosthenes.]
+
+[Footnote 76: See an anonymous fragment published by Banduri,
+(Imperium Orientale, tom. ii. p. 112, 113, de Conversione
+Russorum.]
+
+[Footnote 77: Cherson, or Corsun, is mentioned by Herberstein
+(apud Pagi tom. iv. p. 56) as the place of Wolodomir's baptism
+and marriage; and both the tradition and the gates are still
+preserved at Novogorod.  Yet an observing traveller transports
+the brazen gates from Magdeburgh in Germany, (Coxe's Travels into
+Russia, &c., vol. i. p. 452;) and quotes an inscription, which
+seems to justify his opinion.  The modern reader must not
+confound this old Cherson of the Tauric or Crimaean peninsula,
+with a new city of the same name, which has arisen near the mouth
+of the Borysthenes, and was lately honored by the memorable
+interview of the empress of Russia with the emperor of the West.]
+
+In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of the Christian
+aera, the reign of the gospel and of the church was extended over
+Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
+Poland, and Russia. ^78 The triumphs of apostolic zeal were
+repeated in the iron age of Christianity; and the northern and
+eastern regions of Europe submitted to a religion, more different
+in theory than in practice, from the worship of their native
+idols.  A laudable ambition excited the monks both of Germany and
+Greece, to visit the tents and huts of the Barbarians: poverty,
+hardships, and dangers, were the lot of the first missionaries;
+their courage was active and patient; their motive pure and
+meritorious; their present reward consisted in the testimony of
+their conscience and the respect of a grateful people; but the
+fruitful harvest of their toils was inherited and enjoyed by the
+proud and wealthy prelates of succeeding times.  The first
+conversions were free and spontaneous: a holy life and an
+eloquent tongue were the only arms of the missionaries; but the
+domestic fables of the Pagans were silenced by the miracles and
+visions of the strangers; and the favorable temper of the chiefs
+was accelerated by the dictates of vanity and interest.  The
+leaders of nations, who were saluted with the titles of kings and
+saints, ^79 held it lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith
+on their subjects and neighbors; the coast of the Baltic, from
+Holstein to the Gulf of Finland, was invaded under the standard
+of the cross; and the reign of idolatry was closed by the
+conversion of Lithuania in the fourteenth century.  Yet truth and
+candor must acknowledge, that the conversion of the North
+imparted many temporal benefits both to the old and the new
+Christians.  The rage of war, inherent to the human species,
+could not be healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and
+peace; and the ambition of Catholic princes has renewed in every
+age the calamities of hostile contention.  But the admission of
+the Barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society
+delivered Europe from the depredations, by sea and land, of the
+Normans, the Hungarians, and the Russians, who learned to spare
+their brethren and cultivate their possessions. ^80 The
+establishment of law and order was promoted by the influence of
+the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced
+into the savage countries of the globe.  The liberal piety of the
+Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the
+Greeks, to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants: the
+dome and the paintings of St. Sophia were rudely copied in the
+churches of Kiow and Novogorod: the writings of the fathers were
+translated into the Sclavonic idiom; and three hundred noble
+youths were invited or compelled to attend the lessons of the
+college of Jaroslaus.  It should appear that Russia might have
+derived an early and rapid improvement from her peculiar
+connection with the church and state of Constantinople, which at
+that age so justly despised the ignorance of the Latins.  But the
+Byzantine nation was servile, solitary, and verging to a hasty
+decline: after the fall of Kiow, the navigation of the
+Borysthenes was forgotten; the great princes of Wolodomir and
+Moscow were separated from the sea and Christendom; and the
+divided monarchy was oppressed by the ignominy and blindness of
+Tartar servitude. ^81 The Sclavonic and Scandinavian kingdoms,
+which had been converted by the Latin missionaries, were exposed,
+it is true, to the spiritual jurisdiction and temporal claims of
+the popes; ^82 but they were united in language and religious
+worship, with each other, and with Rome; they imbibed the free
+and generous spirit of the European republic, and gradually
+shared the light of knowledge which arose on the western world.
+
+[Footnote 78: Consult the Latin text, or English version, of
+Mosheim's excellent History of the Church, under the first head
+or section of each of these centuries.]
+
+[Footnote 79: In the year 1000, the ambassadors of St. Stephen
+received from Pope Silvester the title of King of Hungary, with a
+diadem of Greek workmanship.  It had been designed for the duke
+of Poland: but the Poles, by their own confession, were yet too
+barbarous to deserve an angelical and apostolical crown.
+(Katona, Hist. Critic Regum Stirpis Arpadianae, tom. i. p. 1 -
+20.)]
+
+[Footnote 80: Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen, (A.D.
+1080,) of which the substance is agreeable to truth: Ecce illa
+ferocissima Danorum, &c., natio ..... jamdudum novit in Dei
+laudibus Alleluia resonare ..... Ecce populus ille piraticus
+..... suis nunc finibus contentus est. Ecce patria horribilis
+semper inaccessa propter cultum idolorum ... praedicatores
+veritatis ubique certatim admittit, &c., &c., (de Situ Daniae,
+&c., p. 40, 41, edit. Elzevir; a curious and original prospect of
+the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity.)]
+
+[Footnote 81: The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which
+was ruined by the Tartars in 1240.  Moscow became the seat of
+empire in the xivth century. See the 1st and 2d volumes of
+Levesque's History, and Mr. Coxe's Travels into the North, tom.
+i. p. 241, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 82: The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the
+reverential expressions of regnum oblatum, debitam obedientiam,
+&c., which were most rigorously interpreted by Gregory VII.; and
+the Hungarian Catholics are distressed between the sanctity of
+the pope and the independence of the crown, (Katona, Hist.
+Critica, tom. i. p. 20 - 25, tom. ii. p. 304, 346, 360, &c.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.
+
+Part I.
+
+The Saracens, Franks, And Greeks, In Italy. - First
+Adventures And Settlement Of The Normans. - Character And
+Conquest Of Robert Guiscard, Duke Of Apulia - Deliverance Of
+Sicily By His Brother Roger. - Victories Of Robert Over The
+Emperors Of The East And West. - Roger, King Of Sicily, Invades
+Africa And Greece. - The Emperor Manuel Comnenus. - Wars Of The
+Greeks And Normans. - Extinction Of The Normans.
+
+The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the
+Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre
+of Italy. ^1 The southern provinces, which now compose the
+kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most part, to the
+Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum; ^2 so powerful in war,
+that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne; so
+liberal in peace, that they maintained in their capital an
+academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians.  The division
+of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of
+Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or
+revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of
+their common inheritance.  During a calamitous period of two
+hundred years, Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds, which
+the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and
+tranquility of a perfect conquest.  Their frequent and almost
+annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo, and were
+entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples:
+the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coast;
+and even the Arabs of Andalusia were sometimes tempted to assist
+or oppose the Moslems of an adverse sect.  In the revolution of
+human events, a new ambuscade was concealed in the Caudine Forks,
+the fields of Cannae were bedewed a second time with the blood of
+the Africans, and the sovereign of Rome again attacked or
+defended the walls of Capua and Tarentum.  A colony of Saracens
+had been planted at Bari, which commands the entrance of the
+Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations provoked the
+resentment, and conciliated the union of the two emperors.  An
+offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the Macedonian,
+the first of his race, and Lewis the great-grandson of
+Charlemagne; ^3 and each party supplied the deficiencies of his
+associate.  It would have been imprudent in the Byzantine monarch
+to transport his stationary troops of Asia to an Italian
+campaign; and the Latin arms would have been insufficient if his
+superior navy had not occupied the mouth of the Gulf.  The
+fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks, and
+by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of
+four years, the Arabian emir submitted to the clemency of Lewis,
+who commanded in person the operations of the siege. This
+important conquest had been achieved by the concord of the East
+and West; but their recent amity was soon imbittered by the
+mutual complaints of jealousy and pride.  The Greeks assumed as
+their own the merit of the conquest and the pomp of the triumph;
+extolled the greatness of their powers, and affected to deride
+the intemperance and sloth of the handful of Barbarians who
+appeared under the banners of the Carlovingian prince.  His reply
+is expressed with the eloquence of indignation and truth: "We
+confess the magnitude of your preparation," says the great-
+grandson of Charlemagne.  "Your armies were indeed as numerous as
+a cloud of summer locusts, who darken the day, flap their wings,
+and, after a short flight, tumble weary and breathless to the
+ground.  Like them, ye sunk after a feeble effort; ye were
+vanquished by your own cowardice; and withdrew from the scene of
+action to injure and despoil our Christian subjects of the
+Sclavonian coast.  We were few in number, and why were we few?
+Because, after a tedious expectation of your arrival, I had
+dismissed my host, and retained only a chosen band of warriors to
+continue the blockade of the city.  If they indulged their
+hospitable feasts in the face of danger and death, did these
+feasts abate the vigor of their enterprise? Is it by your fasting
+that the walls of Bari have been overturned?  Did not these
+valiant Franks, diminished as they were by languor and fatigue,
+intercept and vanish the three most powerful emirs of the
+Saracens?  and did not their defeat precipitate the fall of the
+city?  Bari is now fallen; Tarentum trembles; Calabria will be
+delivered; and, if we command the sea, the Island of Sicily may
+be rescued from the hands of the infidels.  My brother,"
+accelerate (a name most offensive to the vanity of the Greek,)
+"accelerate your naval succors, respect your allies, and distrust
+your flatterers." ^4
+
+[Footnote 1: For the general history of Italy in the ixth and xth
+centuries, I may properly refer to the vth, vith, and viith books
+of Sigonius de Regno Italiae, (in the second volume of his works,
+Milan, 1732;) the Annals of Baronius, with the criticism of Pagi;
+the viith and viiith books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di
+Napoli of Giannone; the viith and viiith volumes (the octavo
+edition) of the Annali d' Italia of Muratori, and the 2d volume
+of the Abrege Chronologique of M. de St. Marc, a work which,
+under a superficial title, contains much genuine learning and
+industry.  But my long-accustomed reader will give me credit for
+saying, that I myself have ascended to the fountain head, as
+often as such ascent could be either profitable or possible; and
+that I have diligently turned over the originals in the first
+volumes of Muratori's great collection of the Scriptores Rerum
+Italicarum.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Camillo Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last
+century, has illustrated the history of the duchy of Beneventum,
+in his two books Historia Principum Longobardorum, in the
+Scriptores of Muratori tom. ii. pars i. p. 221 - 345, and tom. v.
+p 159 - 245.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Thematibus, l. ii. c
+xi. in Vit Basil. c. 55, p. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 4: The oriental epistle of the emperor Lewis II. to the
+emperor Basil, a curious record of the age, was first published
+by Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 871, No. 51 - 71,) from the
+Vatican Ms. of Erchempert, or rather of the anonymous historian
+of Salerno.] These lofty hopes were soon extinguished by the
+death of Lewis, and the decay of the Carlovingian house; and
+whoever might deserve the honor, the Greek emperors, Basil, and
+his son Leo, secured the advantage, of the reduction of Bari The
+Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to
+acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from Mount
+Garganus to the Bay of Salerno, leaves the far greater part of
+the kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the Eastern empire.
+Beyond that line, the dukes or republics of Amalfi ^5 and Naples,
+who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in
+the neighborhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalfi was
+enriched by supplying Europe with the produce and manufactures of
+Asia.  But the Lombard princes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua,
+^6 were reluctantly torn from the communion of the Latin world,
+and too often violated their oaths of servitude and tribute.  The
+city of Bari rose to dignity and wealth, as the metropolis of the
+new theme or province of Lombardy: the title of patrician, and
+afterwards the singular name of Catapan, ^7 was assigned to the
+supreme governor; and the policy both of the church and state was
+modelled in exact subordination to the throne of Constantinople.
+As long as the sceptre was disputed by the princes of Italy,
+their efforts were feeble and adverse; and the Greeks resisted or
+eluded the forces of Germany, which descended from the Alps under
+the Imperial standard of the Othos.  The first and greatest of
+those Saxon princes was compelled to relinquish the siege of
+Bari: the second, after the loss of his stoutest bishops and
+barons, escaped with honor from the bloody field of Crotona.  On
+that day the scale of war was turned against the Franks by the
+valor of the Saracens. ^8 These corsairs had indeed been driven
+by the Byzantine fleets from the fortresses and coasts of Italy;
+but a sense of interest was more prevalent than superstition or
+resentment, and the caliph of Egypt had transported forty
+thousand Moslems to the aid of his Christian ally.  The
+successors of Basil amused themselves with the belief, that the
+conquest of Lombardy had been achieved, and was still preserved
+by the justice of their laws, the virtues of their ministers, and
+the gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from anarchy and
+oppression.  A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth
+into the palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery
+were dispelled by the easy and rapid success of the Norman
+adventurers.
+
+[Footnote 5: See an excellent Dissertation de Republica
+Amalphitana, in the Appendix (p. 1 - 42) of Henry Brencman's
+Historia Pandectarum, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and
+protection prinminibus Capuano et Beneventano, servis meis, quos
+oppugnare dispono .... Nova (potius nota) res est quod eorum
+patres et avi nostro Imperio tributa dederunt, (Liutprand, in
+Legat. p. 484.) Salerno is not mentioned, yet the prince changed
+his party about the same time, and Camillo Pellegrino (Script.
+Rer. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 285) has nicely discerned this
+change in the style of the anonymous Chronicle.  On the rational
+ground of history and language, Liutprand (p. 480) had asserted
+the Latin claim to Apulia and Calabria.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange
+(catapanus,) and his notes on the Alexias, (p. 275.) Against the
+contemporary notion, which derives it from juxta omne, he treats
+it as a corruption of the Latin capitaneus.  Yet M. de St. Marc
+has accurately observed (Abrege Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 924)
+that in this age the capitanei were not captains, but only nobles
+of the first rank, the great valvassors of Italy.]
+
+[Footnote 8: (the Lombards), (Leon. Tactic. c. xv. p. 741.) The
+little Chronicle of Beneventum (tom. ii. pars i. p. 280) gives a
+far different character of the Greeks during the five years (A.D.
+891 - 896) that Leo was master of the city.]
+
+The revolution of human affairs had produced in Apulia and
+Calabria a melancholy contrast between the age of Pythagoras and
+the tenth century of the Christian aera.  At the former period,
+the coast of Great Greece (as it was then styled) was planted
+with free and opulent cities: these cities were peopled with
+soldiers, artists, and philosophers; and the military strength of
+Tarentum; Sybaris, or Crotona, was not inferior to that of a
+powerful kingdom. At the second aera, these once flourishing
+provinces were clouded with ignorance impoverished by tyranny,
+and depopulated by Barbarian war nor can we severely accuse the
+exaggeration of a contemporary, that a fair and ample district
+was reduced to the same desolation which had covered the earth
+after the general deluge. ^9 Among the hostilities of the Arabs,
+the Franks, and the Greeks, in the southern Italy, I shall select
+two or three anecdotes expressive of their national manners.  1.
+It was the amusement of the Saracens to profane, as well as to
+pillage, the monasteries and churches.  At the siege of Salerno,
+a Mussulman chief spread his couch on the communion-table, and on
+that altar sacrificed each night the virginity of a Christian
+nun.  As he wrestled with a reluctant maid, a beam in the roof
+was accidentally or dexterously thrown down on his head; and the
+death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of Christ,
+which was at length awakened to the defence of his faithful
+spouse. ^10 2. The Saracens besieged the cities of Beneventum and
+Capua: after a vain appeal to the successors of Charlemagne, the
+Lombards implored the clemency and aid of the Greek emperor. ^11
+A fearless citizen dropped from the walls, passed the
+intrenchments, accomplished his commission, and fell into the
+hands of the Barbarians as he was returning with the welcome
+news.  They commanded him to assist their enterprise, and deceive
+his countrymen, with the assurance that wealth and honors should
+be the reward of his falsehood, and that his sincerity would be
+punished with immediate death. He affected to yield, but as soon
+as he was conducted within hearing of the Christians on the
+rampart, "Friends and brethren," he cried with a loud voice, "be
+bold and patient, maintain the city; your sovereign is informed
+of your distress, and your deliverers are at hand.  I know my
+doom, and commit my wife and children to your gratitude." The
+rage of the Arabs confirmed his evidence; and the self-devoted
+patriot was transpierced with a hundred spears.  He deserves to
+live in the memory of the virtuous, but the repetition of the
+same story in ancient and modern times, may sprinkle some doubts
+on the reality of this generous deed. ^12 3. The recital of a
+third incident may provoke a smile amidst the horrors of war.
+Theobald, marquis of Camerino and Spoleto, ^13 supported the
+rebels of Beneventum; and his wanton cruelty was not incompatible
+in that age with the character of a hero.  His captives of the
+Greek nation or party were castrated without mercy, and the
+outrage was aggravated by a cruel jest, that he wished to present
+the emperor with a supply of eunuchs, the most precious ornaments
+of the Byzantine court.  The garrison of a castle had been
+defeated in a sally, and the prisoners were sentenced to the
+customary operation.  But the sacrifice was disturbed by the
+intrusion of a frantic female, who, with bleeding cheeks
+dishevelled hair, and importunate clamors, compelled the marquis
+to listen to her complaint. "Is it thus," she cried, 'ye
+magnanimous heroes, that ye wage war against women, against women
+who have never injured ye, and whose only arms are the distaff
+and the loom?" Theobald denied the charge, and protested that,
+since the Amazons, he had never heard of a female war. "And how,"
+she furiously exclaimed, "can you attack us more directly, how
+can you wound us in a more vital part, than by robbing our
+husbands of what we most dearly cherish, the source of our joys,
+and the hope of our posterity?  The plunder of our flocks and
+herds I have endured without a murmur, but this fatal injury,
+this irreparable loss, subdues my patience, and calls aloud on
+the justice of heaven and earth." A general laugh applauded her
+eloquence; the savage Franks, inaccessible to pity, were moved by
+her ridiculous, yet rational despair; and with the deliverance of
+the captives, she obtained the restitution of her effects.  As
+she returned in triumph to the castle, she was overtaken by a
+messenger, to inquire, in the name of Theobald, what punishment
+should be inflicted on her husband, were he again taken in arms.
+"Should such," she answered without hesitation, "be his guilt and
+misfortune, he has eyes, and a nose, and hands, and feet.  These
+are his own, and these he may deserve to forfeit by his personal
+offences. But let my lord be pleased to spare what his little
+handmaid presumes to claim as her peculiar and lawful property."
+^14
+
+[Footnote 9: Calabriam adeunt, eamque inter se divisam
+reperientes funditus depopulati sunt, (or depopularunt,) ita ut
+deserta sit velut in diluvio. Such is the text of Herempert, or
+Erchempert, according to the two editions of Carraccioli (Rer.
+Italic. Script. tom. v. p. 23) and of Camillo Pellegrino, tom.
+ii. pars i. p. 246.) Both were extremely scarce, when they were
+reprinted by Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 874, No. 2) has drawn
+this story from a Ms. of Erchempert, who died at Capua only
+fifteen years after the event.  But the cardinal was deceived by
+a false title, and we can only quote the anonymous Chronicle of
+Salerno, (Paralipomena, c. 110,) composed towards the end of the
+xth century, and published in the second volume of Muratori's
+Collection.  See the Dissertations of Camillo Pellegrino, tom.
+ii. pars i. p. 231 - 281, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 58,
+p. 183) is the original author of this story.  He places it under
+the reigns of Basil and Lewis II.; yet the reduction of
+Beneventum by the Greeks is dated A.D. 891, after the decease of
+both of those princes.]
+
+[Footnote 12: In the year 663, the same tragedy is described by
+Paul the Deacon, (de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 7, 8, p. 870,
+871, edit. Grot.,) under the walls of the same city of
+Beneventum.  But the actors are different, and the guilt is
+imputed to the Greeks themselves, which in the Byzantine edition
+is applied to the Saracens.  In the late war in Germany, M.
+D'Assas, a French officer of the regiment of Auvergne, is said to
+have devoted himself in a similar manner.  His behavior is the
+more heroic, as mere silence was required by the enemy who had
+made him prisoner, (Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV. c. 33, tom. ix.
+p. 172.)]
+
+[Footnote 13: Theobald, who is styled Heros by Liutprand, was
+properly duke of Spoleto and marquis of Camerino, from the year
+926 to 935.  The title and office of marquis (commander of the
+march or frontier) was introduced into Italy by the French
+emperors, (Abrege Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 545 - 732 &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 14: Liutprand, Hist. l. iv. c. iv. in the Rerum Italic.
+Script. tom. i. pars i. p. 453, 454.  Should the licentiousness
+of the tale be questioned, I may exclaim, with poor Sterne, that
+it is hard if I may not transcribe with caution what a bishop
+could write without scruple What if I had translated, ut viris
+certetis testiculos amputare, in quibus nostri corporis
+refocillatio, &c.?]
+
+The establishment of the Normans in the kingdoms of Naples
+and Sicily ^15 is an event most romantic in its origin, and in
+its consequences most important both to Italy and the Eastern
+empire.  The broken provinces of the Greeks, Lombards, and
+Saracens, were exposed to every invader, and every sea and land
+were invaded by the adventurous spirit of the Scandinavian
+pirates. After a long indulgence of rapine and slaughter, a fair
+and ample territory was accepted, occupied, and named, by the
+Normans of France: they renounced their gods for the God of the
+Christians; ^16 and the dukes of Normandy acknowledged themselves
+the vassals of the successors of Charlemagne and Capet.  The
+savage fierceness which they had brought from the snowy mountains
+of Norway was refined, without being corrupted, in a warmer
+climate; the companions of Rollo insensibly mingled with the
+natives; they imbibed the manners, language, ^17 and gallantry,
+of the French nation; and in a martial age, the Normans might
+claim the palm of valor and glorious achievements.  Of the
+fashionable superstitions, they embraced with ardor the
+pilgrimages of Rome, Italy, and the Holy Land. ^! In this active
+devotion, the minds and bodies were invigorated by exercise:
+danger was the incentive, novelty the recompense; and the
+prospect of the world was decorated by wonder, credulity, and
+ambitious hope.  They confederated for their mutual defence; and
+the robbers of the Alps, who had been allured by the garb of a
+pilgrim, were often chastised by the arm of a warrior.  In one of
+these pious visits to the cavern of Mount Garganus in Apulia,
+which had been sanctified by the apparition of the archangel
+Michael, ^18 they were accosted by a stranger in the Greek habit,
+but who soon revealed himself as a rebel, a fugitive, and a
+mortal foe of the Greek empire.  His name was Melo; a noble
+citizen of Bari, who, after an unsuccessful revolt, was compelled
+to seek new allies and avengers of his country.  The bold
+appearance of the Normans revived his hopes and solicited his
+confidence: they listened to the complaints, and still more to
+the promises, of the patriot.  The assurance of wealth
+demonstrated the justice of his cause; and they viewed, as the
+inheritance of the brave, the fruitful land which was oppressed
+by effeminate tyrants.  On their return to Normandy, they kindled
+a spark of enterprise, and a small but intrepid band was freely
+associated for the deliverance of Apulia.  They passed the Alps
+by separate roads, and in the disguise of pilgrims; but in the
+neighborhood of Rome they were saluted by the chief of Bari, who
+supplied the more indigent with arms and horses, and instantly
+led them to the field of action.  In the first conflict, their
+valor prevailed; but in the second engagement they were
+overwhelmed by the numbers and military engines of the Greeks,
+and indignantly retreated with their faces to the enemy. ^* The
+unfortunate Melo ended his life a suppliant at the court of
+Germany: his Norman followers, excluded from their native and
+their promised land, wandered among the hills and valleys of
+Italy, and earned their daily subsistence by the sword.  To that
+formidable sword the princes of Capua, Beneventum, Salerno, and
+Naples, alternately appealed in their domestic quarrels; the
+superior spirit and discipline of the Normans gave victory to the
+side which they espoused; and their cautious policy observed the
+balance of power, lest the preponderance of any rival state
+should render their aid less important, and their service less
+profitable.  Their first asylum was a strong camp in the depth of
+the marshes of Campania: but they were soon endowed by the
+liberality of the duke of Naples with a more plentiful and
+permanent seat.  Eight miles from his residence, as a bulwark
+against Capua, the town of Aversa was built and fortified for
+their use; and they enjoyed as their own the corn and fruits, the
+meadows and groves, of that fertile district.  The report of
+their success attracted every year new swarms of pilgrims and
+soldiers: the poor were urged by necessity; the rich were excited
+by hope; and the brave and active spirits of Normandy were
+impatient of ease and ambitious of renown.  The independent
+standard of Aversa afforded shelter and encouragement to the
+outlaws of the province, to every fugitive who had escaped from
+the injustice or justice of his superiors; and these foreign
+associates were quickly assimilated in manners and language to
+the Gallic colony.  The first leader of the Normans was Count
+Rainulf; and, in the origin of society, preeminence of rank is
+the reward and the proof of superior merit. ^19 ^*
+
+[Footnote 15: The original monuments of the Normans in Italy are
+collected in the vth volume of Muratori; and among these we may
+distinguish the poems of William Appulus (p. 245 - 278) and the
+history of Galfridus (Jeffrey) Malaterra, (p. 537 - 607.) Both
+were natives of France, but they wrote on the spot, in the age of
+the first conquerors (before A.D. 1100,) and with the spirit of
+freemen.  It is needless to recapitulate the compilers and
+critics of Italian history, Sigonius, Baronius, Pagi, Giannone,
+Muratori, St. Marc, &c., whom I have always consulted, and never
+copied.
+
+Note: M. Goutier d'Arc has discovered a translation of the
+Chronicle of Aime, monk of Mont Cassino, a contemporary of the
+first Norman invaders of Italy.  He has made use of it in his
+Histoire des Conquetes des Normands, and added a summary of its
+contents.  This work was quoted by later writers, but was
+supposed to have been entirely lost. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Some of the first converts were baptized ten or
+twelve times, for the sake of the white garment usually given at
+this ceremony.  At the funeral of Rollo, the gifts to monasteries
+for the repose of his soul were accompanied by a sacrifice of one
+hundred captives.  But in a generation or two, the national
+change was pure and general.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The Danish language was still spoken by the Normans
+of Bayeux on the sea-coast, at a time (A.D. 940) when it was
+already forgotten at Rouen, in the court and capital.  Quem
+(Richard I.) confestim pater Baiocas mittens Botoni militiae suae
+principi nutriendum tradidit, ut, ibi lingua eruditus Danica,
+suis exterisque hominibus sciret aperte dare responsa, (Wilhelm.
+Gemeticensis de Ducibus Normannis, l. iii. c. 8, p. 623, edit.
+Camden.) Of the vernacular and favorite idiom of William the
+Conqueror, (A.D. 1035,) Selden (Opera, tom. ii. p. 1640 - 1656)
+has given a specimen, obsolete and obscure even to antiquarians
+and lawyers.]
+
+[Footnote !: A band of Normans returning from the Holy Land had
+rescued the city of Salerno from the attack of a numerous fleet
+of Saracens.  Gainar, the Lombard prince of Salerno wished to
+retain them in his service and take them into his pay.  They
+answered, "We fight for our religion, and not for money." Gaimar
+entreated them to send some Norman knights to his court.  This
+seems to have been the origin of the connection of the Normans
+with Italy.  See Histoire des Conquetes des Normands par Goutier
+d'Arc, l. i. c. i., Paris, 1830. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See Leandro Alberti (Descrizione d'Italia, p. 250)
+and Baronius, (A.D. 493, No. 43.) If the archangel inherited the
+temple and oracle, perhaps the cavern, of old Calchas the
+soothsayer, (Strab. Geograph l. vi. p. 435, 436,) the Catholics
+(on this occasion) have surpassed the Greeks in the elegance of
+their superstition.]
+
+[Footnote *: Nine out of ten perished in the field.  Chronique
+d'Aime, tom. i. p. 21 quoted by M Goutier d'Arc, p. 42. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: See the first book of William Appulus.  His words
+are applicable to every swarm of Barbarians and freebooters: -
+
+Si vicinorum quis pernitiosus ad illos
+
+Confugiebat eum gratanter suscipiebant:
+
+Moribus et lingua quoscumque venire videbant
+
+Informant propria; gens efficiatur ut una.
+
+And elsewhere, of the native adventurers of Normandy: -
+
+Pars parat, exiguae vel opes aderant quia nullae:
+
+Pars, quia de magnis majora subire volebant.]
+
+[Footnote *: This account is not accurate.  After the retreat of
+the emperor Henry II. the Normans, united under the command of
+Rainulf, had taken possession of Aversa, then a small castle in
+the duchy of Naples. They had been masters of it a few years when
+Pandulf IV., prince of Capua, found means to take Naples by
+surprise.  Sergius, master of the soldiers, and head of the
+republic, with the principal citizens, abandoned a city in which
+he could not behold, without horror, the establishment of a
+foreign dominion he retired to Aversa; and when, with the
+assistance of the Greeks and that of the citizens faithful to
+their country, he had collected money enough to satisfy the
+rapacity of the Norman adventurers, he advanced at their head to
+attack the garrison of the prince of Capua, defeated it, and
+reentered Naples.  It was then that he confirmed the Normans in
+the possession of Aversa and its territory, which he raised into
+a count's fief, and granted the investiture to Rainulf.  Hist.
+des Rep. Ital. tom. i. p. 267]
+
+Since the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the Grecian
+emperors had been anxious to regain that valuable possession; but
+their efforts, however strenuous, had been opposed by the
+distance and the sea.  Their costly armaments, after a gleam of
+success, added new pages of calamity and disgrace to the
+Byzantine annals: twenty thousand of their best troops were lost
+in a single expedition; and the victorious Moslems derided the
+policy of a nation which intrusted eunuchs not only with the
+custody of their women, but with the command of their men ^20
+After a reign of two hundred years, the Saracens were ruined by
+their divisions. ^21 The emir disclaimed the authority of the
+king of Tunis; the people rose against the emir; the cities were
+usurped by the chiefs; each meaner rebel was independent in his
+village or castle; and the weaker of two rival brothers implored
+the friendship of the Christians.  In every service of danger the
+Normans were prompt and useful; and five hundred knights, or
+warriors on horseback, were enrolled by Arduin, the agent and
+interpreter of the Greeks, under the standard of Maniaces,
+governor of Lombardy.  Before their landing, the brothers were
+reconciled; the union of Sicily and Africa was restored; and the
+island was guarded to the water's edge.  The Normans led the van
+and the Arabs of Messina felt the valor of an untried foe.  In a
+second action the emir of Syracuse was unhorsed and transpierced
+by the iron arm of William of Hauteville.  In a third engagement,
+his intrepid companions discomfited the host of sixty thousand
+Saracens, and left the Greeks no more than the labor of the
+pursuit: a splendid victory; but of which the pen of the
+historian may divide the merit with the lance of the Normans. It
+is, however, true, that they essentially promoted the success of
+Maniaces, who reduced thirteen cities, and the greater part of
+Sicily, under the obedience of the emperor.  But his military
+fame was sullied by ingratitude and tyranny.  In the division of
+the spoils, the deserts of his brave auxiliaries were forgotten;
+and neither their avarice nor their pride could brook this
+injurious treatment.  They complained by the mouth of their
+interpreter: their complaint was disregarded; their interpreter
+was scourged; the sufferings were his; the insult and resentment
+belonged to those whose sentiments he had delivered.  Yet they
+dissembled till they had obtained, or stolen, a safe passage to
+the Italian continent: their brethren of Aversa sympathized in
+their indignation, and the province of Apulia was invaded as the
+forfeit of the debt. ^22 Above twenty years after the first
+emigration, the Normans took the field with no more than seven
+hundred horse and five hundred foot; and after the recall of the
+Byzantine legions ^23 from the Sicilian war, their numbers are
+magnified to the amount of threescore thousand men.  Their herald
+proposed the option of battle or retreat; "of battle," was the
+unanimous cry of the Normans; and one of their stoutest warriors,
+with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse of the
+Greek messenger.  He was dismissed with a fresh horse; the insult
+was concealed from the Imperial troops; but in two successive
+battles they were more fatally instructed of the prowess of their
+adversaries.  In the plains of Cannae, the Asiatics fled before
+the adventurers of France; the duke of Lombardy was made
+prisoner; the Apulians acquiesced in a new dominion; and the four
+places of Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and Tarentum, were alone
+saved in the shipwreck of the Grecian fortunes.  From this aera
+we may date the establishment of the Norman power, which soon
+eclipsed the infant colony of Aversa.  Twelve counts ^24 were
+chosen by the popular suffrage; and age, birth, and merit, were
+the motives of their choice.  The tributes of their peculiar
+districts were appropriated to their use; and each count erected
+a fortress in the midst of his lands, and at the head of his
+vassals.  In the centre of the province, the common habitation of
+Melphi was reserved as the metropolis and citadel of the
+republic; a house and separate quarter was allotted to each of
+the twelve counts: and the national concerns were regulated by
+this military senate.  The first of his peers, their president
+and general, was entitled count of Apulia; and this dignity was
+conferred on William of the iron arm, who, in the language of the
+age, is styled a lion in battle, a lamb in society, and an angel
+in council. ^25 The manners of his countrymen are fairly
+delineated by a contemporary and national historian. ^26 "The
+Normans," says Malaterra, "are a cunning and revengeful people;
+eloquence and dissimulation appear to be their hereditary
+qualities: they can stoop to flatter; but unless they are curbed
+by the restraint of law, they indulge the licentiousness of
+nature and passion. Their princes affect the praises of popular
+munificence; the people observe the medium, or rather blond the
+extremes, of avarice and prodigality; and in their eager thirst
+of wealth and dominion, they despise whatever they possess, and
+hope whatever they desire.  Arms and horses, the luxury of dress,
+the exercises of hunting and hawking ^27 are the delight of the
+Normans; but, on pressing occasions, they can endure with
+incredible patience the inclemency of every climate, and the toil
+and absence of a military life." ^28
+
+[Footnote 20: Liutprand, in Legatione, p. 485.  Pagi has
+illustrated this event from the Ms. history of the deacon Leo,
+(tom. iv. A.D. 965, No. 17 - 19.)]
+
+[Footnote 21: See the Arabian Chronicle of Sicily, apud Muratori,
+Script. Rerum Ital. tom. i. p. 253.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Jeffrey Malaterra, who relates the Sicilian war,
+and the conquest of Apulia, (l. i. c. 7, 8, 9, 19.) The same
+events are described by Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 741 - 743, 755,
+756) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 237, 238;) and the Greeks are so
+hardened to disgrace, that their narratives are impartial
+enough.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Lydia: consult Constantine de Thematibus, i. 3, 4,
+with Delisle's map.]
+
+[Footnote 24:  Omnes conveniunt; et bis sex nobiliores,
+
+          Quos genus et gravitas morum decorabat et aetas,
+
+       Elegere duces.  Provectis ad comitatum
+
+          His alii parent.  Comitatus nomen honoris
+
+          Quo donantur erat.  Hi totas undique terras
+
+  Divisere sibi, ni sors inimica repugnet;
+
+          Singula proponunt loca quae contingere sorte
+
+   Cuique duci debent, et quaeque tributa locorum.
+
+And after speaking of Melphi, William Appulus adds,
+
+          Pro numero comitum bis sex statuere plateas,
+
+   Atque domus comitum totidem fabricantur in urbe.
+Leo Ostiensis (l. ii. c. 67) enumerates the divisions of the
+Apulian cities, which it is needless to repeat.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Gulielm. Appulus, l. ii. c 12, according to the
+reference of Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p.
+31,) which I cannot verify in the original.  The Apulian praises
+indeed his validas vires, probitas animi, and vivida virtus; and
+declares that, had he lived, no poet could have equalled his
+merits, (l. i. p. 258, l. ii. p. 259.) He was bewailed by the
+Normans, quippe qui tanti consilii virum, (says Malaterra, l. i.
+c. 12, p. 552,) tam armis strenuum, tam sibi munificum,
+affabilem, morigeratum, ulterius se habere diffidebant.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The gens astutissima, injuriarum ultrix ....
+adulari sciens .... eloquentiis inserviens, of Malaterra, (l. i.
+c. 3, p. 550,) are expressive of the popular and proverbial
+character of the Normans.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The hunting and hawking more properly belong to the
+descendants of the Norwegian sailors; though they might import
+from Norway and Iceland the finest casts of falcons.]
+
+[Footnote 28: We may compare this portrait with that of William
+of Malmsbury, (de Gestis Anglorum, l. iii. p. 101, 102,) who
+appreciates, like a philosophic historian, the vices and virtues
+of the Saxons and Normans. England was assuredly a gainer by the
+conquest.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.
+
+Part II.
+
+The Normans of Apulia were seated on the verge of the two
+empires; and, according to the policy of the hour, they accepted
+the investiture of their lands, from the sovereigns of Germany or
+Constantinople.  But the firmest title of these adventurers was
+the right of conquest: they neither loved nor trusted; they were
+neither trusted nor beloved: the contempt of the princes was
+mixed with fear, and the fear of the natives was mingled with
+hatred and resentment.  Every object of desire, a horse, a woman,
+a garden, tempted and gratified the rapaciousness of the
+strangers; ^29 and the avarice of their chiefs was only colored
+by the more specious names of ambition and glory.  The twelve
+counts were sometimes joined in the league of injustice: in their
+domestic quarrels they disputed the spoils of the people: the
+virtues of William were buried in his grave; and Drogo, his
+brother and successor, was better qualified to lead the valor,
+than to restrain the violence, of his peers.  Under the reign of
+Constantine Monomachus, the policy, rather than benevolence, of
+the Byzantine court, attempted to relieve Italy from this
+adherent mischief, more grievous than a flight of Barbarians; ^30
+and Argyrus, the son of Melo, was invested for this purpose with
+the most lofty titles ^31 and the most ample commission. The
+memory of his father might recommend him to the Normans; and he
+had already engaged their voluntary service to quell the revolt
+of Maniaces, and to avenge their own and the public injury.  It
+was the design of Constantine to transplant the warlike colony
+from the Italian provinces to the Persian war; and the son of
+Melo distributed among the chiefs the gold and manufactures of
+Greece, as the first-fruits of the Imperial bounty. But his arts
+were baffled by the sense and spirit of the conquerors of Apulia:
+his gifts, or at least his proposals, were rejected; and they
+unanimously refused to relinquish their possessions and their
+hopes for the distant prospect of Asiatic fortune.  After the
+means of persuasion had failed, Argyrus resolved to compel or to
+destroy: the Latin powers were solicited against the common
+enemy; and an offensive alliance was formed of the pope and the
+two emperors of the East and West.  The throne of St. Peter was
+occupied by Leo the Ninth, a simple saint, ^32 of a temper most
+apt to deceive himself and the world, and whose venerable
+character would consecrate with the name of piety the measures
+least compatible with the practice of religion.  His humanity was
+affected by the complaints, perhaps the calumnies, of an injured
+people: the impious Normans had interrupted the payment of
+tithes; and the temporal sword might be lawfully unsheathed
+against the sacrilegious robbers, who were deaf to the censures
+of the church.  As a German of noble birth and royal kindred, Leo
+had free access to the court and confidence of the emperor Henry
+the Third; and in search of arms and allies, his ardent zeal
+transported him from Apulia to Saxony, from the Elbe to the
+Tyber.  During these hostile preparations, Argyrus indulged
+himself in the use of secret and guilty weapons: a crowd of
+Normans became the victims of public or private revenge; and the
+valiant Drogo was murdered in a church.  But his spirit survived
+in his brother Humphrey, the third count of Apulia.  The
+assassins were chastised; and the son of Melo, overthrown and
+wounded, was driven from the field, to hide his shame behind the
+walls of Bari, and to await the tardy succor of his allies.
+
+[Footnote 29: The biographer of St. Leo IX. pours his holy venom
+on the Normans.  Videns indisciplinatam et alienam gentem
+Normannorum, crudeli et inaudita rabie, et plusquam Pagana
+impietate, adversus ecclesias Dei insurgere, passim Christianos
+trucidare, &c., (Wibert, c. 6.) The honest Apulian (l. ii. p.
+259) says calmly of their accuser, Veris commiscens fallacia.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The policy of the Greeks, revolt of Maniaces, &c.,
+must be collected from Cedrenus, (tom. ii. p. 757, 758,) William
+Appulus, (l. i. p 257, 258, l. ii. p. 259,) and the two
+Chronicles of Bari, by Lupus Protospata, (Muratori, Script. Ital.
+tom. v. p. 42, 43, 44,) and an anonymous writer, (Antiquitat,
+Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. i. p 31 - 35.) This last is a fragment
+of some value.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Argyrus received, says the anonymous Chronicle of
+Bari, Imperial letters, Foederatus et Patriciatus, et Catapani et
+Vestatus.  In his Annals, Muratori (tom. viii. p. 426) very
+properly reads, or interprets, Sevestatus, the title of Sebastos
+or Augustus.  But in his Antiquities, he was taught by Ducange to
+make it a palatine office, master of the wardrobe.]
+
+[Footnote 32: A Life of St. Leo IX., deeply tinged with the
+passions and prejudices of the age, has been composed by Wibert,
+printed at Paris, 1615, in octavo, and since inserted in the
+Collections of the Bollandists, of Mabillon, and of Muratori.
+The public and private history of that pope is diligently treated
+by M. de St. Marc.  (Abrege, tom. ii. p. 140 - 210, and p. 25 -
+95, second column.)]
+
+But the power of Constantine was distracted by a Turkish
+war; the mind of Henry was feeble and irresolute; and the pope,
+instead of repassing the Alps with a German army, was accompanied
+only by a guard of seven hundred Swabians and some volunteers of
+Lorraine.  In his long progress from Mantua to Beneventum, a vile
+and promiscuous multitude of Italians was enlisted under the holy
+standard: ^33 the priest and the robber slept in the same tent;
+the pikes and crosses were intermingled in the front; and the
+martial saint repeated the lessons of his youth in the order of
+march, of encampment, and of combat.  The Normans of Apulia could
+muster in the field no more than three thousand horse, with a
+handful of infantry: the defection of the natives intercepted
+their provisions and retreat; and their spirit, incapable of
+fear, was chilled for a moment by superstitious awe.  On the
+hostile approach of Leo, they knelt without disgrace or
+reluctance before their spiritual father. But the pope was
+inexorable; his lofty Germans affected to deride the diminutive
+stature of their adversaries; and the Normans were informed that
+death or exile was their only alternative.  Flight they
+disdained, and, as many of them had been three days without
+tasting food, they embraced the assurance of a more easy and
+honorable death.  They climbed the hill of Civitella, descended
+into the plain, and charged in three divisions the army of the
+pope.  On the left, and in the centre, Richard count of Aversa,
+and Robert the famous Guiscard, attacked, broke, routed, and
+pursued the Italian multitudes, who fought without discipline,
+and fled without shame.  A harder trial was reserved for the
+valor of Count Humphrey, who led the cavalry of the right wing.
+The Germans ^34 have been described as unskillful in the
+management of the horse and the lance, but on foot they formed a
+strong and impenetrable phalanx; and neither man, nor steed, nor
+armor, could resist the weight of their long and two-handed
+swords.  After a severe conflict, they were encompassed by the
+squadrons returning from the pursuit; and died in the ranks with
+the esteem of their foes, and the satisfaction of revenge.  The
+gates of Civitella were shut against the flying pope, and he was
+overtaken by the pious conquerors, who kissed his feet, to
+implore his blessing and the absolution of their sinful victory.
+The soldiers beheld in their enemy and captive the vicar of
+Christ; and, though we may suppose the policy of the chiefs, it
+is probable that they were infected by the popular superstition.
+In the calm of retirement, the well-meaning pope deplored the
+effusion of Christian blood, which must be imputed to his
+account: he felt, that he had been the author of sin and scandal;
+and as his undertaking had failed, the indecency of his military
+character was universally condemned. ^35 With these dispositions,
+he listened to the offers of a beneficial treaty; deserted an
+alliance which he had preached as the cause of God; and ratified
+the past and future conquests of the Normans.  By whatever hands
+they had been usurped, the provinces of Apulia and Calabria were
+a part of the donation of Constantine and the patrimony of St.
+Peter: the grant and the acceptance confirmed the mutual claims
+of the pontiff and the adventurers.  They promised to support
+each other with spiritual and temporal arms; a tribute or
+quitrent of twelve pence was afterwards stipulated for every
+ploughland; and since this memorable transaction, the kingdom of
+Naples has remained above seven hundred years a fief of the Holy
+See. ^36
+
+[Footnote 33: See the expedition of Leo XI. against the Normans.
+See William Appulus (l. ii. p. 259 - 261) and Jeffrey Malaterra
+(l. i. c. 13, 14, 15, p. 253.) They are impartial, as the
+national is counterbalanced by the clerical prejudice]
+
+[Footnote 34:  Teutonici, quia caesaries et forma decoros
+
+          Fecerat egregie proceri corporis illos
+
+          Corpora derident Normannica quae breviora
+
+          Esse videbantur.
+
+The verses of the Apulian are commonly in this strain, though he
+heats himself a little in the battle.  Two of his similes from
+hawking and sorcery are descriptive of manners.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Several respectable censures or complaints are
+produced by M. de St. Marc, (tom. ii. p. 200 - 204.) As Peter
+Damianus, the oracle of the times, has denied the popes the right
+of making war, the hermit (lugens eremi incola) is arraigned by
+the cardinal, and Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 1053, No. 10 -
+17) most strenuously asserts the two swords of St. Peter.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The origin and nature of the papal investitures are
+ably discussed by Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii.
+p. 37 - 49, 57 - 66,) as a lawyer and antiquarian.  Yet he vainly
+strives to reconcile the duties of patriot and Catholic, adopts
+an empty distinction of "Ecclesia Romana non dedit, sed accepit,"
+and shrinks from an honest but dangerous confession of the
+truth.]
+
+The pedigree of Robert of Guiscard ^37 is variously deduced
+from the peasants and the dukes of Normandy: from the peasants,
+by the pride and ignorance of a Grecian princess; ^38 from the
+dukes, by the ignorance and flattery of the Italian subjects. ^39
+His genuine descent may be ascribed to the second or middle order
+of private nobility. ^40 He sprang from a race of valvassors or
+bannerets, of the diocese of Coutances, in the Lower Normandy:
+the castle of Hauteville was their honorable seat: his father
+Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army of the duke; and
+his military service was furnished by ten soldiers or knights.
+Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him the
+father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial
+tenderness of his second wife.  But a narrow patrimony was
+insufficient for this numerous and daring progeny; they saw
+around the neighborhood the mischiefs of poverty and discord, and
+resolved to seek in foreign wars a more glorious inheritance.
+Two only remained to perpetuate the race, and cherish their
+father's age: their ten brothers, as they successfully attained
+the vigor of manhood, departed from the castle, passed the Alps,
+and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans. The elder were
+prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their younger
+brethren, and the three first in seniority, William, Drogo, and
+Humphrey, deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the
+founders of the new republic.  Robert was the eldest of the seven
+sons of the second marriage; and even the reluctant praise of his
+foes has endowed him with the heroic qualities of a soldier and a
+statesman.  His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army:
+his limbs were cast in the true proportion of strength and
+gracefulness; and to the decline of life, he maintained the
+patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his form.
+His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and
+beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with
+fire, and his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress
+obedience and terror amidst the tumult of battle.  In the ruder
+ages of chivalry, such qualifications are not below the notice of
+the poet or historians: they may observe that Robert, at once,
+and with equal dexterity, could wield in the right hand his
+sword, his lance in the left; that in the battle of Civitella he
+was thrice unhorsed; and that in the close of that memorable day
+he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valor from the
+warriors of the two armies. ^41 His boundless ambition was
+founded on the consciousness of superior worth: in the pursuit of
+greatness, he was never arrested by the scruples of justice, and
+seldom moved by the feelings of humanity: though not insensible
+of fame, the choice of open or clandestine means was determined
+only by his present advantage.  The surname of Guiscard ^42 was
+applied to this master of political wisdom, which is too often
+confounded with the practice of dissimulation and deceit; and
+Robert is praised by the Apulian poet for excelling the cunning
+of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero.  Yet these arts were
+disguised by an appearance of military frankness: in his highest
+fortune, he was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers;
+and while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he
+affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion
+of his country.  He grasped with a rapacious, that he might
+distribute with a liberal, hand: his primitive indigence had
+taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not
+below his attention; and his prisoners were tortured with slow
+and unfeeling cruelty, to force a discovery of their secret
+treasure.  According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy
+with only five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet
+even this allowance appears too bountiful: the sixth son of
+Tancred of Hauteville passed the Alps as a pilgrim; and his first
+military band was levied among the adventurers of Italy.  His
+brothers and countrymen had divided the fertile lands of Apulia;
+but they guarded their shares with the jealousy of avarice; the
+aspiring youth was driven forwards to the mountains of Calabria,
+and in his first exploits against the Greeks and the natives, it
+is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber.  To
+surprise a castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to
+plunder the adjacent villages for necessary food, were the
+obscure labors which formed and exercised the powers of his mind
+and body.  The volunteers of Normandy adhered to his standard;
+and, under his command, the peasants of Calabria assumed the name
+and character of Normans.
+
+[Footnote 37: The birth, character, and first actions of Robert
+Guiscard, may be found in Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. i. c. 3, 4, 11,
+16, 17, 18, 38, 39, 40,) William Appulus, (l. ii. p. 260 - 262,)
+William Gemeticensis, or of Jumieges, (l. xi. c. 30, p. 663, 664,
+edit. Camden,) and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. i. p. 23 - 27, l.
+vi. p. 165, 166,) with the annotations of Ducange, (Not. in
+Alexiad, p. 230 - 232, 320,) who has swept all the French and
+Latin Chronicles for supplemental intelligence.]
+
+[Footnote 38: (a Greek corruption), and elsewhere, (l. iv. p.
+84,).  Anna Comnena was born in the purple; yet her father was no
+more than a private though illustrious subject, who raised
+himself to the empire.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 2) forgets all his original
+authors, and rests this princely descent on the credit of
+Inveges, an Augustine monk of Palermo in the last century.  They
+continue the succession of dukes from Rollo to William II. the
+Bastard or Conqueror, whom they hold (communemente si tiene) to
+be the father of Tancred of Hauteville; a most strange and
+stupendous blunder!  The sons of Tancred fought in Apulia, before
+William II. was three years old, (A.D. 1037.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: The judgment of Ducange is just and moderate: Certe
+humilis fuit ac tenuis Roberti familia, si ducalem et regium
+spectemus apicem, ad quem postea pervenit; quae honesta tamen et
+praeter nobilium vulgarium statum et conditionem illustris habita
+est, "quae nec humi reperet nec altum quid tumeret." (Wilhem.
+Malmsbur. de Gestis Anglorum, l. iii. p. 107. Not. ad Alexiad. p.
+230.)]
+
+[Footnote 41: I shall quote with pleasure some of the best lines
+of the Apulian, (l. ii. p. 270.)
+
+Pugnat utraque manu, nec lancea cassa, nec ensis
+
+Cassus erat, quocunque manu deducere vellet.
+
+Ter dejectus equo, ter viribus ipse resumptis
+
+Major in arma redit: stimulos furor ipse ministrat.
+
+Ut Leo cum frendens, &c.
+
+-    -    -    -    -    -    -
+
+Nullus in hoc bello sicuti post bella probatum est
+
+Victor vel victus, tam magnos edidit ictus.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The Norman writers and editors most conversant with
+their own idiom interpret Guiscard or Wiscard, by Callidus, a
+cunning man.  The root (wise) is familiar to our ear; and in the
+old word Wiseacre, I can discern something of a similar sense and
+termination.  It is no bad translation of the surname and
+character of Robert.]
+
+As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he
+awakened the jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a
+transient quarrel, his life was threatened and his liberty
+restrained.  After the death of Humphrey, the tender age of his
+sons excluded them from the command; they were reduced to a
+private estate, by the ambition of their guardian and uncle; and
+Guiscard was exalted on a buckler, and saluted count of Apulia
+and general of the republic. With an increase of authority and of
+force, he resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a
+rank that should raise him forever above the heads of his equals.
+
+By some acts of rapine or sacrilege, he had incurred a papal
+excommunication; but Nicholas the Second was easily persuaded
+that the divisions of friends could terminate only in their
+mutual prejudice; that the Normans were the faithful champions of
+the Holy See; and it was safer to trust the alliance of a prince
+than the caprice of an aristocracy.  A synod of one hundred
+bishops was convened at Melphi; and the count interrupted an
+important enterprise to guard the person and execute the decrees
+of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy conferred on
+Robert and his posterity the ducal title, ^43 with the
+investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy
+and Sicily, which his sword could rescue from the schismatic
+Greeks and the unbelieving Saracens. ^44 This apostolic sanction
+might justify his arms; but the obedience of a free and
+victorious people could not be transferred without their consent;
+and Guiscard dissembled his elevation till the ensuing campaign
+had been illustrated by the conquest of Consenza and Reggio.  In
+the hour of triumph, he assembled his troops, and solicited the
+Normans to confirm by their suffrage the judgment of the vicar of
+Christ: the soldiers hailed with joyful acclamations their
+valiant duke; and the counts, his former equals, pronounced the
+oath of fidelity with hollow smiles and secret indignation.
+After this inauguration, Robert styled himself, "By the grace of
+God and St. Peter, duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of
+Sicily;" and it was the labor of twenty years to deserve and
+realize these lofty appellations.  Such sardy progress, in a
+narrow space, may seem unworthy of the abilities of the chief and
+the spirit of the nation; but the Normans were few in number;
+their resources were scanty; their service was voluntary and
+precarious.  The bravest designs of the duke were sometimes
+opposed by the free voice of his parliament of barons: the twelve
+counts of popular election conspired against his authority; and
+against their perfidious uncle, the sons of Humphrey demanded
+justice and revenge.  By his policy and vigor, Guiscard
+discovered their plots, suppressed their rebellions, and punished
+the guilty with death or exile: but in these domestic feuds, his
+years, and the national strength, were unprofitably consumed.
+After the defeat of his foreign enemies, the Greeks, Lombards,
+and Saracens, their broken forces retreated to the strong and
+populous cities of the sea-coast.  They excelled in the arts of
+fortification and defence; the Normans were accustomed to serve
+on horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only
+succeed by the efforts of persevering courage.  The resistance of
+Salerno was maintained above eight months; the siege or blockade
+of Bari lasted near four years. In these actions the Norman duke
+was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the last and
+most patient.  As he pressed the citadel of Salerno, a huge stone
+from the rampart shattered one of his military engines; and by a
+splinter he was wounded in the breast.  Before the gates of Bari,
+he lodged in a miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry
+branches, and thatched with straw; a perilous station, on all
+sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the
+enemy. ^45
+
+[Footnote 43: The acquisition of the ducal title by Robert
+Guiscard is a nice and obscure business.  With the good advice of
+Giannone, Muratori, and St. Marc, I have endeavored to form a
+consistent and probable narrative.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 1059, No. 69) has
+published the original act.  He professes to have copied it from
+the Liber Censuum, a Vatican Ms.  Yet a Liber Censuum of the
+xiith century has been printed by Muratori, (Antiquit. Medii
+Aevi, tom. v. p. 851 - 908;) and the names of Vatican and
+Cardinal awaken the suspicions of a Protestant, and even of a
+philosopher.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Read the life of Guiscard in the second and third
+books of the Apulian, the first and second books of Malaterra.]
+
+The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits
+of the present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his
+arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred
+years. ^46 The monarchy has been composed of the Greek provinces
+of Calabria and Apulia, of the Lombard principality of Salerno,
+the republic of Amalphi, and the inland dependencies of the large
+and ancient duchy of Beneventum.  Three districts only were
+exempted from the common law of subjection; the first forever,
+the two last till the middle of the succeeding century.  The city
+and immediate territory of Benevento had been transferred, by
+gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the Roman pontiff;
+and although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the name of
+St. Peter was finally more potent than the sword of the Normans.
+Their first colony of Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua;
+and her princes were reduced to beg their bread before the palace
+of their fathers.  The dukes of Naples, the present metropolis,
+maintained the popular freedom, under the shadow of the Byzantine
+empire. Among the new acquisitions of Guiscard, the science of
+Salerno, ^47 and the trade of Amalphi, ^48 may detain for a
+moment the curiosity of the reader. I.  Of the learned faculties,
+jurisprudence implies the previous establishment of laws and
+property; and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full
+light of religion and reason. But the savage and the sage must
+alike implore the assistance of physic; and, if our diseases are
+inflamed by luxury, the mischiefs of blows and wounds would be
+more frequent in the ruder ages of society.  The treasures of
+Grecian medicine had been communicated to the Arabian colonies of
+Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse of peace and
+war, a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at
+Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and
+the women beautiful. ^49 A school, the first that arose in the
+darkness of Europe, was consecrated to the healing art: the
+conscience of monks and bishops was reconciled to that salutary
+and lucrative profession; and a crowd of patients, of the most
+eminent rank, and most distant climates, invited or visited the
+physicians of Salerno.  They were protected by the Norman
+conquerors; and Guiscard, though bred in arms, could discern the
+merit and value of a philosopher.  After a pilgrimage of
+thirty-nine years, Constantine, an African Christian, returned
+from Bagdad, a master of the language and learning of the
+Arabians; and Salerno was enriched by the practice, the lessons,
+and the writings of the pupil of Avicenna.  The school of
+medicine has long slept in the name of a university; but her
+precepts are abridged in a string of aphorisms, bound together in
+the Leonine verses, or Latin rhymes, of the twelfth century. ^50
+II. Seven miles to the west of Salerno, and thirty to the south
+of Naples, the obscure town of Amalphi displayed the power and
+rewards of industry.  The land, however fertile, was of narrow
+extent; but the sea was accessible and open: the inhabitants
+first assumed the office of supplying the western world with the
+manufactures and productions of the East; and this useful traffic
+was the source of their opulence and freedom.  The government was
+popular, under the administration of a duke and the supremacy of
+the Greek emperor.  Fifty thousand citizens were numbered in the
+walls of Amalphi; nor was any city more abundantly provided with
+gold, silver, and the objects of precious luxury.  The mariners
+who swarmed in her port, excelled in the theory and practice of
+navigation and astronomy: and the discovery of the compass, which
+has opened the globe, is owing to their ingenuity or good
+fortune.  Their trade was extended to the coasts, or at least to
+the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India: and their
+settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and
+Alexandria, acquired the privileges of independent colonies. ^51
+After three hundred years of prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by
+the arms of the Normans, and sacked by the jealousy of Pisa; but
+the poverty of one thousand ^* fisherman is yet dignified by the
+remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal
+merchants.
+
+[Footnote 46: The conquests of Robert Guiscard and Roger I., the
+exemption of Benevento and the xii provinces of the kingdom, are
+fairly exposed by Giannone in the second volume of his Istoria
+Civile, l. ix. x. xi and l. xvii. p. 460 - 470.  This modern
+division was not established before the time of Frederic II.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 119 - 127,) Muratori,
+(Antiquitat. Medii Aevi, tom. iii. dissert. xliv. p. 935, 936,)
+and Tiraboschi, (Istoria della Letteratura Italiana,) have given
+an historical account of these physicians; their medical
+knowledge and practice must be left to our physicians.]
+
+[Footnote 48: At the end of the Historia Pandectarum of Henry
+Brenckmann, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.,) the
+indefatigable author has inserted two dissertations, de Republica
+Amalphitana, and de Amalphi a Pisanis direpta, which are built on
+the testimonies of one hundred and forty writers.  Yet he has
+forgotten two most important passages of the embassy of
+Liutprand, (A.D. 939,) which compare the trade and navigation of
+Amalphi with that of Venice.]
+
+[Footnote 49:  Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe,
+
+          Frugibus, arboribus, vinoque redundat; et unde
+
+     Non tibi poma, nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt,
+
+   Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum.
+
+          Gulielmus Appulus, l. iii. p. 367]
+
+[Footnote 50: Muratori carries their antiquity above the year
+(1066) of the death of Edward the Confessor, the rex Anglorum to
+whom they are addressed. Nor is this date affected by the
+opinion, or rather mistake, of Pasquier (Recherches de la France,
+l. vii. c. 2) and Ducange, (Glossar. Latin.) The practice of
+rhyming, as early as the viith century, was borrowed from the
+languages of the North and East, (Muratori, Antiquitat. tom. iii.
+dissert. xl. p. 686 - 708.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: The description of Amalphi, by William the Apulian,
+(l. iii. p. 267,) contains much truth and some poetry, and the
+third line may be applied to the sailor's compass: -
+
+Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro
+
+Partibus innumeris: hac plurimus urbe moratur
+
+Nauta maris Caelique vias aperire peritus.
+
+Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe
+
+Regis, et Antiochi.  Gens haec freta plurima transit.
+
+His Arabes, Indi, Siculi nascuntur et Afri.
+
+Haec gens est totum proore nobilitata per orbem,
+
+Et mercando forens, et amans mercata referre.]
+
+[Footnote *: Amalfi had only one thousand inhabitants at the
+commencement of the 18th century, when it was visited by
+Brenckmann, (Brenckmann de Rep. Amalph. Diss. i. c. 23.) At
+present it has six or eight thousand Hist. des Rep. tom. i. p.
+304. - G.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.
+
+Part III.
+
+Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been
+long detained in Normandy by his own and his father' age.  He
+accepted the welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and
+deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his
+elder brother.  Their valor and ambition were equal; but the
+youth, the beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the
+disinterested love of the soldiers and people.  So scanty was his
+allowance for himself and forty followers, that he descended from
+conquest to robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft; and so
+loose were the notions of property, that, by his own historian,
+at his special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a
+stable at Melphi. ^52 His spirit emerged from poverty and
+disgrace: from these base practices he rose to the merit and
+glory of a holy war; and the invasion of Sicily was seconded by
+the zeal and policy of his brother Guiscard.  After the retreat
+of the Greeks, the idolaters, a most audacious reproach of the
+Catholics, had retrieved their losses and possessions; but the
+deliverance of the island, so vainly undertaken by the forces of
+the Eastern empire, was achieved by a small and private band of
+adventurers. ^53 In the first attempt, Roger braved, in an open
+boat, the real and fabulous dangers of Scylla and Charybdis;
+landed with only sixty soldiers on a hostile shore; drove the
+Saracens to the gates of Messina and safely returned with the
+spoils of the adjacent country.  In the fortress of Trani, his
+active and patient courage were equally conspicuous.  In his old
+age he related with pleasure, that, by the distress of the siege,
+himself, and the countess his wife, had been reduced to a single
+cloak or mantle, which they wore alternately; that in a sally his
+horse had been slain, and he was dragged away by the Saracens;
+but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had retreated
+with his saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might be
+left in the hands of the miscreants.  In the siege of Trani,
+three hundred Normans withstood and repulsed the forces of the
+island.  In the field of Ceramio, fifty thousand horse and foot
+were overthrown by one hundred and thirty-six Christian soldiers,
+without reckoning St. George, who fought on horseback in the
+foremost ranks.  The captive banners, with four camels, were
+reserved for the successor of St. Peter; and had these barbaric
+spoils been exposed, not in the Vatican, but in the Capitol, they
+might have revived the memory of the Punic triumphs.  These
+insufficient numbers of the Normans most probably denote their
+knights, the soldiers of honorable and equestrian rank, each of
+whom was attended by five or six followers in the field; ^54 yet,
+with the aid of this interpretation, and after every fair
+allowance on the side of valor, arms, and reputation, the
+discomfiture of so many myriads will reduce the prudent reader to
+the alternative of a miracle or a fable.  The Arabs of Sicily
+derived a frequent and powerful succor from their countrymen of
+Africa: in the siege of Palermo, the Norman cavalry was assisted
+by the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of action, the envy of
+the two brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible
+emulation.  After a war of thirty years, ^55 Roger, with the
+title of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and
+most fruitful island of the Mediterranean; and his administration
+displays a liberal and enlightened mind, above the limits of his
+age and education.  The Moslems were maintained in the free
+enjoyment of their religion and property: ^56 a philosopher and
+physician of Mazara, of the race of Mahomet, harangued the
+conqueror, and was invited to court; his geography of the seven
+climates was translated into Latin; and Roger, after a diligent
+perusal, preferred the work of the Arabian to the writings of the
+Grecian Ptolemy. ^57 A remnant of Christian natives had promoted
+the success of the Normans: they were rewarded by the triumph of
+the cross.  The island was restored to the jurisdiction of the
+Roman pontiff; new bishops were planted in the principal cities;
+and the clergy was satisfied by a liberal endowment of churches
+and monasteries.  Yet the Catholic hero asserted the rights of
+the civil magistrate.  Instead of resigning the investiture of
+benefices, he dexterously applied to his own profit the papal
+claims: the supremacy of the crown was secured and enlarged, by
+the singular bull, which declares the princes of Sicily
+hereditary and perpetual legates of the Holy See. ^58
+
+[Footnote 52: Latrocinio armigerorum suorum in multis
+sustentabatur, quod quidem ad ejus ignominiam non dicimus; sed
+ipso ita praecipiente adhuc viliora et reprehensibiliora dicturi
+sumus ut pluribus patescat, quam laboriose et cum quanta angustia
+a profunda paupertate ad summum culmen divitiarum vel honoris
+attigerit.  Such is the preface of Malaterra (l. i. c. 25) to the
+horse-stealing.  From the moment (l. i. c. 19) that he has
+mentioned his patron Roger, the elder brother sinks into the
+second character.  Something similar in Velleius Paterculus may
+be observed of Augustus and Tiberius.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Duo sibi proficua deputans animae scilicet et
+corporis si terran: Idolis deditam ad cultum divinum revocaret,
+(Galfrid Malaterra, l. ii. c. 1.) The conquest of Sicily is
+related in the three last books, and he himself has given an
+accurate summary of the chapters, (p. 544 - 546.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: See the word Milites in the Latin Glossary of
+Ducange.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Of odd particulars, I learn from Malaterra, that
+the Arabs had introduced into Sicily the use of camels (l. i. c.
+33) and of carrier- pigeons, (c. 42;) and that the bite of the
+tarantula provokes a windy disposition, quae per anum inhoneste
+crepitando emergit; a symptom most ridiculously felt by the whole
+Norman army in their camp near Palermo, (c. 36.) I shall add an
+etymology not unworthy of the xith century: Messana is divided
+from Messis, the place from whence the harvests of the isle were
+sent in tribute to Rome, (l. ii. c. 1.)]
+
+[Footnote 56: See the capitulation of Palermo in Malaterra, l.
+ii. c. 45, and Giannone, who remarks the general toleration of
+the Saracens, (tom ii. p. 72.)]
+
+[Footnote 57: John Leo Afer, de Medicis et Philosophus Arabibus,
+c. 14, apud Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. xiii. p. 278, 279.  This
+philosopher is named Esseriph Essachalli, and he died in Africa,
+A. H. 516, A.D. 1122. Yet this story bears a strange resemblance
+to the Sherif al Edrissi, who presented his book (Geographia
+Nubiensis, see preface p. 88, 90, 170) to Roger, king of Sicily,
+A. H. 541, A.D. 1153, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
+786. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 188.  Petit de la Croix,
+Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 535, 536.  Casiri, Bibliot. Arab. Hispan.
+tom. ii. p. 9 - 13;) and I am afraid of some mistake.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Malaterra remarks the foundation of the bishoprics,
+(l. iv. c. 7,) and produces the original of the bull, (l. iv. c.
+29.) Giannone gives a rational idea of this privilege, and the
+tribunal of the monarchy of Sicily, (tom. ii. p. 95 - 102;) and
+St. Marc (Abrege, tom. iii. p. 217 - 301, 1st column) labors the
+case with the diligence of a Sicilian lawyer.]
+
+To Robert Guiscard, the conquest of Sicily was more glorious
+than beneficial: the possession of Apulia and Calabria was
+inadequate to his ambition; and he resolved to embrace or create
+the first occasion of invading, perhaps of subduing, the Roman
+empire of the East. ^59 From his first wife, the partner of his
+humble fortune, he had been divorced under the pretence of
+consanguinity; and her son Bohemond was destined to imitate,
+rather than to succeed, his illustrious father.  The second wife
+of Guiscard was the daughter of the princes of Salerno; the
+Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger;
+their five daughters were given in honorable nuptials, ^60 and
+one of them was betrothed, in a tender age, to Constantine, a
+beautiful youth, the son and heir of the emperor Michael. ^61 But
+the throne of Constantinople was shaken by a revolution: the
+Imperial family of Ducas was confined to the palace or the
+cloister; and Robert deplored, and resented, the disgrace of his
+daughter and the expulsion of his ally.  A Greek, who styled
+himself the father of Constantine, soon appeared at Salerno, and
+related the adventures of his fall and flight.  That unfortunate
+friend was acknowledged by the duke, and adorned with the pomp
+and titles of Imperial dignity: in his triumphal progress through
+Apulia and Calabria, Michael ^62 was saluted with the tears and
+acclamations of the people; and Pope Gregory the Seventh exhorted
+the bishops to preach, and the Catholics to fight, in the pious
+work of his restoration.  His conversations with Robert were
+frequent and familiar; and their mutual promises were justified
+by the valor of the Normans and the treasures of the East.  Yet
+this Michael, by the confession of the Greeks and Latins, was a
+pageant and an impostor; a monk who had fled from his convent, or
+a domestic who had served in the palace.  The fraud had been
+contrived by the subtle Guiscard; and he trusted, that after this
+pretender had given a decent color to his arms, he would sink, at
+the nod of the conqueror, into his primitive obscurity.  But
+victory was the only argument that could determine the belief of
+the Greeks; and the ardor of the Latins was much inferior to
+their credulity: the Norman veterans wished to enjoy the harvest
+of their toils, and the unwarlike Italians trembled at the known
+and unknown dangers of a transmarine expedition.  In his new
+levies, Robert exerted the influence of gifts and promises, the
+terrors of civil and ecclesiastical authority; and some acts of
+violence might justify the reproach, that age and infancy were
+pressed without distinction into the service of their unrelenting
+prince. After two years' incessant preparations the land and
+naval forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel, or extreme
+promontory, of Italy; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who
+fought by his side, his son Bohemond, and the representative of
+the emperor Michael.  Thirteen hundred knights ^63 of Norman race
+or discipline, formed the sinews of the army, which might be
+swelled to thirty thousand ^64 followers of every denomination.
+The men, the horses, the arms, the engines, the wooden towers,
+covered with raw hides, were embarked on board one hundred and
+fifty vessels: the transports had been built in the ports of
+Italy, and the galleys were supplied by the alliance of the
+republic of Ragusa.
+
+[Footnote 59: In the first expedition of Robert against the
+Greeks, I follow Anna Comnena, (the ist, iiid, ivth, and vth
+books of the Alexiad,) William Appulus, (l. ivth and vth, p.
+270-275,) and Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 13, 14, 24 - 29,
+39.) Their information is contemporary and authentic, but none of
+them were eye-witnesses of the war.]
+
+[Footnote 60: One of them was married to Hugh, the son of Azzo,
+or Axo, a marquis of Lombardy, rich, powerful, and noble,
+(Gulielm. Appul. l. iii. p. 267,) in the xith century, and whose
+ancestors in the xth and ixth are explored by the critical
+industry of Leibnitz and Muratori.  From the two elder sons of
+the marquis Azzo are derived the illustrious lines of Brunswick
+and Este.  See Muratori, Antichita Estense.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Anna Comnena, somewhat too wantonly, praises and
+bewails that handsome boy, who, after the rupture of his barbaric
+nuptials, (l. i. p. 23,) was betrothed as her husband. (p. 27.)
+Elsewhere she describes the red and white of his skin, his hawk's
+eyes, &c., l. iii. p. 71.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Anna Comnena, l. i. p. 28, 29.  Gulielm. Appul. l.
+iv p. 271. Galfrid Malaterra, l. iii. c. 13, p. 579, 580.
+Malaterra is more cautious in his style; but the Apulian is bold
+and positive. - Mentitus se Michaelem Venerata Danais quidam
+seductor ad illum.
+
+As Gregory VII had believed, Baronius almost alone, recognizes
+the emperor Michael. (A.D. No. 44.)]
+
+[Footnote 63: Ipse armatae militiae non plusquam MCCC milites
+secum habuisse, ab eis qui eidem negotio interfuerunt attestatur,
+(Malaterra, l. iii. c. 24, p. 583.) These are the same whom the
+Apulian (l. iv. p. 273) styles the equestris gens ducis, equites
+de gente ducis.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. i. p. 37;) and her
+account tallies with the number and lading of the ships.  Ivit in
+Dyrrachium cum xv. millibus hominum, says the Chronicon Breve
+Normannicum, (Muratori, Scriptores, tom. v. p. 278.) I have
+endeavored to reconcile these reckonings.]
+
+At the mouth of the Adriatic Gulf, the shores of Italy and
+Epirus incline towards each other.  The space between Brundusium
+and Durazzo, the Roman passage, is no more than one hundred
+miles; ^65 at the last station of Otranto, it is contracted to
+fifty; ^66 and this narrow distance had suggested to Pyrrhus and
+Pompey the sublime or extravagant idea of a bridge.  Before the
+general embarkation, the Norman duke despatched Bohemond with
+fifteen galleys to seize or threaten the Isle of Corfu, to survey
+the opposite coast, and to secure a harbor in the neighborhood of
+Vallona for the landing of the troops. They passed and landed
+without perceiving an enemy; and this successful experiment
+displayed the neglect and decay of the naval power of the Greeks.
+The islands of Epirus and the maritime towns were subdued by the
+arms or the name of Robert, who led his fleet and army from Corfu
+(I use the modern appellation) to the siege of Durazzo.  That
+city, the western key of the empire, was guarded by ancient
+renown, and recent fortifications, by George Palaeologus, a
+patrician, victorious in the Oriental wars, and a numerous
+garrison of Albanians and Macedonians, who, in every age, have
+maintained the character of soldiers. In the prosecution of his
+enterprise, the courage of Guiscard was assailed by every form of
+danger and mischance.  In the most propitious season of the year,
+as his fleet passed along the coast, a storm of wind and snow
+unexpectedly arose: the Adriatic was swelled by the raging blast
+of the south, and a new shipwreck confirmed the old infamy of the
+Acroceraunian rocks. ^67 The sails, the masts, and the oars, were
+shattered or torn away; the sea and shore were covered with the
+fragments of vessels, with arms and dead bodies; and the greatest
+part of the provisions were either drowned or damaged.  The ducal
+galley was laboriously rescued from the waves, and Robert halted
+seven days on the adjacent cape, to collect the relics of his
+loss, and revive the drooping spirits of his soldiers.  The
+Normans were no longer the bold and experienced mariners who had
+explored the ocean from Greenland to Mount Atlas, and who smiled
+at the petty dangers of the Mediterranean.  They had wept during
+the tempest; they were alarmed by the hostile approach of the
+Venetians, who had been solicited by the prayers and promises of
+the Byzantine court.  The first day's action was not
+disadvantageous to Bohemond, a beardless youth, ^68 who led the
+naval powers of his father.  All night the galleys of the
+republic lay on their anchors in the form of a crescent; and the
+victory of the second day was decided by the dexterity of their
+evolutions, the station of their archers, the weight of their
+javelins, and the borrowed aid of the Greek fire.  The Apulian
+and Ragusian vessels fled to the shore, several were cut from
+their cables, and dragged away by the conqueror; and a sally from
+the town carried slaughter and dismay to the tents of the Norman
+duke.  A seasonable relief was poured into Durazzo, and as soon
+as the besiegers had lost the command of the sea, the islands and
+maritime towns withdrew from the camp the supply of tribute and
+provision.  That camp was soon afflicted with a pestilential
+disease; five hundred knights perished by an inglorious death;
+and the list of burials (if all could obtain a decent burial)
+amounted to ten thousand persons.  Under these calamities, the
+mind of Guiscard alone was firm and invincible; and while he
+collected new forces from Apulia and Sicily, he battered, or
+scaled, or sapped, the walls of Durazzo.  But his industry and
+valor were encountered by equal valor and more perfect industry.
+A movable turret, of a size and capacity to contain five hundred
+soldiers, had been rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart:
+but the descent of the door or drawbridge was checked by an
+enormous beam, and the wooden structure was constantly consumed
+by artificial flames.
+
+[Footnote 65: The Itinerary of Jerusalem (p. 609, edit.
+Wesseling) gives a true and reasonable space of a thousand stadia
+or one hundred miles which is strangely doubled by Strabo (l. vi.
+p. 433) and Pliny, (Hist. Natur. iii. 16.)]
+
+[Footnote 66: Pliny (Hist. Nat. iii. 6, 16) allows quinquaginta
+millia for this brevissimus cursus, and agrees with the real
+distance from Otranto to La Vallona, or Aulon, (D'Anville,
+Analyse de sa Carte des Cotes de la Grece, &c., p. 3 - 6.)
+Hermolaus Barbarus, who substitutes centum. (Harduin, Not. lxvi.
+in Plin. l. iii.,) might have been corrected by every Venetian
+pilot who had sailed out of the gulf.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Infames scopulos Acroceraunia, Horat. carm. i. 3.
+The praecipitem Africum decertantem Aquilonibus, et rabiem Noti
+and the monstra natantia of the Adriatic, are somewhat enlarged;
+but Horace trembling for the life of Virgil, is an interesting
+moment in the history of poetry and friendship.]
+
+[Footnote 68: (Alexias, l. iv. p. 106.) Yet the Normans shaved,
+and the Venetians wore, their beards: they must have derided the
+no beard of Bohemond; a harsh interpretation. (Duncanga ad
+Alexiad.  p. 283.)]
+
+While the Roman empire was attacked by the Turks in the
+East, east, and the Normans in the West, the aged successor of
+Michael surrendered the sceptre to the hands of Alexius, an
+illustrious captain, and the founder of the Comnenian dynasty.
+The princess Anne, his daughter and historian, observes, in her
+affected style, that even Hercules was unequal to a double
+combat; and, on this principle, she approves a hasty peace with
+the Turks, which allowed her father to undertake in person the
+relief of Durazzo.  On his accession, Alexius found the camp
+without soldiers, and the treasury without money; yet such were
+the vigor and activity of his measures, that in six months he
+assembled an army of seventy thousand men, ^69 and performed a
+march of five hundred miles.  His troops were levied in Europe
+and Asia, from Peloponnesus to the Black Sea; his majesty was
+displayed in the silver arms and rich trappings of the companies
+of Horse-guards; and the emperor was attended by a train of
+nobles and princes, some of whom, in rapid succession, had been
+clothed with the purple, and were indulged by the lenity of the
+times in a life of affluence and dignity.  Their youthful ardor
+might animate the multitude; but their love of pleasure and
+contempt of subordination were pregnant with disorder and
+mischief; and their importunate clamors for speedy and decisive
+action disconcerted the prudence of Alexius, who might have
+surrounded and starved the besieging army.  The enumeration of
+provinces recalls a sad comparison of the past and present limits
+of the Roman world: the raw levies were drawn together in haste
+and terror; and the garrisons of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, had
+been purchased by the evacuation of the cities which were
+immediately occupied by the Turks.  The strength of the Greek
+army consisted in the Varangians, the Scandinavian guards, whose
+numbers were recently augmented by a colony of exiles and
+volunteers from the British Island of Thule.  Under the yoke of
+the Norman conqueror, the Danes and English were oppressed and
+united; a band of adventurous youths resolved to desert a land of
+slavery; the sea was open to their escape; and, in their long
+pilgrimage, they visited every coast that afforded any hope of
+liberty and revenge.  They were entertained in the service of the
+Greek emperor; and their first station was in a new city on the
+Asiatic shore: but Alexius soon recalled them to the defence of
+his person and palace; and bequeathed to his successors the
+inheritance of their faith and valor. ^70 The name of a Norman
+invader revived the memory of their wrongs: they marched with
+alacrity against the national foe, and panted to regain in Epirus
+the glory which they had lost in the battle of Hastings.  The
+Varangians were supported by some companies of Franks or Latins;
+and the rebels, who had fled to Constantinople from the tyranny
+of Guiscard, were eager to signalize their zeal and gratify their
+revenge.  In this emergency, the emperor had not disdained the
+impure aid of the Paulicians or Manichaeans of Thrace and
+Bulgaria; and these heretics united with the patience of
+martyrdom the spirit and discipline of active valor. ^71 The
+treaty with the sultan had procured a supply of some thousand
+Turks; and the arrows of the Scythian horse were opposed to the
+lances of the Norman cavalry.  On the report and distant prospect
+of these formidable numbers, Robert assembled a council of his
+principal officers.  "You behold," said he, "your danger: it is
+urgent and inevitable.  The hills are covered with arms and
+standards; and the emperor of the Greeks is accustomed to wars
+and triumphs.  Obedience and union are our only safety; and I am
+ready to yield the command to a more worthy leader." The vote and
+acclamation even of his secret enemies, assured him, in that
+perilous moment, of their esteem and confidence; and the duke
+thus continued: "Let us trust in the rewards of victory, and
+deprive cowardice of the means of escape.  Let us burn our
+vessels and our baggage, and give battle on this spot, as if it
+were the place of our nativity and our burial." The resolution
+was unanimously approved; and, without confining himself to his
+lines, Guiscard awaited in battle-array the nearer approach of
+the enemy. His rear was covered by a small river; his right wing
+extended to the sea; his left to the hills: nor was he conscious,
+perhaps, that on the same ground Caesar and Pompey had formerly
+disputed the empire of the world. ^72
+
+[Footnote 69: Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom. ix. p. 136, 137)
+observes, that some authors (Petrus Diacon. Chron. Casinen. l.
+iii. c. 49) compose the Greek army of 170,000 men, but that the
+hundred may be struck off, and that Malaterra reckons only
+70,000; a slight inattention.  The passage to which he alludes is
+in the Chronicle of Lupus Protospata, (Script. Ital. tom. v. p.
+45.) Malaterra (l. iv. c. 27) speaks in high, but indefinite
+terms of the emperor, cum copiisinnumerabilbus: like the Apulian
+poet, (l. iv. p. 272: ) -
+
+More locustarum montes et pianna teguntur.]
+
+[Footnote 70: See William of Malmsbury, de Gestis Anglorum, l.
+ii. p. 92. Alexius fidem Anglorum suspiciens praecipuis
+familiaritatibus suis eos applicabat, amorem eorum filio
+transcribens.  Odericus Vitalis (Hist. Eccles. l. iv. p. 508, l.
+vii. p. 641) relates their emigration from England, and their
+service in Greece.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See the Apulian, (l. i. p. 256.) The character and
+the story of these Manichaeans has been the subject of the livth
+chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 72: See the simple and masterly narrative of Caesar
+himself, (Comment. de Bell. Civil. iii. 41 - 75.) It is a pity
+that Quintus Icilius (M. Guichard) did not live to analyze these
+operations, as he has done the campaigns of Africa and Spain.]
+
+Against the advice of his wisest captains, Alexius resolved
+to risk the event of a general action, and exhorted the garrison
+of Durazzo to assist their own deliverance by a well-timed sally
+from the town.  He marched in two columns to surprise the Normans
+before daybreak on two different sides: his light cavalry was
+scattered over the plain; the archers formed the second line; and
+the Varangians claimed the honors of the vanguard.  In the first
+onset, the battle-axes of the strangers made a deep and bloody
+impression on the army of Guiscard, which was now reduced to
+fifteen thousand men.  The Lombards and Calabrians ignominiously
+turned their backs; they fled towards the river and the sea; but
+the bridge had been broken down to check the sally of the
+garrison, and the coast was lined with the Venetian galleys, who
+played their engines among the disorderly throng.  On the verge
+of ruin, they were saved by the spirit and conduct of their
+chiefs.  Gaita, the wife of Robert, is painted by the Greeks as a
+warlike Amazon, a second Pallas; less skilful in arts, but not
+less terrible in arms, than the Athenian goddess: ^73 though
+wounded by an arrow, she stood her ground, and strove, by her
+exhortation and example, to rally the flying troops. ^74 Her
+female voice was seconded by the more powerful voice and arm of
+the Norman duke, as calm in action as he was magnanimous in
+council: "Whither," he cried aloud, "whither do ye fly? Your
+enemy is implacable; and death is less grievous than servitude."
+The moment was decisive: as the Varangians advanced before the
+line, they discovered the nakedness of their flanks: the main
+battle of the duke, of eight hundred knights, stood firm and
+entire; they couched their lances, and the Greeks deplore the
+furious and irresistible shock of the French cavalry. ^75 Alexius
+was not deficient in the duties of a soldier or a general; but he
+no sooner beheld the slaughter of the Varangians, and the flight
+of the Turks, than he despised his subjects, and despaired of his
+fortune.  The princess Anne, who drops a tear on this melancholy
+event, is reduced to praise the strength and swiftness of her
+father's horse, and his vigorous struggle when he was almost
+overthrown by the stroke of a lance, which had shivered the
+Imperial helmet. His desperate valor broke through a squadron of
+Franks who opposed his flight; and after wandering two days and
+as many nights in the mountains, he found some repose, of body,
+though not of mind, in the walls of Lychnidus.  The victorious
+Robert reproached the tardy and feeble pursuit which had suffered
+the escape of so illustrious a prize: but he consoled his
+disappointment by the trophies and standards of the field, the
+wealth and luxury of the Byzantine camp, and the glory of
+defeating an army five times more numerous than his own.  A
+multitude of Italians had been the victims of their own fears;
+but only thirty of his knights were slain in this memorable day.
+In the Roman host, the loss of Greeks, Turks, and English,
+amounted to five or six thousand: ^76 the plain of Durazzo was
+stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of the impostor
+Michael was more honorable than his life.
+
+[Footnote 73: It is very properly translated by the President
+Cousin, (Hist. de Constantinople, tom. iv. p. 131, in 12mo.,) qui
+combattoit comme une Pallas, quoiqu'elle ne fut pas aussi savante
+que celle d'Athenes. The Grecian goddess was composed of two
+discordant characters, of Neith, the workwoman of Sais in Egypt,
+and of a virgin Amazon of the Tritonian lake in Libya, (Banier,
+Mythologie, tom. iv. p. 1 - 31, in 12mo.)]
+
+[Footnote 74: Anna Comnena (l. iv. p. 116) admires, with some
+degree of terror, her masculine virtues.  They were more familiar
+to the Latins and though the Apulian (l. iv. p. 273) mentions her
+presence and her wound, he represents her as far less intrepid.
+
+Uxor in hoc bello Roberti forte sagitta
+
+Quadam laesa fuit: quo vulnere territa nullam.
+
+Dum sperabat opem, se poene subegerat hosti.
+
+The last is an unlucky word for a female prisoner.]
+
+[Footnote 75: (Anna, l. v. p. 133;) and elsewhere, (p. 140.) The
+pedantry of the princess in the choice of classic appellations
+encouraged Ducange to apply to his countrymen the characters of
+the ancient Gauls.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Lupus Protospata (tom. iii. p. 45) says 6000:
+William the Apulian more than 5000, (l. iv. p. 273.) Their
+modesty is singular and laudable: they might with so little
+trouble have slain two or three myriads of schismatics and
+infidels!]
+
+It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by
+the loss of a costly pageant, which had merited only the contempt
+and derision of the Greeks.  After their defeat, they still
+persevered in the defence of Durazzo; and a Venetian commander
+supplied the place of George Palaeologus, who had been
+imprudently called away from his station.  The tents of the
+besiegers were converted into barracks, to sustain the inclemency
+of the winter; and in answer to the defiance of the garrison,
+Robert insinuated, that his patience was at least equal to their
+obstinacy. ^77 Perhaps he already trusted to his secret
+correspondence with a Venetian noble, who sold the city for a
+rich and honorable marriage.  At the dead of night, several
+rope-ladders were dropped from the walls; the light Calabrians
+ascended in silence; and the Greeks were awakened by the name and
+trumpets of the conqueror.  Yet they defended the streets three
+days against an enemy already master of the rampart; and near
+seven months elapsed between the first investment and the final
+surrender of the place.  From Durazzo, the Norman duke advanced
+into the heart of Epirus or Albania; traversed the first
+mountains of Thessaly; surprised three hundred English in the
+city of Castoria; approached Thessalonica; and made
+Constantinople tremble.  A more pressing duty suspended the
+prosecution of his ambitious designs.  By shipwreck, pestilence,
+and the sword, his army was reduced to a third of the original
+numbers; and instead of being recruited from Italy, he was
+informed, by plaintive epistles, of the mischiefs and dangers
+which had been produced by his absence: the revolt of the cities
+and barons of Apulia; the distress of the pope; and the approach
+or invasion of Henry king of Germany.  Highly presuming that his
+person was sufficient for the public safety, he repassed the sea
+in a single brigantine, and left the remains of the army under
+the command of his son and the Norman counts, exhorting Bohemond
+to respect the freedom of his peers, and the counts to obey the
+authority of their leader.  The son of Guiscard trod in the
+footsteps of his father; and the two destroyers are compared, by
+the Greeks, to the caterpillar and the locust, the last of whom
+devours whatever has escaped the teeth of the former. ^78 After
+winning two battles against the emperor, he descended into the
+plain of Thessaly, and besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of
+Achilles, ^79 which contained the treasure and magazines of the
+Byzantine camp.  Yet a just praise must not be refused to the
+fortitude and prudence of Alexius, who bravely struggled with the
+calamities of the times.  In the poverty of the state, he
+presumed to borrow the superfluous ornaments of the churches: the
+desertion of the Manichaeans was supplied by some tribes of
+Moldavia: a reenforcement of seven thousand Turks replaced and
+revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were
+exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of
+ambuscades and evolutions.  Alexius had been taught by
+experience, that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was
+unfit for action, and almost incapable of motion; ^80 his archers
+were directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the
+man; and a variety of spikes and snares were scattered over the
+ground on which he might expect an attack.  In the neighborhood
+of Larissa the events of war were protracted and balanced.  The
+courage of Bohemond was always conspicuous, and often successful;
+but his camp was pillaged by a stratagem of the Greeks; the city
+was impregnable; and the venal or discontented counts deserted
+his standard, betrayed their trusts, and enlisted in the service
+of the emperor.  Alexius returned to Constantinople with the
+advantage, rather than the honor, of victory.  After evacuating
+the conquests which he could no longer defend, the son of
+Guiscard embarked for Italy, and was embraced by a father who
+esteemed his merit, and sympathized in his misfortune.
+
+[Footnote 77: The Romans had changed the inauspicious name of
+Epi-damnus to Dyrrachium, (Plin. iii. 26;) and the vulgar
+corruption of Duracium (see Malaterra) bore some affinity to
+hardness.  One of Robert's names was Durand, a durando: poor wit!
+
+(Alberic. Monach. in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom.
+ix. p. 137.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: (Anna, l. i. p. 35.) By these similes, so different
+from those of Homer she wishes to inspire contempt as well as
+horror for the little noxious animal, a conqueror.  Most
+unfortunately, the common sense, or common nonsense, of mankind,
+resists her laudable design.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Prodiit hac auctor Trojanae cladis Achilles. The
+supposition of the Apulian (l. v. p. 275) may be excused by the
+more classic poetry of Virgil, (Aeneid. ii. 197,) Larissaeus
+Achilles, but it is not justified by the geography of Homer.]
+
+[Footnote 80: The items which encumbered the knights on foot,
+have been ignorantly translated spurs, (Anna Comnena, Alexias, l.
+v. p. 140.) Ducange has explained the true sense by a ridiculous
+and inconvenient fashion, which lasted from the xith to the xvth
+century.  These peaks, in the form of a scorpion, were sometimes
+two feet and fastened to the knee with a silver chain.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.
+
+Part IV.
+
+Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of
+Robert, the most prompt and powerful was Henry the Third or
+Fourth, king of Germany and Italy, and future emperor of the
+West.  The epistle of the Greek monarch ^81 to his brother is
+filled with the warmest professions of friendship, and the most
+lively desire of strengthening their alliance by every public and
+private tie.  He congratulates Henry on his success in a just and
+pious war; and complains that the prosperity of his own empire is
+disturbed by the audacious enterprises of the Norman Robert.  The
+lists of his presents expresses the manners of the age - a
+radiated crown of gold, a cross set with pearls to hang on the
+breast, a case of relics, with the names and titles of the
+saints, a vase of crystal, a vase of sardonyx, some balm, most
+probably of Mecca, and one hundred pieces of purple.  To these he
+added a more solid present, of one hundred and forty-four
+thousand Byzantines of gold, with a further assurance of two
+hundred and sixteen thousand, so soon as Henry should have
+entered in arms the Apulian territories, and confirmed by an oath
+the league against the common enemy. The German, ^82 who was
+already in Lombardy at the head of an army and a faction,
+accepted these liberal offers, and marched towards the south: his
+speed was checked by the sound of the battle of Durazzo; but the
+influence of his arms, or name, in the hasty return of Robert,
+was a full equivalent for the Grecian bribe.  Henry was the
+severe adversary of the Normans, the allies and vassals of
+Gregory the Seventh, his implacable foe. The long quarrel of the
+throne and mitre had been recently kindled by the zeal and
+ambition of that haughty priest: ^83 the king and the pope had
+degraded each other; and each had seated a rival on the temporal
+or spiritual throne of his antagonist.  After the defeat and
+death of his Swabian rebel, Henry descended into Italy, to assume
+the Imperial crown, and to drive from the Vatican the tyrant of
+the church. ^84 But the Roman people adhered to the cause of
+Gregory: their resolution was fortified by supplies of men and
+money from Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually besieged
+by the king of Germany.  In the fourth year he corrupted, as it
+is said, with Byzantine gold, the nobles of Rome, whose estates
+and castles had been ruined by the war.  The gates, the bridges,
+and fifty hostages, were delivered into his hands: the anti-pope,
+Clement the Third, was consecrated in the Lateran: the grateful
+pontiff crowned his protector in the Vatican; and the emperor
+Henry fixed his residence in the Capitol, as the lawful successor
+of Augustus and Charlemagne. The ruins of the Septizonium were
+still defended by the nephew of Gregory: the pope himself was
+invested in the castle of St. Angelo; and his last hope was in
+the courage and fidelity of his Norman vassal.  Their friendship
+had been interrupted by some reciprocal injuries and complaints;
+but, on this pressing occasion, Guiscard was urged by the
+obligation of his oath, by his interest, more potent than oaths,
+by the love of fame, and his enmity to the two emperors.
+Unfurling the holy banner, he resolved to fly to the relief of
+the prince of the apostles: the most numerous of his armies, six
+thousand horse, and thirty thousand foot, was instantly
+assembled; and his march from Salerno to Rome was animated by the
+public applause and the promise of the divine favor.  Henry,
+invincible in sixty-six battles, trembled at his approach;
+recollected some indispensable affairs that required his presence
+in Lombardy; exhorted the Romans to persevere in their
+allegiance; and hastily retreated three days before the entrance
+of the Normans.  In less than three years, the son of Tancred of
+Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the pope, and of
+compelling the two emperors, of the East and West, to fly before
+his victorious arms. ^85 But the triumph of Robert was clouded by
+the calamities of Rome.  By the aid of the friends of Gregory,
+the walls had been perforated or scaled; but the Imperial faction
+was still powerful and active; on the third day, the people rose
+in a furious tumult; and a hasty word of the conqueror, in his
+defence or revenge, was the signal of fire and pillage. ^86 The
+Saracens of Sicily, the subjects of Roger, and auxiliaries of his
+brother, embraced this fair occasion of rifling and profaning the
+holy city of the Christians: many thousands of the citizens, in
+the sight, and by the allies, of their spiritual father were
+exposed to violation, captivity, or death; and a spacious quarter
+of the city, from the Lateran to the Coliseum, was consumed by
+the flames, and devoted to perpetual solitude. ^87 From a city,
+where he was now hated, and might be no longer feared, Gregory
+retired to end his days in the palace of Salerno.  The artful
+pontiff might flatter the vanity of Guiscard with the hope of a
+Roman or Imperial crown; but this dangerous measure, which would
+have inflamed the ambition of the Norman, must forever have
+alienated the most faithful princes of Germany.
+
+[Footnote 81: The epistle itself (Alexias, l. iii. p. 93, 94, 95)
+well deserves to be read.  There is one expression which Ducange
+does not understand.  I have endeavored to grope out a tolerable
+meaning: The first word is a golden crown; the second is
+explained by Simon Portius, (in Lexico Graeco-Barbar.,) by a
+flash of lightning.]
+
+[Footnote 82: For these general events I must refer to the
+general historians Sigonius, Baronius, Muratori, Mosheim, St.
+Marc, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The lives of Gregory VII. are either legends or
+invectives, (St. Marc, Abrege, tom. iii. p. 235, &c.;) and his
+miraculous or magical performances are alike incredible to a
+modern reader.  He will, as usual, find some instruction in Le
+Clerc, (Vie de Hildebrand, Bibliot, ancienne et moderne, tom.
+viii.,) and much amusement in Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique,
+Gregoire VII.) That pope was undoubtedly a great man, a second
+Athanasius, in a more fortunate age of the church.  May I presume
+to add, that the portrait of Athanasius is one of the passages of
+my history (vol. ii. p. 332, &c.) with which I am the least
+dissatisfied?
+
+Note: There is a fair life of Gregory VII. by Voigt,
+(Weimar. 1815,) which has been translated into French.  M.
+Villemain, it is understood, has devoted much time to the study
+of this remarkable character, to whom his eloquence may do
+justice.  There is much valuable information on the subject in
+the accurate work of Stenzel, Geschichte Deutschlands unter den
+Frankischen Kaisern - the History of Germany under the Emperors
+of the Franconian Race. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Anna, with the rancor of a Greek schismatic, calls
+him (l. i. p. 32,) a pope, or priest, worthy to be spit upon and
+accuses him of scourging, shaving, and perhaps of castrating the
+ambassadors of Henry, (p. 31, 33.) But this outrage is improbable
+and doubtful, (see the sensible preface of Cousin.)]
+
+[Footnote 85:  Sic uno tempore victi
+
+          Sunt terrae Domini duo: rex Alemannicus iste,
+
+    Imperii rector Romani maximus ille.
+
+          Alter ad arma ruens armis superatur; et alter
+
+    Nominis auditi sola formidine cessit.
+
+It is singular enough, that the Apulian, a Latin, should
+distinguish the Greek as the ruler of the Roman empire, (l. iv.
+p. 274.)]
+
+[Footnote 86: The narrative of Malaterra (l. iii. c. 37, p. 587,
+588) is authentic, circumstantial, and fair.  Dux ignem exclamans
+urbe incensa, &c. The Apulian softens the mischief, (inde
+quibusdam aedibus exustis,) which is again exaggerated in some
+partial chronicles, (Muratori, Annali, tom. ix. p. 147.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: After mentioning this devastation, the Jesuit
+Donatus (de Roma veteri et nova, l. iv. c. 8, p. 489) prettily
+adds, Duraret hodieque in Coelio monte, interque ipsum et
+capitolium, miserabilis facies prostrates urbis, nisi in hortorum
+vinetorumque amoenitatem Roma resurrexisset, ut perpetua
+viriditate contegeret vulnera et ruinas suas.]
+
+The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged
+himself in a season of repose; but in the same year of the flight
+of the German emperor, the indefatigable Robert resumed the
+design of his eastern conquests.  The zeal or gratitude of
+Gregory had promised to his valor the kingdoms of Greece and
+Asia; ^88 his troops were assembled in arms, flushed with
+success, and eager for action.  Their numbers, in the language of
+Homer, are compared by Anna to a swarm of bees; ^89 yet the
+utmost and moderate limits of the powers of Guiscard have been
+already defined; they were contained on this second occasion in
+one hundred and twenty vessels; and as the season was far
+advanced, the harbor of Brundusium ^90 was preferred to the open
+road of Otranto.  Alexius, apprehensive of a second attack, had
+assiduously labored to restore the naval forces of the empire;
+and obtained from the republic of Venice an important succor of
+thirty-six transports, fourteen galleys, and nine galiots or
+ships of extra-ordinary strength and magnitude.  Their services
+were liberally paid by the license or monopoly of trade, a
+profitable gift of many shops and houses in the port of
+Constantinople, and a tribute to St. Mark, the more acceptable,
+as it was the produce of a tax on their rivals at Amalphi.  By
+the union of the Greeks and Venetians, the Adriatic was covered
+with a hostile fleet; but their own neglect, or the vigilance of
+Robert, the change of a wind, or the shelter of a mist, opened a
+free passage; and the Norman troops were safely disembarked on
+the coast of Epirus.  With twenty strong and well-appointed
+galleys, their intrepid duke immediately sought the enemy, and
+though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he trusted his own
+life, and the lives of his brother and two sons, to the event of
+a naval combat.  The dominion of the sea was disputed in three
+engagements, in sight of the Isle of Corfu: in the two former,
+the skill and numbers of the allies were superior; but in the
+third, the Normans obtained a final and complete victory. ^91 The
+light brigantines of the Greeks were scattered in ignominious
+flight: the nine castles of the Venetians maintained a more
+obstinate conflict; seven were sunk, two were taken; two thousand
+five hundred captives implored in vain the mercy of the victor;
+and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen
+thousand of his subjects or allies.  The want of experience had
+been supplied by the genius of Guiscard; and each evening, when
+he had sounded a retreat, he calmly explored the causes of his
+repulse, and invented new methods how to remedy his own defects,
+and to baffle the advantages of the enemy.  The winter season
+suspended his progress: with the return of spring he again
+aspired to the conquest of Constantinople; but, instead of
+traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms against Greece
+and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labor, and
+where the land and sea forces might pursue their joint operations
+with vigor and effect. But, in the Isle of Cephalonia, his
+projects were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease: Robert
+himself, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent;
+and a suspicion of poison was imputed, by public rumor, to his
+wife, or to the Greek emperor. ^92 This premature death might
+allow a boundless scope for the imagination of his future
+exploits; and the event sufficiently declares, that the Norman
+greatness was founded on his life. ^93 Without the appearance of
+an enemy, a victorious army dispersed or retreated in disorder
+and consternation; and Alexius, who had trembled for his empire,
+rejoiced in his deliverance.  The galley which transported the
+remains of Guiscard was ship-wrecked on the Italian shore; but
+the duke's body was recovered from the sea, and deposited in the
+sepulchre of Venusia, ^94 a place more illustrious for the birth
+of Horace ^95 than for the burial of the Norman heroes.  Roger,
+his second son and successor, immediately sunk to the humble
+station of a duke of Apulia: the esteem or partiality of his
+father left the valiant Bohemond to the inheritance of his sword.
+
+The national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the
+first crusade against the infidels of the East opened a more
+splendid field of glory and conquest. ^96
+
+[Footnote 88: The royalty of Robert, either promised or bestowed
+by the pope, (Anna, l. i. p. 32,) is sufficiently confirmed by
+the Apulian, (l. iv. p. 270.)
+
+Romani regni sibi promisisse coronam
+Papa ferebatur.
+
+Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the other papal advocates,
+should be displeased with this new instance of apostolic
+jurisdiction.]
+
+[Footnote 89: See Homer, Iliad, B. (I hate this pedantic mode of
+quotation by letters of the Greek alphabet) 87, &c.  His bees are
+the image of a disorderly crowd: their discipline and public
+works seem to be the ideas of a later age, (Virgil. Aeneid. l.
+i.)]
+
+[Footnote 90: Gulielm.  Appulus, l. v. p. 276.) The admirable
+port of Brundusium was double; the outward harbor was a gulf
+covered by an island, and narrowing by degrees, till it
+communicated by a small gullet with the inner harbor, which
+embraced the city on both sides.  Caesar and nature have labored
+for its ruin; and against such agents what are the feeble efforts
+of the Neapolitan government?  (Swinburne's Travels in the Two
+Sicilies, vol. i. p. 384 - 390.]
+
+[Footnote 91: William of Apulia (l. v. p. 276) describes the
+victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats,
+which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena, (l. vi. p. 159,
+160, 161.) In her turn, she invents or magnifies a fourth action,
+to give the Venetians revenge and rewards.  Their own feelings
+were far different, since they deposed their doge, propter
+excidium stoli, (Dandulus in Chron in Muratori, Script. Rerum
+Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249.)]
+
+[Footnote 92: The most authentic writers, William of Apulia. (l.
+v. 277,) Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 41, p. 589,) and Romuald
+of Salerno, (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.,)
+are ignorant of this crime, so apparent to our countrymen William
+of Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden, (p. 710, in
+Script. post Bedam) and the latter can tell, how the just Alexius
+married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The
+English historian is indeed so blind, that he ranks Robert
+Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I, who ascended
+the throne fifteen years after the duke of Apulia's death.]
+
+[Footnote 93: The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over
+the grave of an enemy, (Alexiad, l. v. p. 162 - 166;) and his
+best praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the
+sovereign of his family Graecia (says Malaterra) hostibus
+recedentibus libera laeta quievit: Apulia tota sive Calabria
+turbatur.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is
+one of the last lines of the Apulian's poems, (l. v. p. 278.)
+William of Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on
+Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia; he was
+carried to Rome in his childhood, (Serm. i. 6;) and his repeated
+allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii.
+4, Serm. ii. I) are unworthy of his age and genius.]
+
+[Footnote 96: See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88 - 93) and the
+historians of the fire crusade.]
+
+Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are
+alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre.  The male line of Robert
+Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at Antioch, in the
+second generation; but his younger brother became the father of a
+line of kings; and the son of the great count was endowed with
+the name, the conquests, and the spirit, of the first Roger. ^97
+The heir of that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily; and, at
+the age of only four years, he succeeded to the sovereignty of
+the island, a lot which reason might envy, could she indulge for
+a moment the visionary, though virtuous wish of dominion.  Had
+Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and
+grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and if a
+wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of
+the Greek colonies, ^98 the opulence and power of Sicily alone
+might have equalled the widest scope that could be acquired and
+desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great
+count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it was gratified by
+the vulgar means of violence and artifice.  He sought to obtain
+the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been
+ceded to the elder branch; struggled to enlarge his Calabrian
+limits beyond the measure of former treaties; and impatiently
+watched the declining health of his cousin William of Apulia, the
+grandson of Robert.  On the first intelligence of his premature
+death, Roger sailed from Palermo with seven galleys, cast anchor
+in the Bay of Salerno, received, after ten days' negotiation, an
+oath of fidelity from the Norman capital, commanded the
+submission of the barons, and extorted a legal investiture from
+the reluctant popes, who could not long endure either the
+friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal.  The sacred spot of
+Benevento was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter;
+but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his
+uncle Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests
+was possessed by the victorious Roger.  A conscious superiority
+of power and merit prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and
+of count; and the Isle of Sicily, with a third perhaps of the
+continent of Italy, might form the basis of a kingdom ^99 which
+would only yield to the monarchies of France and England.  The
+chiefs of the nation who attended his coronation at Palermo might
+doubtless pronounce under what name he should reign over them;
+but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir was
+insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings
+of the Latin world ^100 might disclaim their new associate,
+unless he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme
+pontiff.  The pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title,
+which the pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit; ^101 but
+his own legitimacy was attacked by the adverse election of
+Innocent the Second; and while Anacletus sat in the Vatican, the
+successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of Europe.
+The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown,
+by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword
+of Lothaire the Second of Germany, the excommunications of
+Innocent, the fleets of Pisa, and the zeal of St. Bernard, were
+united for the ruin of the Sicilian robber.  After a gallant
+resistance, the Norman prince was driven from the continent of
+Italy: a new duke of Apulia was invested by the pope and the
+emperor, each of whom held one end of the gonfanon, or flagstaff,
+as a token that they asserted their right, and suspended their
+quarrel.  But such jealous friendship was of short and precarious
+duration: the German armies soon vanished in disease and
+desertion: ^102 the Apulian duke, with all his adherents, was
+exterminated by a conqueror who seldom forgave either the dead or
+the living; like his predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though
+haughty pontiff became the captive and friend of the Normans; and
+their reconciliation was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard,
+who now revered the title and virtues of the king of Sicily.
+
+[Footnote 97: The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily,
+fills books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone, (tom. ii. l. xi. -
+xiv. p. 136 - 340,) and is spread over the ixth and xth volumes
+of the Italian Annals of Muratori.  In the Bibliotheque Italique
+(tom. i. p. 175 - 122,) I find a useful abstract of Capacelatro,
+a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the
+history of his country from Roger Frederic II. inclusive.]
+
+[Footnote 98: According to the testimony of Philistus and
+Diodorus, the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse could maintain a
+standing force of 10,000 horse, 100,000 foot, and 400 galleys.
+Compare Hume, (Essays, vol. i. p. 268, 435,) and his adversary
+Wallace, (Numbers of Mankind, p. 306, 307.) The ruins of
+Agrigentum are the theme of every traveller, D'Orville, Reidesel,
+Swinburne, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 99: A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger from
+the year 1127 to 1135, founds his title on merit and power, the
+consent of the barons, and the ancient royalty of Sicily and
+Palermo, without introducing Pope Anacletus, (Alexand. Coenobii
+Telesini Abbatis de Rebus gestis Regis Rogerii, lib. iv. in
+Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 607 - 645)]
+
+[Footnote 100: The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castille,
+Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary.  The three first
+were more ancient than Charlemagne; the three next were created
+by their sword; the three last by their baptism; and of these the
+king of Hungary alone was honored or debased by a papal crown.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a
+more early and independent coronation, (A.D. 1130, May 1,) which
+Giannone unwillingly rejects, (tom. ii. p. 137 - 144.) This
+fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it
+be restored by a spurious character of Messina, (Muratori, Annali
+d' Italia, tom. ix. p. 340. Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467,
+468.)]
+
+[Footnote 102: Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire's
+army, who sounded, or rather cried, a retreat; for the Germans
+(says Cinnamus, l. iii. c. i. p. 51) are ignorant of the use of
+trumpets.  Most ignorant himself!
+
+Note: Cinnamus says nothing of their ignorance. - M]
+
+As a penance for his impious war against the successor of
+St. Peter, that monarch might have promised to display the banner
+of the cross, and he accomplished with ardor a vow so propitious
+to his interest and revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might
+provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the Saracens: the
+Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject
+streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval
+trophies of their fathers, and in the maturity of their strength
+they contended with the decline of an African power.  When the
+Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he rewarded
+the real merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a
+gift of his royal mantle, and forty Arabian horses, his palace
+with its sumptuous furniture, and the government of the kingdoms
+of Tunis and Algiers. The Zeirides, ^103 the descendants of
+Joseph, forgot their allegiance and gratitude to a distant
+benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of prosperity; and
+after running the little course of an Oriental dynasty, were now
+fainting in their own weakness.  On the side of the land, they
+were pressed by the Almohades, the fanatic princes of Morocco,
+while the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of the Greeks and
+Franks, who, before the close of the eleventh century, had
+extorted a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold.  By the
+first arms of Roger, the island or rock of Malta, which has been
+since ennobled by a military and religious colony, was
+inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily. Tripoli, ^104 a
+strong and maritime city, was the next object of his attack; and
+the slaughter of the males, the captivity of the females, might
+be justified by the frequent practice of the Moslems themselves.
+The capital of the Zeirides was named Africa from the country,
+and Mahadia ^105 from the Arabian founder: it is strongly built
+on a neck of land, but the imperfection of the harbor is not
+compensated by the fertility of the adjacent plain.  Mahadia was
+besieged by George the Sicilian admiral, with a fleet of one
+hundred and fifty galleys, amply provided with men and the
+instruments of mischief: the sovereign had fled, the Moorish
+governor refused to capitulate, declined the last and
+irresistible assault, and secretly escaping with the Moslem
+inhabitants abandoned the place and its treasures to the
+rapacious Franks.  In successive expeditions, the king of Sicily
+or his lieutenants reduced the cities of Tunis, Safax, Capsia,
+Bona, and a long tract of the sea-coast; ^106 the fortresses were
+garrisoned, the country was tributary, and a boast that it held
+Africa in subjection might be inscribed with some flattery on the
+sword of Roger. ^107 After his death, that sword was broken; and
+these transmarine possessions were neglected, evacuated, or lost,
+under the troubled reign of his successor. ^108 The triumphs of
+Scipio and Belisarius have proved, that the African continent is
+neither inaccessible nor invincible; yet the great princes and
+powers of Christendom have repeatedly failed in their armaments
+against the Moors, who may still glory in the easy conquest and
+long servitude of Spain.
+
+[Footnote 103: See De Guignes, Hist. Generate des Huns, tom. i.
+p. 369 - 373 and Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique, &c., sous la
+Domination des Arabes tom. ii. p. 70 - 144.  Their common
+original appears to be Novairi.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Tripoli (says the Nubian geographer, or more
+properly the Sherif al Edrisi) urbs fortis, saxeo muro vallata,
+sita prope littus maris Hanc expugnavit Rogerius, qui mulieribus
+captivis ductis, viros pere mit.]
+
+[Footnote 105: See the geography of Leo Africanus, (in Ramusio
+tom. i. fol. 74 verso. fol. 75, recto,) and Shaw's Travels, (p.
+110,) the viith book of Thuanus, and the xith of the Abbe de
+Vertot.  The possession and defence of the place was offered by
+Charles V. and wisely declined by the knights of Malta.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Pagi has accurately marked the African conquests
+of Roger and his criticism was supplied by his friend the Abbe de
+Longuerue with some Arabic memorials, (A.D. 1147, No. 26, 27,
+A.D. 1148, No. 16, A.D. 1153, No. 16.)]
+
+[Footnote 107: Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer.
+A proud inscription, which denotes, that the Norman conquerors
+were still discriminated from their Christian and Moslem
+subjects.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Hugo Falcandus (Hist. Sicula, in Muratori, Script.
+tom. vii. p. 270, 271) ascribes these losses to the neglect or
+treachery of the admiral Majo.]
+
+Since the decease of Robert Guiscard, the Normans had
+relinquished, above sixty years, their hostile designs against
+the empire of the East. The policy of Roger solicited a public
+and private union with the Greek princes, whose alliance would
+dignify his regal character: he demanded in marriage a daughter
+of the Comnenian family, and the first steps of the treaty seemed
+to promise a favorable event.  But the contemptuous treatment of
+his ambassadors exasperated the vanity of the new monarch; and
+the insolence of the Byzantine court was expiated, according to
+the laws of nations, by the sufferings of a guiltless people.
+^109 With the fleet of seventy galleys, George, the admiral of
+Sicily, appeared before Corfu; and both the island and city were
+delivered into his hands by the disaffected inhabitants, who had
+yet to learn that a siege is still more calamitous than a
+tribute.  In this invasion, of some moment in the annals of
+commerce, the Normans spread themselves by sea, and over the
+provinces of Greece; and the venerable age of Athens, Thebes, and
+Corinth, was violated by rapine and cruelty.  Of the wrongs of
+Athens, no memorial remains.  The ancient walls, which
+encompassed, without guarding, the opulence of Thebes, were
+scaled by the Latin Christians; but their sole use of the gospel
+was to sanctify an oath, that the lawful owners had not secreted
+any relic of their inheritance or industry.  On the approach of
+the Normans, the lower town of Corinth was evacuated; the Greeks
+retired to the citadel, which was seated on a lofty eminence,
+abundantly watered by the classic fountain of Pirene; an
+impregnable fortress, if the want of courage could be balanced by
+any advantages of art or nature.  As soon as the besiegers had
+surmounted the labor (their sole labor) of climbing the hill,
+their general, from the commanding eminence, admired his own
+victory, and testified his gratitude to Heaven, by tearing from
+the altar the precious image of Theodore, the tutelary saint.
+The silk weavers of both sexes, whom George transported to
+Sicily, composed the most valuable part of the spoil; and in
+comparing the skilful industry of the mechanic with the sloth and
+cowardice of the soldier, he was heard to exclaim that the
+distaff and loom were the only weapons which the Greeks were
+capable of using.  The progress of this naval armament was marked
+by two conspicuous events, the rescue of the king of France, and
+the insult of the Byzantine capital.  In his return by sea from
+an unfortunate crusade, Louis the Seventh was intercepted by the
+Greeks, who basely violated the laws of honor and religion.  The
+fortunate encounter of the Norman fleet delivered the royal
+captive; and after a free and honorable entertainment in the
+court of Sicily, Louis continued his journey to Rome and Paris.
+^110 In the absence of the emperor, Constantinople and the
+Hellespont were left without defence and without the suspicion of
+danger.  The clergy and people (for the soldiers had followed the
+standard of Manuel) were astonished and dismayed at the hostile
+appearance of a line of galleys, which boldly cast anchor in the
+front of the Imperial city.  The forces of the Sicilian admiral
+were inadequate to the siege or assault of an immense and
+populous metropolis; but George enjoyed the glory of humbling the
+Greek arrogance, and of marking the path of conquest to the
+navies of the West.  He landed some soldiers to rifle the fruits
+of the royal gardens, and pointed with silver, or most probably
+with fire, the arrows which he discharged against the palace of
+the Caesars. ^111 This playful outrage of the pirates of Sicily,
+who had surprised an unguarded moment, Manuel affected to
+despise, while his martial spirit, and the forces of the empire,
+were awakened to revenge. The Archipelago and Ionian Sea were
+covered with his squadrons and those of Venice; but I know not by
+what favorable allowance of transports, victuallers, and
+pinnaces, our reason, or even our fancy, can be reconciled to the
+stupendous account of fifteen hundred vessels, which is proposed
+by a Byzantine historian.  These operations were directed with
+prudence and energy: in his homeward voyage George lost nineteen
+of his galleys, which were separated and taken: after an
+obstinate defence, Corfu implored the clemency of her lawful
+sovereign; nor could a ship, a soldier, of the Norman prince, be
+found, unless as a captive, within the limits of the Eastern
+empire.  The prosperity and the health of Roger were already in a
+declining state: while he listened in his palace of Palermo to
+the messengers of victory or defeat, the invincible Manuel, the
+foremost in every assault, was celebrated by the Greeks and
+Latins as the Alexander or the Hercules of the age.
+
+[Footnote 109: The silence of the Sicilian historians, who end
+too soon, or begin too late, must be supplied by Otho of
+Frisingen, a German, (de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in
+Muratori, Script. tom. vi. p. 668,) the Venetian Andrew Dandulus,
+(Id. tom. xii. p. 282, 283) and the Greek writers Cinnamus (l.
+iii. c. 2 - 5) and Nicetas, (in Manuel. l. iii. c. 1 - 6.)]
+
+[Footnote 110: To this imperfect capture and speedy rescue I
+apply Cinnamus, l. ii. c. 19, p. 49.  Muratori, on tolerable
+evidence, (Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 420, 421,) laughs at the
+delicacy of the French, who maintain, marisque nullo impediente
+periculo ad regnum proprium reversum esse; yet I observe that
+their advocate, Ducange, is less positive as the commentator on
+Cinnamus, than as the editor of Joinville.]
+
+[Footnote 111: In palatium regium sagittas igneas injecit, says
+Dandulus; but Nicetas (l. ii. c. 8, p. 66) transforms them, and
+adds, that Manuel styled this insult.  These arrows, by the
+compiler, Vincent de Beauvais, are again transmuted into gold.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.
+
+Part V.
+
+A prince of such a temper could not be satisfied with having
+repelled the insolence of a Barbarian.  It was the right and
+duty, it might be the interest and glory, of Manuel to restore
+the ancient majesty of the empire, to recover the provinces of
+Italy and Sicily, and to chastise this pretended king, the
+grandson of a Norman vassal. ^112 The natives of Calabria were
+still attached to the Greek language and worship, which had been
+inexorably proscribed by the Latin clergy: after the loss of her
+dukes, Apulia was chained as a servile appendage to the crown of
+Sicily; the founder of the monarchy had ruled by the sword; and
+his death had abated the fear, without healing the discontent, of
+his subjects: the feudal government was always pregnant with the
+seeds of rebellion; and a nephew of Roger himself invited the
+enemies of his family and nation.  The majesty of the purple, and
+a series of Hungarian and Turkish wars, prevented Manuel from
+embarking his person in the Italian expedition. To the brave and
+noble Palaeologus, his lieutenant, the Greek monarch intrusted a
+fleet and army: the siege of Bari was his first exploit; and, in
+every operation, gold as well as steel was the instrument of
+victory. Salerno, and some places along the western coast,
+maintained their fidelity to the Norman king; but he lost in two
+campaigns the greater part of his continental possessions; and
+the modest emperor, disdaining all flattery and falsehood, was
+content with the reduction of three hundred cities or villages of
+Apulia and Calabria, whose names and titles were inscribed on all
+the walls of the palace.  The prejudices of the Latins were
+gratified by a genuine or fictitious donation under the seal of
+the German Caesars; ^113 but the successor of Constantine soon
+renounced this ignominious pretence, claimed the indefeasible
+dominion of Italy, and professed his design of chasing the
+Barbarians beyond the Alps.  By the artful speeches, liberal
+gifts, and unbounded promises, of their Eastern ally, the free
+cities were encouraged to persevere in their generous struggle
+against the despotism of Frederic Barbarossa: the walls of Milan
+were rebuilt by the contributions of Manuel; and he poured, says
+the historian, a river of gold into the bosom of Ancona, whose
+attachment to the Greeks was fortified by the jealous enmity of
+the Venetians. ^114 The situation and trade of Ancona rendered it
+an important garrison in the heart of Italy: it was twice
+besieged by the arms of Frederic; the imperial forces were twice
+repulsed by the spirit of freedom; that spirit was animated by
+the ambassador of Constantinople; and the most intrepid patriots,
+the most faithful servants, were rewarded by the wealth and
+honors of the Byzantine court. ^115 The pride of Manuel disdained
+and rejected a Barbarian colleague; his ambition was excited by
+the hope of stripping the purple from the German usurpers, and of
+establishing, in the West, as in the East, his lawful title of
+sole emperor of the Romans.  With this view, he solicited the
+alliance of the people and the bishop of Rome.  Several of the
+nobles embraced the cause of the Greek monarch; the splendid
+nuptials of his niece with Odo Frangipani secured the support of
+that powerful family, ^116 and his royal standard or image was
+entertained with due reverence in the ancient metropolis. ^117
+During the quarrel between Frederic and Alexander the Third, the
+pope twice received in the Vatican the ambassadors of
+Constantinople.  They flattered his piety by the long-promised
+union of the two churches, tempted the avarice of his venal
+court, and exhorted the Roman pontiff to seize the just
+provocation, the favorable moment, to humble the savage insolence
+of the Alemanni and to acknowledge the true representative of
+Constantine and Augustus. ^118
+
+[Footnote 112: For the invasion of Italy, which is almost
+overlooked by Nicetas see the more polite history of Cinnamus,
+(l. iv. c. 1 - 15, p. 78 - 101,) who introduces a diffuse
+narrative by a lofty profession, iii. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 113: The Latin, Otho, (de Gestis Frederici I. l. ii. c.
+30, p. 734,) attests the forgery; the Greek, Cinnamus, (l. iv. c.
+1, p. 78,) claims a promise of restitution from Conrad and
+Frederic.  An act of fraud is always credible when it is told of
+the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Quod Ancontiani Graecum imperium nimis diligerent
+... Veneti speciali odio Anconam oderunt.  The cause of love,
+perhaps of envy, were the beneficia, flumen aureum of the
+emperor; and the Latin narrative is confirmed by Cinnamus, (l.
+iv. c. 14, p. 98.)]
+
+[Footnote 115: Muratori mentions the two sieges of Ancona; the
+first, in 1167, against Frederic I. in person (Annali, tom. x. p.
+39, &c.;) the second, in 1173, against his lieutenant Christian,
+archbishop of Mentz, a man unworthy of his name and office, (p.
+76, &c.) It is of the second siege that we possess an original
+narrative, which he has published in his great collection, (tom.
+vi. p. 921 - 946.)]
+
+[Footnote 116: We derive this anecdote from an anonymous
+chronicle of Fossa Nova, published by Muratori, (Script. Ital.
+tom. vii. p. 874.)]
+
+[Footnote 117: Cinnamus (l. iv. c. 14, p. 99) is susceptible of
+this double sense. A standard is more Latin, an image more
+Greek.]
+
+[Footnote 118: Nihilominus quoque petebat, ut quia occasio justa
+et tempos opportunum et acceptabile se obtulerant, Romani corona
+imperii a sancto apostolo sibi redderetur; quoniam non ad
+Frederici Alemanni, sed ad suum jus asseruit pertinere, (Vit.
+Alexandri III. a Cardinal. Arragoniae, in Script. Rerum Ital.
+tom. iii. par. i. p. 458.) His second embassy was accompanied cum
+immensa multitudine pecuniarum.]
+
+But these Italian conquests, this universal reign, soon
+escaped from the hand of the Greek emperor.  His first demands
+were eluded by the prudence of Alexander the Third, who paused on
+this deep and momentous revolution; ^119 nor could the pope be
+seduced by a personal dispute to renounce the perpetual
+inheritance of the Latin name.  After the reunion with Frederic,
+he spoke a more peremptory language, confirmed the acts of his
+predecessors, excommunicated the adherents of Manuel, and
+pronounced the final separation of the churches, or at least the
+empires, of Constantinople and Rome. ^120 The free cities of
+Lombardy no longer remembered their foreign benefactor, and
+without preserving the friendship of Ancona, he soon incurred the
+enmity of Venice. ^121 By his own avarice, or the complaints of
+his subjects, the Greek emperor was provoked to arrest the
+persons, and confiscate the effects, of the Venetian merchants.
+This violation of the public faith exasperated a free and
+commercial people: one hundred galleys were launched and armed in
+as many days; they swept the coasts of Dalmatia and Greece: but
+after some mutual wounds, the war was terminated by an agreement,
+inglorious to the empire, insufficient for the republic; and a
+complete vengeance of these and of fresh injuries was reserved
+for the succeeding generation.  The lieutenant of Manuel had
+informed his sovereign that he was strong enough to quell any
+domestic revolt of Apulia and Calabria; but that his forces were
+inadequate to resist the impending attack of the king of Sicily.
+His prophecy was soon verified: the death of Palaeologus devolved
+the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in rank, alike
+defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed by land
+and sea; and a captive remnant that escaped the swords of the
+Normans and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the
+person or dominions of their conqueror. ^122 Yet the king of
+Sicily esteemed the courage and constancy of Manuel, who had
+landed a second army on the Italian shore; he respectfully
+addressed the new Justinian; solicited a peace or truce of thirty
+years, accepted as a gift the regal title; and acknowledged
+himself the military vassal of the Roman empire. ^123 The
+Byzantine Caesars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without
+expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman
+army; and the truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any
+hostilities between Sicily and Constantinople.  About the end of
+that period, the throne of Manuel was usurped by an inhuman
+tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence of his country and
+mankind: the sword of William the Second, the grandson of Roger,
+was drawn by a fugitive of the Comnenian race; and the subjects
+of Andronicus might salute the strangers as friends, since they
+detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies.  The Latin
+historians ^124 expatiate on the rapid progress of the four
+counts who invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced
+many castles and cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily.
+The Greeks ^125 accuse and magnify the wanton and sacrilegious
+cruelties that were perpetrated in the sack of Thessalonica, the
+second city of the empire.  The former deplore the fate of those
+invincible but unsuspecting warriors who were destroyed by the
+arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs of
+triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the Sea of
+Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the
+walls of Durazzo.  A revolution which punished the crimes of
+Andronicus, had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of
+the successful insurgents: ten thousand were slain in battle, and
+Isaac Angelus, the new emperor, might indulge his vanity or
+vengeance in the treatment of four thousand captives.  Such was
+the event of the last contest between the Greeks and Normans:
+before the expiration of twenty years, the rival nations were
+lost or degraded in foreign servitude; and the successors of
+Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the
+Sicilian monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 119: Nimis alta et perplexa sunt, (Vit. Alexandri III.
+p. 460, 461,) says the cautious pope.]
+
+[Footnote 120: (Cinnamus, l. iv. c. 14, p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 121: In his vith book, Cinnamus describes the Venetian
+war, which Nicetas has not thought worthy of his attention.  The
+Italian accounts, which do not satisfy our curiosity, are
+reported by the annalist Muratori, under the years 1171, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 122: This victory is mentioned by Romuald of Salerno,
+(in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. vii. p. 198.) It is whimsical
+enough, that in the praise of the king of Sicily, Cinnamus (l.
+iv. c. 13, p. 97, 98) is much warmer and copious than Falcandus,
+(p. 268, 270.) But the Greek is fond of description, and the
+Latin historian is not fond of William the Bad.]
+
+[Footnote 123: For the epistle of William I. see Cinnamus (l. iv.
+c. 15, p. 101, 102) and Nicetas, (l. ii. c. 8.) It is difficult
+to affirm, whether these Greeks deceived themselves, or the
+public, in these flattering portraits of the grandeur of the
+empire.]
+
+[Footnote 124: I can only quote, of original evidence, the poor
+chronicles of Sicard of Cremona, (p. 603,) and of Fossa Nova, (p.
+875,) as they are published in the viith tome of Muratori's
+historians.  The king of Sicily sent his troops contra nequitiam
+Andronici .... ad acquirendum imperium C. P.  They were ....
+decepti captique, by Isaac.]
+
+[Footnote 125: By the failure of Cinnamus to Nicetas (in
+Andronico, l. . c. 7, 8, 9, l. ii. c. 1, in Isaac Angelo, l. i.
+c. 1 - 4,) who now becomes a respectable contemporary.  As he
+survived the emperor and the empire, he is above flattery; but
+the fall of Constantinople exasperated his prejudices against the
+Latins.  For the honor of learning I shall observe that Homer's
+great commentator, Eustathias archbishop of Thessalonica, refused
+to desert his flock.]
+
+The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and
+grandson: they might be confounded under the name of William:
+they are strongly discriminated by the epithets of the bad and
+the good; but these epithets, which appear to describe the
+perfection of vice and virtue, cannot strictly be applied to
+either of the Norman princes.  When he was roused to arms by
+danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate from the
+valor of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners were
+dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the
+monarch is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for
+those of Majo, the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and
+conspired against the life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian
+conquest, Sicily had imbibed a deep tincture of Oriental manners;
+the despotism, the pomp, and even the harem, of a sultan; and a
+Christian people was oppressed and insulted by the ascendant of
+the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly cherished, the
+religion of Mahomet.  An eloquent historian of the times ^126 has
+delineated the misfortunes of his country: ^127 the ambition and
+fall of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his
+assassins; the imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself;
+the private feuds that arose from the public confusion; and the
+various forms of calamity and discord which afflicted Palermo,
+the island, and the continent, during the reign of William the
+First, and the minority of his son.  The youth, innocence, and
+beauty of William the Second, ^128 endeared him to the nation:
+the factions were reconciled; the laws were revived; and from the
+manhood to the premature death of that amiable prince, Sicily
+enjoyed a short season of peace, justice, and happiness, whose
+value was enhanced by the remembrance of the past and the dread
+of futurity.  The legitimate male posterity of Tancred of
+Hauteville was extinct in the person of the second William; but
+his aunt, the daughter of Roger, had married the most powerful
+prince of the age; and Henry the Sixth, the son of Frederic
+Barbarossa, descended from the Alps to claim the Imperial crown
+and the inheritance of his wife. Against the unanimous wish of a
+free people, this inheritance could only be acquired by arms; and
+I am pleased to transcribe the style and sense of the historian
+Falcandus, who writes at the moment, and on the spot, with the
+feelings of a patriot, and the prophetic eye of a statesman.
+"Constantia, the daughter of Sicily, nursed from her cradle in
+the pleasures and plenty, and educated in the arts and manners,
+of this fortunate isle, departed long since to enrich the
+Barbarians with our treasures, and now returns, with her savage
+allies, to contaminate the beauties of her venerable parent.
+Already I behold the swarms of angry Barbarians: our opulent
+cities, the places flourishing in a long peace, are shaken with
+fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by
+intemperance and lust.  I see the massacre or captivity of our
+citizens, the rapes of our virgins and matrons. ^129 In this
+extremity (he interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act?
+By the unanimous election of a king of valor and experience,
+Sicily and Calabria might yet be preserved; ^130 for in the
+levity of the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can
+repose neither confidence nor hope. ^131 Should Calabria be lost,
+the lofty towers, the numerous youth, and the naval strength, of
+Messina, ^132 might guard the passage against a foreign invader.
+If the savage Germans coalesce with the pirates of Messina; if
+they destroy with fire the fruitful region, so often wasted by
+the fires of Mount Aetna, ^133 what resource will be left for the
+interior parts of the island, these noble cities which should
+never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a Barbarian? ^134
+Catana has again been overwhelmed by an earthquake: the ancient
+virtue of Syracuse expires in poverty and solitude; ^135 but
+Palermo is still crowned with a diadem, and her triple walls
+enclose the active multitudes of Christians and Saracens.  If the
+two nations, under one king, can unite for their common safety,
+they may rush on the Barbarians with invincible arms.  But if the
+Saracens, fatigued by a repetition of injuries, should now retire
+and rebel; if they should occupy the castles of the mountains and
+sea-coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double
+attack, and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil,
+must resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude."
+^136 We must not forget, that a priest here prefers his country
+to his religion; and that the Moslems, whose alliance he seeks,
+were still numerous and powerful in the state of Sicily.
+
+[Footnote 126: The Historia Sicula of Hugo Falcandus, which
+properly extends from 1154 to 1169, is inserted in the viiith
+volume of Muratori's Collection, (tom. vii. p. 259 - 344,) and
+preceded by a eloquent preface or epistle, (p. 251 - 258, de
+Calamitatibus Siciliae.) Falcandus has been styled the Tacitus of
+Sicily; and, after a just, but immense, abatement, from the ist
+to the xiith century, from a senator to a monk, I would not strip
+him of his title: his narrative is rapid and perspicuous, his
+style bold and elegant, his observation keen; he had studied
+mankind, and feels like a man.  I can only regret the narrow and
+barren field on which his labors have been cast.]
+
+[Footnote 127: The laborious Benedictines (l'Art de verifier les
+Dates, p. 896) are of opinion, that the true name of Falcandus is
+Fulcandus, or Foucault.  According to them, Hugues Foucalt, a
+Frenchman by birth, and at length abbot of St. Denys, had
+followed into Sicily his patron Stephen de la Perche, uncle to
+the mother of William II., archbishop of Palermo, and great
+chancellor of the kingdom.  Yet Falcandus has all the feelings of
+a Sicilian; and the title of Alumnus (which he bestows on
+himself) appears to indicate that he was born, or at least
+educated, in the island.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Falcand. p. 303.  Richard de St. Germano begins
+his history from the death and praises of William II.  After some
+unmeaning epithets, he thus continues: Legis et justitiae cultus
+tempore suo vigebat in regno; sua erat quilibet sorte contentus;
+(were they mortals?) abique pax, ubique securitas, nec latronum
+metuebat viator insidias, nec maris nauta offendicula piratarum,
+(Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii p 939.)]
+
+[Footnote 129: Constantia, primis a cunabulis in deliciarun
+tuarum affluentia diutius educata, tuisque institutis, doctrinus
+et moribus informata, tandem opibus tuis Barbaros delatura
+discessit: et nunc cum imgentibus copiis revertitur, ut
+pulcherrima nutricis ornamenta barbarica foeditate contaminet
+.... Intuari mihi jam videor turbulentas bar barorum acies ....
+civitates opulentas et loca diuturna pace florentia, metu
+concutere, caede vastare, rapinis atterere, et foedare luxuria
+hinc cives aut gladiis intercepti, aut servitute depressi,
+virgines constupratae, matronae, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 130: Certe si regem non dubiae virtutis elegerint, nec
+a Saracenis Christiani dissentiant, poterit rex creatus rebus
+licet quasi desperatis et perditis subvenire, et incursus
+hostium, si prudenter egerit, propulsare.]
+
+[Footnote 131: In Apulis, qui, semper novitate gaudentes, novarum
+rerum studiis aguntur, nihil arbitror spei aut fiduciae
+reponendum.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Si civium tuorum virtutem et audaciam attendas,
+.... muriorum etiam ambitum densis turribus circumseptum.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Cum erudelitate piratica Theutonum confligat
+atrocitas, et inter aucbustos lapides, et Aethnae flagrant's
+incendia, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 134: Eam partem, quam nobilissimarum civitatum fulgor
+illustrat, quae et toti regno singulari meruit privilegio
+praeminere, nefarium esset .... vel barbarorum ingressu pollui.
+I wish to transcribe his florid, but curious, description, of the
+palace, city, and luxuriant plain of Palermo.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Vires non suppetunt, et conatus tuos tam inopia
+civium, quam paucitas bellatorum elidunt.]
+
+[Footnote 136: The Normans and Sicilians appear to be
+confounded.]
+
+The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at
+first gratified by the free and unanimous election of Tancred,
+the grandson of the first king, whose birth was illegitimate, but
+whose civil and military virtues shone without a blemish.  During
+four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in arms on
+the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier, against the powers of
+Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constantia
+herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass the most
+liberal measure of policy or reason.  After his decease, the
+kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and
+Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo.  The
+political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if
+the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real
+interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven
+to prevent the dangerous union of the German empire with the
+kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican
+has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion
+blind and inactive; and if it were true that Celestine the Third
+had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of the prostrate
+Henry, ^137 such an act of impotent pride could serve only to
+cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy.  The Genoese, who
+enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened
+to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure:
+^138 their fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened the
+harbor of Palermo; and the first act of his government was to
+abolish the privileges, and to seize the property, of these
+imprudent allies.  The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the
+discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought in the
+capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their
+surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above
+thirty years the peace of the island.  By the policy of Frederic
+the Second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera
+in Apulia.  In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor
+and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the
+service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony
+maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till
+they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth century, by
+the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. ^139 All the
+calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored were surpassed
+by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror.  He violated
+the royal sepulchres, ^* and explored the secret treasures of the
+palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom: the pearls and jewels,
+however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and
+sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily. ^140
+The young king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both
+sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps;
+and, on the slightest rumor of rebellion, the captives were
+deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity.
+Constantia herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of
+her country; and the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to
+check her despotic husband, and to save the patrimony of her
+new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age under the
+name of Frederic the Second.  Ten years after this revolution,
+the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy:
+the sceptre of her ancient dukes had been transmitted, by a
+granddaughter of William the Conqueror, to the house of
+Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many
+trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and
+the East, were lost, either in victory or servitude, among the
+vanquished nations.
+
+[Footnote 137: The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de
+Hoveden, (p. 689,) will lightly weigh against the silence of
+German and Italian history, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. x.
+p. 156.) The priests and pilgrims, who returned from Rome,
+exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy father.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo,
+(Caffari, Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
+Italicarum, tom vi. p. 367, 368.)]
+
+[Footnote 139: For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the
+Annals of Muratori, (tom. x. p. 149, and A.D. 1223, 1247,)
+Giannone, (tom ii. p. 385,) and of the originals, in Muratori's
+Collection, Richard de St. Germano, (tom. vii. p. 996,) Matteo
+Spinelli de Giovenazzo, (tom. vii. p. 1064,) Nicholas de
+Jamsilla, (tom. x. p. 494,) and Matreo Villani, (tom. xiv l. vii.
+p. 103.) The last of these insinuates that, in reducing the
+Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather artifice
+than violence.]
+
+[Footnote *: It is remarkable that at the same time the tombs of
+the Roman emperors, even of Constantine himself, were violated
+and ransacked by their degenerate successor Alexius Comnenus, in
+order to enable him to pay the "German" tribute exacted by the
+menaces of the emperor Henry.  See the end of the first book of
+the Life of Alexius, in Nicetas, p. 632, edit. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec,
+(l. iv. c. 20:) Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omnem lapidum
+pretiosorum et gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 somariis,
+gloriose ad terram suam redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions
+the violation of the royal tombs and corpses, computes the spoil
+of Salerno at 200,000 ounces of gold, (p. 746.) On these
+occasions, I am almost tempted to exclaim with the listening maid
+in La Fontaine, "Je voudrois bien avoir ce qui manque."]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII: The Turks.
+
+Part I.
+
+The Turks Of The House Of Seljuk. - Their Revolt Against
+Mahmud Conqueror Of Hindostan. - Togrul Subdues Persia, And
+Protects The Caliphs. - Defeat And Captivity Of The Emperor
+Romanus Diogenes By Alp Arslan. - Power And Magnificence Of Malek
+Shah. - Conquest Of Asia Minor And Syria. - State And Oppression
+Of Jerusalem. - Pilgrimages To The Holy Sepulchre.
+
+From the Isle of Sicily, the reader must transport himself
+beyond the Caspian Sea, to the original seat of the Turks or
+Turkmans, against whom the first crusade was principally
+directed.  Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long
+since dissolved; but the name was still famous among the Greeks
+and Orientals; and the fragments of the nation, each a powerful
+and independent people, were scattered over the desert from China
+to the Oxus and the Danube: the colony of Hungarians was admitted
+into the republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were
+occupied by slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction.  While
+Apulia and Sicily were subdued by the Norman lance, a swarm of
+these northern shepherds overspread the kingdoms of Persia; their
+princes of the race of Seljuk erected a splendid and solid empire
+from Samarcand to the confines of Greece and Egypt; and the Turks
+have maintained their dominion in Asia Minor, till the victorious
+crescent has been planted on the dome of St. Sophia.
+
+One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mahmood or
+Mahmud, ^1 the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of
+Persia, one thousand years after the birth of Christ.  His father
+Sebectagi was the slave of the slave of the slave of the
+commander of the faithful.  But in this descent of servitude, the
+first degree was merely titular, since it was filled by the
+sovereign of Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid a nominal
+allegiance to the caliph of Bagdad.  The second rank was that of
+a minister of state, a lieutenant of the Samanides, ^2 who broke,
+by his revolt, the bonds of political slavery.  But the third
+step was a state of real and domestic servitude in the family of
+that rebel; from which Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity,
+ascended to the supreme command of the city and provinces of
+Gazna, ^3 as the son-in-law and successor of his grateful master.
+
+The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at first protected, and
+at last overthrown, by their servants; and, in the public
+disorders, the fortune of Mahmud continually increased.  From him
+the title of Sultan ^4 was first invented; and his kingdom was
+enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighborhood of Ispahan, from
+the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus.  But the
+principal source of his fame and riches was the holy war which he
+waged against the Gentoos of Hindostan.  In this foreign
+narrative I may not consume a page; and a volume would scarcely
+suffice to recapitulate the battles and sieges of his twelve
+expeditions.  Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the
+inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the
+breadth of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the
+multitudes of the enemy, or the formidable array of their
+elephants of war. ^5 The sultan of Gazna surpassed the limits of
+the conquests of Alexander: after a march of three months, over
+the hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached the famous city of
+Kinnoge, ^6 on the Upper Ganges; and, in a naval combat on one of
+the branches of the Indus, he fought and vanquished four thousand
+boats of the natives.  Delhi, Lahor, and Multan, were compelled
+to open their gates: the fertile kingdom of Guzarat attracted his
+ambition and tempted his stay; and his avarice indulged the
+fruitless project of discovering the golden and aromatic isles of
+the Southern Ocean.  On the payment of a tribute, the rajahs
+preserved their dominions; the people, their lives and fortunes;
+but to the religion of Hindostan the zealous Mussulman was cruel
+and inexorable: many hundred temples, or pagodas, were levelled
+with the ground; many thousand idols were demolished; and the
+servants of the prophet were stimulated and rewarded by the
+precious materials of which they were composed.  The pagoda of
+Sumnat was situate on the promontory of Guzarat, in the
+neighborhood of Diu, one of the last remaining possessions of the
+Portuguese. ^7 It was endowed with the revenue of two thousand
+villages; two thousand Brahmins were consecrated to the service
+of the Deity, whom they washed each morning and evening in water
+from the distant Ganges: the subordinate ministers consisted of
+three hundred musicians, three hundred barbers, and five hundred
+dancing girls, conspicuous for their birth or beauty.  Three
+sides of the temple were protected by the ocean, the narrow
+isthmus was fortified by a natural or artificial precipice; and
+the city and adjacent country were peopled by a nation of
+fanatics.  They confessed the sins and the punishment of Kinnoge
+and Delhi; but if the impious stranger should presume to approach
+their holy precincts, he would surely be overwhelmed by a blast
+of the divine vengeance. By this challenge, the faith of Mahmud
+was animated to a personal trial of the strength of this Indian
+deity.  Fifty thousand of his worshippers were pierced by the
+spear of the Moslems; the walls were scaled; the sanctuary was
+profaned; and the conqueror aimed a blow of his iron mace at the
+head of the idol.  The trembling Brahmins are said to have
+offered ten millions ^* sterling for his ransom; and it was urged
+by the wisest counsellors, that the destruction of a stone image
+would not change the hearts of the Gentoos; and that such a sum
+might be dedicated to the relief of the true believers.  "Your
+reasons," replied the sultan, "are specious and strong; but never
+in the eyes of posterity shall Mahmud appear as a merchant of
+idols." ^* He repeated his blows, and a treasure of pearls and
+rubies, concealed in the belly of the statue, explained in some
+degree the devout prodigality of the Brahmins.  The fragments of
+the idol were distributed to Gazna, Mecca, and Medina.  Bagdad
+listened to the edifying tale; and Mahmud was saluted by the
+caliph with the title of guardian of the fortune and faith of
+Mahomet.
+
+[Footnote 1: I am indebted for his character and history to
+D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque Orientale, Mahmud, p. 533 - 537,) M. De
+Guignes, (Histoire des Huns, tom. iii. p. 155 - 173,) and our
+countryman Colonel Alexander Dow, (vol. i. p. 23 - 83.) In the
+two first volumes of his History of Hindostan, he styles himself
+the translator of the Persian Ferishta; but in his florid text,
+it is not easy to distinguish the version and the original.
+
+Note: The European reader now possesses a more accurate
+version of Ferishta, that of Col. Briggs.  Of Col. Dow's work,
+Col. Briggs observes, "that the author's name will be handed down
+to posterity as one of the earliest and most indefatigable of our
+Oriental scholars.  Instead of confining himself, however, to
+mere translation, he has filled his work with his own
+observations, which have been so embodied in the text that Gibbon
+declares it impossible to distinguish the translator from the
+original author." Preface p. vii. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The dynasty of the Samanides continued 125 years,
+A.D. 847 - 999, under ten princes.  See their succession and
+ruin, in the Tables of M. De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p.
+404 - 406.) They were followed by the Gaznevides, A.D. 999 -
+1183, (see tom. i. p. 239, 240.) His divisions of nations often
+disturbs the series of time and place.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Gaznah hortos non habet: est emporium et domicilium
+mercaturae Indicae.  Abulfedae Geograph. Reiske, tab. xxiii. p.
+349.  D'Herbelot, p. 364. It has not been visited by any modern
+traveller.]
+
+[Footnote 4: By the ambassador of the caliph of Bagdad, who
+employed an Arabian or Chaldaic word that signifies lord and
+master, (D'Herbelot, p. 825.) It is interpreted by the Byzantine
+writers of the eleventh century; and the name (Soldanus) is
+familiarly employed in the Greek and Latin languages, after it
+had passed from the Gaznevides to the Seljukides, and other emirs
+of Asia and Egypt.  Ducange (Dissertation xvi. sur Joinville, p.
+238 - 240.  Gloss. Graec. et Latin.) labors to find the title of
+Sultan in the ancient kingdom of Persia: but his proofs are mere
+shadows; a proper name in the Themes of Constantine, (ii. 11,) an
+anticipation of Zonaras, &c., and a medal of Kai Khosrou, not (as
+he believes) the Sassanide of the vith, but the Seljukide of
+Iconium of the xiiith century, (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom.
+i. p. 246.)]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ferishta (apud Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p.
+49) mentions the report of a gun in the Indian army.  But as I am
+slow in believing this premature (A.D. 1008) use of artillery, I
+must desire to scrutinize first the text, and then the authority
+of Ferishta, who lived in the Mogul court in the last century.
+
+Note: This passage is differently written in the various
+manuscripts I have seen; and in some the word tope (gun) has been
+written for nupth, (naphtha, and toofung (musket) for khudung,
+(arrow.) But no Persian or Arabic history speaks of gunpowder
+before the time usually assigned for its invention, (A.D. 1317;)
+long after which, it was first applied to the purposes of war.
+Briggs's Ferishta, vol. i. p. 47, note. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Kinnouge, or Canouge, (the old Palimbothra) is
+marked in latitude 27 Degrees 3 Minutes, longitude 80 Degrees 13
+Minutes. See D'Anville, (Antiquite de l'Inde, p. 60 - 62,)
+corrected by the local knowledge of Major Rennel (in his
+excellent Memoir on his Map of Hindostan, p. 37 - 43: ) 300
+jewellers, 30,000 shops for the arreca nut, 60,000 bands of
+musicians, &c. (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. xv. p. 274.  Dow, vol. i.
+p. 16,) will allow an ample deduction.
+
+Note: Mr. Wilson (Hindu Drama, vol. iii. p. 12) and Schlegel
+(Indische Bibliothek, vol. ii. p. 394) concur in identifying
+Palimbothra with the Patalipara of the Indians; the Patna of the
+moderns. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The idolaters of Europe, says Ferishta, (Dow, vol.
+i. p. 66.) Consult Abulfeda, (p. 272,) and Rennel's Map of
+Hindostan.]
+
+[Footnote *: Ferishta says, some "crores of gold." Dow says, in a
+note at the bottom of the page, "ten millions," which is the
+explanation of the word "crore." Mr. Gibbon says rashly that the
+sum offered by the Brahmins was ten millions sterling.  Note to
+Mill's India, vol. ii. p. 222.  Col. Briggs's translation is "a
+quantity of gold."
+
+The treasure found in the temple, "perhaps in the image,"
+according to Major Price's authorities, was twenty millions of
+dinars of gold, above nine millions sterling; but this was a
+hundred-fold the ransom offered by the Brahmins.  Price, vol. ii.
+p. 290. - M.]
+
+[Footnote *: Rather than the idol broker, he chose to be called
+Mahmud the idol breaker.  Price, vol. ii. p. 289 - M]
+
+From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations)
+I cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science
+or virtue. The name of Mahmud the Gaznevide is still venerable in
+the East: his subjects enjoyed the blessings of prosperity and
+peace; his vices were concealed by the veil of religion; and two
+familiar examples will testify his justice and magnanimity. I. As
+he sat in the Divan, an unhappy subject bowed before the throne
+to accuse the insolence of a Turkish soldier who had driven him
+from his house and bed.  "Suspend your clamors," said Mahmud;
+"inform me of his next visit, and ourself in person will judge
+and punish the offender." The sultan followed his guide, invested
+the house with his guards, and extinguishing the torches,
+pronounced the death of the criminal, who had been seized in the
+act of rapine and adultery.  After the execution of his sentence,
+the lights were rekindled, Mahmud fell prostrate in prayer, and
+rising from the ground, demanded some homely fare, which he
+devoured with the voraciousness of hunger.  The poor man, whose
+injury he had avenged, was unable to suppress his astonishment
+and curiosity; and the courteous monarch condescended to explain
+the motives of this singular behavior. "I had reason to suspect
+that none, except one of my sons, could dare to perpetrate such
+an outrage; and I extinguished the lights, that my justice might
+be blind and inexorable.  My prayer was a thanksgiving on the
+discovery of the offender; and so painful was my anxiety, that I
+had passed three days without food since the first moment of your
+complaint." II. The sultan of Gazna had declared war against the
+dynasty of the Bowides, the sovereigns of the western Persia: he
+was disarmed by an epistle of the sultana mother, and delayed his
+invasion till the manhood of her son. ^8 "During the life of my
+husband," said the artful regent, "I was ever apprehensive of
+your ambition: he was a prince and a soldier worthy of your arms.
+
+He is now no more his sceptre has passed to a woman and a child,
+and you dare not attack their infancy and weakness.  How
+inglorious would be your conquest, how shameful your defeat!  and
+yet the event of war is in the hand of the Almighty." Avarice was
+the only defect that tarnished the illustrious character of
+Mahmud; and never has that passion been more richly satiated. ^*
+The Orientals exceed the measure of credibility in the account of
+millions of gold and silver, such as the avidity of man has never
+accumulated; in the magnitude of pearls, diamonds, and rubies,
+such as have never been produced by the workmanship of nature. ^9
+Yet the soil of Hindostan is impregnated with precious minerals:
+her trade, in every age, has attracted the gold and silver of the
+world; and her virgin spoils were rifled by the first of the
+Mahometan conquerors.  His behavior, in the last days of his
+life, evinces the vanity of these possessions, so laboriously
+won, so dangerously held, and so inevitably lost.  He surveyed
+the vast and various chambers of the treasury of Gazna, burst
+into tears, and again closed the doors, without bestowing any
+portion of the wealth which he could no longer hope to preserve.
+The following day he reviewed the state of his military force;
+one hundred thousand foot, fifty-five thousand horse, and
+thirteen hundred elephants of battle. ^10 He again wept the
+instability of human greatness; and his grief was imbittered by
+the hostile progress of the Turkmans, whom he had introduced into
+the heart of his Persian kingdom.
+
+[Footnote 8: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 527.  Yet
+these letters apothegms, &c., are rarely the language of the
+heart, or the motives of public action.]
+
+[Footnote *: Compare Price, vol. ii. p. 295. - M]
+
+[Footnote 9: For instance, a ruby of four hundred and fifty
+miskals, (Dow, vol. i. p. 53,) or six pounds three ounces: the
+largest in the treasury of Delhi weighed seventeen miskals,
+(Voyages de Tavernier, partie ii. p. 280.) It is true, that in
+the East all colored stones are calied rubies, (p. 355,) and that
+Tavernier saw three larger and more precious among the jewels de
+notre grand roi, le plus puissant et plus magnifique de tous les
+rois de la terre, (p. 376.)]
+
+[Footnote 10: Dow, vol. i. p. 65.  The sovereign of Kinoge is
+said to have possessed 2500 elephants, (Abulfed. Geograph. tab.
+xv. p. 274.) From these Indian stories, the reader may correct a
+note in my first volume, (p. 245;) or from that note he may
+correct these stories.]
+
+In the modern depopulation of Asia, the regular operation of
+government and agriculture is confined to the neighborhood of
+cities; and the distant country is abandoned to the pastoral
+tribes of Arabs, Curds, and Turkmans. ^11 Of the last-mentioned
+people, two considerable branches extend on either side of the
+Caspian Sea: the western colony can muster forty thousand
+soldiers; the eastern, less obvious to the traveller, but more
+strong and populous, has increased to the number of one hundred
+thousand families.  In the midst of civilized nations, they
+preserve the manners of the Scythian desert, remove their
+encampments with a change of seasons, and feed their cattle among
+the ruins of palaces and temples. Their flocks and herds are
+their only riches; their tents, either black or white, according
+to the color of the banner, are covered with felt, and of a
+circular form; their winter apparel is a sheep-skin; a robe of
+cloth or cotton their summer garment: the features of the men are
+harsh and ferocious; the countenance of their women is soft and
+pleasing.  Their wandering life maintains the spirit and exercise
+of arms; they fight on horseback; and their courage is displayed
+in frequent contests with each other and with their neighbors.
+For the license of pasture they pay a slight tribute to the
+sovereign of the land; but the domestic jurisdiction is in the
+hands of the chiefs and elders.  The first emigration of the
+Eastern Turkmans, the most ancient of the race, may be ascribed
+to the tenth century of the Christian aera. ^12 In the decline of
+the caliphs, and the weakness of their lieutenants, the barrier
+of the Jaxartes was often violated; in each invasion, after the
+victory or retreat of their countrymen, some wandering tribe,
+embracing the Mahometan faith, obtained a free encampment in the
+spacious plains and pleasant climate of Transoxiana and Carizme.
+The Turkish slaves who aspired to the throne encouraged these
+emigrations which recruited their armies, awed their subjects and
+rivals, and protected the frontier against the wilder natives of
+Turkestan; and this policy was abused by Mahmud the Gaznevide
+beyond the example of former times.  He was admonished of his
+error by the chief of the race of Seljuk, who dwelt in the
+territory of Bochara.  The sultan had inquired what supply of men
+he could furnish for military service.  "If you send," replied
+Ismael, "one of these arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of
+your servants will mount on horseback." - "And if that number,"
+continued Mahmud, "should not be sufficient?" - "Send this second
+arrow to the horde of Balik, and you will find fifty thousand
+more." - "But," said the Gaznevide, 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 Ismael, "and
+as it is circulated around, the summons will be obeyed by two
+hundred thousand horse." The apprehension of such formidable
+friendship induced Mahmud to transport the most obnoxious tribes
+into the heart of Chorasan, where they would be separated from
+their brethren of the River Oxus, and enclosed on all sides by
+the walls of obedient cities.  But the face of the country was an
+object of temptation rather than terror; and the vigor of
+government was relaxed by the absence and death of the sultan of
+Gazna. The shepherds were converted into robbers; the bands of
+robbers were collected into an army of conquerors: as far as
+Ispahan and the Tigris, Persia was afflicted by their predatory
+inroads; and the Turkmans were not ashamed or afraid to measure
+their courage and numbers with the proudest sovereigns of Asia.
+Massoud, the son and successor of Mahmud, had too long neglected
+the advice of his wisest Omrahs.  "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 venom and magnitude of serpents." After some alternatives of
+truce and hostility, after the repulse or partial success of his
+lieutenants, the sultan marched in person against the Turkmans,
+who attacked him on all sides with barbarous shouts and irregular
+onset. "Massoud," says the Persian historian, ^13 "plunged singly
+to oppose the torrent of gleaming arms, exhibiting such acts of
+gigantic force and valor as never king had before displayed.  A
+few of his friends, roused by his words and actions, and that
+innate honor which inspires the brave, seconded their lord so
+well, that wheresoever he turned his fatal sword, the enemies
+were mowed down, or retreated before him.  But now, when victory
+seemed to blow on his standard, misfortune was active behind it;
+for when he looked round, be beheld almost his whole army,
+excepting that body he commanded in person, devouring the paths
+of flight." The Gaznevide was abandoned by the cowardice or
+treachery of some generals of Turkish race; and this memorable
+day of Zendecan ^14 founded in Persia the dynasty of the shepherd
+kings. ^15
+
+[Footnote 11: See a just and natural picture of these pastoral
+manners, in the history of William archbishop of Tyre, (l. i. c.
+vii. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 633, 634,) and a valuable
+note by the editor of the Histoire Genealogique des Tatars, p.
+535 - 538.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The first emigration of the Turkmans, and doubtful
+origin of the Seljukians, may be traced in the laborious History
+of the Huns, by M. De Guignes, (tom. i. Tables Chronologiques, l.
+v. tom. iii. l. vii. ix. x.) and the Bibliotheque Orientale, of
+D'Herbelot, (p. 799 - 802, 897 - 901,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen.
+p. 321 - 333,) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 221, 222.)]
+
+[Footnote 13: Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p. 89, 95 - 98.  I
+have copied this passage as a specimen of the Persian manner; but
+I suspect that, by some odd fatality, the style of Ferishta has
+been improved by that of Ossian.
+
+Note: Gibbon's conjecture was well founded.  Compare the
+more sober and genuine version of Col. Briggs, vol. i. p. 110. -
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The Zendekan of D'Herbelot, (p. 1028,) the Dindaka
+of Dow (vol. i. p. 97,) is probably the Dandanekan of Abulfeda,
+(Geograph. p. 345, Reiske,) a small town of Chorasan, two days'
+journey from Maru, and renowned through the East for the
+production and manufacture of cotton.]
+
+[Footnote 15: The Byzantine historians (Cedrenus, tom. ii. p.
+766, 766, Zonaras tom. ii. p. 255, Nicephorus Bryennius, p. 21)
+have confounded, in this revolution, the truth of time and place,
+of names and persons, of causes and events.  The ignorance and
+errors of these Greeks (which I shall not stop to unravel) may
+inspire some distrust of the story of Cyaxares and Cyrus, as it
+is told by their most eloquent predecessor.]
+
+The victorious Turkmans immediately proceeded to the
+election of a king; and, if the probable tale of a Latin
+historian ^16 deserves any credit, they determined by lot the
+choice of their new master.  A number of arrows were successively
+inscribed with the name of a tribe, a family, and a candidate;
+they were drawn from the bundle by the hand of a child; and the
+important prize was obtained by Togrul Beg, the son of Michael
+the son of Seljuk, whose surname was immortalized in the
+greatness of his posterity.  The sultan Mahmud, who valued
+himself on his skill in national genealogy, professed his
+ignorance of the family of Seljuk; yet the father of that race
+appears to have been a chief of power and renown. ^17 For a
+daring intrusion into the harem of his prince.  Seljuk was
+banished from Turkestan: with a numerous tribe of his friends and
+vassals, he passed the Jaxartes, encamped in the neighborhood of
+Samarcand, embraced the religion of Mahomet, and acquired the
+crown of martyrdom in a war against the infidels.  His age, of a
+hundred and seven years, surpassed the life of his son, and
+Seljuk adopted the care of his two grandsons, Togrul and Jaafar;
+the eldest of whom, at the age of forty-five, was invested with
+the title of Sultan, in the royal city of Nishabur.  The blind
+determination of chance was justified by the virtues of the
+successful candidate.  It would be superfluous to praise the
+valor of a Turk; and the ambition of Togrul ^18 was equal to his
+valor.  By his arms, the Gasnevides were expelled from the
+eastern kingdoms of Persia, and gradually driven to the banks of
+the Indus, in search of a softer and more wealthy conquest.  In
+the West he annihilated the dynasty of the Bowides; and the
+sceptre of Irak passed from the Persian to the Turkish nation.
+The princes who had felt, or who feared, the Seljukian arrows,
+bowed their heads in the dust; by the conquest of Aderbijan, or
+Media, he approached the Roman confines; and the shepherd
+presumed to despatch an ambassador, or herald, to demand the
+tribute and obedience of the emperor of Constantinople. ^19 In
+his own dominions, Togrul was the father of his soldiers and
+people; by a firm and equal administration, Persia was relieved
+from the evils of anarchy; and the same hands which had been
+imbrued in blood became the guardians of justice and the public
+peace. The more rustic, perhaps the wisest, portion of the
+Turkmans ^20 continued to dwell in the tents of their ancestors;
+and, from the Oxus to the Euphrates, these military colonies were
+protected and propagated by their native princes. But the Turks
+of the court and city were refined by business and softened by
+pleasure: they imitated the dress, language, and manners of
+Persia; and the royal palaces of Nishabur and Rei displayed the
+order and magnificence of a great monarchy.  The most deserving
+of the Arabians and Persians were promoted to the honors of the
+state; and the whole body of the Turkish nation embraced, with
+fervor and sincerity, the religion of Mahomet.  The northern
+swarms of Barbarians, who overspread both Europe and Asia, have
+been irreconcilably separated by the consequences of a similar
+conduct.  Among the Moslems, as among the Christians, their vague
+and local traditions have yielded to the reason and authority of
+the prevailing system, to the fame of antiquity, and the consent
+of nations.  But the triumph of the Koran is more pure and
+meritorious, as it was not assisted by any visible splendor of
+worship which might allure the Pagans by some resemblance of
+idolatry.  The first of the Seljukian sultans was conspicuous by
+his zeal and faith: each day he repeated the five prayers which
+are enjoined to the true believers; of each week, the two first
+days were consecrated by an extraordinary fast; and in every city
+a mosch was completed, before Togrul presumed to lay the
+foundations of a palace. ^21
+
+[Footnote 16: Willerm. Tyr. l. i. c. 7, p. 633.  The divination
+by arrows is ancient and famous in the East.]
+
+[Footnote 17: D'Herbelot, p. 801.  Yet after the fortune of his
+posterity, Seljuk became the thirty-fourth in lineal descent from
+the great Afrasiab, emperor of Touran, (p. 800.) The Tartar
+pedigree of the house of Zingis gave a different cast to flattery
+and fable; and the historian Mirkhond derives the Seljukides from
+Alankavah, the virgin mother, (p. 801, col. 2.) If they be the
+same as the Zalzuts of Abulghazi Bahadur Kahn, (Hist.
+Genealogique, p. 148,) we quote in their favor the most weighty
+evidence of a Tartar prince himself, the descendant of Zingis,
+Alankavah, or Alancu, and Oguz Khan.]
+
+[Footnote 18: By a slight corruption, Togrul Beg is the
+Tangroli-pix of the Greeks.  His reign and character are
+faithfully exhibited by D'Herbelot (Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
+1027, 1028) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 189 -
+201.)]
+
+[Footnote 19: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 774, 775.  Zonaras, tom. ii.
+p. 257. With their usual knowledge of Oriental affairs, they
+describe the ambassador as a sherif, who, like the syncellus of
+the patriarch, was the vicar and successor of the caliph.]
+
+[Footnote 20: From William of Tyre I have borrowed this
+distinction of Turks and Turkmans, which at least is popular and
+convenient.  The names are the same, and the addition of man is
+of the same import in the Persic and Teutonic idioms.  Few
+critics will adopt the etymology of James de Vitry, (Hist.
+Hierosol. l. i. c. 11 p. 1061,) of Turcomani, quesi Turci et
+Comani, a mixed people.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. iii. p. 165, 166,
+167.  M. DeGognes Abulmahasen, an historian of Egypt.]
+
+With the belief of the Koran, the son of Seljuk imbibed a
+lively reverence for the successor of the prophet.  But that
+sublime character was still disputed by the caliphs of Bagdad and
+Egypt, and each of the rivals was solicitous to prove his title
+in the judgment of the strong, though illiterate Barbarians.
+Mahmud the Gaznevide had declared himself in favor of the line of
+Abbas; and had treated with indignity the robe of honor which was
+presented by the Fatimite ambassador.  Yet the ungrateful
+Hashemite had changed with the change of fortune; he applauded
+the victory of Zendecan, and named the Seljukian sultan his
+temporal vicegerent over the Moslem world.  As Togrul executed
+and enlarged this important trust, he was called to the
+deliverance of the caliph Cayem, and obeyed the holy summons,
+which gave a new kingdom to his arms. ^22 In the palace of
+Bagdad, the commander of the faithful still slumbered, a
+venerable phantom.  His servant or master, the prince of the
+Bowides, could no longer protect him from the insolence of meaner
+tyrants; and the Euphrates and Tigris were oppressed by the
+revolt of the Turkish and Arabian emirs.  The presence of a
+conqueror was implored as a blessing; and the transient mischiefs
+of fire and sword were excused as the sharp but salutary remedies
+which alone could restore the health of the republic.  At the
+head of an irresistible force, the sultan of Persia marched from
+Hamadan: the proud were crushed, the prostrate were spared; the
+prince of the Bowides disappeared; the heads of the most
+obstinate rebels were laid at the feet of Togrul; and he
+inflicted a lesson of obedience on the people of Mosul and
+Bagdad.  After the chastisement of the guilty, and the
+restoration of peace, the royal shepherd accepted the reward of
+his labors; and a solemn comedy represented the triumph of
+religious prejudice over Barbarian power. ^23 The Turkish sultan
+embarked on the Tigris, landed at the gate of Racca, and made his
+public entry on horseback.  At the palace-gate he respectfully
+dismounted, and walked on foot, preceded by his emirs without
+arms.  The caliph was seated behind his black veil: the black
+garment of the Abbassides was cast over his shoulders, and he
+held in his hand the staff of the apostle of God.  The conqueror
+of the East kissed the ground, stood some time in a modest
+posture, and was led towards the throne by the vizier and
+interpreter.  After Togrul had seated himself on another throne,
+his commission was publicly read, which declared him the temporal
+lieutenant of the vicar of the prophet.  He was successively
+invested with seven robes of honor, and presented with seven
+slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the Arabian empire.
+His mystic veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns ^* were placed
+on his head; two cimeters were girded to his side, as the symbols
+of a double reign over the East and West.  After this
+inauguration, the sultan was prevented from prostrating himself a
+second time; but he twice kissed the hand of the commander of the
+faithful, and his titles were proclaimed by the voice of heralds
+and the applause of the Moslems.  In a second visit to Bagdad,
+the Seljukian prince again rescued the caliph from his enemies
+and devoutly, on foot, led the bridle of his mule from the prison
+to the palace.  Their alliance was cemented by the marriage of
+Togrul's sister with the successor of the prophet.  Without
+reluctance he had introduced a Turkish virgin into his harem; but
+Cayem proudly refused his daughter to the sultan, disdained to
+mingle the blood of the Hashemites with the blood of a Scythian
+shepherd; and protracted the negotiation many months, till the
+gradual diminution of his revenue admonished him that he was
+still in the hands of a master.  The royal nuptials were followed
+by the death of Togrul himself; ^24 ^! as he left no children,
+his nephew Alp Arslan succeeded to the title and prerogatives of
+sultan; and his name, after that of the caliph, was pronounced in
+the public prayers of the Moslems.  Yet in this revolution, the
+Abbassides acquired a larger measure of liberty and power.  On
+the throne of Asia, the Turkish monarchs were less jealous of the
+domestic administration of Bagdad; and the commanders of the
+faithful were relieved from the ignominious vexations to which
+they had been exposed by the presence and poverty of the Persian
+dynasty.
+
+[Footnote 22: Consult the Bibliotheque Orientale, in the articles
+of the Abbassides, Caher, and Caiem, and the Annals of Elmacin
+and Abulpharagius.]
+
+[Footnote 23: For this curious ceremony, I am indebted to M. De
+Guignes (tom. iii. p. 197, 198,) and that learned author is
+obliged to Bondari, who composed in Arabic the history of the
+Seljukides, tom. v. p. 365) I am ignorant of his age, country,
+and character.]
+
+[Footnote *: According to Von Hammer, "crowns" are incorrect.
+They are unknown as a symbol of royalty in the East.  V. Hammer,
+Osmanische Geschischte, vol. i. p. 567. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Eodem anno (A. H. 455) obiit princeps Togrulbecus
+.... rex fuit clemens, prudens, et peritus regnandi, cujus terror
+corda mortalium invaserat, ita ut obedirent ei reges atque ad
+ipsum scriberent. Elma cin, Hist. Saracen. p. 342, vers. Erpenii.
+
+Note: He died, being 75 years old.  V. Hammer. - M.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII: The Turks.
+
+Part II.
+
+Since the fall of the caliphs, the discord and degeneracy of
+the Saracens respected the Asiatic provinces of Rome; which, by
+the victories of Nicephorus, Zimisces, and Basil, had been
+extended as far as Antioch and the eastern boundaries of Armenia.
+
+Twenty-five years after the death of Basil, his successors were
+suddenly assaulted by an unknown race of Barbarians, who united
+the Scythian valor with the fanaticism of new proselytes, and the
+art and riches of a powerful monarchy. ^25 The myriads of Turkish
+horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to
+Arzeroum, and the blood of one hundred and thirty thousand
+Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet.  Yet
+the arms of Togrul did not make any deep or lasting impression on
+the Greek empire.  The torrent rolled away from the open country;
+the sultan retired without glory or success from the siege of an
+Armenian city; the obscure hostilities were continued or
+suspended with a vicissitude of events; and the bravery of the
+Macedonian legions renewed the fame of the conqueror of Asia. ^26
+The name of Alp Arslan, the valiant lion, is expressive of the
+popular idea of the perfection of man; and the successor of
+Togrul displayed the fierceness and generosity of the royal
+animal.  He passed the Euphrates at the head of the Turkish
+cavalry, and entered Caesarea, the metropolis of Cappadocia, to
+which he had been attracted by the fame and wealth of the temple
+of St. Basil.  The solid structure resisted the destroyer: but he
+carried away the doors of the shrine incrusted with gold and
+pearls, and profaned the relics of the tutelar saint, whose
+mortal frailties were now covered by the venerable rust of
+antiquity.  The final conquest of Armenia and Georgia was
+achieved by Alp Arslan.  In Armenia, the title of a kingdom, and
+the spirit of a nation, were annihilated: the artificial
+fortifications were yielded by the mercenaries of Constantinople;
+by strangers without faith, veterans without pay or arms, and
+recruits without experience or discipline.  The loss of this
+important frontier was the news of a day; and the Catholics were
+neither surprised nor displeased, that a people so deeply
+infected with the Nestorian and Eutychian errors had been
+delivered by Christ and his mother into the hands of the
+infidels. ^27 The woods and valleys of Mount Caucasus were more
+strenuously defended by the native Georgians ^28 or Iberians; but
+the Turkish sultan and his son Malek were indefatigable in this
+holy war: their captives were compelled to promise a spiritual,
+as well as temporal, obedience; and, instead of their collars and
+bracelets, an iron horseshoe, a badge of ignominy, was imposed on
+the infidels who still adhered to the worship of their fathers.
+The change, however, was not sincere or universal; and, through
+ages of servitude, the Georgians have maintained the succession
+of their princes and bishops.  But a race of men, whom nature has
+cast in her most perfect mould, is degraded by poverty,
+ignorance, and vice; their profession, and still more their
+practice, of Christianity is an empty name; and if they have
+emerged from heresy, it is only because they are too illiterate
+to remember a metaphysical creed. ^29
+
+[Footnote 25: For these wars of the Turks and Romans, see in
+general the Byzantine histories of Zonaras and Cedrenus,
+Scylitzes the continuator of Cedrenus, and Nicephorus Bryennius
+Caesar.  The two first of these were monks, the two latter
+statesmen; yet such were the Greeks, that the difference of style
+and character is scarcely discernible.  For the Orientals, I draw
+as usuul on the wealth of D'Herbelot (see titles of the first
+Seljukides) and the accuracy of De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom.
+iii. l. x.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 791.  The credulity of the
+vulgar is always probable; and the Turks had learned from the
+Arabs the history or legend of Escander Dulcarnein, (D'Herbelot,
+p. 213 &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 27: (Scylitzes, ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 834,
+whose ambiguous construction shall not tempt me to suspect that
+he confounded the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies,) He
+familiarly talks of the qualities, as I should apprehend, very
+foreign to the perfect Being; but his bigotry is forced to
+confess that they were soon afterwards discharged on the orthodox
+Romans.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Had the name of Georgians been known to the Greeks,
+(Stritter, Memoriae Byzant. tom. iv. Iberica,) I should derive it
+from their agriculture, (l. iv. c. 18, p. 289, edit. Wesseling.)
+But it appears only since the crusades, among the Latins (Jac. a
+Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. c. 79, p. 1095) and Orientals,
+(D'Herbelot, p. 407,) and was devoutly borrowed from St. George
+of Cappadocia.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 632.  See, in
+Chardin's Travels, (tom. i. p. 171 - 174,) the manners and
+religion of this handsome but worthless nation.  See the pedigree
+of their princes from Adam to the present century, in the tables
+of M. De Guignes, (tom. i. p. 433 - 438.)]
+
+The false or genuine magnanimity of Mahmud the Gaznevide was
+not imitated by Alp Arslan; and he attacked without scruple the
+Greek empress Eudocia and her children.  His alarming progress
+compelled her to give herself and her sceptre to the hand of a
+soldier; and Romanus Diogenes was invested with the Imperial
+purple.  His patriotism, and perhaps his pride, urged him from
+Constantinople within two months after his accession; and the
+next campaign he most scandalously took the field during the holy
+festival of Easter.  In the palace, Diogenes was no more than the
+husband of Eudocia: in the camp, he was the emperor of the
+Romans, and he sustained that character with feeble resources and
+invincible courage.  By his spirit and success the soldiers were
+taught to act, the subjects to hope, and the enemies to fear.
+The Turks had penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; but the
+sultan himself had resigned to his emirs the prosecution of the
+war; and their numerous detachments were scattered over Asia in
+the security of conquest.  Laden with spoil, and careless of
+discipline, they were separately surprised and defeated by the
+Greeks: the activity of the emperor seemed to multiply his
+presence: and while they heard of his expedition to Antioch, the
+enemy felt his sword on the hills of Trebizond. In three
+laborious campaigns, the Turks were driven beyond the Euphrates;
+in the fourth and last, Romanus undertook the deliverance of
+Armenia.  The desolation of the land obliged him to transport a
+supply of two months' provisions; and he marched forwards to the
+siege of Malazkerd, ^30 an important fortress in the midway
+between the modern cities of Arzeroum and Van.  His army
+amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand men.  The troops
+of Constantinople were reenforced by the disorderly multitudes of
+Phrygia and Cappadocia; but the real strength was composed of the
+subjects and allies of Europe, the legions of Macedonia, and the
+squadrons of Bulgaria; the Uzi, a Moldavian horde, who were
+themselves of the Turkish race; ^31 and, above all, the mercenary
+and adventurous bands of French and Normans.  Their lances were
+commanded by the valiant Ursel of Baliol, the kinsman or father
+of the Scottish kings, ^32 and were allowed to excel in the
+exercise of arms, or, according to the Greek style, in the
+practice of the Pyrrhic dance.
+
+[Footnote 30: This city is mentioned by Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus, (de Administrat. Imperii, l. ii. c. 44, p. 119,)
+and the Byzantines of the xith century, under the name of
+Mantzikierte, and by some is confounded with Theodosiopolis; but
+Delisle, in his notes and maps, has very properly fixed the
+situation.  Abulfeda (Geograph. tab. xviii. p. 310) describes
+Malasgerd as a small town, built with black stone, supplied with
+water, without trees, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The Uzi of the Greeks (Stritter, Memor. Byzant.
+tom. iii. p. 923 - 948) are the Gozz of the Orientals, (Hist. des
+Huns, tom. ii. p. 522, tom. iii. p. 133, &c.) They appear on the
+Danube and the Volga, and Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and the
+name seems to have been extended to the whole Turkman race.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Urselius (the Russelius of Zonaras) is
+distinguished by Jeffrey Malaterra (l. i. c. 33) among the Norman
+conquerors of Sicily, and with the surname of Baliol: and our own
+historians will tell how the Baliols came from Normandy to
+Durham, built Bernard's castle on the Tees, married an heiress of
+Scotland, &c.  Ducange (Not. ad Nicephor. Bryennium, l. ii. No.
+4) has labored the subject in honor of the president de Bailleul,
+whose father had exchanged the sword for the gown.]
+
+On the report of this bold invasion, which threatened his
+hereditary dominions, Alp Arslan flew to the scene of action at
+the head of forty thousand horse. ^33 His rapid and skilful
+evolutions distressed and dismayed the superior numbers of the
+Greeks; and in the defeat of Basilacius, one of their principal
+generals, he displayed the first example of his valor and
+clemency.  The imprudence of the emperor had separated his forces
+after the reduction of Malazkerd.  It was in vain that he
+attempted to recall the mercenary Franks: they refused to obey
+his summons; he disdained to await their return: the desertion of
+the Uzi filled his mind with anxiety and suspicion; and against
+the most salutary advice he rushed forwards to speedy and
+decisive action.  Had he listened to the fair proposals of the
+sultan, Romanus might have secured a retreat, perhaps a peace;
+but in these overtures he supposed the fear or weakness of the
+enemy, and his answer was conceived in the tone of insult and
+defiance. "If the Barbarian wishes for peace, let him evacuate
+the ground which he occupies for the encampment of the Romans,
+and surrender his city and palace of Rei as a pledge of his
+sincerity." Alp Arslan smiled at the vanity of the demand, but he
+wept the death of so many faithful Moslems; and, after a devout
+prayer, proclaimed a free permission to all who were desirous of
+retiring from the field.  With his own hands he tied up his
+horse's tail, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and
+cimeter, 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. ^34 The sultan himself had
+affected to cast away his missile weapons: but his hopes of
+victory were placed in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry, whose
+squadrons were loosely distributed in the form of a crescent.
+Instead of the successive lines and reserves of the Grecian
+tactics, Romulus led his army in a single and solid phalanx, and
+pressed with vigor and impatience the artful and yielding
+resistance of the Barbarians.  In this desultory and fruitless
+combat he spent the greater part of a summer's day, till prudence
+and fatigue compelled him to return to his camp.  But a retreat
+is always perilous in the face of an active foe; and no sooner
+had the standard been turned to the rear than the phalanx was
+broken by the base cowardice, or the baser jealousy, of
+Andronicus, a rival prince, who disgraced his birth and the
+purple of the Caesars. ^35 The Turkish squadrons poured a cloud
+of arrows on this moment of confusion and lassitude; and the
+horns of their formidable crescent were closed in the rear of the
+Greeks.  In the destruction of the army and pillage of the camp,
+it would be needless to mention the number of the slain or
+captives. The Byzantine writers deplore the loss of an
+inestimable pearl: they forgot to mention, that in this fatal day
+the Asiatic provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.
+
+[Footnote 33: Elmacin (p. 343, 344) assigns this probable number,
+which is reduced by Abulpharagius to 15,000, (p. 227,) and by
+D'Herbelot (p. 102) to 12,000 horse.  But the same Elmacin gives
+300,000 met to the emperor, of whom Abulpharagius says, Cum
+centum hominum millibus, multisque equis et magna pompa
+instructus.  The Greeks abstain from any definition of numbers.]
+
+[Footnote 34: The Byzantine writers do not speak so distinctly of
+the presence of the sultan: he committed his forces to a eunuch,
+had retired to a distance, &c.  Is it ignorance, or jealousy, or
+truth?]
+
+[Footnote 35: He was the son of Caesar John Ducas, brother of the
+emperor Constantine, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 165.) Nicephorus
+Bryennius applauds his virtues and extenuates his faults, (l. i.
+p. 30, 38. l. ii. p. 53.) Yet he owns his enmity to Romanus.
+Scylitzes speaks more explicitly of his treason.]
+
+As long as a hope survived, Romanus attempted to rally and
+save the relics of his army.  When the centre, the Imperial
+station, was left naked on all sides, and encompassed by the
+victorious Turks, he still, with desperate courage, maintained
+the fight till the close of day, at the head of the brave and
+faithful subjects who adhered to his standard.  They fell around
+him; his horse was slain; the emperor was wounded; yet he stood
+alone and intrepid, till he was oppressed and bound by the
+strength of multitudes.  The glory of this illustrious prize was
+disputed by a slave and a soldier; a slave who had seen him on
+the throne of Constantinople, and a soldier whose extreme
+deformity had been excused on the promise of some signal service.
+
+Despoiled of his arms, his jewels, and his purple, Romanus spent
+a dreary and perilous night on the field of battle, amidst a
+disorderly crowd of the meaner Barbarians.  In the morning the
+royal captive was presented to Alp Arslan, who doubted of his
+fortune, till the identity of the person was ascertained by the
+report of his ambassadors, and by the more pathetic evidence of
+Basilacius, who embraced with tears the feet of his unhappy
+sovereign.  The successor of Constantine, in a plebeian habit,
+was led into the Turkish divan, and commanded to kiss the ground
+before the lord of Asia.  He reluctantly obeyed; and Alp Arslan,
+starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the
+neck of the Roman emperor. ^36 But the fact is doubtful; and if,
+in this moment of insolence, the sultan complied with the
+national custom, the rest of his conduct has extorted the praise
+of his bigoted foes, and may afford a lesson to the most
+civilized ages.  He instantly raised the royal captive from the
+ground; and thrice clasping his hand with tender sympathy,
+assured him, that his life and dignity should be inviolate in the
+hands of a prince who had learned to respect the majesty of his
+equals and the vicissitudes of fortune. From the divan, Romanus
+was conducted to an adjacent tent, where he was served with pomp
+and reverence by the officers of the sultan, who, twice each day,
+seated him in the place of honor at his own table.  In a free and
+familiar conversation of eight days, not a word, not a look, of
+insult escaped from the conqueror; but he severely censured the
+unworthy subjects who had deserted their valiant prince in the
+hour of danger, and gently admonished his antagonist of some
+errors which he had committed in the management of the war. In
+the preliminaries of negotiation, Alp Arslan asked him what
+treatment he expected to receive, and the calm indifference of
+the emperor displays the freedom of his mind.  "If you are
+cruel," said he, "you will take my life; if you listen to pride,
+you will drag me at your chariot-wheels; if you consult your
+interest, you will accept a ransom, and restore me to my
+country." "And what," continued the sultan, "would have been your
+own behavior, had fortune smiled on your arms?" The reply of the
+Greek betrays a sentiment, which prudence, and even gratitude,
+should have taught him to suppress.  "Had I vanquished," he
+fiercely said, "I would have inflicted on thy body many a
+stripe." The Turkish conqueror smiled at the insolence of his
+captive observed that the Christian law inculcated the love of
+enemies and forgiveness of injuries; and nobly declared, that he
+would not imitate an example which he condemned.  After mature
+deliberation, Alp Arslan dictated the terms of liberty and peace,
+a ransom of a million, ^* an annual tribute of three hundred and
+sixty thousand pieces of gold, ^37 the marriage of the royal
+children, and the deliverance of all the Moslems, who were in the
+power of the Greeks. Romanus, with a sigh, subscribed this
+treaty, so disgraceful to the majesty of the empire; he was
+immediately invested with a Turkish robe of honor; his nobles and
+patricians were restored to their sovereign; and the sultan,
+after a courteous embrace, dismissed him with rich presents and a
+military guard.  No sooner did he reach the confines of the
+empire, than he was informed that the palace and provinces had
+disclaimed their allegiance to a captive: a sum of two hundred
+thousand pieces was painfully collected; and the fallen monarch
+transmitted this part of his ransom, with a sad confession of his
+impotence and disgrace.  The generosity, or perhaps the ambition,
+of the sultan, prepared to espouse the cause of his ally; but his
+designs were prevented by the defeat, imprisonment, and death, of
+Romanus Diogenes. ^38
+
+[Footnote 36: This circumstance, which we read and doubt in
+Scylitzes and Constantine Manasses, is more prudently omitted by
+Nicephorus and Zonaras.]
+
+[Footnote *: Elmacin gives 1,500,000.  Wilken, Geschichte der
+Kreuz-zuge, vol. l. p. 10. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 37: The ransom and tribute are attested by reason and
+the Orientals. The other Greeks are modestly silent; but
+Nicephorus Bryennius dares to affirm, that the terms were bad and
+that the emperor would have preferred death to a shameful
+treaty.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The defeat and captivity of Romanus Diogenes may be
+found in John Scylitzes ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 835 - 843.
+
+Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 281 - 284.  Nicephorus Bryennius, l. i. p.
+25 - 32.  Glycas, p. 325 - 327. Constantine Manasses, p. 134.
+Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 343 344. Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 227.
+D'Herbelot, p. 102, 103.  D Guignes, tom. iii. p. 207 - 211.
+Besides my old acquaintance Elmacin and Abulpharagius, the
+historian of the Huns has consulted Abulfeda, and his epitomizer
+Benschounah, a Chronicle of the Caliphs, by Abulmahasen of Egypt,
+and Novairi of Africa.]
+
+In the treaty of peace, it does not appear that Alp Arslan
+extorted any province or city from the captive emperor; and his
+revenge was satisfied with the trophies of his victory, and the
+spoils of Anatolia, from Antioch to the Black Sea.  The fairest
+part of Asia was subject to his laws: twelve hundred princes, or
+the sons of princes, stood before his throne; and two hundred
+thousand soldiers marched under his banners. The sultan disdained
+to pursue the fugitive Greeks; but he meditated the more glorious
+conquest of Turkestan, the original seat of the house of Seljuk.
+He moved from Bagdad to the banks of the Oxus; a bridge was
+thrown over the river; and twenty days were consumed in the
+passage of his troops.  But the progress of the great king was
+retarded by the governor of Berzem; and Joseph the Carizmian
+presumed to defend his fortress against the powers of the East.
+When he was produced a captive in the royal tent, the sultan,
+instead of praising his valor, severely reproached his obstinate
+folly: and the insolent replies of the rebel provoked a sentence,
+that he should be fastened to four stakes, and left to expire in
+that painful situation.  At this command, the desperate
+Carizmian, drawing a dagger, rushed headlong towards the throne:
+the guards raised their battle-axes; their zeal was checked by
+Alp Arslan, the most skilful archer of the age: he drew his bow,
+but his foot slipped, the arrow glanced aside, and he received in
+his breast the dagger of Joseph, who was instantly cut in pieces.
+
+The wound was mortal; and the Turkish prince bequeathed a dying
+admonition to the pride of kings.  "In my youth," said Alp
+Arslan, "I was advised by a sage to humble myself before God; to
+distrust my own strength; and never to despise the most
+contemptible foe.  I have neglected these lessons; and my neglect
+has been deservedly punished.  Yesterday, as from an eminence I
+beheld the numbers, the discipline, and the spirit, of my armies,
+the earth seemed to tremble under my feet; and I said in my
+heart, Surely thou art the king of the world, the greatest and
+most invincible of warriors. These armies are no longer mine;
+and, in the confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the
+hand of an assassin." ^39 Alp Arslan possessed the virtues of a
+Turk and a Mussulman; his voice and stature commanded the
+reverence of mankind; his face was shaded with long whiskers; and
+his ample turban was fashioned in the shape of a crown.  The
+remains of the sultan were deposited in the tomb of the Seljukian
+dynasty; and the passenger might read and meditate this useful
+inscription: ^40 "O ye who have seen the glory of Alp Arslan
+exalted to the heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it
+buried in the dust." The annihilation of the inscription, and the
+tomb itself, more forcibly proclaims the instability of human
+greatness.
+
+[Footnote 39: This interesting death is told by D'Herbelot, (p.
+103, 104,) and M. De Guignes, (tom. iii. p. 212, 213.) from their
+Oriental writers; but neither of them have transfused the spirit
+of Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen p. 344, 345.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: A critic of high renown, (the late Dr. Johnson,)
+who has severely scrutinized the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in
+this sublime inscription at the words "repair to Maru," since the
+reader must already be at Maru before he could peruse the
+inscription.]
+
+During the life of Alp Arslan, his eldest son had been
+acknowledged as the future sultan of the Turks.  On his father's
+death the inheritance was disputed by an uncle, a cousin, and a
+brother: they drew their cimeters, and assembled their followers;
+and the triple victory of Malek Shah ^41 established his own
+reputation and the right of primogeniture.  In every age, and
+more especially in Asia, the thirst of power has inspired the
+same passions, and occasioned the same disorders; but, from the
+long series of civil war, it would not be easy to extract a
+sentiment more pure and magnanimous than is contained in the
+saying of the Turkish prince.  On the eve of the battle, he
+performed his devotions at Thous, before the tomb of the Imam
+Riza.  As the sultan rose from the ground, he asked his vizier
+Nizam, who had knelt beside him, what had been the object of his
+secret petition: "That your arms may be crowned with victory,"
+was the prudent, and most probably the sincere, answer of the
+minister.  "For my part," replied the generous Malek, "I implored
+the Lord of Hosts that he would take from me my life and crown,
+if my brother be more worthy than myself to reign over the
+Moslems." The favorable judgment of heaven was ratified by the
+caliph; and for the first time, the sacred title of Commander of
+the Faithful was communicated to a Barbarian.  But this
+Barbarian, by his personal merit, and the extent of his empire,
+was the greatest prince of his age.  After the settlement of
+Persia and Syria, he marched at the head of innumerable armies to
+achieve the conquest of Turkestan, which had been undertaken by
+his father.  In his passage of the Oxus, the boatmen, who had
+been employed in transporting some troops, complained, that their
+payment was assigned on the revenues of Antioch.  The sultan
+frowned at this preposterous choice; but he miled at the artful
+flattery of his vizier. "It was not to postpone their reward,
+that I selected those remote places, but to leave a memorial to
+posterity, that, under your reign, Antioch and the Oxus were
+subject to the same sovereign." But this description of his
+limits was unjust and parsimonious: beyond the Oxus, he reduced
+to his obedience the cities of Bochara, Carizme, and Samarcand,
+and crushed each rebellious slave, or independent savage, who
+dared to resist.  Malek passed the Sihon or Jaxartes, the last
+boundary of Persian civilization: the hordes of Turkestan yielded
+to his supremacy: his name was inserted on the coins, and in the
+prayers of Cashgar, a Tartar kingdom on the extreme borders of
+China.  From the Chinese frontier, he stretched his immediate
+jurisdiction or feudatory sway to the west and south, as far as
+the mountains of Georgia, the neighborhood of Constantinople, the
+holy city of Jerusalem, and the spicy groves of Arabia Felix.
+Instead of resigning himself to the luxury of his harem, the
+shepherd king, both in peace and war, was in action and in the
+field.  By the perpetual motion of the royal camp, each province
+was successively blessed with his presence; and he is said to
+have perambulated twelve times the wide extent of his dominions,
+which surpassed the Asiatic reign of Cyrus and the caliphs.  Of
+these expeditions, the most pious and splendid was the pilgrimage
+of Mecca: the freedom and safety of the caravans were protected
+by his arms; the citizens and pilgrims were enriched by the
+profusion of his alms; and the desert was cheered by the places
+of relief and refreshment, which he instituted for the use of his
+brethren. Hunting was the pleasure, and even the passion, of the
+sultan, and his train consisted of forty-seven thousand horses;
+but after the massacre of a Turkish chase, for each piece of
+game, he bestowed a piece of gold on the poor, a slight
+atonement, at the expense of the people, for the cost and
+mischief of the amusement of kings.  In the peaceful prosperity
+of his reign, the cities of Asia were adorned with palaces and
+hospitals with moschs and colleges; few departed from his Divan
+without reward, and none without justice.  The language and
+literature of Persia revived under the house of Seljuk; ^42 and
+if Malek emulated the liberality of a Turk less potent than
+himself, ^43 his palace might resound with the songs of a hundred
+poets.  The sultan bestowed a more serious and learned care on
+the reformation of the calendar, which was effected by a general
+assembly of the astronomers of the East.  By a law of the
+prophet, the Moslems are confined to the irregular course of the
+lunar months; in Persia, since the age of Zoroaster, the
+revolution of the sun has been known and celebrated as an annual
+festival; ^44 but after the fall of the Magian empire, the
+intercalation had been neglected; the fractions of minutes and
+hours were multiplied into days; and the date of the springs was
+removed from the sign of Aries to that of Pisces.  The reign of
+Malek was illustrated by the Gelalaean aera; and all errors,
+either past or future, were corrected by a computation of time,
+which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the
+Gregorian, style. ^45
+
+[Footnote 41: The Bibliotheque Orientale has given the text of
+the reign of Malek, (p. 542, 543, 544, 654, 655;) and the
+Histoire Generale des Huns (tom. iii. p. 214 - 224) has added the
+usual measure of repetition emendation, and supplement.  Without
+those two learned Frenchmen I should be blind indeed in the
+Eastern world.]
+
+[Footnote 42: See an excellent discourse at the end of Sir
+William Jones's History of Nadir Shah, and the articles of the
+poets, Amak, Anvari, Raschidi, &c., in the Bibliotheque
+Orientale. ]
+
+[Footnote 43: His name was Kheder Khan.  Four bags were placed
+round his sopha, and as he listened to the song, he cast handfuls
+of gold and silver to the poets, (D'Herbelot, p. 107.) All this
+may be true; but I do not understand how he could reign in
+Transoxiana in the time of Malek Shah, and much less how Kheder
+could surpass him in power and pomp.  I suspect that the
+beginning, not the end, of the xith century is the true aera of
+his reign.]
+
+[Footnote 44: See Chardin, Voyages en Perse, tom. ii. p. 235.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The Gelalaean aera (Gelaleddin, Glory of the Faith,
+was one of the names or titles of Malek Shah) is fixed to the
+xvth of March, A. H. 471, A.D. 1079.  Dr. Hyde has produced the
+original testimonies of the Persians and Arabians, (de Religione
+veterum Persarum, c. 16 p. 200 - 211.)]
+
+In a period when Europe was plunged in the deepest
+barbarism, the light and splendor of Asia may be ascribed to the
+docility rather than the knowledge of the Turkish conquerors.  An
+ample share of their wisdom and virtue is due to a Persian
+vizier, who ruled the empire under the reigns of Alp Arslan and
+his son.  Nizam, one of the most illustrious ministers of the
+East, was honored by the caliph as an oracle of religion and
+science; he was trusted by the sultan as the faithful vicegerent
+of his power and justice.  After an administration of thirty
+years, the fame of the vizier, his wealth, and even his services,
+were transformed into crimes.  He was overthrown by the insidious
+arts of a woman and a rival; and his fall was hastened by a rash
+declaration, that his cap and ink-horn, the badges of his office,
+were connected by the divine decree with the throne and diadem of
+the sultan.  At the age of ninety-three years, the venerable
+statesman was dismissed by his master, accused by his enemies,
+and murdered by a fanatic: ^* the last words of Nizam attested
+his innocence, and the remainder of Malek's life was short and
+inglorious.  From Ispahan, the scene of this disgraceful
+transaction, the sultan moved to Bagdad, with the design of
+transplanting the caliph, and of fixing his own residence in the
+capital of the Moslem world.  The feeble successor of Mahomet
+obtained a respite of ten days; and before the expiration of the
+term, the Barbarian was summoned by the angel of death.  His
+ambassadors at Constantinople had asked in marriage a Roman
+princess; but the proposal was decently eluded; and the daughter
+of Alexius, who might herself have been the victim, expresses her
+abhorrence of his unnatural conjunction. ^46 The daughter of the
+sultan was bestowed on the caliph Moctadi, with the imperious
+condition, that, renouncing the society of his wives and
+concubines, he should forever confine himself to this honorable
+alliance.
+
+[Footnote *: He was the first great victim of his enemy, Hassan
+Sabek, founder of the Assassins.  Von Hammer, Geschichte der
+Assassinen, p. 95. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 46: She speaks of this Persian royalty.  Anna Comnena
+was only nine years old at the end of the reign of Malek Shah,
+(A.D. 1092,) and when she speaks of his assassination, she
+confounds the sultan with the vizier, (Alexias, l. vi. p. 177,
+178.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII: The Turks.
+
+Part III.
+
+The greatness and unity of the Turkish empire expired in the
+person of Malek Shah.  His vacant throne was disputed by his
+brother and his four sons; ^! and, after a series of civil wars,
+the treaty which reconciled the surviving candidates confirmed a
+lasting separation in the Persian dynasty, the eldest and
+principal branch of the house of Seljuk. The three younger
+dynasties were those of Kerman, of Syria, and of Roum: the first
+of these commanded an extensive, though obscure, ^47 dominion on
+the shores of the Indian Ocean: ^48 the second expelled the
+Arabian princes of Aleppo and Damascus; and the third, our
+peculiar care, invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor.  The
+generous policy of Malek contributed to their elevation: he
+allowed the princes of his blood, even those whom he had
+vanquished in the field, to seek new kingdoms worthy of their
+ambition; nor was he displeased that they should draw away the
+more ardent spirits, who might have disturbed the tranquillity of
+his reign.  As the supreme head of his family and nation, the
+great sultan of Persia commanded the obedience and tribute of his
+royal brethren: the thrones of Kerman and Nice, of Aleppo and
+Damascus; the Atabeks, and emirs of Syria and Mesopotamia,
+erected their standards under the shadow of his sceptre: ^49 and
+the hordes of Turkmans overspread the plains of the Western Asia.
+
+After the death of Malek, the bands of union and subordination
+were relaxed and finally dissolved: the indulgence of the house
+of Seljuk invested their slaves with the inheritance of kingdoms;
+and, in the Oriental style, a crowd of princes arose from the
+dust of their feet. ^50
+
+[Footnote !: See Von Hammer, Osmanische Geschichte, vol. i. p.
+16. The Seljukian dominions were for a time reunited in the
+person of Sandjar, one of the sons of Malek Shah, who ruled "from
+Kashgar to Antioch, from the Caspian to the Straits of
+Babelmandel." - M.]
+
+[Footnote 47: So obscure, that the industry of M. De Guignes
+could only copy (tom. i. p. 244, tom. iii. part i. p. 269, &c.)
+the history, or rather list, of the Seljukides of Kerman, in
+Bibliotheque Orientale.  They were extinguished before the end of
+the xiith century.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Tavernier, perhaps the only traveller who has
+visited Kerman, describes the capital as a great ruinous village,
+twenty-five days' journey from Ispahan, and twenty-seven from
+Ormus, in the midst of a fertile country, (Voyages en Turquie et
+en Perse, p. 107, 110.)]
+
+[Footnote 49: It appears from Anna Comnena, that the Turks of
+Asia Minor obeyed the signet and chiauss of the great sultan,
+(Alexias, l. vi. p. 170;) and that the two sons of Soliman were
+detained in his court, p. 180.)]
+
+[Footnote 50: This expression is quoted by Petit de la Croix (Vie
+de Gestis p. 160) from some poet, most probably a Persian.]
+
+A prince of the royal line, Cutulmish, ^* the son of Izrail,
+the son of Seljuk, had fallen in a battle against Alp Arslan and
+the humane victor had dropped a tear over his grave.  His five
+sons, strong in arms, ambitious of power, and eager for revenge,
+unsheathed their cimeters against the son of Alp Arslan.  The two
+armies expected the signal when the caliph, forgetful of the
+majesty which secluded him from vulgar eyes, interposed his
+venerable mediation.  "Instead of shedding the blood of your
+brethren, your brethren both in descent and faith, unite your
+forces in a holy war against the Greeks, the enemies of God and
+his apostle." They listened to his voice; the sultan embraced his
+rebellious kinsmen; and the eldest, the valiant Soliman, accepted
+the royal standard, which gave him the free conquest and
+hereditary command of the provinces of the Roman empire, from
+Arzeroum to Constantinople, and the unknown regions of the West.
+^51 Accompanied by his four brothers, he passed the Euphrates;
+the Turkish camp was soon seated in the neighborhood of Kutaieh
+in Phrygia; and his flying cavalry laid waste the country as far
+as the Hellespont and the Black Sea.  Since the decline of the
+empire, the peninsula of Asia Minor had been exposed to the
+transient, though destructive, inroads of the Persians and
+Saracens; but the fruits of a lasting conquest were reserved for
+the Turkish sultan; and his arms were introduced by the Greeks,
+who aspired to reign on the ruins of their country.  Since the
+captivity of Romanus, six years the feeble son of Eudocia had
+trembled under the weight of the Imperial crown, till the
+provinces of the East and West were lost in the same month by a
+double rebellion: of either chief Nicephorus was the common name;
+but the surnames of Bryennius and Botoniates distinguish the
+European and Asiatic candidates.  Their reasons, or rather their
+promises, were weighed in the Divan; and, after some hesitation,
+Soliman declared himself in favor of Botoniates, opened a free
+passage to his troops in their march from Antioch to Nice, and
+joined the banner of the Crescent to that of the Cross.  After
+his ally had ascended the throne of Constantinople, the sultan
+was hospitably entertained in the suburb of Chrysopolis or
+Scutari; and a body of two thousand Turks was transported into
+Europe, to whose dexterity and courage the new emperor was
+indebted for the defeat and captivity of his rival, Bryennius.
+But the conquest of Europe was dearly purchased by the sacrifice
+of Asia: Constantinople was deprived of the obedience and revenue
+of the provinces beyond the Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the
+regular progress of the Turks, who fortified the passes of the
+rivers and mountains, left not a hope of their retreat or
+expulsion.  Another candidate implored the aid of the sultan:
+Melissenus, in his purple robes and red buskins, attended the
+motions of the Turkish camp; and the desponding cities were
+tempted by the summons of a Roman prince, who immediately
+surrendered them into the hands of the Barbarians. These
+acquisitions were confirmed by a treaty of peace with the emperor
+Alexius: his fear of Robert compelled him to seek the friendship
+of Soliman; and it was not till after the sultan's death that he
+extended as far as Nicomedia, about sixty miles from
+Constantinople, the eastern boundary of the Roman world.
+Trebizond alone, defended on either side by the sea and
+mountains, preserved at the extremity of the Euxine the ancient
+character of a Greek colony, and the future destiny of a
+Christian empire.
+
+[Footnote *: Wilken considers Cutulmish not a Turkish name.
+Geschicht Kreuz-zuge, vol. i. p. 9. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 51: On the conquest of Asia Minor, M. De Guignes has
+derived no assistance from the Turkish or Arabian writers, who
+produce a naked list of the Seljukides of Roum.  The Greeks are
+unwilling to expose their shame, and we must extort some hints
+from Scylitzes, (p. 860, 863,) Nicephorus Bryennius, (p. 88, 91,
+92, &c., 103, 104,) and Anna Comnena (Alexias, p. 91, 92, &c.,
+163, &c.)]
+
+Since the first conquests of the caliphs, the establishment
+of the Turks in Anatolia or Asia Minor was the most deplorable
+loss which the church and empire had sustained.  By the
+propagation of the Moslem faith, Soliman deserved the name of
+Gazi, a holy champion; and his new kingdoms, of the Romans, or of
+Roum, was added to the tables of Oriental geography. It is
+described as extending from the Euphrates to Constantinople, from
+the Black Sea to the confines of Syria; pregnant with mines of
+silver and iron, of alum and copper, fruitful in corn and wine,
+and productive of cattle and excellent horses. ^52 The wealth of
+Lydia, the arts of the Greeks, the splendor of the Augustan age,
+existed only in books and ruins, which were equally obscure in
+the eyes of the Scythian conquerors.  Yet, in the present decay,
+Anatolia still contains some wealthy and populous cities; and,
+under the Byzantine empire, they were far more flourishing in
+numbers, size, and opulence.  By the choice of the sultan, Nice,
+the metropolis of Bithynia, was preferred for his palace and
+fortress: the seat of the Seljukian dynasty of Roum was planted
+one hundred miles from Constantinople; and the divinity of Christ
+was denied and derided in the same temple in which it had been
+pronounced by the first general synod of the Catholics.  The
+unity of God, and the mission of Mahomet, were preached in the
+moschs; the Arabian learning was taught in the schools; the
+Cadhis judged according to the law of the Koran; the Turkish
+manners and language prevailed in the cities; and Turkman camps
+were scattered over the plains and mountains of Anatolia.  On the
+hard conditions of tribute and servitude, the Greek Christians
+might enjoy the exercise of their religion; but their most holy
+churches were profaned; their priests and bishops were insulted;
+^53 they were compelled to suffer the triumph of the Pagans, and
+the apostasy of their brethren; many thousand children were
+marked by the knife of circumcision; and many thousand captives
+were devoted to the service or the pleasures of their masters.
+^54 After the loss of Asia, Antioch still maintained her
+primitive allegiance to Christ and Caesar; but the solitary
+province was separated from all Roman aid, and surrounded on all
+sides by the Mahometan powers.  The despair of Philaretus the
+governor prepared the sacrifice of his religion and loyalty, had
+not his guilt been prevented by his son, who hastened to the
+Nicene palace, and offered to deliver this valuable prize into
+the hands of Soliman.  The ambitious sultan mounted on horseback,
+and in twelve nights (for he reposed in the day) performed a
+march of six hundred miles.  Antioch was oppressed by the speed
+and secrecy of his enterprise; and the dependent cities, as far
+as Laodicea and the confines of Aleppo, ^55 obeyed the example of
+the metropolis.  From Laodicea to the Thracian Bosphorus, or arm
+of St. George, the conquests and reign of Soliman extended thirty
+days' journey in length, and in breadth about ten or fifteen,
+between the rocks of Lycia and the Black Sea. ^56 The Turkish
+ignorance of navigation protected, for a while, the inglorious
+safety of the emperor; but no sooner had a fleet of two hundred
+ships been constructed by the hands of the captive Greeks, than
+Alexius trembled behind the walls of his capital. His plaintive
+epistles were dispersed over Europe, to excite the compassion of
+the Latins, and to paint the danger, the weakness, and the riches
+of the city of Constantine. ^57
+
+[Footnote 52: Such is the description of Roum by Haiton the
+Armenian, whose Tartar history may be found in the collections of
+Ramusio and Bergeron, (see Abulfeda, Geograph. climat. xvii. p.
+301 - 305.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: Dicit eos quendam abusione Sodomitica intervertisse
+episcopum, (Guibert. Abbat. Hist. Hierosol. l. i. p. 468.) It is
+odd enough, that we should find a parallel passage of the same
+people in the present age.  "Il n'est point d'horreur que ces
+Turcs n'ayent commis, et semblables aux soldats effrenes, qui
+dans le sac d'une ville, non contens de disposer de tout a leur
+gre pretendent encore aux succes les moins desirables.  Quelque
+Sipahis ont porte leurs attentats sur la personne du vieux rabbi
+de la synagogue, et celle de l'Archeveque Grec." (Memoires du
+Baron de Tott, tom. ii. p. 193.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: The emperor, or abbot describe the scenes of a
+Turkish camp as if they had been present.  Matres correptae in
+conspectu filiarum multipliciter repetitis diversorum coitibus
+vexabantur; (is that the true reading?) cum filiae assistentes
+carmina praecinere saltando cogerentur. Mox eadem passio ad
+filias, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 55: See Antioch, and the death of Soliman, in Anna
+Comnena, (Alexius, l. vi. p. 168, 169,) with the notes of
+Ducange.]
+
+[Footnote 56: William of Tyre (l. i. c. 9, 10, p. 635) gives the
+most authentic and deplorable account of these Turkish
+conquests.]
+
+[Footnote 57: In his epistle to the count of Flanders, Alexius
+seems to fall too low beneath his character and dignity; yet it
+is approved by Ducange, (Not. ad Alexiad. p. 335, &c.,) and
+paraphrased by the Abbot Guibert, a contemporary historian.  The
+Greek text no longer exists; and each translator and scribe might
+say with Guibert, (p. 475,) verbis vestita meis, a privilege of
+most indefinite latitude.]
+
+But the most interesting conquest of the Seljukian Turks was
+that of Jerusalem, ^58 which soon became the theatre of nations.
+In their capitulation with Omar, the inhabitants had stipulated
+the assurance of their religion and property; but the articles
+were interpreted by a master against whom it was dangerous to
+dispute; and in the four hundred years of the reign of the
+caliphs, the political climate of Jerusalem was exposed to the
+vicissitudes of storm and sunshine. ^59 By the increase of
+proselytes and population, the Mahometans might excuse the
+usurpation of three fourths of the city: but a peculiar quarter
+was resolved for the patriarch with his clergy and people; a
+tribute of two pieces of gold was the price of protection; and
+the sepulchre of Christ, with the church of the Resurrection, was
+still left in the hands of his votaries.  Of these votaries, the
+most numerous and respectable portion were strangers to
+Jerusalem: the pilgrimages to the Holy Land had been stimulated,
+rather than suppressed, by the conquest of the Arabs; and the
+enthusiasm which had always prompted these perilous journeys, was
+nourished by the congenial passions of grief and indignation.  A
+crowd of pilgrims from the East and West continued to visit the
+holy sepulchre, and the adjacent sanctuaries, more especially at
+the festival of Easter; and the Greeks and Latins, the Nestorians
+and Jacobites, the Copts and Abyssinians, the Armenians and
+Georgians, maintained the chapels, the clergy, and the poor of
+their respective communions.  The harmony of prayer in so many
+various tongues, the worship of so many nations in the common
+temple of their religion, might have afforded a spectacle of
+edification and peace; but the zeal of the Christian sects was
+imbittered by hatred and revenge; and in the kingdom of a
+suffering Messiah, who had pardoned his enemies, they aspired to
+command and persecute their spiritual brethren.  The preeminence
+was asserted by the spirit and numbers of the Franks; and the
+greatness of Charlemagne ^60 protected both the Latin pilgrims
+and the Catholics of the East.  The poverty of Carthage,
+Alexandria, and Jerusalem, was relieved by the alms of that pious
+emperor; and many monasteries of Palestine were founded or
+restored by his liberal devotion.  Harun Alrashid, the greatest
+of the Abbassides, esteemed in his Christian brother a similar
+supremacy of genius and power: their friendship was cemented by a
+frequent intercourse of gifts and embassies; and the caliph,
+without resigning the substantial dominion, presented the emperor
+with the keys of the holy sepulchre, and perhaps of the city of
+Jerusalem.  In the decline of the Carlovingian monarchy, the
+republic of Amalphi promoted the interest of trade and religion
+in the East.  Her vessels transported the Latin pilgrims to the
+coasts of Egypt and Palestine, and deserved, by their useful
+imports, the favor and alliance of the Fatimite caliphs: ^61 an
+annual fair was instituted on Mount Calvary: and the Italian
+merchants founded the convent and hospital of St. John of
+Jerusalem, the cradle of the monastic and military order, which
+has since reigned in the isles of Rhodes and of Malta.  Had the
+Christian pilgrims been content to revere the tomb of a prophet,
+the disciples of Mahomet, instead of blaming, would have
+imitated, their piety: but these rigid Unitarians were
+scandalized by a worship which represents the birth, death, and
+resurrection, of a God; the Catholic images were branded with the
+name of idols; and the Moslems smiled with indignation ^62 at the
+miraculous flame which was kindled on the eve of Easter in the
+holy sepulchre. ^63 This pious fraud, first devised in the ninth
+century, ^64 was devoutly cherished by the Latin crusaders, and
+is annually repeated by the clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and
+Coptic sects, ^65 who impose on the credulous spectators ^66 for
+their own benefit, and that of their tyrants.  In every age, a
+principle of toleration has been fortified by a sense of
+interest: and the revenue of the prince and his emir was
+increased each year, by the expense and tribute of so many
+thousand strangers.
+
+[Footnote 58: Our best fund for the history of Jerusalem from
+Heraclius to the crusades is contained in two large and original
+passages of William archbishop of Tyre, (l. i. c. 1 - 10, l.
+xviii. c. 5, 6,) the principal author of the Gesta Dei per
+Francos.  M. De Guignes has composed a very learned Memoire sur
+le Commerce des Francois dans le de Levant avant les Croisades,
+&c. (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxvii. p. 467 -
+500.)]
+
+[Footnote 59: Secundum Dominorum dispositionem plerumque lucida
+plerum que nubila recepit intervalla, et aegrotantium more
+temporum praesentium gravabatur aut respirabat qualitate, (l. i.
+c. 3, p. 630.) The latinity of William of Tyre is by no means
+contemptible: but in his account of 490 years, from the loss to
+the recovery of Jerusalem, precedes the true account by 30
+years.]
+
+[Footnote 60: For the transactions of Charlemagne with the Holy
+Land, see Eginhard, (de Vita Caroli Magni, c. 16, p. 79 - 82,)
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Administratione Imperii, l. ii.
+c. 26, p. 80,) and Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 800, No. 13,
+14, 15.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: The caliph granted his privileges, Amalphitanis
+viris amicis et utilium introductoribus, (Gesta Dei, p. 934.) The
+trade of Venice to Egypt and Palestine cannot produce so old a
+title, unless we adopt the laughable translation of a Frenchman,
+who mistook the two factions of the circus (Veneti et Prasini)
+for the Venetians and Parisians.]
+
+[Footnote 62: An Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem (apud Asseman.
+Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 268, tom. iv. p. 368) attests the
+unbelief of the caliph and the historian; yet Cantacuzene
+presumes to appeal to the Mahometans themselves for the truth of
+this perpetual miracle.]
+
+[Footnote 63: In his Dissertations on Ecclesiastical History, the
+learned Mosheim has separately discussed this pretended miracle,
+(tom. ii. p. 214 - 306,) de lumine sancti sepulchri.]
+
+[Footnote 64: William of Malmsbury (l. iv. c. 2, p. 209) quotes
+the Itinerary of the monk Bernard, an eye-witness, who visited
+Jerusalem A.D. 870.  The miracle is confirmed by another pilgrim
+some years older; and Mosheim ascribes the invention to the
+Franks, soon after the decease of Charlemagne.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Our travellers, Sandys, (p. 134,) Thevenot, (p. 621
+- 627,) Maundrell, (p. 94, 95,) &c., describes this extravagant
+farce.  The Catholics are puzzled to decide when the miracle
+ended and the trick began.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The Orientals themselves confess the fraud, and
+plead necessity and edification, (Memoires du Chevalier
+D'Arvieux, tom. ii. p. 140.  Joseph Abudacni, Hist. Copt. c. 20;)
+but I will not attempt, with Mosheim, to explain the mode.  Our
+travellers have failed with the blood of St. Januarius at
+Naples.]
+
+The revolution which transferred the sceptre from the
+Abbassides to the Fatimites was a benefit, rather than an injury,
+to the Holy Land.  A sovereign resident in Egypt was more
+sensible of the importance of Christian trade; and the emirs of
+Palestine were less remote from the justice and power of the
+throne.  But the third of these Fatimite caliphs was the famous
+Hakem, ^67 a frantic youth, who was delivered by his impiety and
+despotism from the fear either of God or man; and whose reign was
+a wild mixture of vice and folly. Regardless of the most ancient
+customs of Egypt, he imposed on the women an absolute
+confinement; the restraint excited the clamors of both sexes;
+their clamors provoked his fury; a part of Old Cairo was
+delivered to the flames and the guards and citizens were engaged
+many days in a bloody conflict.  At first the caliph declared
+himself a zealous Mussulman, the founder or benefactor of moschs
+and colleges: twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran were
+transcribed at his expense in letters of gold; and his edict
+extirpated the vineyards of the Upper Egypt.  But his vanity was
+soon flattered by the hope of introducing a new religion; he
+aspired above the fame of a prophet, and styled himself the
+visible image of the Most High God, who, after nine apparitions
+on earth, was at length manifest in his royal person.  At the
+name of Hakem, the lord of the living and the dead, every knee
+was bent in religious adoration: his mysteries were performed on
+a mountain near Cairo: sixteen thousand converts had signed his
+profession of faith; and at the present hour, a free and warlike
+people, the Druses of Mount Libanus, are persuaded of the life
+and divinity of a madman and tyrant. ^68 In his divine character,
+Hakem hated the Jews and Christians, as the servants of his
+rivals; while some remains of prejudice or prudence still pleaded
+in favor of the law of Mahomet.  Both in Egypt and Palestine, his
+cruel and wanton persecution made some martyrs and many apostles:
+the common rights and special privileges of the sectaries were
+equally disregarded; and a general interdict was laid on the
+devotion of strangers and natives.  The temple of the Christian
+world, the church of the Resurrection, was demolished to its
+foundations; the luminous prodigy of Easter was interrupted, and
+much profane labor was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock
+which properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of
+this sacrilege, the nations of Europe were astonished and
+afflicted: but instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land,
+they contented themselves with burning, or banishing, the Jews,
+as the secret advisers of the impious Barbarian. ^69 Yet the
+calamities of Jerusalem were in some measure alleviated by the
+inconstancy or repentance of Hakem himself; and the royal mandate
+was sealed for the restitution of the churches, when the tyrant
+was assassinated by the emissaries of his sister.  The succeeding
+caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and policy: a free
+toleration was again granted; with the pious aid of the emperor
+of Constantinople, the holy sepulchre arose from its ruins; and,
+after a short abstinence, the pilgrims returned with an increase
+of appetite to the spiritual feast. ^70 In the sea-voyage of
+Palestine, the dangers were frequent, and the opportunities rare:
+but the conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between
+Germany and Greece.  The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of
+his kingdom, relieved and conducted his itinerant brethren; ^71
+and from Belgrade to Antioch, they traversed fifteen hundred
+miles of a Christian empire.  Among the Franks, the zeal of
+pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former times: and the
+roads were covered with multitudes of either sex, and of every
+rank, who professed their contempt of life, so soon as they
+should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and
+prelates abandoned the care of their dominions; and the numbers
+of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which
+marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the cross.  About
+thirty years before the first crusade, the arch bishop of Mentz,
+with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook
+this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan; and the
+multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons.
+At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the
+emperor; but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault
+of the wild Arabs: they drew their swords with scrupulous
+reluctance, and sustained siege in the village of Capernaum, till
+they were rescued by the venal protection of the Fatimite emir.
+After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy, but only
+a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native land.
+
+Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion
+of this pilgrimage: he observes that they sailed from Normandy,
+thirty stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed
+the Alps, twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand,
+and the wallet at their back. ^72
+
+[Footnote 67: See D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 411,)
+Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 390, 397, 400, 401,)
+Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 321 - 323,) and Marei, (p. 384 -
+386,) an historian of Egypt, translated by Reiske from Arabic
+into German, and verbally interpreted to me by a friend.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The religion of the Druses is concealed by their
+ignorance and hypocrisy.  Their secret doctrines are confined to
+the elect who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar
+Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the
+worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighborhood.
+The little that is, or deserves to be, known, may be seen in the
+industrious Niebuhr, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354 - 357,) and the
+second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de
+Volney.
+
+Note: The religion of the Druses has, within the present
+year, been fully developed from their own writings, which have
+long lain neglected in the libraries of Paris and Oxford, in the
+"Expose de la Religion des Druses, by M. Silvestre de Sacy." Deux
+tomes, Paris, 1838. The learned author has prefixed a life of
+Hakem Biamr-Allah, which enables us to correct several errors in
+the account of Gibbon.  These errors chiefly arose from his want
+of knowledge or of attention to the chronology of Hakem's life.
+Hakem succeeded to the throne of Egypt in the year of the Hegira
+386.  He did not assume his divinity till 408.  His life was
+indeed "a wild mixture of vice and folly," to which may be added,
+of the most sanguinary cruelty.  During his reign, 18,000 persons
+were victims of his ferocity.  Yet such is the god, observes M.
+de Sacy, whom the Druses have worshipped for 800 years!  (See p.
+ccccxxix.) All his wildest and most extravagant actions were
+interpreted by his followers as having a mystic and allegoric
+meaning, alluding to the destruction of other religions and the
+propagation of his own.  It does not seem to have been the
+"vanity" of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion.
+The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali,
+the real founder of the Unitarian religion, (such is its boastful
+title,) was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was
+God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his Intelligence.  It
+was not in his "divine character" that Hakem "hated the Jews and
+Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed
+in the earlier years of his reign.  His barbarous persecution,
+and the burning of the church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem,
+belong entirely to that period; and his assumption of divinity
+was followed by an edict of toleration to Jews and Christians.
+The Mahometans, whose religion he then treated with hostility and
+contempt, being far the most numerous, were his most dangerous
+enemies, and therefore the objects of his most inveterate hatred.
+
+It is another singular fact, that the religion of Hakem was by no
+means confined to Egypt and Syria.  M. de Sacy quotes a letter
+addressed to the chief of the sect in India; and there is
+likewise a letter to the Byzantine emperor Constantine, son of
+Armanous, (Romanus,) and the clergy of the empire.  (Constantine
+VIII., M. de Sacy supposes, but this is irreconcilable with
+chronology; it must mean Constantine XI., Monomachus.) The
+assassination of Hakem is, of course, disbelieved by his
+sectaries.  M. de Sacy seems to consider the fact obscure and
+doubtful. According to his followers he disappeared, but is
+hereafter to return.  At his return the resurrection is to take
+place; the triumph of Unitarianism, and the final discomfiture of
+all other religions.  The temple of Mecca is especially devoted
+to destruction.  It is remarkable that one of the signs of this
+final consummation, and of the reappearance of Hakem, is that
+Christianity shall be gaining a manifest predominance over
+Mahometanism.
+
+As for the religion of the Druses, I cannot agree with
+Gibbon that it does not "deserve" to be better known; and am
+grateful to M. de Sacy, notwithstanding the prolixity and
+occasional repetition in his two large volumes, for the full
+examination of the most extraordinary religious aberration which
+ever extensively affected the mind of man.  The worship of a mad
+tyrant is the basis of a subtle metaphysical creed, and of a
+severe, and even ascetic, morality. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 69: See Glaber, l. iii. c. 7, and the Annals of
+Baronius and Pagi, A.D. 1009.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Per idem tempus ex universo orbe tam innumerabilis
+multitudo coepit confluere ad sepulchrum Salvatoris Hierosolymis,
+quantum nullus hominum prius sperare poterat.  Ordo inferioris
+plebis ....  mediocres .... reges et comites ..... praesules
+..... mulieres multae nobilis cum pauperioribus .... Pluribus
+enim erat mentis desiderium mori priusquam ad propria
+reverterentur, (Glaber, l. iv. c. 6, Bouquet. Historians of
+France, tom. x. p. 50.)
+
+Note: Compare the first chap. of Wilken, Geschichte der
+Kreuz-zuge. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 71: Glaber, l. iii. c. 1. Katona (Hist. Critic. Regum
+Hungariae, tom. i. p. 304 - 311) examines whether St. Stephen
+founded a monastery at Jerusalem.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Baronius (A.D. 1064, No. 43 - 56) has transcribed
+the greater part of the original narratives of Ingulphus,
+Marianus, and Lambertus.]
+
+After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the
+Fatimite caliphs was invaded by the Turks. ^73 One of the
+lieutenants of Malek Shah, Atsiz the Carizmian, marched into
+Syria at the head of a powerful army, and reduced Damascus by
+famine and the sword.  Hems, and the other cities of the
+province, acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of
+Persia; and the victorious emir advanced without resistance to
+the banks of the Nile: the Fatimite was preparing to fly into the
+heart of Africa; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants
+of Cairo made a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the
+confines of Egypt.  In his retreat he indulged the license of
+slaughter and rapine: the judge and notaries of Jerusalem were
+invited to his camp; and their execution was followed by the
+massacre of three thousand citizens.  The cruelty or the defeat
+of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother of
+Malek Shah, who, with a higher title and more formidable powers,
+asserted the dominion of Syria and Palestine.  The house of
+Seljuk reigned about twenty years in Jerusalem; ^74 but the
+hereditary command of the holy city and territory was intrusted
+or abandoned to the emir Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans,
+whose children, after their expulsion from Palestine, formed two
+dynasties on the borders of Armenia and Assyria. ^75 The Oriental
+Christians and the Latin pilgrims deplored a revolution, which,
+instead of the regular government and old alliance of the
+caliphs, imposed on their necks the iron yoke of the strangers of
+the North. ^76 In his court and camp the great sultan had adopted
+in some degree the arts and manners of Persia; but the body of
+the Turkish nation, and more especially the pastoral tribes,
+still breathed the fierceness of the desert.  From Nice to
+Jerusalem, the western countries of Asia were a scene of foreign
+and domestic hostility; and the shepherds of Palestine, who held
+a precarious sway on a doubtful frontier, had neither leisure nor
+capacity to await the slow profits of commercial and religious
+freedom.  The pilgrims, who, through innumerable perils, had
+reached the gates of Jerusalem, were the victims of private
+rapine or public oppression, and often sunk under the pressure of
+famine and disease, before they were permitted to salute the holy
+sepulchre.  A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal,
+prompted the Turkmans to insult the clergy of every sect: the
+patriarch was dragged by the hair along the pavement, and cast
+into a dungeon, to extort a ransom from the sympathy of his
+flock; and the divine worship in the church of the Resurrection
+was often disturbed by the savage rudeness of its masters. The
+pathetic tale excited the millions of the West to march under the
+standard of the cross to the relief of the Holy Land; and yet how
+trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if compared with
+the single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so
+patiently endured by the Latin Christians!  A slighter
+provocation inflamed the more irascible temper of their
+descendants: a new spirit had arisen of religious chivalry and
+papal dominion; a nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the
+sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 73: See Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 349, 350) and
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 237, vers. Pocock.) M. De Guignes
+(Hist. des Huns, tom iii. part i. p. 215, 216) adds the
+testimonies, or rather the names, of Abulfeda and Novairi.]
+
+[Footnote 74: From the expedition of Isar Atsiz, (A. H. 469, A.D.
+1076,) to the expulsion of the Ortokides, (A.D. 1096.) Yet
+William of Tyre (l. i. c. 6, p. 633) asserts, that Jerusalem was
+thirty-eight years in the hands of the Turks; and an Arabic
+chronicle, quoted by Pagi, (tom. iv. p. 202) supposes that the
+city was reduced by a Carizmian general to the obedience of the
+caliph of Bagdad, A. H. 463, A.D. 1070.  These early dates are
+not very compatible with the general history of Asia; and I am
+sure, that as late as A.D. 1064, the regnum Babylonicum (of
+Cairo) still prevailed in Palestine, (Baronius, A.D. 1064, No.
+56.)]
+
+[Footnote 75: De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 249 - 252. ]
+
+[Footnote 76: Willierm. Tyr. l. i. c. 8, p. 634, who strives hard
+to magnify the Christian grievances.  The Turks exacted an aureus
+from each pilgrim!  The caphar of the Franks now is fourteen
+dollars: and Europe does not complain of this voluntary tax.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.
+
+Part I.
+
+Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade. - Characters Of The
+Latin Princes. - Their March To Constantinople. - Policy Of The
+Greek Emperor Alexius. - Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And
+Jerusalem, By The Franks. - Deliverance Of The Holy Sepulchre. -
+Godfrey Of Bouillon, First King Of Jerusalem. - Institutions Of
+The French Or Latin Kingdom.
+
+About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the
+Turks, the holy sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of
+Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy ^1 in
+France.  His resentment and sympathy were excited by his own
+injuries and the oppression of the Christian name; he mingled his
+tears with those of the patriarch, and earnestly inquired, if no
+hopes of relief could be entertained from the Greek emperors of
+the East.  The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the
+successors of Constantine.  "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit,
+"the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was
+obedient to the call of the hermit.  The astonished patriarch
+dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint; and no
+sooner did he land at Bari, than Peter hastened to kiss the feet
+of the Roman pontiff.  His stature was small, his appearance
+contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively; and he possessed
+that vehemence of speech, which seldom fails to impart the
+persuasion of the soul. ^2 He was born of a gentleman's family,
+(for we must now adopt a modern idiom,) and his military service
+was under the neighboring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the
+first crusade.  But he soon relinquished the sword and the world;
+and if it be true, that his wife, however noble, was aged and
+ugly, he might withdraw, with the less reluctance, from her bed
+to a convent, and at length to a hermitage. ^* In this austere
+solitude, his body was emaciated, his fancy was inflamed;
+whatever he wished, he believed; whatever he believed, he saw in
+dreams and revelations.  From Jerusalem the pilgrim returned an
+accomplished fanatic; but as he excelled in the popular madness
+of the times, Pope Urban the Second received him as a prophet,
+applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a
+general council, and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance
+of the Holy Land. Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff,
+his zealous missionary traversed. with speed and success, the
+provinces of Italy and France.  His diet was abstemious, his
+prayers long and fervent, and the alms which he received with one
+hand, he distributed with the other: his head was bare, his feet
+naked, his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse garment; he bore
+and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he rode
+was sanctified, in the public eye, by the service of the man of
+God.  He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the
+streets, and the highways: the hermit entered with equal
+confidence the palace and the cottage; and the people (for all
+was people) was impetuously moved by his call to repentance and
+arms.  When he painted the sufferings of the natives and pilgrims
+of Palestine, every heart was melted to compassion; every breast
+glowed with indignation, when he challenged the warriors of the
+age to defend their brethren, and rescue their Savior: his
+ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and
+tears, and ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of
+reason by loud and frequent appeals to Christ and his mother, to
+the saints and angels of paradise, with whom he had personally
+conversed. ^! The most perfect orator of Athens might have envied
+the success of his eloquence; the rustic enthusiast inspired the
+passions which he felt, and Christendom expected with impatience
+the counsels and decrees of the supreme pontiff.
+
+[Footnote 1: Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of
+Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date later
+than A.D. 1200.  It was an academical joke, an epithet first
+applied to the quarrelsome humor of those students, in the
+University of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and
+Flanders, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447, Longuerue.
+Description de la France, p. 54.)]
+
+[Footnote 2: William of Tyre (l. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus
+describes the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis
+ingenii, et oculum habeas perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens
+ei non deerat eloquium.  See Albert Aquensis, p. 185.  Guibert,
+p. 482.  Anna Comnena in Alex isd, l. x. p. 284, &c., with
+Ducarge's Notes, p. 349.]
+
+[Footnote *: Wilken considers this as doubtful, (vol. i. p. 47.(
+- M.]
+
+[Footnote !: He had seen the Savior in a vision: a letter had
+fallen from heaven Wilken, vol. i. p. 49. - M.]
+
+The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already
+embraced the design of arming Europe against Asia; the ardor of
+his zeal and ambition still breathes in his epistles: from either
+side of the Alps, fifty thousand Catholics had enlisted under the
+banner of St. Peter; ^3 and his successor reveals his intention
+of marching at their head against the impious sectaries of
+Mahomet.  But the glory or reproach of executing, though not in
+person, this holy enterprise, was reserved for Urban the Second,
+^4 the most faithful of his disciples.  He undertook the conquest
+of the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was possessed and
+fortified by his rival Guibert of Ravenna, who contended with
+Urban for the name and honors of the pontificate.  He attempted
+to unite the powers of the West, at a time when the princes were
+separated from the church, and the people from their princes, by
+the excommunication which himself and his predecessors had
+thundered against the emperor and the king of France. Philip the
+First, of France, supported with patience the censures which he
+had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage.
+Henry the Fourth, of Germany, asserted the right of investitures,
+the prerogative of confirming his bishops by the delivery of the
+ring and crosier.  But the emperor's party was crushed in Italy
+by the arms of the Normans and the Countess Mathilda; and the
+long quarrel had been recently envenomed by the revolt of his son
+Conrad and the shame of his wife, ^5 who, in the synods of
+Constance and Placentia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to
+which she had been exposed by a husband regardless of her honor
+and his own. ^6 So popular was the cause of Urban, so weighty was
+his influence, that the council which he summoned at Placentia ^7
+was composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France, Burgandy,
+Swabia, and Bavaria.  Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty
+thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and, as
+the most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the
+multitude, the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent
+to the city. The ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius
+Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their
+sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was divided
+only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common
+enemies of the Christian name.  In their suppliant address they
+flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and, appealing at once
+to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the
+Barbarians on the confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in
+the heart of Europe. At the sad tale of the misery and perils of
+their Eastern brethren, the assembly burst into tears; the most
+eager champions declared their readiness to march; and the Greek
+ambassadors were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and
+powerful succor.  The relief of Constantinople was included in
+the larger and most distant project of the deliverance of
+Jerusalem; but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to
+a second synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of
+France in the autumn of the same year.  The short delay would
+propagate the flame of enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a
+nation of soldiers ^8 still proud of the preeminence of their
+name, and ambitious to emulate their hero Charlemagne, ^9 who, in
+the popular romance of Turpin, ^10 had achieved the conquest of
+the Holy Land.  A latent motive of affection or vanity might
+influence the choice of Urban: he was himself a native of France,
+a monk of Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended
+the throne of St. Peter. The pope had illustrated his family and
+province; nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification
+than to revisit, in a conspicuous dignity, the humble and
+laborious scenes of our youth.
+
+[Footnote 3: Ultra quinquaginta millia, si me possunt in
+expeditione pro duce et pontifice habere, armata manu volunt in
+inimicos Dei insurgere et ad sepulchrum Domini ipso ducente
+pervenire, (Gregor. vii. epist. ii. 31, in tom. xii. 322,
+concil.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: See the original lives of Urban II. by Pandulphus
+Pisanus and Bernardus Guido, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom.
+iii. pars i. p. 352, 353.]
+
+[Footnote 5: She is known by the different names of Praxes,
+Eupraecia, Eufrasia, and Adelais; and was the daughter of a
+Russian prince, and the widow of a margrave of Brandenburgh.
+(Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p. 340.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: Henricus odio eam coepit habere: ideo incarceravit
+eam, et concessit ut plerique vim ei inferrent; immo filium
+hortans ut eam subagitaret, (Dodechin, Continuat. Marian. Scot.
+apud Baron. A.D. 1093, No. 4.) In the synod of Constance, she is
+described by Bertholdus, rerum inspector: quae se tantas et tam
+inauditas fornicationum spur citias, et a tantis passam fuisse
+conquesta est, &c.; and again at Placentia: satis misericorditer
+suscepit, eo quod ipsam tantas spurcitias pertulisse pro certo
+cognoverit papa cum sancta synodo.  Apud Baron. A.D. 1093, No. 4,
+1094, No. 3. A rare subject for the infallible decision of a pope
+and council.  These abominations are repugnant to every principle
+of human nature, which is not altered by a dispute about rings
+and crosiers.  Yet it should seem, that the wretched woman was
+tempted by the priests to relate or subscribe some infamous
+stories of herself and her husband.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See the narrative and acts of the synod of
+Placentia, Concil. tom. xii. p. 821, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Guibert, himself a Frenchman, praises the piety and
+valor of the French nation, the author and example of the
+crusades: Gens nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis et nitida
+.... Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus
+videamus, non illico Francos homines appellemus?  (p. 478.) He
+owns, however, that the vivacity of the French degenerates into
+petulance among foreigners, (p. 488.) and vain loquaciousness,
+(p. 502.)]
+
+[Footnote 9: Per viam quam jamdudum Carolus Magnus mirificus rex
+Francorum aptari fecit usque C. P., (Gesta Francorum, p. 1.
+Robert. Monach. Hist. Hieros. l. i. p. 33, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 10: John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was archbishop of
+Rheims, A.D. 773. After the year 1000, this romance was composed
+in his name, by a monk of the borders of France and Spain; and
+such was the idea of ecclesiastical merit, that he describes
+himself as a fighting and drinking priest!  Yet the book of lies
+was pronounced authentic by Pope Calixtus II., (A.D. 1122,) and
+is respectfully quoted by the abbot Suger, in the great
+Chronicles of St. Denys, (Fabric Bibliot. Latin Medii Aevi, edit.
+Mansi, tom. iv. p. 161.)]
+
+It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should
+erect, in the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled
+his anathemas against the king; but our surprise will vanish so
+soon as we form a just estimate of a king of France of the
+eleventh century. ^11 Philip the First was the great-grandson of
+Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race, who, in the decline
+of Charlemagne's posterity, added the regal title to his
+patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans.  In this narrow
+compass, he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the
+rest of France, Hugh and his first descendants were no more than
+the feudal lords of about sixty dukes and counts, of independent
+and hereditary power, ^12 who disdained the control of laws and
+legal assemblies, and whose disregard of their sovereign was
+revenged by the disobedience of their inferior vassals.  At
+Clermont, in the territories of the count of Auvergne, ^13 the
+pope might brave with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the
+council which he convened in that city was not less numerous or
+respectable than the synod of Placentia. ^14 Besides his court
+and council of Roman cardinals, he was supported by thirteen
+archbishops and two hundred and twenty-five bishops: the number
+of mitred prelates was computed at four hundred; and the fathers
+of the church were blessed by the saints and enlightened by the
+doctors of the age.  From the adjacent kingdoms, a martial train
+of lords and knights of power and renown attended the council,
+^15 in high expectation of its resolves; and such was the ardor
+of zeal and curiosity, that the city was filled, and many
+thousands, in the month of November, erected their tents or huts
+in the open field.  A session of eight days produced some useful
+or edifying canons for the reformation of manners; a severe
+censure was pronounced against the license of private war; the
+Truce of God ^16 was confirmed, a suspension of hostilities
+during four days of the week; women and priests were placed under
+the safeguard of the church; and a protection of three years was
+extended to husbandmen and merchants, the defenceless victims of
+military rapine.  But a law, however venerable be the sanction,
+cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times; and the
+benevolent efforts of Urban deserve the less praise, since he
+labored to appease some domestic quarrels that he might spread
+the flames of war from the Atlantic to the Euphrates.  From the
+synod of Placentia, the rumor of his great design had gone forth
+among the nations: the clergy on their return had preached in
+every diocese the merit and glory of the deliverance of the Holy
+Land; and when the pope ascended a lofty scaffold in the
+market-place of Clermont, his eloquence was addressed to a
+well-prepared and impatient audience.  His topics were obvious,
+his exhortation was vehement, his success inevitable.  The orator
+was interrupted by the shout of thousands, who with one voice,
+and in their rustic idiom, exclaimed aloud, "God wills it, God
+wills it." ^17 "It is indeed the will of God," replied the pope;
+"and let this memorable word, the inspiration surely of the Holy
+Spirit, be forever adopted as your cry of battle, to animate the
+devotion and courage of the champions of Christ.  His cross is
+the symbol of your salvation; wear it, a red, a bloody cross, as
+an external mark, on your breasts or shoulders, as a pledge of
+your sacred and irrevocable engagement." The proposal was
+joyfully accepted; great numbers, both of the clergy and laity,
+impressed on their garments the sign of the cross, ^18 and
+solicited the pope to march at their head.  This dangerous honor
+was declined by the more prudent successor of Gregory, who
+alleged the schism of the church, and the duties of his pastoral
+office, recommending to the faithful, who were disqualified by
+sex or profession, by age or infirmity, to aid, with their
+prayers and alms, the personal service of their robust brethren.
+The name and powers of his legate he devolved on Adhemar bishop
+of Puy, the first who had received the cross at his hands.  The
+foremost of the temporal chiefs was Raymond count of Thoulouse,
+whose ambassadors in the council excused the absence, and pledged
+the honor, of their master.  After the confession and absolution
+of their sins, the champions of the cross were dismissed with a
+superfluous admonition to invite their countrymen and friends;
+and their departure for the Holy Land was fixed to the festival
+of the Assumption, the fifteenth of August, of the ensuing year.
+^19
+
+[Footnote 11: See Etat de la France, by the Count de
+Boulainvilliers, tom. i. p. 180 - 182, and the second volume of
+the Observations sur l'Histoire de France, by the Abbe de Mably.]
+
+[Footnote 12: In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the
+first Capetians were scarcely allowed a feudal supremacy.  On all
+sides, Normandy, Bretagne, Aquitain, Burgundy, Lorraine, and
+Flanders, contracted the same and limits of the proper France.
+See Hadrian Vales. Notitia Galliarum]
+
+[Footnote 13: These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of
+Aquitain, were at length despoiled of the greatest part of their
+country by Philip Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually
+became princes of the city. Melanges, tires d'une grand
+Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvi. p. 288, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 14: See the Acts of the council of Clermont, Concil.
+tom. xii. p. 829, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Confluxerunt ad concilium e multis regionibus, viri
+potentes et honorati, innumeri quamvis cingulo laicalis militiae
+superbi, (Baldric, an eye-witness, p. 86 - 88.  Robert. Monach.
+p. 31, 32.  Will. Tyr. i. 14, 15, p. 639 - 641.  Guibert, p. 478
+- 480.  Fulcher. Carnot. p. 382.)]
+
+[Footnote 16: The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first
+invented in Aquitain, A.D. 1032; blamed by some bishops as an
+occasion of perjury, and rejected by the Normans as contrary to
+their privileges (Ducange, Gloss Latin. tom. vi. p. 682 - 685.)]
+
+[Footnote 17: Deus vult, Deus vult!  was the pure acclamation of
+the clergy who understood Latin, (Robert. Mon. l. i. p. 32.) By
+the illiterate laity, who spoke the Provincial or Limousin idiom,
+it was corrupted to Deus lo volt, or Diex el volt.  See Chron.
+Casinense, l. iv. c. 11, p. 497, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital.
+tom. iv., and Ducange, (Dissertat xi. p. 207, sur Joinville, and
+Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p. 690,) who, in his preface, produces a
+very difficult specimen of the dialect of Rovergue, A.D. 1100,
+very near, both in time and place, to the council of Clermont,
+(p. 15, 16.)]
+
+[Footnote 18: Most commonly on their shoulders, in gold, or silk,
+or cloth sewed on their garments.  In the first crusade, all were
+red, in the third, the French alone preserved that color, while
+green crosses were adopted by the Flemings, and white by the
+English, (Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651.) Yet in England, the red ever
+appears the favorite, and as if were, the national, color of our
+military ensigns and uniforms.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Bongarsius, who has published the original writers
+of the crusades, adopts, with much complacency, the fanatic title
+of Guibertus, Gesta Dei per Francos; though some critics propose
+to read Gesta Diaboli per Francos, (Hanoviae, 1611, two vols. in
+folio.) I shall briefly enumerate, as they stand in this
+collection, the authors whom I have used for the first crusade.
+
+I.    Gesta Francorum.
+
+II.   Robertus Monachus.
+
+III.  Baldricus.
+
+IV.   Raimundus de Agiles.
+
+V.    Albertus Aquensis VI. Fulcherius Carnotensis.
+
+VII.  Guibertus.
+
+VIII. Willielmus Tyriensis. Muratori has given us,
+
+IX.   Radulphus Cadomensis de Gestis Tancredi,
+
+          (Script. Rer. Ital. tom. v. p. 285 - 333,)
+
+X.    Bernardus Thesaurarius de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae,
+
+         (tom. vii. p. 664 - 848.)
+
+The last of these was unknown to a late French historian,
+who has given a large and critical list of the writers of the
+crusades, (Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13 - 141,) and most
+of whose judgments my own experience will allow me to ratify.  It
+was late before I could obtain a sight of the French historians
+collected by Duchesne.  I.  Petri Tudebodi Sacerdotis Sivracensis
+Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, (tom. iv. p. 773 - 815,) has
+been transfused into the first anonymous writer of Bongarsius.
+II. The Metrical History of the first Crusade, in vii. books, (p.
+890 - 912,) is of small value or account.
+
+Note: Several new documents, particularly from the East,
+have been collected by the industry of the modern historians of
+the crusades, M. Michaud and Wilken. - M.]
+
+So familiar, and as it were so natural to man, is the
+practice of violence, that our indulgence allows the slightest
+provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of
+national hostility.  But the name and nature of a holy war
+demands a more rigorous scrutiny; nor can we hastily believe,
+that the servants of the Prince of Peace would unsheathe the
+sword of destruction, unless the motive were pure, the quarrel
+legitimate, and the necessity inevitable.  The policy of an
+action may be determined from the tardy lessons of experience;
+but, before we act, our conscience should be satisfied of the
+justice and propriety of our enterprise.  In the age of the
+crusades, the Christians, both of the East and West, were
+persuaded of their lawfulness and merit; their arguments are
+clouded by the perpetual abuse of Scripture and rhetoric; but
+they seem to insist on the right of natural and religious
+defence, their peculiar title to the Holy Land, and the impiety
+of their Pagan and Mahometan foes. ^20
+
+I. The right of a just defence may fairly include our civil
+and spiritual allies: it depends on the existence of danger; and
+that danger must be estimated by the twofold consideration of the
+malice, and the power, of our enemies.  A pernicious tenet has
+been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other
+religions by the sword.  This charge of ignorance and bigotry is
+refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Mussulman conquerors,
+and by their public and legal toleration of the Christian
+worship.  But it cannot be denied, that the Oriental churches are
+depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace and war, they
+assert a divine and indefeasible claim of universal empire; and
+that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are
+continually threatened with the loss of religion or liberty.  In
+the eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks presented
+a real and urgent apprehension of these losses.  They had
+subdued, in less than thirty years, the kingdoms of Asia, as far
+as Jerusalem and the Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on
+the verge of destruction. Besides an honest sympathy for their
+brethren, the Latins had a right and interest in the support of
+Constantinople, the most important barrier of the West; and the
+privilege of defence must reach to prevent, as well as to repel,
+an impending assault.  But this salutary purpose might have been
+accomplished by a moderate succor; and our calmer reason must
+disclaim the innumerable hosts, and remote operations, which
+overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe. ^*
+
+[Footnote 20: If the reader will turn to the first scene of the
+First Part of Henry the Fourth, he will see in the text of
+Shakespeare the natural feelings of enthusiasm; and in the notes
+of Dr. Johnson the workings of a bigoted, though vigorous mind,
+greedy of every pretence to hate and persecute those who dissent
+from his creed.]
+
+[Footnote *: The manner in which the war was conducted surely has
+little relation to the abstract question of the justice or
+injustice of the war. The most just and necessary war may be
+conducted with the most prodigal waste of human life, and the
+wildest fanaticism; the most unjust with the coolest moderation
+and consummate generalship.  The question is, whether the
+liberties and religion of Europe were in danger from the
+aggressions of Mahometanism? If so, it is difficult to limit the
+right, though it may be proper to question the wisdom, of
+overwhelming the enemy with the armed population of a whole
+continent, and repelling, if possible, the invading conqueror
+into his native deserts.  The crusades are monuments of human
+folly!  but to which of the more regular wars civilized.  Europe,
+waged for personal ambition or national jealousy, will our calmer
+reason appeal as monuments either of human justice or human
+wisdom? - M.]
+
+II.  Palestine could add nothing to the strength or safety
+of the Latins; and fanaticism alone could pretend to justify the
+conquest of that distant and narrow province.  The Christians
+affirmed that their inalienable title to the promised land had
+been sealed by the blood of their divine Savior; it was their
+right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the unjust
+possessors, who profaned his sepulchre, and oppressed the
+pilgrimage of his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged that the
+preeminence of Jerusalem, and the sanctity of Palestine, have
+been abolished with the Mosaic law; that the God of the
+Christians is not a local deity, and that the recovery of Bethlem
+or Calvary, his cradle or his tomb, will not atone for the
+violation of the moral precepts of the gospel. Such arguments
+glance aside from the leaden shield of superstition; and the
+religious mind will not easily relinquish its hold on the sacred
+ground of mystery and miracle.
+
+III.  But the holy wars which have been waged in every
+climate of the globe, from Egypt to Livonia, and from Peru to
+Hindostan, require the support of some more general and flexible
+tenet.  It has been often supposed, and sometimes affirmed, that
+a difference of religion is a worthy cause of hostility; that
+obstinate unbelievers may be slain or subdued by the champions of
+the cross; and that grace is the sole fountain of dominion as
+well as of mercy. ^* Above four hundred years before the first
+crusade, the eastern and western provinces of the Roman empire
+had been acquired about the same time, and in the same manner, by
+the Barbarians of Germany and Arabia.  Time and treaties had
+legitimated the conquest of the Christian Franks; but in the eyes
+of their subjects and neighbors, the Mahometan princes were still
+tyrants and usurpers, who, by the arms of war or rebellion, might
+be lawfully driven from their unlawful possession. ^21
+
+[Footnote *: "God," says the abbot Guibert, "invented the
+crusades as a new way for the laity to atone for their sins and
+to merit salvation." This extraordinary and characteristic
+passage must be given entire.  "Deus nostro tempore praelia
+sancta instituit, ut ordo equestris et vulgus oberrans qui
+vetustae Paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabatur caedes, novum
+reperirent salutis promerendae genus, ut nec funditus electa, ut
+fieri assolet, monastica conversatione, seu religiosa qualibet
+professione saeculum relinquere congerentur; sed sub consueta
+licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio Dei aliquantenus
+gratiam consequerentur." Guib. Abbas, p. 371.  See Wilken, vol.
+i. p. 63. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The vith Discourse of Fleury on Ecclesiastical
+History (p. 223 - 261) contains an accurate and rational view of
+the causes and effects of the crusades.]
+
+As the manners of the Christians were relaxed, their
+discipline of penance ^22 was enforced; and with the
+multiplication of sins, the remedies were multiplied.  In the
+primitive church, a voluntary and open confession prepared the
+work of atonement.  In the middle ages, the bishops and priests
+interrogated the criminal; compelled him to account for his
+thoughts, words, and actions; and prescribed the terms of his
+reconciliation with God.  But as this discretionary power might
+alternately be abused by indulgence and tyranny, a rule of
+discipline was framed, to inform and regulate the spiritual
+judges.  This mode of legislation was invented by the Greeks;
+their penitentials ^23 were translated, or imitated, in the Latin
+church; and, in the time of Charlemagne, the clergy of every
+diocese were provided with a code, which they prudently concealed
+from the knowledge of the vulgar.  In this dangerous estimate of
+crimes and punishments, each case was supposed, each difference
+was remarked, by the experience or penetration of the monks; some
+sins are enumerated which innocence could not have suspected, and
+others which reason cannot believe; and the more ordinary
+offences of fornication and adultery, of perjury and sacrilege,
+of rapine and murder, were expiated by a penance, which,
+according to the various circumstances, was prolonged from forty
+days to seven years.  During this term of mortification, the
+patient was healed, the criminal was absolved, by a salutary
+regimen of fasts and prayers: the disorder of his dress was
+expressive of grief and remorse; and he humbly abstained from all
+the business and pleasure of social life.  But the rigid
+execution of these laws would have depopulated the palace, the
+camp, and the city; the Barbarians of the West believed and
+trembled; but nature often rebelled against principle; and the
+magistrate labored without effect to enforce the jurisdiction of
+the priest.  A literal accomplishment of penance was indeed
+impracticable: the guilt of adultery was multiplied by daily
+repetition; that of homicide might involve the massacre of a
+whole people; each act was separately numbered; and, in those
+times of anarchy and vice, a modest sinner might easily incur a
+debt of three hundred years. His insolvency was relieved by a
+commutation, or indulgence: a year of penance was appreciated at
+twenty-six solidi ^24 of silver, about four pounds sterling, for
+the rich; at three solidi, or nine shillings, for the indigent:
+and these alms were soon appropriated to the use of the church,
+which derived, from the redemption of sins, an inexhaustible
+source of opulence and dominion.  A debt of three hundred years,
+or twelve hundred pounds, was enough to impoverish a plentiful
+fortune; the scarcity of gold and silver was supplied by the
+alienation of land; and the princely donations of Pepin and
+Charlemagne are expressly given for the remedy of their soul.  It
+is a maxim of the civil law, that whosoever cannot pay with his
+purse, must pay with his body; and the practice of flagellation
+was adopted by the monks, a cheap, though painful equivalent.  By
+a fantastic arithmetic, a year of penance was taxed at three
+thousand lashes; ^25 and such was the skill and patience of a
+famous hermit, St. Dominic of the iron Cuirass, ^26 that in six
+days he could discharge an entire century, by a whipping of three
+hundred thousand stripes.  His example was followed by many
+penitents of both sexes; and, as a vicarious sacrifice was
+accepted, a sturdy disciplinarian might expiate on his own back
+the sins of his benefactors. ^27 These compensations of the purse
+and the person introduced, in the eleventh century, a more
+honorable mode of satisfaction. The merit of military service
+against the Saracens of Africa and Spain had been allowed by the
+predecessors of Urban the Second.  In the council of Clermont,
+that pope proclaimed a plenary indulgence to those who should
+enlist under the banner of the cross; the absolution of all their
+sins, and a full receipt for all that might be due of canonical
+penance. ^28 The cold philosophy of modern times is incapable of
+feeling the impression that was made on a sinful and fanatic
+world.  At the voice of their pastor, the robber, the incendiary,
+the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls, by
+repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had exercised
+against their Christian brethren; and the terms of atonement were
+eagerly embraced by offenders of every rank and denomination.
+None were pure; none were exempt from the guilt and penalty of
+sin; and those who were the least amenable to the justice of God
+and the church were the best entitled to the temporal and eternal
+recompense of their pious courage.  If they fell, the spirit of
+the Latin clergy did not hesitate to adorn their tomb with the
+crown of martyrdom; ^29 and should they survive, they could
+expect without impatience the delay and increase of their
+heavenly reward.  They offered their blood to the Son of God, who
+had laid down his life for their salvation: they took up the
+cross, and entered with confidence into the way of the Lord.  His
+providence would watch over their safety; perhaps his visible and
+miraculous power would smooth the difficulties of their holy
+enterprise.  The cloud and pillar of Jehovah had marched before
+the Israelites into the promised land.  Might not the Christians
+more reasonably hope that the rivers would open for their
+passage; that the walls of their strongest cities would fall at
+the sound of their trumpets; and that the sun would be arrested
+in his mid career, to allow them time for the destruction of the
+infidels?
+
+[Footnote 22: The penance, indulgences, &c., of the middle ages
+are amply discussed by Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi,
+tom. v. dissert. lxviii. p. 709 - 768,) and by M. Chais, (Lettres
+sur les Jubiles et les Indulgences, tom. ii. lettres 21 & 22, p.
+478 - 556,) with this difference, that the abuses of superstition
+are mildly, perhaps faintly, exposed by the learned Italian, and
+peevishly magnified by the Dutch minister.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Schmidt (Histoire des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 211 -
+220, 452 - 462) gives an abstract of the Penitential of Rhegino
+in the ninth, and of Burchard in the tenth, century.  In one
+year, five-and-thirty murders were perpetrated at Worms.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Till the xiith century, we may support the clear
+account of xii. denarii, or pence, to the solidus, or shilling;
+and xx. solidi to the pound weight of silver, about the pound
+sterling.  Our money is diminished to a third, and the French to
+a fiftieth, of this primitive standard.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Each century of lashes was sanctified with a
+recital of a psalm, and the whole Psalter, with the accompaniment
+of 15,000 stripes, was equivalent to five years.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The Life and Achievements of St. Dominic Loricatus
+was composed by his friend and admirer, Peter Damianus.  See
+Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 96 - 104.  Baronius, A.D.
+1056, No. 7, who observes, from Damianus, how fashionable, even
+among ladies of quality, (sublimis generis,) this expiation
+(purgatorii genus) was grown.]
+
+[Footnote 27: At a quarter, or even half a rial a lash, Sancho
+Panza was a cheaper, and possibly not a more dishonest, workman.
+I remember in Pere Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom. vii. p. 16 -
+29) a very lively picture of the dexterity of one of these
+artists.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel
+pecuniae adoptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem
+profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni poenitentia reputetur.
+Canon. Concil. Claromont. ii. p. 829. Guibert styles it novum
+salutis genus, (p. 471,) and is almost philosophical on the
+subject.
+
+Note: See note, page 546. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Such at least was the belief of the crusaders, and
+such is the uniform style of the historians, (Esprit des
+Croisades, tom. iii. p. 477;) but the prayer for the repose of
+their souls is inconsistent in orthodox theology with the merits
+of martyrdom.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.
+
+Part II.
+
+Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre,
+I will dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of
+enthusiasm; the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the
+assurance of divine aid.  But I am equally persuaded, that in
+many it was not the sole, that in some it was not the leading,
+principle of action.  The use and abuse of religion are feeble to
+stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel, the stream of
+national manners.  Against the private wars of the Barbarians,
+their bloody tournaments, licentious love, and judicial duels,
+the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder.  It is a more
+easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to
+drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to
+sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the
+merit of the humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War
+and exercise were the reigning passions of the Franks or Latins;
+they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to
+visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nation
+of the East.  Their victory, or even their attempt, would
+immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and
+the purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid
+prospect of military glory.  In the petty quarrels of Europe,
+they shed the blood of their friends and countrymen, for the
+acquisition perhaps of a castle or a village.  They could march
+with alacrity against the distant and hostile nations who were
+devoted to their arms; their fancy already grasped the golden
+sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the
+Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private
+adventurer.  Christendom, in her rudest state, must have yielded
+to the climate and cultivation of the Mahometan countries; and
+their natural and artificial wealth had been magnified by the
+tales of pilgrims, and the gifts of an imperfect commerce.  The
+vulgar, both the great and small, were taught to believe every
+wonder, of lands flowing with milk and honey, of mines and
+treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper,
+and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense. In this
+earthly paradise, each warrior depended on his sword to carve a
+plenteous and honorable establishment, which he measured only by
+the extent of his wishes. ^30 Their vassals and soldiers trusted
+their fortunes to God and their master: the spoils of a Turkish
+emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and the
+flavor of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women, ^31 were
+temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession,
+of the champions of the cross.  The love of freedom was a
+powerful incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by
+feudal or ecclesiastical tyranny.  Under this holy sign, the
+peasants and burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the
+glebe, might escape from a haughty lord, and transplant
+themselves and their families to a land of liberty.  The monk
+might release himself from the discipline of his convent: the
+debtor might suspend the accumulation of usury, and the pursuit
+of his creditors; and outlaws and malefactors of every cast might
+continue to brave the laws and elude the punishment of their
+crimes. ^32
+
+[Footnote 30: The same hopes were displayed in the letters of the
+adventurers ad animandos qui in Francia residerant.  Hugh de
+Reiteste could boast, that his share amounted to one abbey and
+ten castles, of the yearly value of 1500 marks, and that he
+should acquire a hundred castles by the conquest of Aleppo,
+(Guibert, p. 554, 555.)]
+
+[Footnote 31: In his genuine or fictitious letter to the count of
+Flanders, Alexius mingles with the danger of the church, and the
+relics of saints, the auri et argenti amor, and pulcherrimarum
+foeminarum voluptas, p. 476;) as if, says the indignant Guibert,
+the Greek women were handsomer than those of France.]
+
+[Footnote 32: See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom
+from debt, usury injury, secular justice, &c.  The pope was their
+perpetual guardian (Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651, 652.)]
+
+These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly
+computed their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add
+the infinite series, the multiplying powers, of example and
+fashion.  The first proselytes became the warmest and most
+effectual missionaries of the cross: among their friends and
+countrymen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense,
+of their holy vow; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly
+drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and authority.  The
+martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion of
+cowardice; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre
+of Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and
+children, who consulted rather their zeal than their strength;
+and those who in the evening had derided the folly of their
+companions, were the most eager, the ensuing day, to tread in
+their footsteps.  The ignorance, which magnified the hopes,
+diminished the perils, of the enterprise.  Since the Turkish
+conquest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated; the chiefs
+themselves had an imperfect notion of the length of the way and
+the state of their enemies; and such was the stupidity of the
+people, that, at the sight of the first city or castle beyond the
+limits of their knowledge, they were ready to ask whether that
+was not the Jerusalem, the term and object of their labors.  Yet
+the more prudent of the crusaders, who were not sure that they
+should be fed from heaven with a shower of quails or manna,
+provided themselves with those precious metals, which, in every
+country, are the representatives of every commodity.  To defray,
+according to their rank, the expenses of the road, princes
+alienated their provinces, nobles their lands and castles,
+peasants their cattle and the instruments of husbandry.  The
+value of property was depreciated by the eager competition of
+multitudes; while the price of arms and horses was raised to an
+exorbitant height by the wants and impatience of the buyers. ^33
+Those who remained at home, with sense and money, were enriched
+by the epidemical disease: the sovereigns acquired at a cheap
+rate the domains of their vassals; and the ecclesiastical
+purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of their
+prayers.  The cross, which was commonly sewed on the garment, in
+cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin: a hot
+iron, or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark;
+and a crafty monk, who showed the miraculous impression on his
+breast was repaid with the popular veneration and the richest
+benefices of Palestine. ^34
+
+[Footnote 33: Guibert (p. 481) paints in lively colors this
+general emotion. He was one of the few contemporaries who had
+genius enough to feel the astonishing scenes that were passing
+before their eyes.  Erat itaque videre miraculum, caro omnes
+emere, atque vili vendere, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Some instances of these stigmata are given in the
+Esprit des Croisades, (tom. iii. p. 169 &c.,) from authors whom I
+have not seen]
+
+The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the council of
+Clermont for the departure of the pilgrims; but the day was
+anticipated by the thoughtless and needy crowd of plebeians, and
+I shall briefly despatch the calamities which they inflicted and
+suffered, before I enter on the more serious and successful
+enterprise of the chiefs.  Early in the spring, from the confines
+of France and Lorraine, above sixty thousand of the populace of
+both sexes flocked round the first missionary of the crusade, and
+pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the holy
+sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the
+talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the
+forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and
+Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate,
+and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though needy
+soldier, conducted a van guard of pilgrims, whose condition may
+be determined from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen
+thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely
+pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose sermons had
+swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages
+of Germany.  Their rear was again pressed by a herd of two
+hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the
+people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal license of
+rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness.  Some counts and
+gentlemen, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the
+motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil; but their
+genuine leaders (may we credit such folly?) were a goose and a
+goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these worthy
+Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit. ^35 Of
+these, and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy
+warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God.
+In the trading cities of the Moselle and the Rhine, their
+colonies were numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the
+protection of the emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of
+their religion. ^36 At Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many
+thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred: ^37
+nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of
+Hadrian.  A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops,
+who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more
+obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the
+Christians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating
+themselves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or
+the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of
+their implacable foes.
+
+[Footnote 35: Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac
+congregatione pedestris populi stulti et vesanae levitatis,
+anserem quendam divino spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam
+non minus eodem repletam, et has sibi duces secundae viae
+fecerant, &c., (Albert. Aquensis, l. i. c. 31, p. 196.) Had these
+peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in
+Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic descend
+ants would have glossed over with some specious and subtile
+allegory.
+
+Note: A singular "allegoric" explanation of this strange
+fact has recently been broached: it is connected with the charge
+of idolatry and Eastern heretical opinions subsequently made
+against the Templars.  "We have no doubt that they were Manichee
+or Gnostic standards." (The author says the animals themselves
+were carried before the army. - M.) "The goose, in Egyptian
+symbols, as every Egyptian scholar knows, meant 'divine Son,' or
+'Son of God.' The goat meant Typhon, or Devil.  Thus we have the
+Manichee opposing principles of good and evil, as standards, at
+the head of the ignorant mob of crusading invaders.  Can any one
+doubt that a large portion of this host must have been infected
+with the Manichee or Gnostic idolatry?" Account of the Temple
+Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838.  This is, at all
+events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in
+connection with the extensive dissemination of the Paulician
+opinions among the common people of Europe.  At any rate, in so
+inexplicable a matter, we are inclined to catch at any
+explanation, however wild or subtile. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his
+Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich,
+generous, learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the
+Messiah, (Voyage, tom. i. p. 243 - 245, par Baratier.) In seventy
+years (he wrote about A.D. 1170) they had recovered from these
+massacres.]
+
+[Footnote 37: These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which
+were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related.  It is true,
+that St. Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329) admonishes the
+Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judaei, non sunt
+trucidandi.  The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival
+monk.
+
+Note: This is an unjust sarcasm against St. Bernard.  He
+stood above all rivalry of this kind See note 31, c. l x. - M]
+
+Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzan
+tine monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse as
+interval of six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of
+Hungary ^38 and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected
+with rivers; but it was then covered with morasses and forests,
+which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to
+exercise his dominion over the earth.  Both nations had imbibed
+the rudiments of Christianity; the Hungarians were ruled by their
+native princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the Greek
+emperor; but, on the slightest provocation, their ferocious
+nature was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the
+disorders of the first pilgrims Agriculture must have been
+unskilful and languid among a people, whose cities were built of
+reeds and timber, which were deserted in the summer season for
+the tents of hunters and shepherds.  A scanty supply of
+provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly seized, and greedily
+consumed; and on the first quarrel, the crusaders gave a loose to
+indignation and revenge.  But their ignorance of the country, of
+war, and of discipline, exposed them to every snare.  The Greek
+praefect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; ^* at the trumpet
+of the Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial
+subjects bent their bows and mounted on horseback; their policy
+was insidious, and their retaliation on these pious robbers was
+unrelenting and bloody. ^39 About a third of the naked fugitives
+(and the hermit Peter was of the number) escaped to the Thracian
+mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and
+succor of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journeys
+to Constantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their
+brethren.  For a while they remembered their faults and losses;
+but no sooner were they revived by the hospitable entertainment,
+than their venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor,
+and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches, were safe from
+their depredations.  For his own safety, Alexius allured them to
+pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; but their blind
+impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had
+assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied
+the road to Jerusalem.  The hermit, conscious of his shame, had
+withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant,
+Walter the Penniless, who was worthy of a better command,
+attempted without success to introduce some order and prudence
+among the herd of savages.  They separated in quest of prey, and
+themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the sultan.  By a
+rumor that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils
+of his capital, Soliman ^* tempted the main body to descend into
+the plain of Nice: they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows;
+and a pyramid of bones ^40 informed their companions of the place
+of their defeat.  Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand
+had already perished, before a single city was rescued from the
+infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had
+completed the preparations of their enterprise. ^41
+
+[Footnote 38: See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho
+of Frisin gen, l. ii. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
+Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665 666.]
+
+[Footnote *: The narrative of the first march is very incorrect.
+The first party moved under Walter de Pexego and Walter the
+Penniless: they passed safe through Hungary, the kingdom of
+Kalmeny, and were attacked in Bulgaria.  Peter followed with
+40,000 men; passed through Hungary; but seeing the clothes of
+sixteen crusaders, who had been empaled on the walls of Semlin.
+he attacked and stormed the city.  He then marched to Nissa,
+where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an accidental
+quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat.  Wilken, vol.
+i. p. 84 - 86 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius,
+are ill informed of the first crusade, which they involve in a
+single passage. Katona, like ourselves, can only quote the
+writers of France; but he compares with local science the ancient
+and modern geography.  Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron or Poson;
+Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith;
+Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Moson; Tollenburg, Pragg, (de
+Regibus Hungariae, tom. iii. p. 19 - 53.)]
+
+[Footnote *: Soliman had been killed in 1085, in a battle against
+Toutoneh, brother of Malek Schah, between Appelo and Antioch.  It
+was not Soliman, therefore, but his son David, surnamed Kilidje
+Arslan, the "Sword of the Lion," who reigned in Nice.  Almost all
+the occidental authors have fallen into this mistake, which was
+detected by M. Michaud, Hist. des Crois. 4th edit. and Extraits
+des Aut. Arab. rel. aux Croisades, par M. Reinaud Paris, 1829, p.
+3.  His kingdom extended from the Orontes to the Euphra tes, and
+as far as the Bosphorus.  Kilidje Arslan must uniformly be
+substituted for Soliman.  Brosset note on Le Beau, tom. xv. p.
+311. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. x. p. 287) describes this
+as a mountain.  In the siege of Nice, such were used by the
+Franks themselves as the materials of a wall.]
+
+[Footnote 41: See table on following page.]
+
+"To save time and space, I shall represent, in a short table, the
+particular references to the great events of the first crusade."
+
+
+[See Table 1.: Events Of The First Crusade]
+
+None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their
+persons in the first crusade.  The emperor Henry the Fourth was
+not disposed to obey the summons of the pope: Philip the First of
+France was occupied by his pleasures; William Rufus of England by
+a recent conquest; the kin`gs of Spain were engaged in a domestic
+war against the Moors; and the northern monarchs of Scotland,
+Denmark, ^42 Sweden, and Poland, were yet strangers to the
+passions and interests of the South.  The religious ardor was
+more strongly felt by the princes of the second order, who held
+an important place in the feudal system. Their situation will
+naturally cast under four distinct heads the review of their
+names and characters; but I may escape some needless repetition,
+by observing at once, that courage and the exercise of arms are
+the common attribute of these Christian adventurers.  I.  The
+first rank both in war and council is justly due to Godfrey of
+Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they
+had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of that accomplished
+hero, a worthy representative of Charlemagne, from whom he was
+descended in the female line.  His father was of the noble race
+of the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower province of
+Lorraine, ^43 was the inheritance of his mother; and by the
+emperor's bounty he was himself invested with that ducal title,
+which has been improperly transferred to his lordship of Bouillon
+in the Ardennes. ^44 In the service of Henry the Fourth, he bore
+the great standard of the empire, and pierced with his lance the
+breast of Rodolph, the rebel king: Godfrey was the first who
+ascended the walls of Rome; and his sickness, his vow, perhaps
+his remorse for bearing arms against the pope, confirmed an early
+resolution of visiting the holy sepulchre, not as a pilgrim, but
+a deliverer.  His valor was matured by prudence and moderation;
+his piety, though blind, was sincere; and, in the tumult of a
+camp, he practised the real and fictitious virtues of a convent.
+Superior to the private factions of the chiefs, he reserved his
+enmity for the enemies of Christ; and though he gained a kingdom
+by the attempt, his pure and disinterested zeal was acknowledged
+by his rivals.  Godfrey of Bouillon ^45 was accompanied by his
+two brothers, by Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the
+county of Boulogne, and by the younger, Baldwin, a character of
+more ambiguous virtue.  The duke of Lorraine, was alike
+celebrated on either side of the Rhine: from his birth and
+education, he was equally conversant with the French and Teutonic
+languages: the barons of France, Germany, and Lorraine, assembled
+their vassals; and the confederate force that marched under his
+banner was composed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten
+thousand horse. II.  In the parliament that was held at Paris, in
+the king's presence, about two months after the council of
+Clermont, Hugh, count of Vermandois, was the most conspicuous of
+the princes who assumed the cross. But the appellation of the
+Great was applied, not so much to his merit or possessions,
+(though neither were contemptible,) as to the royal birth of the
+brother of the king of France. ^46 Robert, duke of Normandy, was
+the eldest son of William the Conqueror; but on his father's
+death he was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own
+indolence and the activity of his brother Rufus.  The worth of
+Robert was degraded by an excessive levity and easiness of
+temper: his cheerfulness seduced him to the indulgence of
+pleasure; his profuse liberality impoverished the prince and
+people; his indiscriminate clemency multiplied the number of
+offenders; and the amiable qualities of a private man became the
+essential defects of a sovereign.  For the trifling sum of ten
+thousand marks, he mortgaged Normandy during his absence to the
+English usurper; ^47 but his engagement and behavior in the holy
+war announced in Robert a reformation of manners, and restored
+him in some degree to the public esteem.  Another Robert was
+count of Flanders, a royal province, which, in this century, gave
+three queens to the thrones of France, England, and Denmark: he
+was surnamed the Sword and Lance of the Christians; but in the
+exploits of a soldier he sometimes forgot the duties of a
+general.  Stephen, count of Chartres, of Blois, and of Troyes,
+was one of the richest princes of the age; and the number of his
+castles has been compared to the three hundred and sixty-five
+days of the year.  His mind was improved by literature; and, in
+the council of the chiefs, the eloquent Stephen ^48 was chosen to
+discharge the office of their president.  These four were the
+principal leaders of the French, the Normans, and the pilgrims of
+the British isles: but the list of the barons who were possessed
+of three or four towns would exceed, says a contemporary, the
+catalogue of the Trojan war. ^49 III.  In the south of France,
+the command was assumed by Adhemar bishop of Puy, the pope egate,
+and by Raymond count of St. Giles and Thoulouse who added the
+prouder titles of duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence.  The
+former was a respectable prelate, alike qualified for this world
+and the next.  The latter was a veteran warrior, who had fought
+against the Saracens of Spain, and who consecrated his declining
+age, not only to the deliverance, but to the perpetual service,
+of the holy sepulchre.  His experience and riches gave him a
+strong ascendant in the Christian camp, whose distress he was
+often able, and sometimes willing, to relieve.  But it was easier
+for him to extort the praise of the Infidels, than to preserve
+the love of his subjects and associates.  His eminent qualities
+were clouded by a temper haughty, envious, and obstinate; and,
+though he resigned an ample patrimony for the cause of God, his
+piety, in the public opinion, was not exempt from avarice and
+ambition. ^50 A mercantile, rather than a martial, spirit
+prevailed among his provincials, ^51 a common name, which
+included the natives of Auvergne and Languedoc, ^52 the vassals
+of the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles.  From the adjacent frontier
+of Spain he drew a band of hardy adventurers; as he marched
+through Lombardy, a crowd of Italians flocked to his standard,
+and his united force consisted of one hundred thousand horse and
+foot.  If Raymond was the first to enlist and the last to depart,
+the delay may be excused by the greatness of his preparation and
+the promise of an everlasting farewell.  IV. The name of
+Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, was already famous by his
+double victory over the Greek emperor; but his father's will had
+reduced him to the principality of Tarentum, and the remembrance
+of his Eastern trophies, till he was awakened by the rumor and
+passage of the French pilgrims.  It is in the person of this
+Norman chief that we may seek for the coolest policy and
+ambition, with a small allay of religious fanaticism.  His
+conduct may justify a belief that he had secretly directed the
+design of the pope, which he affected to second with astonishment
+and zeal: at the siege of Amalphi, his example and discourse
+inflamed the passions of a confederate army; he instantly tore
+his garment to supply crosses for the numerous candidates, and
+prepared to visit Constantinople and Asia at the head of ten
+thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.  Several princes of the
+Norman race accompanied this veteran general; and his cousin
+Tancred ^53 was the partner, rather than the servant, of the war.
+
+In the accomplished character of Tancred we discover all the
+virtues of a perfect knight, ^54 the true spirit of chivalry,
+which inspired the generous sentiments and social offices of man
+far better than the base philosophy, or the baser religion, of
+the times.
+
+[Footnote 42: The author of the Esprit des Croisades has doubted,
+and might have disbelieved, the crusade and tragic death of
+Prince Sueno, with 1500 or 15,000 Danes, who was cut off by
+Sultan Soliman in Cappadocia, but who still lives in the poem of
+Tasso, (tom. iv. p. 111 - 115.)]
+
+[Footnote 43: The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or
+Lorraine, were broken into the two duchies of the Moselle and of
+the Meuse: the first has preserved its name, which in the latter
+has been changed into that of Brabant, (Vales. Notit. Gall. p.
+283 - 288.)]
+
+[Footnote 44: See, in the Description of France, by the Abbe de
+Longuerue, the articles of Boulogne, part i. p. 54; Brabant, part
+ii. p. 47, 48; Bouillon, p. 134.  On his departure, Godfrey sold
+or pawned Bouillon to the church for 1300 marks.]
+
+[Footnote 45: See the family character of Godfrey, in William of
+Tyre, l. ix. c. 5 - 8; his previous design in Guibert, (p. 485;)
+his sickness and vow in Bernard. Thesaur., (c 78.)]
+
+[Footnote 46: Anna Comnena supposes, that Hugh was proud of his
+nobility riches, and power, (l. x. p. 288: ) the two last
+articles appear more equivocal; but an item, which seven hundred
+years ago was famous in the palace of Constantinople, attests the
+ancient dignity of the Capetian family of France.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Will. Gemeticensis, l. vii. c. 7, p. 672, 673, in
+Camden. Normani cis.  He pawned the duchy for one hundredth part
+of the present yearly revenue.  Ten thousand marks may be equal
+to five hundred thousand livres, and Normandy annually yields
+fifty-seven millions to the king, (Necker, Administration des
+Finances, tom. i. p. 287.)]
+
+[Footnote 48: His original letter to his wife is inserted in the
+Spicilegium of Dom. Luc. d'Acheri, tom. iv. and quoted in the
+Esprit des Croisades tom. i. p. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Unius enim duum, trium seu quatuor oppidorum
+dominos quis numeret?  quorum tanta fuit copia, ut non vix
+totidem Trojana obsidio coegisse putetur.  (Ever the lively and
+interesting Guibert, p. 486.)]
+
+[Footnote 50: It is singular enough, that Raymond of St. Giles, a
+second character in the genuine history of the crusades, should
+shine as the first of heroes in the writings of the Greeks (Anna
+Comnen. Alexiad, l. x xi.) and the Arabians, (Longueruana, p.
+129.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: Omnes de Burgundia, et Alvernia, et Vasconia, et
+Gothi, (of Languedoc,) provinciales appellabantur, caeteri vero
+Francigenae et hoc in exercitu; inter hostes autem Franci
+dicebantur.  Raymond des Agiles, p. 144.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The town of his birth, or first appanage, was
+consecrated to St Aegidius, whose name, as early as the first
+crusade, was corrupted by the French into St. Gilles, or St.
+Giles.  It is situate in the Iowen Languedoc, between Nismes and
+the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate church of the foundation
+of Raymond, (Melanges tires d'une Grande Bibliotheque, tom.
+xxxvii. p 51.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great
+Robert Guiscard; his father, the Marquis Odo the Good.  It is
+singular enough, that the family and country of so illustrious a
+person should be unknown; but Muratori reasonably conjectures
+that he was an Italian, and perhaps of the race of the marquises
+of Montferrat in Piedmont, (Script. tom. v. p. 281, 282.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: To gratify the childish vanity of the house of
+Este. Tasso has inserted in his poem, and in the first crusade, a
+fabulous hero, the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x. 75, xvii. 66 -
+94.) He might borrow his name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila
+bianca Estense, who vanquished, as the standard-bearer of the
+Roman church, the emperor Frederic I., (Storia Imperiale di
+Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script. Ital. tom. ix. p. 360. Ariosto,
+Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.) But, 1. The distance of sixty years
+between the youth of the two Rinaldos destroys their identity.
+2. The Storia Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the
+end of the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281 - 289.) 3. This
+Rinaldo, and his exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero
+of Tasso, (Muratori, Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.
+
+Part III.
+
+Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the crusades, a
+revolution had taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and
+the French, which was gradually extended to the rest of Europe.
+The service of the infantry was degraded to the plebeians; the
+cavalry formed the strength of the armies, and the honorable name
+of miles, or soldier, was confined to the gentlemen ^55 who
+served on horseback, and were invested with the character of
+knighthood.  The dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of
+sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful barons:
+the barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices
+of their jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of
+each other and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian
+order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of
+the same species with themselves. The dignity of their birth was
+preserved by pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who
+could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry without spot or
+reproach, might legally pretend to the honor of knighthood; but a
+valiant plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the
+sword, and became the father of a new race.  A single knight
+could impart, according to his judgment, the character which he
+received; and the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more glory
+from this personal distinction than from the lustre of their
+diadem.  This ceremony, of which some traces may be found in
+Tacitus and the woods of Germany, ^56 was in its origin simple
+and profane; the candidate, after some previous trial, was
+invested with the sword and spurs; and his cheek or shoulder was
+touched with a slight blow, as an emblem of the last affront
+which it was lawful for him to endure.  But superstition mingled
+in every public and private action of life: in the holy wars, it
+sanctified the profession of arms; and the order of chivalry was
+assimilated in its rights and privileges to the sacred orders of
+priesthood. The bath and white garment of the novice were an
+indecent copy of the regeneration of baptism: his sword, which he
+offered on the altar, was blessed by the ministers of religion:
+his solemn reception was preceded by fasts and vigils; and he was
+created a knight in the name of God, of St. George, and of St.
+Michael the archangel.  He swore to accomplish the duties of his
+profession; and education, example, and the public opinion, were
+the inviolable guardians of his oath.  As the champion of God and
+the ladies, (I blush to unite such discordant names,) he devoted
+himself to speak the truth; to maintain the right; to protect the
+distressed; to practise courtesy, a virtue less familiar to the
+ancients; to pursue the infidels; to despise the allurements of
+ease and safety; and to vindicate in every perilous adventure the
+honor of his character.  The abuse of the same spirit provoked
+the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace;
+to esteem himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries;
+and proudly to neglect the laws of civil society and military
+discipline.  Yet the benefits of this institution, to refine the
+temper of Barbarians, and to infuse some principles of faith,
+justice, and humanity, were strongly felt, and have been often
+observed.  The asperity of national prejudice was softened; and
+the community of religion and arms spread a similar color and
+generous emulation over the face of Christendom.  Abroad in
+enterprise and pilgrimage, at home in martial exercise, the
+warriors of every country were perpetually associated; and
+impartial taste must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic
+games of classic antiquity. ^57 Instead of the naked spectacles
+which corrupted the manners of the Greeks, and banished from the
+stadium the virgins and matrons, the pompous decoration of the
+lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and high-born
+beauty, from whose hands the conqueror received the prize of his
+dexterity and courage.  The skill and strength that were exerted
+in wrestling and boxing bear a distant and doubtful relation to
+the merit of a soldier; but the tournaments, as they were
+invented in France, and eagerly adopted both in the East and
+West, presented a lively image of the business of the field. The
+single combats, the general skirmish, the defence of a pass, or
+castle, were rehearsed as in actual service; and the contest,
+both in real and mimic war, was decided by the superior
+management of the horse and lance. The lance was the proper and
+peculiar weapon of the knight: his horse was of a large and heavy
+breed; but this charger, till he was roused by the approaching
+danger, was usually led by an attendant, and he quietly rode a
+pad or palfrey of a more easy pace.  His helmet and sword, his
+greaves and buckler, it would be superfluous to describe; but I
+may remark, that, at the period of the crusades, the armor was
+less ponderous than in later times; and that, instead of a massy
+cuirass, his breast was defended by a hauberk or coat of mail.
+When their long lances were fixed in the rest, the warriors
+furiously spurred their horses against the foe; and the light
+cavalry of the Turks and Arabs could seldom stand against the
+direct and impetuous weight of their charge. Each knight was
+attended to the field by his faithful squire, a youth of equal
+birth and similar hopes; he was followed by his archers and men
+at arms, and four, or five, or six soldiers were computed as the
+furniture of a complete lance.  In the expeditions to the
+neighboring kingdoms or the Holy Land, the duties of the feudal
+tenure no longer subsisted; the voluntary service of the knights
+and their followers were either prompted by zeal or attachment,
+or purchased with rewards and promises; and the numbers of each
+squadron were measured by the power, the wealth, and the fame, of
+each independent chieftain.  They were distinguished by his
+banner, his armorial coat, and his cry of war; and the most
+ancient families of Europe must seek in these achievements the
+origin and proof of their nobility.  In this rapid portrait of
+chivalry I have been urged to anticipate on the story of the
+crusades, at once an effect and a cause, of this memorable
+institution. ^58
+
+[Footnote 55: Of the words gentilis, gentilhomme, gentleman, two
+etymologies are produced: 1. From the Barbarians of the fifth
+century, the soldiers, and at length the conquerors of the Roman
+empire, who were vain of their foreign nobility; and 2. From the
+sense of the civilians, who consider gentilis as synonymous with
+ingenuus.  Selden inclines to the first but the latter is more
+pure, as well as probable.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Framea scutoque juvenem ornant.  Tacitus, Germania.
+c. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 57: The athletic exercises, particularly the caestus
+and pancratium, were condemned by Lycurgus, Philopoemen, and
+Galen, a lawgiver, a general, and a physician.  Against their
+authority and reasons, the reader may weigh the apology of
+Lucian, in the character of Solon.  See West on the Olympic
+Games, in his Pindar, vol. ii. p. 86 - 96 243 - 248]
+
+[Footnote 58: On the curious subjects of knighthood,
+knights-service, nobility, arms, cry of war, banners, and
+tournaments, an ample fund of information may be sought in
+Selden, (Opera, tom. iii. part i.  Titles of Honor, part ii. c.
+1, 3, 5, 8,) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p. 398 - 412, &c.,)
+Dissertations sur Joinville, (i. vi. - xii. p. 127 - 142, p. 161
+- 222,) and M. de St. Palaye, (Memoires sur la Chevalerie.)]
+
+Such were the troops, and such the leaders, who assumed the
+cross for the deliverance of the holy sepulchre.  As soon as they
+were relieved by the absence of the plebeian multitude, they
+encouraged each other, by interviews and messages, to accomplish
+their vow, and hasten their departure.  Their wives and sisters
+were desirous of partaking the danger and merit of the
+pilgrimage: their portable treasures were conveyed in bars of
+silver and gold; and the princes and barons were attended by
+their equipage of hounds and hawks to amuse their leisure and to
+supply their table.  The difficulty of procuring subsistence for
+so many myriads of men and horses engaged them to separate their
+forces: their choice or situation determined the road; and it was
+agreed to meet in the neighborhood of Constantinople, and from
+thence to begin their operations against the Turks.  From the
+banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, Godfrey of Bouillon followed
+the direct way of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria; and, as long as
+he exercised the sole command every step afforded some proof of
+his prudence and virtue.  On the confines of Hungary he was
+stopped three weeks by a Christian people, to whom the name, or
+at least the abuse, of the cross was justly odious.  The
+Hungarians still smarted with the wounds which they had received
+from the first pilgrims: in their turn they had abused the right
+of defence and retaliation; and they had reason to apprehend a
+severe revenge from a hero of the same nation, and who was
+engaged in the same cause. But, after weighing the motives and
+the events, the virtuous duke was content to pity the crimes and
+misfortunes of his worthless brethren; and his twelve deputies,
+the messengers of peace, requested in his name a free passage and
+an equal market.  To remove their suspicions, Godfrey trusted
+himself, and afterwards his brother, to the faith of Carloman, ^*
+king of Hungary, who treated them with a simple but hospitable
+entertainment: the treaty was sanctified by their common gospel;
+and a proclamation, under pain of death, restrained the animosity
+and license of the Latin soldiers.  From Austria to Belgrade,
+they traversed the plains of Hungary, without enduring or
+offering an injury; and the proximity of Carloman, who hovered on
+their flanks with his numerous cavalry, was a precaution not less
+useful for their safety than for his own.  They reached the banks
+of the Save; and no sooner had they passed the river, than the
+king of Hungary restored the hostages, and saluted their
+departure with the fairest wishes for the success of their
+enterprise. With the same conduct and discipline, Godfrey
+pervaded the woods of Bulgaria and the frontiers of Thrace; and
+might congratulate himself that he had almost reached the first
+term of his pilgrimage, without drawing his sword against a
+Christian adversary.  After an easy and pleasant journey through
+Lombardy, from Turin to Aquileia, Raymond and his provincials
+marched forty days through the savage country of Dalmatia ^59 and
+Sclavonia.  The weather was a perpetual fog; the land was
+mountainous and desolate; the natives were either fugitive or
+hostile: loose in their religion and government, they refused to
+furnish provisions or guides; murdered the stragglers; and
+exercised by night and day the vigilance of the count, who
+derived more security from the punishment of some captive robbers
+than from his interview and treaty with the prince of Scodra. ^60
+His march between Durazzo and Constantinople was harassed,
+without being stopped, by the peasants and soldiers of the Greek
+emperor; and the same faint and ambiguous hostility was prepared
+for the remaining chiefs, who passed the Adriatic from the coast
+of Italy.  Bohemond had arms and vessels, and foresight and
+discipline; and his name was not forgotten in the provinces of
+Epirus and Thessaly.  Whatever obstacles he encountered were
+surmounted by his military conduct and the valor of Tancred; and
+if the Norman prince affected to spare the Greeks, he gorged his
+soldiers with the full plunder of an heretical castle. ^61 The
+nobles of France pressed forwards with the vain and thoughtless
+ardor of which their nation has been sometimes accused.  From the
+Alps to Apulia the march of Hugh the Great, of the two Roberts,
+and of Stephen of Chartres, through a wealthy country, and amidst
+the applauding Catholics, was a devout or triumphant progress:
+they kissed the feet of the Roman pontiff; and the golden
+standard of St. Peter was delivered to the brother of the French
+monarch. ^62 But in this visit of piety and pleasure, they
+neglected to secure the season, and the means of their
+embarkation: the winter was insensibly lost: their troops were
+scattered and corrupted in the towns of Italy.  They separately
+accomplished their passage, regardless of safety or dignity; and
+within nine months from the feast of the Assumption, the day
+appointed by Urban, all the Latin princes had reached
+Constantinople. But the count of Vermandois was produced as a
+captive; his foremost vessels were scattered by a tempest; and
+his person, against the law of nations, was detained by the
+lieutenants of Alexius.  Yet the arrival of Hugh had been
+announced by four-and-twenty knights in golden armor, who
+commanded the emperor to revere the general of the Latin
+Christians, the brother of the king of kings. ^63 ^*
+
+[Footnote *: Carloman (or Calmany) demanded the brother of
+Godfrey as hostage but Count Baldwin refused the humiliating
+submission.  Godfrey shamed him into this sacrifice for the
+common good by offering to surrender himself Wilken, vol. i. p.
+104. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The Familiae Dalmaticae of Ducange are meagre and
+imperfect; the national historians are recent and fabulous, the
+Greeks remote and careless. In the year 1104 Coloman reduced the
+maritine country as far as Trau and Saloma, (Katona, Hist. Crit.
+tom. iii. p. 195 - 207.)]
+
+[Footnote 60: Scodras appears in Livy as the capital and fortress
+of Gentius, king of the Illyrians, arx munitissima, afterwards a
+Roman colony, (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 393, 394.) It is now called
+Iscodar, or Scutari, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p.
+164.) The sanjiak (now a pacha) of Scutari, or Schendeire, was
+the viiith under the Beglerbeg of Romania, and furnished 600
+soldiers on a revenue of 78,787 rix dollars, (Marsigli, Stato
+Militare del Imperio Ottomano, p. 128.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: In Pelagonia castrum haereticum ..... spoliatum cum
+suis habi tatoribus igne combussere.  Nec id eis injuria
+contigit: quia illorum detestabilis sermo et cancer serpebat,
+jamque circumjacentes regiones suo pravo dogmate foedaverat,
+(Robert. Mon. p. 36, 37.) After cooly relating the fact, the
+Archbishop Baldric adds, as a praise, Omnes siquidem illi
+viatores, Judeos, haereticos, Saracenos aequaliter habent exosos;
+quos omnes appellant inimicos Dei, (p. 92.)]
+
+[Footnote 62: (Alexiad. l. x. p. 288.)]
+
+[Footnote 63: This Oriental pomp is extravagant in a count of
+Vermandois; but the patriot Ducange repeats with much complacency
+(Not. ad Alexiad. p. 352, 353.  Dissert. xxvii. sur Joinville, p.
+315) the passages of Matthew Paris (A.D. 1254) and Froissard,
+(vol. iv. p. 201,) which style the king of France rex regum, and
+chef de tous les rois Chretiens.]
+
+[Footnote *: Hugh was taken at Durazzo, and sent by land to
+Constantinople Wilken - M.]
+
+In some oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd,
+who was ruined by the accomplishment of his own wishes: he had
+prayed for water; the Ganges was turned into his grounds, and his
+flock and cottage were swept away by the inundation.  Such was
+the fortune, or at least the apprehension of the Greek emperor
+Alexius Comnenus, whose name has already appeared in this
+history, and whose conduct is so differently represented by his
+daughter Anne, ^64 and by the Latin writers. ^65 In the council
+of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succor,
+perhaps of ten thousand soldiers, but he was astonished by the
+approach of so many potent chiefs and fanatic nations.  The
+emperor fluctuated between hope and fear, between timidity and
+courage; but in the crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom, I
+cannot believe, I cannot discern, that he maliciously conspired
+against the life or honor of the French heroes.  The promiscuous
+multitudes of Peter the Hermit were savage beasts, alike
+destitute of humanity and reason: nor was it possible for Alexius
+to prevent or deplore their destruction.  The troops of Godfrey
+and his peers were less contemptible, but not less suspicious, to
+the Greek emperor.  Their motives might be pure and pious: but he
+was equally alarmed by his knowledge of the ambitious Bohemond,
+^* and his ignorance of the Transalpine chiefs: the courage of
+the French was blind and headstrong; they might be tempted by the
+luxury and wealth of Greece, and elated by the view and opinion
+of their invincible strength: and Jerusalem might be forgotten in
+the prospect of Constantinople.  After a long march and painful
+abstinence, the troops of Godfrey encamped in the plains of
+Thrace; they heard with indignation, that their brother, the
+count of Vermandois, was imprisoned by the Greeks; and their
+reluctant duke was compelled to indulge them in some freedom of
+retaliation and rapine.  They were appeased by the submission of
+Alexius: he promised to supply their camp; and as they refused,
+in the midst of winter, to pass the Bosphorus, their quarters
+were assigned among the gardens and palaces on the shores of that
+narrow sea.  But an incurable jealousy still rankled in the minds
+of the two nations, who despised each other as slaves and
+Barbarians.  Ignorance is the ground of suspicion, and suspicion
+was inflamed into daily provocations: prejudice is blind, hunger
+is deaf; and Alexius is accused of a design to starve or assault
+the Latins in a dangerous post, on all sides encompassed with the
+waters. ^66 Godfrey sounded his trumpets, burst the net,
+overspread the plain, and insulted the suburbs; but the gates of
+Constantinople were strongly fortified; the ramparts were lined
+with archers; and, after a doubtful conflict, both parties
+listened to the voice of peace and religion.  The gifts and
+promises of the emperor insensibly soothed the fierce spirit of
+the western strangers; as a Christian warrior, he rekindled their
+zeal for the prosecution of their holy enterprise, which he
+engaged to second with his troops and treasures.  On the return
+of spring, Godfrey was persuaded to occupy a pleasant and
+plentiful camp in Asia; and no sooner had he passed the
+Bosphorus, than the Greek vessels were suddenly recalled to the
+opposite shore.  The same policy was repeated with the succeeding
+chiefs, who were swayed by the example, and weakened by the
+departure, of their foremost companions.  By his skill and
+diligence, Alexius prevented the union of any two of the
+confederate armies at the same moment under the walls of
+Constantinople; and before the feast of the Pentecost not a Latin
+pilgrim was left on the coast of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 64: Anna Comnena was born the 1st of December, A.D.
+1083, indiction vii., (Alexiad. l. vi. p. 166, 167.) At thirteen,
+the time of the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps
+married to the younger Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly
+styles, (l. x. p. 295, 296.) Some moderns have imagined, that her
+enmity to Bohemond was the fruit of disappointed love. In the
+transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her partial accounts
+(Alex. l. x. xi. p. 283 - 317) may be opposed to the partiality
+of the Latins, but in their subsequent exploits she is brief and
+ignorant.]
+
+[Footnote 65: In their views of the character and conduct of
+Alexius, Maimbourg has favored the Catholic Franks, and Voltaire
+has been partial to the schismatic Greeks.  The prejudice of a
+philosopher is less excusable than that of a Jesuit.]
+
+[Footnote *: Wilken quotes a remarkable passage of William of
+Malmsbury as to the secret motives of Urban and of Bohemond in
+urging the crusade. Illud repositius propositum non ita
+vulgabatur, quod Boemundi consilio, pene totam Europam in
+Asiaticam expeditionem moveret, ut in tanto tumultu omnium
+provinciarum facile obaeratis auxiliaribus, et Urbanus Romam et
+Boemundus Illyricum et Macedoniam pervaderent.  Nam eas terras et
+quidquid praeterea a Dyrrachio usque ad Thessalonicam
+protenditur, Guiscardus pater, super Alexium acquisierat; ideirco
+illas Boemundus suo juri competere clamitabat: inops haereditatis
+Apuliae, quam genitor Rogerio, minori filio delegaverat.  Wilken,
+vol. ii. p. 313. - M]
+
+[Footnote 66: Between the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the River
+Barbyses, which is deep in summer, and runs fifteen miles through
+a flat meadow.  Its communication with Europe and Constantinople
+is by the stone bridge of the Blachernoe, which in successive
+ages was restored by Justinian and Basil, (Gyllius de Bosphoro
+Thracio, l. ii. c. 3.  Ducange O. P. Christiana, l. v. c. 2, p,
+179.)]
+
+The same arms which threatened Europe might deliver Asia,
+and repel the Turks from the neighboring shores of the Bosphorus
+and Hellespont.  The fair provinces from Nice to Antioch were the
+recent patrimony of the Roman emperor; and his ancient and
+perpetual claim still embraced the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt.
+In his enthusiasm, Alexius indulged, or affected, the ambitious
+hope of leading his new allies to subvert the thrones of the
+East; but the calmer dictates of reason and temper dissuaded him
+from exposing his royal person to the faith of unknown and
+lawless Barbarians. His prudence, or his pride, was content with
+extorting from the French princes an oath of homage and fidelity,
+and a solemn promise, that they
+
+would either restore, or hold, their Asiatic conquests as the
+humble and loyal vassals of the Roman empire.  Their independent
+spirit was fired at the mention of this foreign and voluntary
+servitude: they successively yielded to the dexterous application
+of gifts and flattery; and the first proselytes became the most
+eloquent and effectual missionaries to multiply the companions of
+their shame.  The pride of Hugh of Vermandois was soothed by the
+honors of his captivity; and in the brother of the French king,
+the example of submission was prevalent and weighty.  In the mind
+of Godfrey of Bouillon every human consideration was subordinate
+to the glory of God and the success of the crusade.  He had
+firmly resisted the temptations of Bohemond and Raymond, who
+urged the attack and conquest of Constantinople. Alexius esteemed
+his virtues, deservedly named him the champion of the empire, and
+dignified his homage with the filial name and the rights of
+adoption. ^67 The hateful Bohemond was received as a true and
+ancient ally; and if the emperor reminded him of former
+hostilities, it was only to praise the valor that he had
+displayed, and the glory that he had acquired, in the fields of
+Durazzo and Larissa.  The son of Guiscard was lodged and
+entertained, and served with Imperial pomp: one day, as he passed
+through the gallery of the palace, a door was carelessly left
+open to expose a pile of gold and silver, of silk and gems, of
+curious and costly furniture, that was heaped, in seeming
+disorder, from the floor to the roof of the chamber. "What
+conquests," exclaimed the ambitious miser, "might not be achieved
+by the possession of such a treasure!" - "It is your own,"
+replied a Greek attendant, who watched the motions of his soul;
+and Bohemond, after some hesitation, condescended to accept this
+magnificent present.  The Norman was flattered by the assurance
+of an independent principality; and Alexius eluded, rather than
+denied, his daring demand of the office of great domestic, or
+general of the East.  The two Roberts, the son of the conqueror
+of England, and the kinsmen of three queens, ^68 bowed in their
+turn before the Byzantine throne.  A private letter of Stephen of
+Chartres attests his admiration of the emperor, the most
+excellent and liberal of men, who taught him to believe that he
+was a favorite, and promised to educate and establish his
+youngest son.  In his southern province, the count of St. Giles
+and Thoulouse faintly recognized the supremacy of the king of
+France, a prince of a foreign nation and language.  At the head
+of a hundred thousand men, he declared that he was the soldier
+and servant of Christ alone, and that the Greek might be
+satisfied with an equal treaty of alliance and friendship.  His
+obstinate resistance enhanced the value and the price of his
+submission; and he shone, says the princess Anne, among the
+Barbarians, as the sun amidst the stars of heaven.  His disgust
+of the noise and insolence of the French, his suspicions of the
+designs of Bohemond, the emperor imparted to his faithful
+Raymond; and that aged statesman might clearly discern, that
+however false in friendship, he was sincere in his enmity. ^69
+The spirit of chivalry was last subdued in the person of Tancred;
+and none could deem themselves dishonored by the imitation of
+that gallant knight.  He disdained the gold and flattery of the
+Greek monarch; assaulted in his presence an insolent patrician;
+escaped to Asia in the habit of a private soldier; and yielded
+with a sigh to the authority of Bohemond, and the interest of the
+Christian cause.  The best and most ostensible reason was the
+impossibility of passing the sea and accomplishing their vow,
+without the license and the vessels of Alexius; but they
+cherished a secret hope, that as soon as they trod the continent
+of Asia, their swords would obliterate their shame, and dissolve
+the engagement, which on his side might not be very faithfully
+performed.  The ceremony of their homage was grateful to a people
+who had long since considered pride as the substitute of power.
+High on his throne, the emperor sat mute and immovable: his
+majesty was adored by the Latin princes; and they submitted to
+kiss either his feet or his knees, an indignity which their own
+writers are ashamed to confess and unable to deny. ^70
+
+[Footnote 67: There are two sorts of adoption, the one by arms,
+the other by introducing the son between the shirt and skin of
+his father.  Ducange isur Joinville, Diss. xxii. p. 270) supposes
+Godfrey's adoption to have been of the latter sort.]
+
+[Footnote 68: After his return, Robert of Flanders became the man
+of the king of England, for a pension of four hundred marks.  See
+the first act in Rymer's Foedera.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Sensit vetus regnandi, falsos in amore, odia non
+fingere. Tacit. vi. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The proud historians of the crusades slide and
+stumble over this humiliating step.  Yet, since the heroes knelt
+to salute the emperor, as he sat motionless on his throne, it is
+clear that they must have kissed either his feet or knees.  It is
+only singular, that Anna should not have amply supplied the
+silence or ambiguity of the Latins.  The abasement of their
+princes would have added a fine chapter to the Ceremoniale Aulae
+Byzantinae.]
+
+Private or public interest suppressed the murmurs of the
+dukes and counts; but a French baron (he is supposed to be Robert
+of Paris ^71) presumed to ascend the throne, and to place himself
+by the side of Alexius. The sage reproof of Baldwin provoked him
+to exclaim, in his barbarous idiom, "Who is this rustic, that
+keeps his seat, while so many valiant captains are standing round
+him?" The emperor maintained his silence, dissembled his
+indignation, and questioned his interpreter concerning the
+meaning of the words, which he partly suspected from the
+universal language of gesture and countenance. Before the
+departure of the pilgrims, he endeavored to learn the name and
+condition of the audacious baron.  "I am a Frenchman," replied
+Robert, "of the purest and most ancient nobility of my country.
+All that I know is, that there is a church in my neighborhood,
+^72 the resort of those who are desirous of approving their valor
+in single combat.  Till an enemy appears, they address their
+prayers to God and his saints.  That church I have frequently
+visited.  But never have I found an antagonist who dared to
+accept my defiance." Alexius dismissed the challenger with some
+prudent advice for his conduct in the Turkish warfare; and
+history repeats with pleasure this lively example of the manners
+of his age and country.
+
+[Footnote 71: He called himself (see Alexias, l. x. p. 301.) What
+a title of noblesse of the eleventh century, if any one could now
+prove his inheritance! Anna relates, with visible pleasure, that
+the swelling Barbarian, was killed, or wounded, after fighting in
+the front in the battle of Dorylaeum, (l. xi. p. 317.) This
+circumstance may justify the suspicion of Ducange, (Not. p. 362,)
+that he was no other than Robert of Paris, of the district most
+peculiarly styled the Duchy or Island of France, (L'Isle de
+France.)]
+
+[Footnote 72: With the same penetration, Ducange discovers his
+church to be that of St. Drausus, or Drosin, of Soissons, quem
+duello dimicaturi solent invocare: pugiles qui ad memoriam ejus
+(his tomb) pernoctant invictos reddit, ut et de Burgundia et
+Italia tali necessitate confugiatur ad eum. Joan. Sariberiensis,
+epist. 139.]
+
+The conquest of Asia was undertaken and achieved by
+Alexander, with thirty-five thousand Macedonians and Greeks; ^73
+and his best hope was in the strength and discipline of his
+phalanx of infantry.  The principal force of the crusaders
+consisted in their cavalry; and when that force was mustered in
+the plains of Bithynia, the knights and their martial attendants
+on horseback amounted to one hundred thousand fighting men,
+completely armed with the helmet and coat of mail.  The value of
+these soldiers deserved a strict and authentic account; and the
+flower of European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort,
+this formidable body of heavy horse.  A part of the infantry
+might be enrolled for the service of scouts, pioneers, and
+archers; but the promiscuous crowd were lost in their own
+disorder; and we depend not on the eyes and knowledge, but on the
+belief and fancy, of a chaplain of Count Baldwin, ^74 in the
+estimate of six hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms,
+besides the priests and monks, the women and children of the
+Latin camp. The reader starts; and before he is recovered from
+his surprise, I shall add, on the same testimony, that if all who
+took the cross had accomplished their vow, above six millions
+would have migrated from Europe to Asia.  Under this oppression
+of faith, I derive some relief from a more sagacious and thinking
+writer, ^75 who, after the same review of the cavalry, accuses
+the credulity of the priest of Chartres, and even doubts whether
+the Cisalpine regions (in the geography of a Frenchman) were
+sufficient to produce and pour forth such incredible multitudes.
+The coolest scepticism will remember, that of these religious
+volunteers great numbers never beheld Constantinople and Nice.
+Of enthusiasm the influence is irregular and transient: many were
+detained at home by reason or cowardice, by poverty or weakness;
+and many were repulsed by the obstacles of the way, the more
+insuperable as they were unforeseen, to these ignorant fanatics.
+The savage countries of Hungary and Bulgaria were whitened with
+their bones: their vanguard was cut in pieces by the Turkish
+sultan; and the loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or
+climate, or fatigue, has already been stated at three hundred
+thousand men.  Yet the myriads that survived, that marched, that
+pressed forwards on the holy pilgrimage, were a subject of
+astonishment to themselves and to the Greeks. The copious energy
+of her language sinks under the efforts of the princess Anne: ^76
+the images of locusts, of leaves and flowers, of the sands of the
+sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly represent what she had
+seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius exclaims, that Europe
+was loosened from its foundations, and hurled against Asia.  The
+ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labor under the same doubt of
+a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to believe,
+that a larger number has never been contained within the lines of
+a single camp, than at the siege of Nice, the first operation of
+the Latin princes.  Their motives, their characters, and their
+arms, have been already displayed.  Of their troops the most
+numerous portion were natives of France: the Low Countries, the
+banks of the Rhine, and Apulia, sent a powerful reenforcement:
+some bands of adventurers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and
+England; ^77 and from the distant bogs and mountains of Ireland
+or Scotland ^78 issued some naked and savage fanatics, ferocious
+at home but unwarlike abroad.  Had not superstition condemned the
+sacrilegious prudence of depriving the poorest or weakest
+Christian of the merit of the pilgrimage, the useless crowd, with
+mouths but without hands, might have been stationed in the Greek
+empire, till their companions had opened and secured the way of
+the Lord.  A small remnant of the pilgrims, who passed the
+Bosphorus, was permitted to visit the holy sepulchre.  Their
+northern constitution was scorched by the rays, and infected by
+the vapors, of a Syrian sun.  They consumed, with heedless
+prodigality, their stores of water and provision: their numbers
+exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks were
+unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the
+voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren.  In the dire
+necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the
+flesh of their infant or adult captives.  Among the Turks and
+Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were rendered more odious by
+the name and reputation of Cannibals; the spies, who introduced
+themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were shown several human
+bodies turning on the spit: and the artful Norman encouraged a
+report, which increased at the same time the abhorrence and the
+terror of the infidels. ^79
+
+[Footnote 73: There is some diversity on the numbers of his army;
+but no authority can be compared with that of Ptolemy, who states
+it at five thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, (see Usher's
+Annales, p 152.)]
+
+[Footnote 74: Fulcher. Carnotensis, p. 387.  He enumerates
+nineteen nations of different names and languages, (p. 389;) but
+I do not clearly apprehend his difference between the Franci and
+Galli, Itali and Apuli.  Elsewhere (p. 385) he contemptuously
+brands the deserters.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Guibert, p. 556.  Yet even his gentle opposition
+implies an
+immense multitude.  By Urban II., in the fervor of his zeal, it
+is only rated at 300,000 pilgrims, (epist. xvi. Concil. tom. xii.
+p. 731.)]
+
+[Footnote 76: Alexias, l. x. p. 283, 305.  Her fastidious
+delicacy complains of their strange and inarticulate names; and
+indeed there is scarcely one that she has not contrived to
+disfigure with the proud ignorance so dear and familiar to a
+polished people.  I shall select only one example, Sangeles, for
+the count of St. Giles.]
+
+[Footnote 77: William of Malmsbury (who wrote about the year
+1130) has inserted in his history (l. iv. p. 130-154) a narrative
+of the first crusade: but I wish that, instead of listening to
+the tenue murmur which had passed the British ocean, (p. 143,) he
+had confined himself to the numbers, families, and adventures of
+his countrymen.  I find in Dugdale, that an English Norman,
+Stephen earl of Albemarle and Holdernesse, led the rear-guard
+with Duke Robert, at the battle of Antioch, (Baronage, part i. p.
+61.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: Videres Scotorum apud se ferocium alias imbellium
+cuneos, (Guibert, p. 471;) the crus intectum and hispida chlamys,
+may suit the Highlanders; but the finibus uliginosis may rather
+apply to the Irish bogs. William of Malmsbury expressly mentions
+the Welsh and Scots, &c., (l. iv. p. 133,) who quitted, the
+former venatiorem, the latter familiaritatem pulicum.]
+
+[Footnote 79: This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more
+frequently an artifice or a lie, may be found in Anna Comnena,
+(Alexias, l. x. p. 288,) Guibert, (p. 546,) Radulph. Cadom., (c.
+97.) The stratagem is related by the author of the Gesta
+Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric, and Raymond des Agiles, in
+the siege and famine of Antioch.]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.
+
+Part IV.
+
+I have expiated with pleasure on the first steps of the
+crusaders, as they paint the manners and character of Europe: but
+I shall abridge the tedious and uniform narrative of their blind
+achievements, which were performed by strength and are described
+by ignorance.  From their first station in the neighborhood of
+Nicomedia, they advanced in successive divisions; passed the
+contracted limit of the Greek empire; opened a road through the
+hills, and commenced, by the siege of his capital, their pious
+warfare against the Turkish sultan.  His kingdom of Roum extended
+from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria, and barred the
+pilgrimage of Jerusalem, his name was Kilidge-Arslan, or Soliman,
+^80 of the race of Seljuk, and son of the first conqueror; and in
+the defence of a land which the Turks considered as their own, he
+deserved the praise of his enemies, by whom alone he is known to
+posterity.  Yielding to the first impulse of the torrent, he
+deposited his family and treasure in Nice; retired to the
+mountains with fifty thousand horse; and twice descended to
+assault the camps or quarters of the Christian besiegers, which
+formed an imperfect circle of above six miles.  The lofty and
+solid walls of Nice were covered by a deep ditch, and flanked by
+three hundred and seventy towers; and on the verge of
+Christendom, the Moslems were trained in arms, and inflamed by
+religion.  Before this city, the French princes occupied their
+stations, and prosecuted their attacks without correspondence or
+subordination: emulation prompted their valor; but their valor
+was sullied by cruelty, and their emulation degenerated into envy
+and civil discord.  In the siege of Nice, the arts and engines of
+antiquity were employed by the Latins; the mine and the
+battering-ram, the tortoise, and the belfrey or movable turret,
+artificial fire, and the catapult and balist, the sling, and the
+crossbow for the casting of stones and darts. ^81 In the space of
+seven weeks much labor and blood were expended, and some
+progress, especially by Count Raymond, was made on the side of
+the besiegers.  But the Turks could protract their resistance and
+secure their escape, as long as they were masters of the Lake ^82
+Ascanius, which stretches several miles to the westward of the
+city.  The means of conquest were supplied by the prudence and
+industry of Alexius; a great number of boats was transported on
+sledges from the sea to the lake; they were filled with the most
+dexterous of his archers; the flight of the sultana was
+intercepted; Nice was invested by land and water; and a Greek
+emissary persuaded the inhabitants to accept his master's
+protection, and to save themselves, by a timely surrender, from
+the rage of the savages of Europe.  In the moment of victory, or
+at least of hope, the crusaders, thirsting for blood and plunder,
+were awed by the Imperial banner that streamed from the citadel;
+^* and Alexius guarded with jealous vigilance this important
+conquest.  The murmurs of the chiefs were stifled by honor or
+interest; and after a halt of nine days, they directed their
+march towards Phrygia under the guidance of a Greek general, whom
+they suspected of a secret connivance with the sultan.  The
+consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honorably
+restored without ransom; and the emperor's generosity to the
+miscreants ^83 was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.
+
+[Footnote 80: His Mussulman appellation of Soliman is used by the
+Latins, and his character is highly embellished by Tasso.  His
+Turkish name of Kilidge-Arslan (A. H. 485 - 500, A.D. 1192 -
+1206.  See De Guignes's Tables, tom. i. p. 245) is employed by
+the Orientals, and with some corruption by the Greeks; but little
+more than his name can be found in the Mahometan writers, who are
+dry and sulky on the subject of the first crusade, (De Guignes,
+tom. iii. p. ii. p. 10 - 30.)
+
+Note: See note, page 556.  Soliman and Kilidge-Arslan were
+father and son - M.]
+
+[Footnote 81: On the fortifications, engines, and sieges of the
+middle ages, see Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae, tom. ii.
+dissert. xxvi. p. 452 - 524.) The belfredus, from whence our
+belfrey, was the movable tower of the ancients, (Ducange, tom. i.
+p. 608.)]
+
+[Footnote 82: I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between
+the siege and lake of Nice, with the operations of Hernan Cortez
+before Mexico.  See Dr. Robertson, History of America, l. v.]
+
+[Footnote *: See Anna Comnena. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Mecreant, a word invented by the French crusaders,
+and confined in that language to its primitive sense.  It should
+seem, that the zeal of our ancestors boiled higher, and that they
+branded every unbeliever as a rascal. A similar prejudice still
+lurks in the minds of many who think themselves Christians.]
+
+Soliman was rather provoked than dismayed by the loss of his
+capital: he admonished his subjects and allies of this strange
+invasion of the Western Barbarians; the Turkish emirs obeyed the
+call of loyalty or religion; the Turkman hordes encamped round
+his standard; and his whole force is loosely stated by the
+Christians at two hundred, or even three hundred and sixty
+thousand horse.  Yet he patiently waited till they had left
+behind them the sea and the Greek frontier; and hovering on the
+flanks, observed their careless and confident progress in two
+columns beyond the view of each other. Some miles before they
+could reach Dorylaeum in Phrygia, the left, and least numerous,
+division was surprised, and attacked, and almost oppressed, by
+the Turkish cavalry. ^84 The heat of the weather, the clouds of
+arrows, and the barbarous onset, overwhelmed the crusaders; they
+lost their order and confidence, and the fainting fight was
+sustained by the personal valor, rather than by the military
+conduct, of Bohemond, Tancred, and Robert of Normandy. They were
+revived by the welcome banners of Duke Godfrey, who flew to their
+succor, with the count of Vermandois, and sixty thousand horse;
+and was followed by Raymond of Tholouse, the bishop of Puy, and
+the remainder of the sacred army.  Without a moment's pause, they
+formed in new order, and advanced to a second battle.  They were
+received with equal resolution; and, in their common disdain for
+the unwarlike people of Greece and Asia, it was confessed on both
+sides, that the Turks and the Franks were the only nations
+entitled to the appellation of soldiers. ^85 Their encounter was
+varied, and balanced by the contrast of arms and discipline; of
+the direct charge, and wheeling evolutions; of the couched lance,
+and the brandished javelin; of a weighty broadsword, and a
+crooked sabre; of cumbrous armor, and thin flowing robes; and of
+the long Tartar bow, and the arbalist or crossbow, a deadly
+weapon, yet unknown to the Orientals. ^86 As long as the horses
+were fresh, and the quivers full, Soliman maintained the
+advantage of the day; and four thousand Christians were pierced
+by the Turkish arrows.  In the evening, swiftness yielded to
+strength: on either side, the numbers were equal or at least as
+great as any ground could hold, or any generals could manage; but
+in turning the hills, the last division of Raymond and his
+provincials was led, perhaps without design on the rear of an
+exhausted enemy; and the long contest was determined.  Besides a
+nameless and unaccounted multitude, three thousand Pagan knights
+were slain in the battle and pursuit; the camp of Soliman was
+pillaged; and in the variety of precious spoil, the curiosity of
+the Latins was amused with foreign arms and apparel, and the new
+aspect of dromedaries and camels.  The importance of the victory
+was proved by the hasty retreat of the sultan: reserving ten
+thousand guards of the relics of his army, Soliman evacuated the
+kingdom of Roum, and hastened to implore the aid, and kindle the
+resentment, of his Eastern brethren.  In a march of five hundred
+miles, the crusaders traversed the Lesser Asia, through a wasted
+land and deserted towns, without finding either a friend or an
+enemy.  The geographer ^87 may trace the position of Dorylaeum,
+Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Archelais, and Germanicia, and may
+compare those classic appellations with the modern names of
+Eskishehr the old city, Akshehr the white city, Cogni, Erekli,
+and Marash.  As the pilgrims passed over a desert, where a
+draught of water is exchanged for silver, they were tormented by
+intolerable thirst; and on the banks of the first rivulet, their
+haste and intemperance were still more pernicious to the
+disorderly throng.  They climbed with toil and danger the steep
+and slippery sides of Mount Taurus; many of the soldiers cast
+away their arms to secure their footsteps; and had not terror
+preceded their van, the long and trembling file might have been
+driven down the precipice by a handful of resolute enemies.  Two
+of their most respectable chiefs, the duke of Lorraine and the
+count of Tholouse, were carried in litters: Raymond was raised,
+as it is said by miracle, from a hopeless malady; and Godfrey had
+been torn by a bear, as he pursued that rough and perilous chase
+in the mountains of Pisidia.
+
+[Footnote 84: Baronius has produced a very doubtful letter to his
+brother Roger, (A.D. 1098, No. 15.) The enemies consisted of
+Medes, Persians, Chaldeans: be it so.  The first attack was cum
+nostro incommodo; true and tender.  But why Godfrey of Bouillon
+and Hugh brothers!  Tancred is styled filius; of whom?  Certainly
+not of Roger, nor of Bohemond.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Verumtamen dicunt se esse de Francorum generatione;
+et quia nullus homo naturaliter debet esse miles nisi Franci et
+Turci, (Gesta Francorum, p. 7.) The same community of blood and
+valor is attested by Archbishop Baldric, (p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 86: Balista, Balestra, Arbalestre.  See Muratori,
+Antiq. tom. ii. p. 517 - 524.  Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. i. p.
+531, 532.  In the time of Anna Comnena, this weapon, which she
+describes under the name of izangra, was unknown in the East, (l.
+x. p. 291.) By a humane inconsistency, the pope strove to
+prohibit it in Christian wars.]
+
+[Footnote 87: The curious reader may compare the classic learning
+of Cellarius and the geographical science of D'Anville.  William
+of Tyre is the only historian of the crusades who has any
+knowledge of antiquity; and M. Otter trod almost in the footsteps
+of the Franks from Constantinople to Antioch, (Voyage en Turquie
+et en Perse, tom. i. p. 35 - 88.)
+
+Note: The journey of Col. Macdonald Kinneir in Asia Minor
+throws considerable light on the geography of this march of the
+crusaders. - M.]
+
+To improve the general consternation, the cousin of Bohemond
+and the brother of Godfrey were detached from the main army with
+their respective squadrons of five, and of seven, hundred
+knights.  They overran in a rapid career the hills and sea-coast
+of Cilicia, from Cogni to the Syrian gates: the Norman standard
+was first planted on the walls of Tarsus and Malmistra; but the
+proud injustice of Baldwin at length provoked the patient and
+generous Italian; and they turned their consecrated swords
+against each other in a private and profane quarrel.  Honor was
+the motive, and fame the reward, of Tancred; but fortune smiled
+on the more selfish enterprise of his rival. ^88 He was called to
+the assistance of a Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been
+suffered under the Turkish yoke to reign over the Christians of
+Edessa. Baldwin accepted the character of his son and champion:
+but no sooner was he introduced into the city, than he inflamed
+the people to the massacre of his father, occupied the throne and
+treasure, extended his conquests over the hills of Armenia and
+the plain of Mesopotamia, and founded the first principality of
+the Franks or Latins, which subsisted fifty-four years beyond the
+Euphrates. ^89
+
+[Footnote 88: This detached conquest of Edessa is best
+represented by Fulcherius Carnotensis, or of Chartres, (in the
+collections of Bongarsius Duchesne, and Martenne,) the valiant
+chaplain of Count Baldwin (Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13,
+14.) In the disputes of that prince with Tancred, his partiality
+is encountered by the partiality of Radulphus Cadomensis, the
+soldier and historian of the gallant marquis.]
+
+[Footnote 89: See de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 456.]
+
+Before the Franks could enter Syria, the summer, and even
+the autumn, were completely wasted: the siege of Antioch, or the
+separation and repose of the army during the winter season, was
+strongly debated in their council: the love of arms and the holy
+sepulchre urged them to advance; and reason perhaps was on the
+side of resolution, since every hour of delay abates the fame and
+force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive
+war.  The capital of Syria was protected by the River Orontes;
+and the iron bridge, ^* of nine arches, derives its name from the
+massy gates of the two towers which are constructed at either
+end.  They were opened by the sword of the duke of Normandy: his
+victory gave entrance to three hundred thousand crusaders, an
+account which may allow some scope for losses and desertion, but
+which clearly detects much exaggeration in the review of Nice.
+In the description of Antioch, ^90 it is not easy to define a
+middle term between her ancient magnificence, under the
+successors of Alexander and Augustus, and the modern aspect of
+Turkish desolation. The Tetrapolis, or four cities, if they
+retained their name and position, must have left a large vacuity
+in a circumference of twelve miles; and that measure, as well as
+the number of four hundred towers, are not perfectly consistent
+with the five gates, so often mentioned in the history of the
+siege.  Yet Antioch must have still flourished as a great and
+populous capital.  At the head of the Turkish emirs, Baghisian, a
+veteran chief, commanded in the place: his garrison was composed
+of six or seven thousand horse, and fifteen or twenty thousand
+foot: one hundred thousand Moslems are said to have fallen by the
+sword; and their numbers were probably inferior to the Greeks,
+Armenians, and Syrians, who had been no more than fourteen years
+the slaves of the house of Seljuk.  From the remains of a solid
+and stately wall, it appears to have arisen to the height of
+threescore feet in the valleys; and wherever less art and labor
+had been applied, the ground was supposed to be defended by the
+river, the morass, and the mountains. Notwithstanding these
+fortifications, the city had been repeatedly taken by the
+Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks; so large a
+circuit must have yielded many pervious points of attack; and in
+a siege that was formed about the middle of October, the vigor of
+the execution could alone justify the boldness of the attempt.
+Whatever strength and valor could perform in the field was
+abundantly discharged by the champions of the cross: in the
+frequent occasions of sallies, of forage, of the attack and
+defence of convoys, they were often victorious; and we can only
+complain, that their exploits are sometimes enlarged beyond the
+scale of probability and truth.  The sword of Godfrey ^91 divided
+a Turk from the shoulder to the haunch; and one half of the
+infidel fell to the ground, while the other was transported by
+his horse to the city gate. As Robert of Normandy rode against
+his antagonist, "I devote thy head," he piously exclaimed, "to
+the daemons of hell;" and that head was instantly cloven to the
+breast by the resistless stroke of his descending falchion. But
+the reality or the report of such gigantic prowess ^92 must have
+taught the Moslems to keep within their walls: and against those
+walls of earth or stone, the sword and the lance were unavailing
+weapons.  In the slow and successive labors of a siege, the
+crusaders were supine and ignorant, without skill to contrive, or
+money to purchase, or industry to use, the artificial engines and
+implements of assault.  In the conquest of Nice, they had been
+powerfully assisted by the wealth and knowledge of the Greek
+emperor: his absence was poorly supplied by some Genoese and
+Pisan vessels, that were attracted by religion or trade to the
+coast of Syria: the stores were scanty, the return precarious,
+and the communication difficult and dangerous. Indolence or
+weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the entire
+circuit; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the
+wants and recruited the garrison of the city.  At the end of
+seven months, after the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous
+loss by famine, desertion and fatigue, the progress of the
+crusaders was imperceptible, and their success remote, if the
+Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond, had not
+employed the arms of cunning and deceit.  The Christians of
+Antioch were numerous and discontented: Phirouz, a Syrian
+renegado, had acquired the favor of the emir and the command of
+three towers; and the merit of his repentance disguised to the
+Latins, and perhaps to himself, the foul design of perfidy and
+treason.  A secret correspondence, for their mutual interest, was
+soon established between Phirouz and the prince of Tarento; and
+Bohemond declared in the council of the chiefs, that he could
+deliver the city into their hands. ^* But he claimed the
+sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service; and the
+proposal which had been rejected by the envy, was at length
+extorted from the distress, of his equals.  The nocturnal
+surprise was executed by the French and Norman princes, who
+ascended in person the scaling-ladders that were thrown from the
+walls: their new proselyte, after the murder of his too
+scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the servants of
+Christ; the army rushed through the gates; and the Moslems soon
+found, that although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent.
+
+But the citadel still refused to surrender; and the victims
+themselves were speedily encompassed and besieged by the
+innumerable forces of Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who, with
+twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the deliverance of
+Antioch.  Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent on the verge
+of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and the
+sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. ^93 In
+this extremity they collected the relics of their strength,
+sallied from the town, and in a single memorable day, annihilated
+or dispersed the host of Turks and Arabians, which they might
+safely report to have consisted of six hundred thousand men. ^94
+Their supernatural allies I shall proceed to consider: the human
+causes of the victory of Antioch were the fearless despair of the
+Franks; and the surprise, the discord, perhaps the errors, of
+their unskilful and presumptuous adversaries.  The battle is
+described with as much disorder as it was fought; but we may
+observe the tent of Kerboga, a movable and spacious palace,
+enriched with the luxury of Asia, and capable of holding above
+two thousand persons; we may distinguish his three thousand
+guards, who were cased, the horse as well as the men, in complete
+steel. [Footnote *: This bridge was over the Ifrin, not the
+Orontes, at a distance of three leagues from Antioch.  See
+Wilken, vol. i. p. 172. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 90: For Antioch, see Pocock, (Description of the East,
+vol. ii. p. i. p. 188 - 193,) Otter, (Voyage en Turquie, &c.,
+tom. i. p. 81, &c.,) the Turkish geographer, (in Otter's notes,)
+the Index Geographicus of Schultens, (ad calcem Bohadin. Vit.
+Saladin.,) and Abulfeda, (Tabula Syriae, p. 115, 116, vers.
+Reiske.)]
+
+[Footnote 91: Ensem elevat, eumque a sinistra parte scapularum,
+tanta virtute intorsit, ut quod pectus medium disjunxit spinam et
+vitalia interrupit; et sic lubricus ensis super crus dextrum
+integer exivit: sicque caput integrum cum dextra parte corporis
+immersit gurgite, partemque quae equo praesidebat remisit
+civitati, (Robert. Mon. p. 50.) Cujus ense trajectus, Turcus duo
+factus est Turci: ut inferior alter in urbem equitaret, alter
+arcitenens in flumine nataret, (Radulph. Cadom. c. 53, p. 304.)
+Yet he justifies the deed by the stupendis viribus of Godfrey;
+and William of Tyre covers it by obstupuit populus facti novitate
+.... mirabilis, (l. v. c. 6, p. 701.) Yet it must not have
+appeared incredible to the knights of that age.]
+
+[Footnote 92: See the exploits of Robert, Raymond, and the modest
+Tancred who imposed silence on his squire, (Randulph. Cadom. c.
+53.)]
+
+[Footnote *: See the interesting extract from Kemaleddin's
+History of Aleppo in Wilken, preface to vol. ii. p. 36.  Phirouz,
+or Azzerrad, the breastplate maker, had been pillaged and put to
+the torture by Bagi Sejan, the prince of Antioch. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 93: After mentioning the distress and humble petition
+of the Franks, Abulpharagius adds the haughty reply of Codbuka,
+or Kerboga, "Non evasuri estis nisi per gladium," (Dynast. p.
+242.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: In describing the host of Kerboga, most of the
+Latin historians, the author of the Gesta, (p. 17,) Robert
+Monachus, p. 56,) Baldric, (p. 111,) Fulcherius Carnotensis, (p.
+392,) Guibert, (p. 512,) William of Tyre, (l. vi. c. 3, p. 714,)
+Bernard Thesaurarius, (c. 39, p. 695,) are content with the vague
+expressions of infinita multitudo, immensum agmen, innumerae
+copiae or gentes, which correspond with Anna Comnena, (Alexias,
+l. xi. p. 318 - 320.) The numbers of the Turks are fixed by
+Albert Aquensis at 200,000, (l. iv. c. 10, p. 242,) and by
+Radulphus Cadomensis at 400,000 horse, (c. 72, p. 309.)]
+
+In the eventful period of the siege and defence of Antioch,
+the crusaders were alternately exalted by victory or sunk in
+despair; either swelled with plenty or emaciated with hunger.  A
+speculative reasoner might suppose, that their faith had a strong
+and serious influence on their practice; and that the soldiers of
+the cross, the deliverers of the holy sepulchre, prepared
+themselves by a sober and virtuous life for the daily
+contemplation of martyrdom.  Experience blows away this
+charitable illusion; and seldom does the history of profane war
+display such scenes of intemperance and prostitution as were
+exhibited under the walls of Antioch. The grove of Daphne no
+longer flourished; but the Syrian air was still impregnated with
+the same vices; the Christians were seduced by every temptation
+^95 that nature either prompts or reprobates; the authority of
+the chiefs was despised; and sermons and edicts were alike
+fruitless against those scandalous disorders, not less pernicious
+to military discipline, than repugnant to evangelic purity.  In
+the first days of the siege and the possession of Antioch, the
+Franks consumed with wanton and thoughtless prodigality the
+frugal subsistence of weeks and months: the desolate country no
+longer yielded a supply; and from that country they were at
+length excluded by the arms of the besieging Turks.  Disease, the
+faithful companion of want, was envenomed by the rains of the
+winter, the summer heats, unwholesome food, and the close
+imprisonment of multitudes. The pictures of famine and pestilence
+are always the same, and always disgustful; and our imagination
+may suggest the nature of their sufferings and their resources.
+The remains of treasure or spoil were eagerly lavished in the
+purchase of the vilest nourishment; and dreadful must have been
+the calamities of the poor, since, after paying three marks of
+silver for a goat and fifteen for a lean camel, ^96 the count of
+Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner, and Duke Godfrey to borrow
+a horse.  Sixty thousand horse had been reviewed in the camp:
+before the end of the siege they were diminished to two thousand,
+and scarcely two hundred fit for service could be mustered on the
+day of battle. Weakness of body and terror of mind extinguished
+the ardent enthusiasm of the pilgrims; and every motive of honor
+and religion was subdued by the desire of life. ^97 Among the
+chiefs, three heroes may be found without fear or reproach:
+Godfrey of Bouillon was supported by his magnanimous piety;
+Bohemond by ambition and interest; and Tancred declared, in the
+true spirit of chivalry, that as long as he was at the head of
+forty knights, he would never relinquish the enterprise of
+Palestine.  But the count of Tholouse and Provence was suspected
+of a voluntary indisposition; the duke of Normandy was recalled
+from the sea-shore by the censures of the church: Hugh the Great,
+though he led the vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous
+opportunity of returning to France and Stephen, count of
+Chartres, basely deserted the standard which he bore, and the
+council in which he presided.  The soldiers were discouraged by
+the flight of William, viscount of Melun, surnamed the Carpenter,
+from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the saints were
+scandalized by the fall ^* of Peter the Hermit, who, after arming
+Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from the penance of a
+necessary fast.  Of the multitude of recreant warriors, the names
+(says an historian) are blotted from the book of life; and the
+opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the
+deserters who dropped in the night from the walls of Antioch. The
+emperor Alexius, ^98 who seemed to advance to the succor of the
+Latins, was dismayed by the assurance of their hopeless
+condition.  They expected their fate in silent despair; oaths and
+punishments were tried without effect; and to rouse the soldiers
+to the defence of the walls, it was found necessary to set fire
+to their quarters.
+
+[Footnote 95: See the tragic and scandalous fate of an archdeacon
+of royal birth, who was slain by the Turks as he reposed in an
+orchard, playing at dice with a Syrian concubine.]
+
+[Footnote 96: The value of an ox rose from five solidi, (fifteen
+shillings,) at Christmas to two marks, (four pounds,) and
+afterwards much higher; a kid or lamb, from one shilling to
+eighteen of our present money: in the second famine, a loaf of
+bread, or the head of an animal, sold for a piece of gold. More
+examples might be produced; but it is the ordinary, not the
+extraordinary, prices, that deserve the notice of the
+philosopher.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Alli multi, quorum nomina non tenemus; quia, deleta
+de libro vitae, praesenti operi non sunt inserenda, (Will. Tyr.
+l. vi. c. 5, p. 715.) Guibert (p. 518, 523) attempts to excuse
+Hugh the Great, and even Stephen of Chartres.]
+
+[Footnote *: Peter fell during the siege: he went afterwards on
+an embassy to Kerboga Wilken. vol. i. p. 217. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 98: See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of
+Alexius, the victory of Antioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem,
+in the Alexiad, l. xi. p. 317 - 327.  Anna was so prone to
+exaggeration, that she magnifies the exploits of the Latins.]
+
+For their salvation and victory, they were indebted to the
+same fanaticism which had led them to the brink of ruin.  In such
+a cause, and in such an army, visions, prophecies, and miracles,
+were frequent and familiar. In the distress of Antioch, they were
+repeated with unusual energy and success: St. Ambrose had assured
+a pious ecclesiastic, that two years of trial must precede the
+season of deliverance and grace; the deserters were stopped by
+the presence and reproaches of Christ himself; the dead had
+promised to arise and combat with their brethren; the Virgin had
+obtained the pardon of their sins; and their confidence was
+revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and splendid discovery
+of the Holy Lance. The policy of their chiefs has on this
+occasion been admired, and might surely be excused; but a pious
+baud is seldom produced by the cool conspiracy of many persons;
+and a voluntary impostor might depend on the support of the wise
+and the credulity of the people.  Of the diocese of Marseilles,
+there was a priest of low cunning and loose manners, and his name
+was Peter Bartholemy.  He presented himself at the door of the
+council-chamber, to disclose an apparition of St. Andrew, which
+had been thrice reiterated in his sleep with a dreadful menace,
+if he presumed to suppress the commands of Heaven.  "At Antioch,"
+said the apostle, "in the church of my brother St. Peter, near
+the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance that
+pierced the side of our Redeemer.  In three days that instrument
+of eternal, and now of temporal, salvation, will be manifested to
+his disciples.  Search, and ye shall find: bear it aloft in
+battle; and that mystic weapon shall penetrate the souls of the
+miscreants." The pope's legate, the bishop of Puy, affected to
+listen with coldness and distrust; but the revelation was eagerly
+accepted by Count Raymond, whom his faithful subject, in the name
+of the apostle, had chosen for the guardian of the holy lance.
+The experiment was resolved; and on the third day after a due
+preparation of prayer and fasting, the priest of Marseilles
+introduced twelve trusty spectators, among whom were the count
+and his chaplain; and the church doors were barred against the
+impetuous multitude.  The ground was opened in the appointed
+place; but the workmen, who relieved each other, dug to the depth
+of twelve feet without discovering the object of their search.
+In the evening, when Count Raymond had withdrawn to his post, and
+the weary assistants began to murmur, Bartholemy, in his shirt,
+and without his shoes, boldly descended into the pit; the
+darkness of the hour and of the place enabled him to secrete and
+deposit the head of a Saracen lance; and the first sound, the
+first gleam, of the steel was saluted with a devout rapture.  The
+holy lance was drawn from its recess, wrapped in a veil of silk
+and gold, and exposed to the veneration of the crusaders; their
+anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of joy and hope,
+and the desponding troops were again inflamed with the enthusiasm
+of valor.  Whatever had been the arts, and whatever might be the
+sentiments of the chiefs, they skilfully improved this fortunate
+revolution by every aid that discipline and devotion could
+afford.  The soldiers were dismissed to their quarters with an
+injunction to fortify their minds and bodies for the approaching
+conflict, freely to bestow their last pittance on themselves and
+their horses, and to expect with the dawn of day the signal of
+victory.  On the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the gates of
+Antioch were thrown open: a martial psalm, "Let the Lord arise,
+and let his enemies be scattered!" was chanted by a procession of
+priests and monks; the battle array was marshalled in twelve
+divisions, in honor of the twelve apostles; and the holy lance,
+in the absence of Raymond, was intrusted to the hands of his
+chaplain.  The influence of his relic or trophy, was felt by the
+servants, and perhaps by the enemies, of Christ; ^99 and its
+potent energy was heightened by an accident, a stratagem, or a
+rumor, of a miraculous complexion.  Three knights, in white
+garments and resplendent arms, either issued, or seemed to issue,
+from the hills: the voice of Adhemar, the pope's legate,
+proclaimed them as the martyrs St. George, St. Theodore, and St.
+Maurice: the tumult of battle allowed no time for doubt or
+scrutiny; and the welcome apparition dazzled the eyes or the
+imagination of a fanatic army. ^* In the season of danger and
+triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles was
+unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service was
+accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal arms which the
+count of Tholouse derived from the custody of the holy lance,
+provoked the envy, and awakened the reason, of his rivals.  A
+Norman clerk presumed to sift, with a philosophic spirit, the
+truth of the legend, the circumstances of the discovery, and the
+character of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond ascribed their
+deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ alone. For a
+while, the Provincials defended their national palladium with
+clamors and arms and new visions condemned to death and hell the
+profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinize the truth and merit
+of the discovery.  The prevalence of incredulity compelled the
+author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God.  A
+pile of dry fagots, four feet high and fourteen long, was erected
+in the midst of the camp; the flames burnt fiercely to the
+elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow path of twelve inches
+was left for the perilous trial.  The unfortunate priest of
+Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but the
+thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired
+the next day; ^** and the logic of believing minds will pay some
+regard to his dying protestations of innocence and truth.  Some
+efforts were made by the Provincials to substitute a cross, a
+ring, or a tabernacle, in the place of the holy lance, which soon
+vanished in contempt and oblivion. ^100 Yet the revelation of
+Antioch is gravely asserted by succeeding historians: and such is
+the progress of credulity, that miracles most doubtful on the
+spot, and at the moment, will be received with implicit faith at
+a convenient distance of time and space.
+
+[Footnote 99: The Mahometan Aboulmahasen (apud De Guignes, tom.
+ii. p. ii. p. 95) is more correct in his account of the holy
+lance than the Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the
+Greek princess confounds it with the nail of the cross, (l. xi.
+p. 326;) the Jacobite primate, with St. Peter's staff, p. 242.)]
+
+[Footnote *: The real cause of this victory appears to have been
+the feud in Kerboga's army Wilken, vol. ii. p. 40. - M.]
+
+[Footnote **: The twelfth day after.  He was much injured, and
+his flesh torn off, from the ardor of pious congratulation with
+which he was assailed by those who witnessed his escape, unhurt,
+as it was first supposed. Wilken vol. i p. 263 - M.]
+
+[Footnote 100: The two antagonists who express the most intimate
+knowledge and the strongest conviction of the miracle, and of the
+fraud, are Raymond des Agiles, and Radulphus Cadomensis, the one
+attached to the count of Tholouse, the other to the Norman
+prince.  Fulcherius Carnotensis presumes to say, Audite fraudem
+et non fraudem!  and afterwards, Invenit lanceam, fallaciter
+occultatam forsitan.  The rest of the herd are loud and
+strenuous.]
+
+The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their
+invasion till the decline of the Turkish empire. ^101 Under the
+manly government of the three first sultans, the kingdoms of Asia
+were united in peace and justice; and the innumerable armies
+which they led in person were equal in courage, and superior in
+discipline, to the Barbarians of the West.  But at the time of
+the crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was disputed by his
+four sons; their private ambition was insensible of the public
+danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the royal
+vassals were ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their
+allegiance.  The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard
+or Kerboga were his rivals or enemies: their hasty levies were
+drawn from the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the
+Turkish veterans were employed or consumed in the civil wars
+beyond the Tigris.  The caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity
+of weakness and discord to recover his ancient possessions; and
+his sultan Aphdal besieged Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the
+children of Ortok, and restored in Palestine the civil and
+ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. ^102 They heard with
+astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed
+from Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which
+broke the power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and
+monarchy. But the same Christians were the enemies of the
+prophet; and from the overthrow of Nice and Antioch, the motive
+of their enterprise, which was gradually understood, would urge
+them forwards to the banks of the Jordan, or perhaps of the Nile.
+
+An intercourse of epistles and embassies, which rose and fell
+with the events of war, was maintained between the throne of
+Cairo and the camp of the Latins; and their adverse pride was the
+result of ignorance and enthusiasm.  The ministers of Egypt
+declared in a haughty, or insinuated in a milder, tone, that
+their sovereign, the true and lawful commander of the faithful,
+had rescued Jerusalem from the Turkish yoke; and that the
+pilgrims, if they would divide their numbers, and lay aside their
+arms, should find a safe and hospitable reception at the
+sepulchre of Jesus. In the belief of their lost condition, the
+caliph Mostali despised their arms and imprisoned their deputies:
+the conquest and victory of Antioch prompted him to solicit those
+formidable champions with gifts of horses and silk robes, of
+vases, and purses of gold and silver; and in his estimate of
+their merit or power, the first place was assigned to Bohemond,
+and the second to Godfrey. In either fortune, the answer of the
+crusaders was firm and uniform: they disdained to inquire into
+the private claims or possessions of the followers of Mahomet;
+whatsoever was his name or nation, the usurper of Jerusalem was
+their enemy; and instead of prescribing the mode and terms of
+their pilgrimage, it was only by a timely surrender of the city
+and province, their sacred right, that he could deserve their
+alliance, or deprecate their impending and irresistible attack.
+^103
+
+[Footnote 101: See M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 223, &c.;
+and the articles of Barkidrok, Mohammed, Sangiar, in D'Herbelot.]
+
+[Footnote 102: The emir, or sultan, Aphdal, recovered Jerusalem
+and Tyre, A. H. 489, (Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch.  Alexandrin. p.
+478. De Guignes, tom. i. p. 249, from Abulfeda and Ben Schounah.)
+Jerusalem ante adventum vestrum recuperavimus, Turcos ejecimus,
+say the Fatimite ambassadors]
+
+[Footnote 103: See the transactions between the caliph of Egypt
+and the crusaders in William of Tyre (l. iv. c. 24, l. vi. c. 19)
+and Albert Aquensis, (l. iii. c. 59,) who are more sensible of
+their importance than the contemporary writers.]
+
+Yet this attack, when they were within the view and reach of
+their glorious prize, was suspended above ten months after the
+defeat of Kerboga. The zeal and courage of the crusaders were
+chilled in the moment of victory; and instead of marching to
+improve the consternation, they hastily dispersed to enjoy the
+luxury, of Syria.  The causes of this strange delay may be found
+in the want of strength and subordination.  In the painful and
+various service of Antioch, the cavalry was annihilated; many
+thousands of every rank had been lost by famine, sickness, and
+desertion: the same abuse of plenty had been productive of a
+third famine; and the alternative of intemperance and distress
+had generated a pestilence, which swept away above fifty thousand
+of the pilgrims.  Few were able to command, and none were willing
+to obey; the domestic feuds, which had been stifled by common
+fear, were again renewed in acts, or at least in sentiments, of
+hostility; the fortune of Baldwin and Bohemond excited the envy
+of their companions; the bravest knights were enlisted for the
+defence of their new principalities; and Count Raymond exhausted
+his troops and treasures in an idle expedition into the heart of
+Syria. ^* The winter was consumed in discord and disorder; a
+sense of honor and religion was rekindled in the spring; and the
+private soldiers, less susceptible of ambition and jealousy,
+awakened with angry clamors the indolence of their chiefs.  In
+the month of May, the relics of this mighty host proceeded from
+Antioch to Laodicea: about forty thousand Latins, of whom no more
+than fifteen hundred horse, and twenty thousand foot, were
+capable of immediate service.  Their easy march was continued
+between Mount Libanus and the sea-shore: their wants were
+liberally supplied by the coasting traders of Genoa and Pisa; and
+they drew large contributions from the emirs of Tripoli, Tyre,
+Sidon, Acre, and Caesarea, who granted a free passage, and
+promised to follow the example of Jerusalem.  From Caesarea they
+advanced into the midland country; their clerks recognized the
+sacred geography of Lydda, Ramla, Emmaus, and Bethlem, ^* and as
+soon as they descried the holy city, the crusaders forgot their
+toils and claimed their reward. ^104
+
+[Footnote *: This is not quite correct: he took Marra on his
+road.  His excursions were partly to obtain provisions for the
+army and fodder for the horses Wilken, vol. i. p. 226. - M.]
+
+[Footnote *: Scarcely of Bethlehem, to the south of Jerusalem. -
+M.]
+
+[Footnote 104: The greatest part of the march of the Franks is
+traced, and most accurately traced, in Maundrell's Journey from
+Aleppo to Jerusalem, (p. 11 - 67;) un des meilleurs morceaux,
+sans contredit qu'on ait dans ce genre, (D'Anville, Memoire sur
+Jerusalem, p. 27.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.
+
+Part V.
+
+Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and
+importance of her memorable sieges.  It was not till after a long
+and obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail against
+the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground that might
+supersede the necessity of fortifications, and the walls and
+towers that would have fortified the most accessible plain. ^105
+These obstacles were diminished in the age of the crusades.  The
+bulwarks had been completely destroyed and imperfectly restored:
+the Jews, their nation, and worship, were forever banished; but
+nature is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem,
+though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was still strong
+against the assaults of an enemy.  By the experience of a recent
+siege, and a three years' possession, the Saracens of Egypt had
+been taught to discern, and in some degree to remedy, the defects
+of a place, which religion as well as honor forbade them to
+resign.  Aladin, or Iftikhar, the caliph's lieutenant, was
+intrusted with the defence: his policy strove to restrain the
+native Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the
+holy sepulchre; to animate the Moslems by the assurance of
+temporal and eternal rewards.  His garrison is said to have
+consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians; and if he could
+muster twenty thousand of the inhabitants, it must be confessed
+that the besieged were more numerous than the besieging army.
+^106 Had the diminished strength and numbers of the Latins
+allowed them to grasp the whole circumference of four thousand
+yards, (about two English miles and a half, ^107) to what useful
+purpose should they have descended into the valley of Ben Hinnom
+and torrent of Cedron, ^108 or approach the precipices of the
+south and east, from whence they had nothing either to hope or
+fear? Their siege was more reasonably directed against the
+northern and western sides of the city.  Godfrey of Bouillon
+erected his standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary: to the
+left, as far as St. Stephen's gate, the line of attack was
+continued by Tancred and the two Roberts; and Count Raymond
+established his quarters from the citadel to the foot of Mount
+Sion, which was no longer included within the precincts of the
+city.  On the fifth day, the crusaders made a general assault, in
+the fanatic hope of battering down the walls without engines, and
+of scaling them without ladders.  By the dint of brutal force,
+they burst the first barrier; but they were driven back with
+shame and slaughter to the camp: the influence of vision and
+prophecy was deadened by the too frequent abuse of those pious
+stratagems; and time and labor were found to be the only means of
+victory.  The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled in forty
+days, but they were forty days of calamity and anguish.  A
+repetition of the old complaint of famine may be imputed in some
+degree to the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks; but
+the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute of water; the
+scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the summer season;
+nor was the thirst of the besiegers relieved, as in the city, by
+the artificial supply of cisterns and aqueducts. The circumjacent
+country is equally destitute of trees for the uses of shade or
+building, but some large beams were discovered in a cave by the
+crusaders: a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso, ^109
+was cut down: the necessary timber was transported to the camp by
+the vigor and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed
+by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbor
+of Jaffa.  Two movable turrets were constructed at the expense,
+and in the stations, of the duke of Lorraine and the count of
+Tholouse, and rolled forwards with devout labor, not to the most
+accessible, but to the most neglected, parts of the
+fortification. Raymond's Tower was reduced to ashes by the fire
+of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant and
+successful; ^* the enemies were driven by his archers from the
+rampart; the draw-bridge was let down; and on a Friday, at three
+in the afternoon, the day and hour of the passion, Godfrey of
+Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem.  His example
+was followed on every side by the emulation of valor; and about
+four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the holy
+city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke.  In the pillage of
+public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect
+the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of
+the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and
+silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of
+Tancred.  A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries
+to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke but
+neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage: they
+indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; ^110
+and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical
+disease.  After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the
+sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue,
+they could still reserve a multitude of captives, whom interest
+or lassitude persuaded them to spare.  Of these savage heroes of
+the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion;
+yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted
+a capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the citadel.
+^111 The holy sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors
+prepared to accomplish their vow.  Bareheaded and barefoot, with
+contrite hearts, and in an humble posture, they ascended the hill
+of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the
+stone which had covered the Savior of the world; and bedewed with
+tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.
+This union of the fiercest and most tender passions has been
+variously considered by two philosophers; by the one, ^112 as
+easy and natural; by the other, ^113 as absurd and incredible.
+Perhaps it is too rigorously applied to the same persons and the
+same hour; the example of the virtuous Godfrey awakened the piety
+of his companions; while they cleansed their bodies, they
+purified their minds; nor shall I believe that the most ardent in
+slaughter and rapine were the foremost in the procession to the
+holy sepulchre.
+
+[Footnote 105: See the masterly description of Tacitus, (Hist. v.
+11, 12, 13,) who supposes that the Jewish lawgivers had provided
+for a perpetual state of hostility against the rest of mankind.
+
+Note: This is an exaggerated inference from the words of
+Tacitus, who speaks of the founders of the city, not the
+lawgivers. Praeviderant conditores, ex diversitate morum, crebra
+bella; inde cuncta quamvis adversus loagum obsidium. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The lively scepticism of Voltaire is balanced with
+sense and erudition by the French author of the Esprit des
+Croisades, (tom. iv. p. 386 - 388,) who observes, that, according
+to the Arabians, the inhabitants of Jerusalem must have exceeded
+200,000; that in the siege of Titus, Josephus collects 1,300,000
+Jews; that they are stated by Tacitus himself at 600,000; and
+that the largest defalcation, that his accepimus can justify,
+will still leave them more numerous than the Roman army.]
+
+[Footnote 107: Maundrell, who diligently perambulated the walls,
+found a circuit of 4630 paces, or 4167 English yards, (p. 109,
+110: ) from an authentic plan, D'Anville concludes a measure
+nearly similar, of 1960 French toises, (p. 23 - 29,) in his
+scarce and valuable tract.  For the topography of Jerusalem, see
+Reland, (Palestina, tom. ii. p. 832 - 860.)]
+
+[Footnote 108: Jerusalem was possessed only of the torrent of
+Kedron, dry in summer, and of the little spring or brook of
+Siloe, (Reland, tom. i. p. 294, 300.) Both strangers and natives
+complain of the want of water, which, in time of war, was
+studiously aggravated.  Within the city, Tacitus mentions a
+perennial fountain, an aqueduct and cisterns for rain water. The
+aqueduct was conveyed from the rivulet Tekos or Etham, which is
+likewise mentioned by Bohadin, (in Vit. Saludio p. 238.)]
+
+[Footnote 109: Gierusalomme Liberata, canto xiii.  It is pleasant
+enough to observe how Tasso has copied and embellished the
+minutest details of the siege.]
+
+[Footnote *: This does not appear by Wilken's account, (p. 294.)
+They fought in vair the whole of the Thursday. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Besides the Latins, who are not ashamed of the
+massacre, see Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 363,) Abulpharagius,
+(Dynast. p. 243,) and M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99, from
+Aboulmahasen.]
+
+[Footnote 111: The old tower Psephina, in the middle ages
+Neblosa, was named Castellum Pisanum, from the patriarch
+Daimbert.  It is still the citadel, the residence of the Turkish
+aga, and commands a prospect of the Dead Sea, Judea, and Arabia,
+(D'Anville, p. 19 - 23.) It was likewise called the Tower of
+David.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Hume, in his History of England, vol. i. p. 311,
+312, octavo edition.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Voltaire, in his Essai sur l'Histoire Generale,
+tom ii. c. 54, p 345, 346]
+
+Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did
+not live to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a
+king, to guard and govern their conquests in Palestine.  Hugh the
+Great, and Stephen of Chartres, had retired with some loss of
+reputation, which they strove to regain by a second crusade and
+an honorable death.  Baldwin was established at Edessa, and
+Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the duke of Normandy ^114
+and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in
+the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre. The
+jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own
+followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the
+army proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of
+the champions of Christendom.  His magnanimity accepted a trust
+as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had
+been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name
+and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of
+Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and
+Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.  His government of a single year,
+^115 too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the
+first fortnight by a summons to the field, by the approach of the
+vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but
+who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total
+overthrow in the battle of Ascalon sealed the establishment of
+the Latins in Syria, and signalized the valor of the French
+princes who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.
+
+Some glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of
+numbers, though I shall not count the myriads of horse and foot
+^* on the side of the Fatimites; but, except three thousand
+Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or scourges of
+iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and
+afforded a pleasing comparison between the active valor of the
+Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt.
+After suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword and standard
+of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his
+departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant
+Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers for
+the defence of Palestine.  His sovereignty was soon attacked by a
+new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward.
+Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action,
+had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining
+ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their
+character; and their seditious clamors had required that the
+choice of a bishop should precede that of a king.  The revenue
+and jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the
+Latin clergy: the exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was
+justified by the reproach of heresy or schism; ^116 and, under
+the iron yoke of their deliverers, the Oriental Christians
+regretted the tolerating government of the Arabian caliphs.
+Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret
+policy of Rome: he brought a fleet at his countrymen to the
+succor of the Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor,
+the spiritual and temporal head of the church. ^* The new
+patriarch ^117 immediately grasped the sceptre which had been
+acquired by the toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and
+both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the
+investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient;
+Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa;
+instead of a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with
+the priest; a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and
+the modest bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the
+rest, on the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future
+acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus.
+
+[Footnote 114: The English ascribe to Robert of Normandy, and the
+Provincials to Raymond of Tholouse, the glory of refusing the
+crown; but the honest voice of tradition has preserved the memory
+of the ambition and revenge (Villehardouin, No. 136) of the count
+of St. Giles.  He died at the siege of Tripoli, which was
+possessed by his descendants.]
+
+[Footnote 115: See the election, the battle of Ascalon, &c., in
+William of Tyre l. ix. c. 1 - 12, and in the conclusion of the
+Latin historians of the first crusade.]
+
+[Footnote *: 20,000 Franks, 300,000 Mussulmen, according to
+Wilken, (vol. ii. p. 9) - M.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 479.]
+
+[Footnote *: Arnulf was first chosen, but illegitimately, and
+degraded.  He was ever after the secret enemy of Daimbert or
+Dagobert.  Wilken, vol. i. p. 306, vol. ii. p. 52. - M]
+
+[Footnote 117: See the claims of the patriarch Daimbert, in
+William of Tyre (l. ix. c. 15 - 18, x. 4, 7, 9,) who asserts with
+marvellous candor the independence of the conquerors and kings of
+Jerusalem.]
+
+Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost
+been stripped of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of
+Jerusalem and Jaffa, with about twenty villages and towns of the
+adjacent country. ^118 Within this narrow verge, the Mahometans
+were still lodged in some impregnable castles: and the
+husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrim, were exposed to daily
+and domestic hostility.  By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of
+the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the
+throne, the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at
+length they equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though
+not in the millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of
+Judah and Israel. ^119 After the reduction of the maritime cities
+of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Ascalon, ^120 which were
+powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and
+even of Flanders and Norway, ^121 the range of sea-coast from
+Scanderoon to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian
+pilgrims.  If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy, the
+counts of Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of the
+king of Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and
+the four cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the
+only relics of the Mahometan conquests in Syria. ^122 The laws
+and language, the manners and titles, of the French nation and
+Latin church, were introduced into these transmarine colonies.
+According to the feudal jurisprudence, the principal states and
+subordinate baronies descended in the line of male and female
+succession: ^123 but the children of the first conquerors, ^124 a
+motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the
+climate; the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful
+hope and a casual event.  The service of the feudal tenures ^125
+was performed by six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might
+expect the aid of two hundred more under the banner of the count
+of Tripoli; and each knight was attended to the field by four
+squires or archers on horseback. ^126 Five thousand and seventy
+sergeants, most probably foot-soldiers, were supplied by the
+churches and cities; and the whole legal militia of the kingdom
+could not exceed eleven thousand men, a slender defence against
+the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks. ^127 But the
+firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the
+Hospital of St. John, ^128 and of the temple of Solomon; ^129 on
+the strange association of a monastic and military life, which
+fanaticism might suggest, but which policy must approve.  The
+flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross, and
+to profess the vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit
+and discipline were immortal; and the speedy donation of
+twenty-eight thousand farms, or manors, ^130 enabled them to
+support a regular force of cavalry and infantry for the defence
+of Palestine.  The austerity of the convent soon evaporated in
+the exercise of arms; the world was scandalized by the pride,
+avarice, and corruption of these Christian soldiers; their claims
+of immunity and jurisdiction disturbed the harmony of the church
+and state; and the public peace was endangered by their jealous
+emulation.  But in their most dissolute period, the knights of
+their hospital and temple maintained their fearless and fanatic
+character: they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die,
+in the service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry, the parent
+and offspring of the crusades, has been transplanted by this
+institution from the holy sepulchre to the Isle of Malta. ^131
+
+[Footnote 118: Willerm. Tyr. l. x. 19.  The Historia
+Hierosolimitana of Jacobus a Vitriaco (l. i. c. 21 - 50) and the
+Secreta Fidelium Crucis of Marinus Sanutus (l. iii. p. 1)
+describe the state and conquests of the Latin kingdom of
+Jerusalem.]
+
+[Footnote 119: An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi
+and Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or 1,574,000
+fighting men; which, with the addition of women, children, and
+slaves, may imply a population of thirteen millions, in a country
+sixty leagues in length, and thirty broad. The honest and
+rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d Samuel xxiv. and 1st Chronicles,
+xxi.) aestuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a
+false transcript; a dangerous suspicion!
+
+Note: David determined to take a census of his vast
+dominions, which extended from Lebanon to the frontiers of Egypt,
+from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean.  The numbers (in 2 Sam.
+xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi. 5) differ; but the lowest gives
+800,000 men fit to bear arms in Israel, 500,000 in Judah. Hist.
+of Jews, vol. i. p. 248.  Gibbon has taken the highest census in
+his estimate of the population, and confined the dominions of
+David to Jordandic Palestine. - M.]
+
+[Footnote 120: These sieges are related, each in its proper
+place, in the great history of William of Tyre, from the ixth to
+the xviiith book, and more briefly told by Bernardus
+Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae, c. 89 - 98, p. 732
+- 740.) Some domestic facts are celebrated in the Chronicles of
+Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith tomes of
+Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et
+maxime de ea parte quae Norvegia dicitur.  William of Tyre (l.
+xi. c. 14, p. 804) marks their course per Britannicum Mare et
+Calpen to the siege of Sidon.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Benelathir, apud De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom.
+ii. part ii. p. 150, 151, A.D. 1127.  He must speak of the inland
+country.]
+
+[Footnote 123: Sanut very sensibly descants on the mischiefs of
+female succession, in a land hostibus circumdata, ubi cuncta
+virilia et virtuosa esse deberent.  Yet, at the summons, and with
+the approbation, of her feudal lord, a noble damsel was obliged
+to choose a husband and champion, (Assises de Jerusalem, c. 242,
+&c.) See in M. De Guignes (tom. i. p. 441 - 471) the accurate and
+useful tables of these dynasties, which are chiefly drawn from
+the Lignages d'Outremer.]
+
+[Footnote 124: They were called by derision Poullains, Pallani,
+and their name is never pronounced without contempt, (Ducange,
+Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 535; and Observations sur Joinville, p.
+84, 85; Jacob. a Vitriaco Hist. Hierosol. i. c. 67, 72; and
+Sanut, l. iii. p. viii. c. 2, p. 182.) Illustrium virorum, qui ad
+Terrae Sanctae .... liberationem in ipsa manserunt, degeneres
+filii .... in deliciis enutriti, molles et effoe minati, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 125: This authentic detail is extracted from the
+Assises de Jerusalem (c. 324, 326 - 331.) Sanut (l. iii. p. viii.
+c. 1, p. 174) reckons only 518 knights, and 5775 followers.]
+
+[Footnote 126: The sum total, and the division, ascertain the
+service of the three great baronies at 100 knights each; and the
+text of the Assises, which extends the number to 500, can only be
+justified by this supposition.]
+
+[Footnote 127: Yet on great emergencies (says Sanut) the barons
+brought a voluntary aid; decentem comitivam militum juxta statum
+suum.]
+
+[Footnote 128: William of Tyre (l. xviii. c. 3, 4, 5) relates the
+ignoble origin and early insolence of the Hospitallers, who soon
+deserted their humble patron, St. John the Eleemosynary, for the
+more august character of St. John the Baptist, (see the
+ineffectual struggles of Pagi, Critica, A. D 1099, No. 14 - 18.)
+They assumed the profession of arms about the year 1120; the
+Hospital was mater; the Temple filia; the Teutonic order was
+founded A.D. 1190, at the siege of Acre, (Mosheim Institut p.
+389, 390.)]
+
+[Footnote 129: See St. Bernard de Laude Novae Militiae Templi,
+composed A.D. 1132 - 1136, in Opp. tom. i. p. ii. p. 547 - 563,
+edit. Mabillon, Venet. 1750. Such an encomium, which is thrown
+away on the dead Templars, would be highly valued by the
+historians of Malta.]
+
+[Footnote 130: Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544.  He assigns to
+the Hospitallers 19,000, to the Templars 9,000 maneria, word of
+much higher import (as Ducange has rightly observed) in the
+English than in the French idiom. Manor is a lordship, manoir a
+dwelling.]
+
+[Footnote 131: In the three first books of the Histoire de
+Chevaliers de Malthe par l'Abbe de Vertot, the reader may amuse
+himself with a fair, and sometimes flattering, picture of the
+order, while it was employed for the defence of Palestine.  The
+subsequent books pursue their emigration to Rhodes and Malta.]
+
+The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal
+institutions, was felt in its strongest energy by the volunteers
+of the cross, who elected for their chief the most deserving of
+his peers.  Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the lesson
+or example, a model of political liberty was introduced; and the
+laws of the French kingdom are derived from the purest source of
+equality and justice.  Of such laws, the first and indispensable
+condition is the assent of those whose obedience they require,
+and for whose benefit they are designed. No sooner had Godfrey of
+Bouillon accepted the office of supreme magistrate, than he
+solicited the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims,
+who were the best skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe.
+From these materials, with the counsel and approbation of the
+patriarch and barons, of the clergy and laity, Godfrey composed
+the Assise of Jerusalem, ^132 a precious monument of feudal
+jurisprudence.  The new code, attested by the seals of the king,
+the patriarch, and the viscount of Jerusalem, was deposited in
+the holy sepulchre, enriched with the improvements of succeeding
+times, and respectfully consulted as often as any doubtful
+question arose in the tribunals of Palestine.  With the kingdom
+and city all was lost: ^133 the fragments of the written law were
+preserved by jealous tradition ^134 and variable practice till
+the middle of the thirteenth century: the code was restored by
+the pen of John d'Ibelin, count of Jaffa, one of the principal
+feudatories; ^135 and the final revision was accomplished in the
+year thirteen hundred and sixty-nine, for the use of the Latin
+kingdom of Cyprus. ^136
+
+[Footnote 132: The Assises de Jerusalem, in old law French, were
+printed with Beaumanoir's Coutumes de Beauvoisis, (Bourges and
+Paris, 1690, in folio,) and illustrated by Gaspard Thaumas de la
+Thaumassiere, with a comment and glossary.  An Italian version
+had been published in 1534, at Venice, for the use of the kingdom
+of Cyprus.
+
+Note: See Wilken, vol. i. p. 17, &c., - M.]
+
+[Footnote 133: A la terre perdue, tout fut perdu, is the vigorous
+expression of the Assise, (c. 281.) Yet Jerusalem capitulated
+with Saladin; the queen and the principal Christians departed in
+peace; and a code so precious and so portable could not provoke
+the avarice of the conquerors. I have sometimes suspected the
+existence of this original copy of the Holy Sepulchre, which
+might be invented to sanctify and authenticate the traditionary
+customs of the French in Palestine.]
+
+[Footnote 134: A noble lawyer, Raoul de Tabarie, denied the
+prayer of King Amauri, (A.D. 1195 - 1205,) that he would commit
+his knowledged to writing, and frankly declared, que de ce qu'il
+savoit ne feroit-il ja nul borjois son pareill, ne null sage
+homme lettre, (c. 281.)]
+
+[Footnote 135: The compiler of this work, Jean d'Ibelin, was
+count of Jaffa and Ascalon, lord of Baruth (Berytus) and Rames,
+and died A.D. 1266, (Sanut, l. iii. p. ii. c. 5, 8.) The family
+of Ibelin, which descended from a younger brother of a count of
+Chartres in France, long flourished in Palestine and Cyprus, (see
+the Lignages de deca Mer, or d'Outremer, c. 6, at the end of the
+Assises de Jerusalem, an original book, which records the
+pedigrees of the French adventurers.)]
+
+[Footnote 136: By sixteen commissioners chosen in the states of
+the island: the work was finished the 3d of November, 1369,
+sealed with four seals and deposited in the cathedral of Nicosia,
+(see the preface to the Assises.)]
+
+The justice and freedom of the constitution were maintained
+by two tribunals of unequal dignity, which were instituted by
+Godfrey of Bouillon after the conquest of Jerusalem.  The king,
+in person, presided in the upper court, the court of the barons.
+Of these the four most conspicuous were the prince of Galilee,
+the lord of Sidon and Caesarea, and the counts of Jaffa and
+Tripoli, who, perhaps with the constable and marshal, ^137 were
+in a special manner the compeers and judges of each other.  But
+all the nobles, who held their lands immediately of the crown,
+were entitled and bound to attend the king's court; and each
+baron exercised a similar jurisdiction on the subordinate
+assemblies of his own feudatories.  The connection of lord and
+vassal was honorable and voluntary: reverence was due to the
+benefactor, protection to the dependant; but they mutually
+pledged their faith to each other; and the obligation on either
+side might be suspended by neglect or dissolved by injury.  The
+cognizance of marriages and testaments was blended with religion,
+and usurped by the clergy: but the civil and criminal causes of
+the nobles, the inheritance and tenure of their fiefs, formed the
+proper occupation of the supreme court.  Each member was the
+judge and guardian both of public and private rights.  It was his
+duty to assert with his tongue and sword the lawful claims of the
+lord; but if an unjust superior presumed to violate the freedom
+or property of a vassal, the confederate peers stood forth to
+maintain his quarrel by word and deed.  They boldly affirmed his
+innocence and his wrongs; demanded the restitution of his liberty
+or his lands; suspended, after a fruitless demand, their own
+service; rescued their brother from prison; and employed every
+weapon in his defence, without offering direct violence to the
+person of their lord, which was ever sacred in their eyes. ^138
+In their pleadings, replies, and rejoinders, the advocates of the
+court were subtle and copious; but the use of argument and
+evidence was often superseded by judicial combat; and the Assise
+of Jerusalem admits in many cases this barbarous institution,
+which has been slowly abolished by the laws and manners of
+Europe.
+
+[Footnote 137: The cautious John D'Ibelin argues, rather than
+affirms, that Tripoli is the fourth barony, and expresses some
+doubt concerning the right or pretension of the constable and
+marshal, (c. 323.)]
+
+[Footnote 138: Entre seignor et homme ne n'a que la foi; ....
+mais tant que l'homme doit a son seignor reverence en toutes
+choses, (c. 206.) Tous les hommes dudit royaume sont par ladite
+Assise tenus les uns as autres .... et en celle maniere que le
+seignor mette main ou face mettre au cors ou au fie d'aucun
+d'yaus sans esgard et sans connoissans de court, que tous les
+autres doivent venir devant le seignor, &c., (212.) The form of
+their remonstrances is conceived with the noble simplicity of
+freedom.]
+
+The trial by battle was established in all criminal cases
+which affected the life, or limb, or honor, of any person; and in
+all civil transactions, of or above the value of one mark of
+silver.  It appears that in criminal cases the combat was the
+privilege of the accuser, who, except in a charge of treason,
+avenged his personal injury, or the death of those persons whom
+he had a right to represent; but wherever, from the nature of the
+charge, testimony could be obtained, it was necessary for him to
+produce witnesses of the fact.  In civil cases, the combat was
+not allowed as the means of establishing the claim of the
+demandant; but he was obliged to produce witnesses who had, or
+assumed to have, knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the
+privilege of the defendant; because he charged the witness with
+an attempt by perjury to take away his right.  He came therefore
+to be in the same situation as the appellant in criminal cases.
+It was not then as a mode of proof that the combat was received,
+nor as making negative evidence, (according to the supposition of
+Montesquieu; ^139) but in every case the right to offer battle
+was founded on the right to pursue by arms the redress of an
+injury; and the judicial combat was fought on the same principle,
+and with the same spirit, as a private duel. Champions were only
+allowed to women, and to men maimed or past the age of sixty.
+The consequence of a defeat was death to the person accused, or
+to the champion or witness, as well as to the accuser himself:
+but in civil cases, the demandant was punished with infamy and
+the loss of his suit, while his witness and champion suffered
+ignominious death.  In many cases it was in the option of the
+judge to award or to refuse the combat: but two are specified, in
+which it was the inevitable result of the challenge; if a
+faithful vassal gave the lie to his compeer, who unjustly claimed
+any portion of their lord's demesnes; or if an unsuccessful
+suitor presumed to impeach the judgment and veracity of the
+court.  He might impeach them, but the terms were severe and
+perilous: in the same day he successively fought all the members
+of the tribunal, even those who had been absent; a single defeat
+was followed by death and infamy; and where none could hope for
+victory, it is highly probable that none would adventure the
+trial.  In the Assise of Jerusalem, the legal subtlety of the
+count of Jaffa is more laudably employed to elude, than to
+facilitate, the judicial combat, which he derives from a
+principle of honor rather than of superstition. ^140
+
+[Footnote 139: See l'Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii.  In the forty
+years since its publication, no work has been more read and
+criticized; and the spirit of inquiry which it has excited is not
+the least of our obligations to the author.]
+
+[Footnote 140: For the intelligence of this obscure and obsolete
+jurisprudence (c. 80 - 111) I am deeply indebted to the
+friendship of a learned lord, who, with an accurate and
+discerning eye, has surveyed the philosophic history of law.  By
+his studies, posterity might be enriched: the merit of the orator
+and the judge can be felt only by his contemporaries.]
+
+Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the
+yoke of feudal tyranny, the institution of cities and
+corporations is one of the most powerful; and if those of
+Palestine are coeval with the first crusade, they may be ranked
+with the most ancient of the Latin world.  Many of the pilgrims
+had escaped from their lords under the banner of the cross; and
+it was the policy of the French princes to tempt their stay by
+the assurance of the rights and privileges of freemen.  It is
+expressly declared in the Assise of Jerusalem, that after
+instituting, for his knights and barons, the court of peers, in
+which he presided himself, Godfrey of Bouillon established a
+second tribunal, in which his person was represented by his
+viscount.  The jurisdiction of this inferior court extended over
+the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was composed of a select
+number of the most discreet and worthy citizens, who were sworn
+to judge, according to the laws of the actions and fortunes of
+their equals. ^141 In the conquest and settlement of new cities,
+the example of Jerusalem was imitated by the kings and their
+great vassals; and above thirty similar corporations were founded
+before the loss of the Holy Land.  Another class of subjects, the
+Syrians, ^142 or Oriental Christians, were oppressed by the zeal
+of the clergy, and protected by the toleration of the state.
+Godfrey listened to their reasonable prayer, that they might be
+judged by their own national laws.  A third court was instituted
+for their use, of limited and domestic jurisdiction: the sworn
+members were Syrians, in blood, language, and religion; but the
+office of the president (in Arabic, of the rais) was sometimes
+exercised by the viscount of the city.  At an immeasurable
+distance below the nobles, the burgesses, and the strangers, the
+Assise of Jerusalem condescends to mention the villains and
+slaves, the peasants of the land and the captives of war, who
+were almost equally considered as the objects of property.  The
+relief or protection of these unhappy men was not esteemed worthy
+of the care of the legislator; but he diligently provides for the
+recovery, though not indeed for the punishment, of the fugitives.
+Like hounds, or hawks, who had strayed from the lawful owner,
+they might be lost and claimed: the slave and falcon were of the
+same value; but three slaves, or twelve oxen, were accumulated to
+equal the price of the war-horse; and a sum of three hundred
+pieces of gold was fixed, in the age of chivalry, as the
+equivalent of the more noble animal. ^143
+
+[Footnote 141: Louis le Gros, who is considered as the father of
+this institution in France, did not begin his reign till nine
+years (A.D. 1108) after Godfrey of Bouillon, (Assises, c. 2,
+324.) For its origin and effects, see the judicious remarks of
+Dr. Robertson, (History of Charles V. vol. i. p. 30 - 36, 251 -
+265, quarto edition.)]
+
+[Footnote 142: Every reader conversant with the historians of the
+crusades will understand by the peuple des Suriens, the Oriental
+Christians, Melchites, Jacobites, or Nestorians, who had all
+adopted the use of the Arabic language, (vol. iv. p. 593.)]
+
+[Footnote 143: See the Assises de Jerusalem, (310, 311, 312.)
+These laws were enacted as late as the year 1350, in the kingdom
+of Cyprus.  In the same century, in the reign of Edward I., I
+understand, from a late publication, (of his Book of Account,)
+that the price of a war-horse was not less exorbitant in
+England.]
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of The Decline and Fall of the
+Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
+       Volume 5
+
+Author: Edward Gibbon
+
+Commentator: H. H. Milman
+
+Posting Date: June 7, 2008 [EBook #735]
+Release Date: November, 1996
+Last Udated: June 8, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Reed
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+Edward Gibbon, Esq.
+
+With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman
+
+Vol. 5
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part I.
+
+     Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images.--Revolt Of
+     Italy And Rome.--Temporal Dominion Of The Popes.--Conquest
+     Of Italy By The Franks.--Establishment Of Images.--Character
+     And Coronation Of Charlemagne.--Restoration And Decay Of The
+     Roman Empire In The West.--Independence Of Italy.--
+     Constitution Of The Germanic Body.
+
+In the connection of the church and state, I have considered the former
+as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a salutary maxim,
+if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The
+Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination
+and grace, and the strange transformation of the Eucharist from the sign
+to the substance of Christ's body, [1] I have purposely abandoned to the
+curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence
+and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
+decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, the
+propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church,
+the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious
+controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation. At the head
+of this class, we may justly rank the worship of images, so fiercely
+disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries; since a question of popular
+superstition produced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the
+popes, and the restoration of the Roman empire in the West.
+
+[Footnote 1: The learned Selden has given the history of
+transubstantiation in a comprehensive and pithy sentence: "This opinion
+is only rhetoric turned into logic," (his Works, vol. iii. p. 2037, in
+his Table-Talk.)]
+
+The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance
+to the use and abuse of images; and this aversion may be ascribed to
+their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic
+law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that
+precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the
+chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against
+the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own
+hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had they been endowed with
+sense and motion, should have started rather from the pedestal to adore
+the creative powers of the artist. [2] Perhaps some recent and imperfect
+converts of the Gnostic tribe might crown the statues of Christ and St.
+Paul with the profane honors which they paid to those of Aristotle and
+Pythagoras; [3] but the public religion of the Catholics was uniformly
+simple and spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in
+the censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after the
+Christian aera. Under the successors of Constantine, in the peace and
+luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent bishops condescended
+to indulge a visible superstition, for the benefit of the multitude;
+and, after the ruin of Paganism, they were no longer restrained by the
+apprehension of an odious parallel. The first introduction of a symbolic
+worship was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. The saints
+and martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were seated on the right
+hand if God; but the gracious and often supernatural favors, which,
+in the popular belief, were showered round their tomb, conveyed an
+unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims, who visited, and
+touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the memorials of their
+merits and sufferings. [4] But a memorial, more interesting than the
+skull or the sandals of a departed worthy, is the faithful copy of his
+person and features, delineated by the arts of painting or sculpture.
+In every age, such copies, so congenial to human feelings, have been
+cherished by the zeal of private friendship, or public esteem: the
+images of the Roman emperors were adored with civil, and almost
+religious, honors; a reverence less ostentatious, but more sincere, was
+applied to the statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues,
+these splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who
+had died for their celestial and everlasting country. At first, the
+experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the venerable pictures
+were discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold,
+and to gratify the prejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow
+though inevitable progression, the honors of the original were
+transferred to the copy: the devout Christian prayed before the image of
+a saint; and the Pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense,
+again stole into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety,
+were silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the
+pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a
+divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious
+adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in the rash attempt
+of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite Spirit, the eternal
+Father, who pervades and sustains the universe. [5] But the
+superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to worship
+the angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the human shape,
+which, on earth, they have condescended to assume. The second person of
+the Trinity had been clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body
+had ascended into heaven: and, had not some similitude been presented
+to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ might
+have been obliterated by the visible relics and representations of the
+saints. A similar indulgence was requisite and propitious for the Virgin
+Mary: the place of her burial was unknown; and the assumption of her
+soul and body into heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and
+Latins. The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly established
+before the end of the sixth century: they were fondly cherished by the
+warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics: the Pantheon and Vatican
+were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition; but this semblance
+of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the rude Barbarians and the
+Arian clergy of the West. The bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or
+marble, which peopled the temples of antiquity, were offensive to the
+fancy or conscience of the Christian Greeks: and a smooth surface
+of colors has ever been esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of
+imitation. [6]
+
+[Footnote 2: Nec intelligunt homines ineptissimi, quod si sentire
+simulacra et moveri possent, adoratura hominem fuissent a quo sunt
+expolita. (Divin. Institut. l. ii. c. 2.) Lactantius is the last, as
+well as the most eloquent, of the Latin apologists. Their raillery of
+idols attacks not only the object, but the form and matter.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Augustin, (Basnage, Hist.
+des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. p. 1313.) This Gnostic practice has
+a singular affinity with the private worship of Alexander Severus,
+(Lampridius, c. 29. Lardner, Heathen Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 34.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: See this History, vol. ii. p. 261; vol. ii. p. 434; vol.
+iii. p. 158-163.]
+
+[Footnote 5: (Concilium Nicenum, ii. in Collect. Labb. tom. viii. p.
+1025, edit. Venet.) Il seroit peut-etre a-propos de ne point souffrir
+d'images de la Trinite ou de la Divinite; les defenseurs les plus zeles
+des images ayant condamne celles-ci, et le concile de Trente ne parlant
+que des images de Jesus Christ et des Saints, (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles.
+tom. vi. p. 154.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: This general history of images is drawn from the xxiid book
+of the Hist. des Eglises Reformees of Basnage, tom. ii. p. 1310-1337.
+He was a Protestant, but of a manly spirit; and on this head the
+Protestants are so notoriously in the right, that they can venture to
+be impartial. See the perplexity of poor Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p.
+42.]
+
+The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the
+original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine
+features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue
+of Christ at Paneas in Palestine [7] was more probably that of
+some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were
+reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided
+by the clandestine imitation of some heathen model. In this distress, a
+bold and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of the image
+and the innocence of the worship. A new super structure of fable was
+raised on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence
+of Christ and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly
+deserted by our modern advocates. The bishop of Caesarea [8] records the
+epistle, [9] but he most strangely forgets the picture of Christ; [10]
+the perfect impression of his face on a linen, with which he gratified
+the faith of the royal stranger who had invoked his healing power, and
+offered the strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of
+the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the long
+imprisonment of the image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an
+oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop,
+and seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and
+most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of
+Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine
+promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is
+true, indeed, that the text of Procopius ascribes the double deliverance
+of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who purchased
+the absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian monarch. He was
+ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is compelled
+to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium
+was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been sprinkled
+on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel to the flames
+of the besieged. After this important service, the image of Edessa was
+preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians rejected the
+legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude, which was not
+the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine
+original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how
+far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "How can we
+with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor
+the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven,
+condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image; He who is
+seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture, which the
+Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in
+an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and
+love." Before the end of the sixth century, these images, made without
+hands, (in Greek it is a single word, [11] were propagated in the camps
+and cities of the Eastern empire: [12] they were the objects of worship,
+and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult,
+their venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage,
+or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these pictures, the far
+greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to
+a secondary likeness and improper title: but there were some of higher
+descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with
+the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and prolific
+virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation
+with the image of Edessa; and such is the veronica of Rome, or Spain,
+or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to
+his face, and delivered to a holy matron. The fruitful precedent was
+speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In
+the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God
+[13] were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have
+been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who was
+perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a
+painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians.
+The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of
+Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but
+these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish
+artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius. [14]
+
+[Footnote 7: After removing some rubbish of miracle and inconsistency,
+it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300, Paneas in Palestine was
+decorated with a bronze statue, representing a grave personage wrapped
+in a cloak, with a grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him,
+and that an inscription was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal. By the
+Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder and
+the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb. vii. 18,
+Philostorg. vii. 3, &c.) M. de Beausobre more reasonably conjectures
+the philosopher Apollonius, or the emperor Vespasian: in the latter
+supposition, the female is a city, a province, or perhaps the queen
+Berenice, (Bibliotheque Germanique, tom. xiii. p. 1-92.)]
+
+[Footnote 8: Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 13. The learned Assemannus
+has brought up the collateral aid of three Syrians, St. Ephrem, Josua
+Stylites, and James bishop of Sarug; but I do not find any notice of the
+Syriac original or the archives of Edessa, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p.
+318, 420, 554;) their vague belief is probably derived from the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The evidence for these epistles is stated and rejected by
+the candid Lardner, (Heathen Testimonies, vol. i. p. 297-309.) Among
+the herd of bigots who are forcibly driven from this convenient, but
+untenable, post, I am ashamed, with the Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts, &c.,
+to discover Mr. Addison, an English gentleman, (his Works, vol. i. p.
+528, Baskerville's edition;) but his superficial tract on the Christian
+religion owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested
+applause of our clergy.]
+
+[Footnote 10: From the silence of James of Sarug, (Asseman. Bibliot.
+Orient. p. 289, 318,) and the testimony of Evagrius, (Hist. Eccles. l.
+iv. c. 27,) I conclude that this fable was invented between the years
+521 and 594, most probably after the siege of Edessa in 540, (Asseman.
+tom. i. p. 416. Procopius, de Bell. Persic. l. ii.) It is the sword and
+buckler of, Gregory II., (in Epist. i. ad. Leon. Isaur. Concil. tom.
+viii. p. 656, 657,) of John Damascenus, (Opera, tom. i. p. 281, edit.
+Lequien,) and of the second Nicene Council, (Actio v. p. 1030.) The most
+perfect edition may be found in Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 175-178.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: See Ducange, in Gloss. Graec. et Lat. The subject is
+treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser, (Syntagma
+de Imaginibus non Manu factis, ad calcem Codini de Officiis, p.
+289-330,) the ass, or rather the fox, of Ingoldstadt, (see the
+Scaligerana;) with equal reason and wit by the Protestant Beausobre, in
+the ironical controversy which he has spread through many volumes of the
+Bibliotheque Germanique, (tom. xviii. p. 1-50, xx. p. 27-68, xxv. p.
+1-36, xxvii. p. 85-118, xxviii. p. 1-33, xxxi. p. 111-148, xxxii. p.
+75-107, xxxiv. p. 67-96.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: Theophylact Simocatta (l. ii. c. 3, p. 34, l. iii. c. 1,
+p. 63) celebrates it; yet it was no more than a copy, since he adds (of
+Edessa). See Pagi, tom. ii. A.D. 588 No. 11.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See, in the genuine or supposed works of John Damascenus,
+two passages on the Virgin and St. Luke, which have not been noticed by
+Gretser, nor consequently by Beausobre, (Opera Joh. Damascen. tom. i. p.
+618, 631.)]
+
+[Footnote 14: "Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the canvass:
+they are as bad as a group of statues!" It was thus that the ignorance
+and bigotry of a Greek priest applauded the pictures of Titian, which he
+had ordered, and refused to accept.]
+
+The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible
+degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as
+productive of comfort, and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the
+eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous
+Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of
+Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they
+heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant
+charge of the Jews and Mahometans, [15] who derived from the Law and the
+Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship.
+The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their
+authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus,
+and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the
+accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria, Palestine,
+and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and
+his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous
+defence. In a rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those
+cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts
+pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of
+these mute and inanimate idols. [1511] For a while Edessa had braved
+the Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was
+involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave
+and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years,
+the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a
+ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two
+hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa.
+[16] In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks
+was exercised in the defence of images; and they attempted to prove,
+that the sin and schism of the greatest part of the Orientals had
+forfeited the favor, and annihilated the virtue, of these precious
+symbols. But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or
+rational Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts,
+and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of
+the church. As the worship of images had never been established by any
+general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern empire had been
+retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of men and manners, the
+local degrees of refinement, and the personal characters of the bishops.
+The splendid devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the capital,
+and the inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and
+remote districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred
+luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians maintained,
+after their conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their
+separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were
+not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to the sight of images. [17]
+These various denominations of men afforded a fund of prejudice and
+aversion, of small account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but
+which, in the fortune of a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be
+often connected with the powers of the church and state.
+
+[Footnote 15: By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the origin
+of the Aconoclcasts is imprinted to the caliph Yezid and two Jews,
+who promised the empire to Leo; and the reproaches of these hostile
+sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for restoring the purity
+of the Christian worship, (see Spanheim, Hist. Imag. c. 2.)]
+
+[Footnote 1511: Yezid, ninth caliph of the race of the Ommiadae, caused
+all the images in Syria to be destroyed about the year 719; hence the
+orthodox reproaches the sectaries with following the example of the
+Saracens and the Jews Fragm. Mon. Johan. Jerosylym. Script. Byzant.
+vol. xvi. p. 235. Hist. des Repub. Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i. p.
+126.--G.]
+
+[Footnote 16: See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,) Abulpharagius,
+(Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 264,), and the
+criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The prudent Franciscan refuses
+to determine whether the image of Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa;
+but its repose is inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no
+longer famous or fashionable.]
+
+[Footnote 17: (Nicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are still
+content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p. 148;) but
+surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the superstition of the
+Germans of the xiith century.]
+
+Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,
+[18] who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the
+East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education,
+his reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had
+inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held
+to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of
+his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten
+years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy,
+bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman
+pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the
+reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious:
+he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with
+their consent, that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary
+and altar to a proper height in the churches where they might be visible
+to the eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it
+was impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse impulse
+of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred images
+still edified their votaries, and reproached the tyrant. He was himself
+provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him
+of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the
+example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen
+serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence
+as well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople
+and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
+Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster
+was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts
+was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East
+and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and
+twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the
+condemnation of images as an article of faith, and by the authority of
+a general council: but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved
+for his son Constantine; [19] and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
+bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
+mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and
+decrees of many provincial synods introduced the summons of the general
+council which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed
+of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of
+Europe and Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria
+were the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the
+churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
+Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general
+council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding
+assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic
+faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and
+thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree, that
+all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either
+blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of
+Christianity and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of
+idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse
+to deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
+disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In
+their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their
+temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they intrusted the
+execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in the
+former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith;
+but on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of
+the prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of
+hope and fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
+wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it easy for
+them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth.
+The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious
+fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy
+ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves
+of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of
+obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging
+a royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the
+Catholics, [20] but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private
+creed of his bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a
+secret horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
+to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the
+sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the faculties
+of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of antiquity;
+and the vigor of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the
+sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks.
+
+[Footnote 18: Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the
+Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom. viii.
+and ix. Collect. Labbe, edit. Venet. and the historical writings of
+Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonoras, &c. Of the modern
+Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Eccles. Seculum
+viii. and ix.,) and Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclasts,) have treated the
+subject with learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labors
+of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage
+(Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are
+cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite
+tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic
+indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der
+Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of research and
+impartiality--M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Some flowers of rhetoric. By Damascenus is styled (Opera,
+tom. i. p. 623.) Spanheim's Apology for the Synod of Constantinople (p.
+171, &c.) is worked up with truth and ingenuity, from such materials
+as he could find in the Nicene Acts, (p. 1046, &c.) The witty John of
+Damascus converts it into slaves of their belly, &c. Opera, tom. i. p.
+806]
+
+[Footnote 20: He is accused of proscribing the title of saint; styling
+the Virgin, Mother of Christ; comparing her after her delivery to an
+empty purse of Arianism, Nestorianism, &c. In his defence, Spanheim (c.
+iv. p. 207) is somewhat embarrassed between the interest of a Protestant
+and the duty of an orthodox divine.]
+
+The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to the people
+by the blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the most ignorant can
+perceive, the most torpid must feel, the profanation and downfall
+of their visible deities. The first hostilities of Leo were directed
+against a lofty Christ on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the
+palace. A ladder had been planted for the assault, but it was furiously
+shaken by a crowd of zealots and women: they beheld, with pious
+transport, the ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed
+against the pavement: and the honors of the ancient martyrs were
+prostituted to these criminals, who justly suffered for murder and
+rebellion. [21] The execution of the Imperial edicts was resisted by
+frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces: the person of Leo
+was endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm
+was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power.
+Of the Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were filled with
+images and monks: their votaries abjured, without scruple, the enemy
+of Christ, his mother, and the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and
+galleys, displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the
+harbor of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite of God
+and the people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their
+miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the defeat
+and conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the
+clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year
+of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens: during
+his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple, were occupied by
+his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith.
+The worship of images was triumphantly restored: the patriarch renounced
+his dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments and the righteous claims
+of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new, and in ancient, Rome.
+Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended
+at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final
+victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long
+reign was distracted with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual
+hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive
+or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal diadem,
+they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every
+act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving
+enmity of the monks, the faithful slaves of the superstition to which
+they owed their riches and influence. They prayed, they preached, they
+absolved, they inflamed, they conspired; the solitude of Palestine
+poured forth a torrent of invective; and the pen of St. John Damascenus,
+[22] the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant's head, both in
+this world and the next. [23] [2311] I am not at leisure to examine how
+far the monks provoked, nor how much they have exaggerated, their real
+and pretended sufferings, nor how many lost their lives or limbs, their
+eyes or their beards, by the cruelty of the emperor. [2312] From the
+chastisement of individuals, he proceeded to the abolition of the order;
+and, as it was wealthy and useless, his resentment might be stimulated
+by avarice, and justified by patriotism. The formidable name and
+mission of the Dragon, [24] his visitor-general, excited the terror
+and abhorrence of the black nation: the religious communities were
+dissolved, the buildings were converted into magazines, or bar racks;
+the lands, movables, and cattle were confiscated; and our modern
+precedents will support the charge, that much wanton or malicious havoc
+was exercised against the relics, and even the books of the monasteries.
+With the habit and profession of monks, the public and private worship
+of images was rigorously proscribed; and it should seem, that a solemn
+abjuration of idolatry was exacted from the subjects, or at least from
+the clergy, of the Eastern empire. [25]
+
+[Footnote 21: The holy confessor Theophanes approves the principle
+of their rebellion, (p. 339.) Gregory II. (in Epist. i. ad Imp. Leon.
+Concil. tom. viii. p. 661, 664) applauds the zeal of the Byzantine women
+who killed the Imperial officers.]
+
+[Footnote 22: John, or Mansur, was a noble Christian of Damascus, who
+held a considerable office in the service of the caliph. His zeal in the
+cause of images exposed him to the resentment and treachery of the Greek
+emperor; and on the suspicion of a treasonable correspondence, he was
+deprived of his right hand, which was miraculously restored by the
+Virgin. After this deliverance, he resigned his office, distributed
+his wealth, and buried himself in the monastery of St. Sabas, between
+Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. The legend is famous; but his learned
+editor, Father Lequien, has a unluckily proved that St. John Damascenus
+was already a monk before the Iconoclast dispute, (Opera, tom. i. Vit.
+St. Joan. Damascen. p. 10-13, et Notas ad loc.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: After sending Leo to the devil, he introduces his heir,
+(Opera, Damascen. tom. i. p. 625.) If the authenticity of this piece
+be suspicious, we are sure that in other works, no longer extant,
+Damascenus bestowed on Constantine the titles. (tom. i. p. 306.)]
+
+[Footnote 2311: The patriarch Anastasius, an Iconoclast under Leo, an
+image worshipper under Artavasdes, was scourged, led through the streets
+on an ass, with his face to the tail; and, reinvested in his dignity,
+became again the obsequious minister of Constantine in his Iconoclastic
+persecutions. See Schlosser p. 211.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 2312: Compare Schlosser, p. 228-234.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 24: In the narrative of this persecution from Theophanes and
+Cedreves, Spanheim (p. 235-238) is happy to compare the Draco of Leo
+with the dragoons (Dracones) of Louis XIV.; and highly solaces himself
+with the controversial pun.]
+
+[Footnote 25: (Damascen. Op. tom. i. p. 625.) This oath and subscription
+I do not remember to have seen in any modern compilation]
+
+The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; they were
+fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the independent zeal of
+the Italians. In ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction, the patriarch
+of Constantinople and the pope of Rome were nearly equal. But the Greek
+prelate was a domestic slave under the eye of his master, at whose
+nod he alternately passed from the convent to the throne, and from
+the throne to the convent. A distant and dangerous station, amidst the
+Barbarians of the West, excited the spirit and freedom of the Latin
+bishops.
+
+Their popular election endeared them to the Romans: the public and
+private indigence was relieved by their ample revenue; and the weakness
+or neglect of the emperors compelled them to consult, both in peace and
+war, the temporal safety of the city. In the school of adversity the
+priest insensibly imbibed the virtues and the ambition of a prince; the
+same character was assumed, the same policy was adopted, by the Italian,
+the Greek, or the Syrian, who ascended the chair of St. Peter; and,
+after the loss of her legions and provinces, the genius and fortune of
+the popes again restored the supremacy of Rome. It is agreed, that in
+the eighth century, their dominion was founded on rebellion, and
+that the rebellion was produced, and justified, by the heresy of the
+Iconoclasts; but the conduct of the second and third Gregory, in this
+memorable contest, is variously interpreted by the wishes of their
+friends and enemies. The Byzantine writers unanimously declare, that,
+after a fruitless admonition, they pronounced the separation of the
+East and West, and deprived the sacrilegious tyrant of the revenue
+and sovereignty of Italy. Their excommunication is still more clearly
+expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of the papal
+triumphs; and as they are more strongly attached to their religion
+than to their country, they praise, instead of blaming, the zeal and
+orthodoxy of these apostolical men. [26] The modern champions of
+Rome are eager to accept the praise and the precedent: this great and
+glorious example of the deposition of royal heretics is celebrated by
+the cardinals Baronius and Bellarmine; [27] and if they are asked,
+why the same thunders were not hurled against the Neros and Julians of
+antiquity, they reply, that the weakness of the primitive church was the
+sole cause of her patient loyalty. [28] On this occasion the effects of
+love and hatred are the same; and the zealous Protestants, who seek
+to kindle the indignation, and to alarm the fears, of princes and
+magistrates, expatiate on the insolence and treason of the two Gregories
+against their lawful sovereign. [29] They are defended only by the
+moderate Catholics, for the most part, of the Gallican church, [30] who
+respect the saint, without approving the sin. These common advocates of
+the crown and the mitre circumscribe the truth of facts by the rule
+of equity, Scripture, and tradition, and appeal to the evidence of the
+Latins, [31] and the lives [32] and epistles of the popes themselves.
+
+[Footnote 26: Theophanes. (Chronograph. p. 343.) For this Gregory is
+styled by Cedrenus. (p. 450.) Zonaras specifies the thunder, (tom. ii.
+l. xv. p. 104, 105.) It may be observed, that the Greeks are apt to
+confound the times and actions of two Gregories.]
+
+[Footnote 27: See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 730, No. 4, 5; dignum
+exemplum! Bellarmin. de Romano Pontifice, l. v. c. 8: mulctavit eum
+parte imperii. Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iii. Opera, tom. ii. p.
+169. Yet such is the change of Italy, that Sigonius is corrected by the
+editor of Milan, Philipus Argelatus, a Bolognese, and subject of the
+pope.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Quod si Christiani olim non deposuerunt Neronem aut
+Julianum, id fuit quia deerant vires temporales Christianis, (honest
+Bellarmine, de Rom. Pont. l. v. c. 7.) Cardinal Perron adds a
+distinction more honorable to the first Christians, but not more
+satisfactory to modern princes--the treason of heretics and apostates,
+who break their oath, belie their coin, and renounce their allegiance to
+Christ and his vicar, (Perroniana, p. 89.)]
+
+[Footnote 29: Take, as a specimen, the cautious Basnage (Hist. d'Eglise,
+p. 1350, 1351) and the vehement Spanheim, (Hist. Imaginum,) who, with a
+hundred more, tread in the footsteps of the centuriators of Magdeburgh.]
+
+[Footnote 30: See Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. epist. vii. 7, p.
+456-474,) Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Nov. Testamenti, secul. viii.
+dissert. i. p. 92-98,) Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 215, 216,) and
+Giannone, (Istoria Civile Napoli, tom. i. p. 317-320,) a disciple of the
+Gallican school In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate
+party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both
+sides.]
+
+[Footnote 31: They appeal to Paul Warnefrid, or Diaconus, (de Gestis
+Langobard. l. vi. c. 49, p. 506, 507, in Script. Ital. Muratori, tom. i.
+pars i.,) and the nominal Anastasius, (de Vit. Pont. in Muratori, tom.
+iii. pars i. Gregorius II. p. 154. Gregorius III. p. 158. Zacharias, p.
+161. Stephanus III. p. 165.; Paulus, p. 172. Stephanus IV. p. 174.
+Hadrianus, p. 179. Leo III. p. 195.) Yet I may remark, that the true
+Anastasius (Hist. Eccles. p. 134, edit. Reg.) and the Historia Miscella,
+(l. xxi. p. 151, in tom. i. Script. Ital.,) both of the ixth century,
+translate and approve the Greek text of Theophanes.]
+
+[Footnote 32: With some minute difference, the most learned critics,
+Lucas Holstenius, Schelestrate, Ciampini, Bianchini, Muratori,
+(Prolegomena ad tom. iii. pars i.,) are agreed that the Liber
+Pontificalis was composed and continued by the apostolic librarians
+and notaries of the viiith and ixth centuries; and that the last and
+smallest part is the work of Anastasius, whose name it bears. The style
+is barbarous, the narrative partial, the details are trifling--yet
+it must be read as a curious and authentic record of the times. The
+epistles of the popes are dispersed in the volumes of Councils.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part II.
+
+Two original epistles, from Gregory the Second to the emperor Leo, are
+still extant; [33] and if they cannot be praised as the most perfect
+models of eloquence and logic, they exhibit the portrait, or at least
+the mask, of the founder of the papal monarchy. "During ten pure and
+fortunate years," says Gregory to the emperor, "we have tasted the
+annual comfort of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink, with
+your own hand, the sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox
+creed of our fathers. How deplorable is the change! how tremendous
+the scandal! You now accuse the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the
+accusation, you betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance
+we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments: the
+first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion; and
+were you to enter a grammar-school, and avow yourself the enemy of our
+worship, the simple and pious children would be provoked to cast
+their horn-books at your head." After this decent salutation, the pope
+attempts the usual distinction between the idols of antiquity and
+the Christian images. The former were the fanciful representations of
+phantoms or daemons, at a time when the true God had not manifested
+his person in any visible likeness. The latter are the genuine forms
+of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd
+of miracles, the innocence and merit of this relative worship. He must
+indeed have trusted to the ignorance of Leo, since he could assert the
+perpetual use of images, from the apostolic age, and their venerable
+presence in the six synods of the Catholic church. A more specious
+argument is drawn from present possession and recent practice the
+harmony of the Christian world supersedes the demand of a general
+council; and Gregory frankly confesses, than such assemblies can only
+be useful under the reign of an orthodox prince. To the impudent and
+inhuman Leo, more guilty than a heretic, he recommends peace, silence,
+and implicit obedience to his spiritual guides of Constantinople and
+Rome. The limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers are defined by the
+pontiff. To the former he appropriates the body; to the latter, the
+soul: the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate: the more
+formidable weapon of excommunication is intrusted to the clergy; and in
+the exercise of their divine commission a zealous son will not spare his
+offending father: the successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise
+the kings of the earth. "You assault us, O tyrant! with a carnal and
+military hand: unarmed and naked we can only implore the Christ, the
+prince of the heavenly host, that he will send unto you a devil, for the
+destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul. You declare,
+with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to Rome: I will break
+in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor
+Martin, shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the
+Imperial throne. Would to God that I might be permitted to tread in the
+footsteps of the holy Martin! but may the fate of Constans serve as a
+warning to the persecutors of the church! After his just condemnation
+by the bishops of Sicily, the tyrant was cut off, in the fullness of his
+sins, by a domestic servant: the saint is still adored by the nations of
+Scythia, among whom he ended his banishment and his life. But it is our
+duty to live for the edification and support of the faithful people; nor
+are we reduced to risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as
+you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the
+city may perhaps expose it to your depredation but we can remove to
+the distance of four-and-twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the
+Lombards, and then--you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the
+popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East
+and West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they
+revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you
+threaten to destroy. [35] The remote and interior kingdoms of the West
+present their homage to Christ and his vicegerent; and we now prepare to
+visit one of their most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from
+our hands the sacrament of baptism. [36] The Barbarians have submitted
+to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the
+shepherd. These pious Barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst
+to avenge the persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal
+enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are
+innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest; may it fall on
+your own head!"
+
+[Footnote 33: The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved in the
+Acta of the Nicene Council, (tom. viii. p. 651-674.) They are without a
+date, which is variously fixed, by Baronius in the year 726, by Muratori
+(Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 120) in 729, and by Pagi in 730. Such is
+the force of prejudice, that some papists have praised the good sense
+and moderation of these letters.]
+
+[Footnote 34: (Epist. i. p. 664.) This proximity of the Lombards is hard
+of digestion. Camillo Pellegrini (Dissert. iv. de Ducatu Beneventi,
+in the Script. Ital. tom. v. p. 172, 173) forcibly reckons the xxivth
+stadia, not from Rome, but from the limits of the Roman duchy, to the
+first fortress, perhaps Sora, of the Lombards. I rather believe that
+Gregory, with the pedantry of the age, employs stadia for miles, without
+much inquiry into the genuine measure.]
+
+[Footnote 35: {Greek}]
+
+[Footnote 36: (p. 665.) The pope appears to have imposed on the
+ignorance of the Greeks: he lived and died in the Lateran; and in his
+time all the kingdoms of the West had embraced Christianity. May not
+this unknown Septetus have some reference to the chief of the Saxon
+Heptarchy, to Ina king of Wessex, who, in the pontificate of Gregory the
+Second, visited Rome for the purpose, not of baptism, but of pilgrimage!
+(Pagi. A., 89, No. 2. A.D. 726, No. 15.)]
+
+The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been
+witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related
+with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the emperor. But on the
+reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic
+deities: the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs,
+and saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong
+alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the
+price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his
+disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate; and
+the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor displays his
+confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the powers of resistance.
+Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the
+public enemy, and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their
+danger and their duty. [37] At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and
+the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of
+religion; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the
+most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was
+transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and
+die in the defence of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people was
+devoted to their father, and even the Lombards were ambitious to share
+the merit and advantage of this holy war. The most treasonable act,
+but the most obvious revenge, was the destruction of the statues of Leo
+himself: the most effectual and pleasing measure of rebellion, was the
+withholding the tribute of Italy, and depriving him of a power which he
+had recently abused by the imposition of a new capitation. [38] A form
+of administration was preserved by the election of magistrates and
+governors; and so high was the public indignation, that the Italians
+were prepared to create an orthodox emperor, and to conduct him with
+a fleet and army to the palace of Constantinople. In that palace, the
+Roman bishops, the second and third Gregory, were condemned as the
+authors of the revolt, and every attempt was made, either by fraud or
+force, to seize their persons, and to strike at their lives. The city
+was repeatedly visited or assaulted by captains of the guards, and dukes
+and exarchs of high dignity or secret trust; they landed with foreign
+troops, they obtained some domestic aid, and the superstition of Naples
+may blush that her fathers were attached to the cause of heresy. But
+these clandestine or open attacks were repelled by the courage and
+vigilance of the Romans; the Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their
+leaders suffered an ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined
+to mercy, refused to intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna,
+[39] the several quarters of the city had long exercised a bloody and
+hereditary feud; in religious controversy they found a new aliment of
+faction: but the votaries of images were superior in numbers or spirit,
+and the exarch, who attempted to stem the torrent, lost his life in
+a popular sedition. To punish this flagitious deed, and restore his
+dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic
+Gulf. After suffering from the winds and waves much loss and delay,
+the Greeks made their descent in the neighborhood of Ravenna: they
+threatened to depopulate the guilty capital, and to imitate, perhaps to
+surpass, the example of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a
+former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the principal
+inhabitants. The women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate
+in prayer: the men were in arms for the defence of their country; the
+common danger had united the factions, and the event of a battle was
+preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the
+two armies alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice
+was heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory. The
+strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured
+forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were so deeply infected
+with blood, that during six years the public prejudice abstained
+from the fish of the river; and the institution of an annual feast
+perpetuated the worship of images, and the abhorrence of the Greek
+tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic arms, the Roman pontiff
+convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against the heresy of the
+Iconoclasts. With their consent, he pronounced a general excommunication
+against all who by word or deed should attack the tradition of the
+fathers and the images of the saints: in this sentence the emperor was
+tacitly involved, [40] but the vote of a last and hopeless remonstrance
+may seem to imply that the anathema was yet suspended over his guilty
+head. No sooner had they confirmed their own safety, the worship of
+images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than the popes appear to
+have relaxed of their severity, and to have spared the relics of the
+Byzantine dominion. Their moderate councils delayed and prevented
+the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not to
+separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch was permitted
+to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather than a master;
+and till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the government of Rome
+and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors of Constantine.
+[41]
+
+[Footnote 37: I shall transcribe the important and decisive passage
+of the Liber Pontificalis. Respiciens ergo pius vir profanam principis
+jussionem, jam contra Imperatorem quasi contra hostem se armavit,
+renuens haeresim ejus, scribens ubique se cavere Christianos, eo quod
+orta fuisset impietas talis. Igitur permoti omnes Pentapolenses, atque
+Venetiarum exercitus contra Imperatoris jussionem restiterunt; dicentes
+se nunquam in ejusdem pontificis condescendere necem, sed pro ejus magis
+defensione viriliter decertare, (p. 156.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: A census, or capitation, says Anastasius, (p. 156;) a
+most cruel tax, unknown to the Saracens themselves, exclaims the zealous
+Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclastes, l. i.,) and Theophanes, (p. 344,)
+who talks of Pharaoh's numbering the male children of Israel. This mode
+of taxation was familiar to the Saracens; and, most unluckily for the
+historians, it was imposed a few years afterwards in France by his
+patron Louis XIV.]
+
+[Footnote 39: See the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus, (in the Scriptores
+Rerum Italicarum of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i.,) whose deeper shade
+of barbarism marks the difference between Rome and Ravenna. Yet we are
+indebted to him for some curious and domestic facts--the quarters and
+factions of Ravenna, (p. 154,) the revenge of Justinian II, (p. 160,
+161,) the defeat of the Greeks, (p. 170, 171,) &c.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Yet Leo was undoubtedly comprised in the si quis ....
+imaginum sacrarum.... destructor.... extiterit, sit extorris a cor
+pore D. N. Jesu Christi vel totius ecclesiae unitate. The canonists may
+decide whether the guilt or the name constitutes the excommunication;
+and the decision is of the last importance to their safety, since,
+according to the oracle (Gratian, Caus. xxiii. q. 5, 47, apud Spanheim,
+Hist. Imag. p. 112) homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos trucidant.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Compescuit tale consilium Pontifex, sperans conversionem
+principis, (Anastas. p. 156.) Sed ne desisterent ab amore et fide R.
+J. admonebat, (p. 157.) The popes style Leo and Constantine Copronymus,
+Imperatores et Domini, with the strange epithet of Piissimi. A famous
+Mosaic of the Lateran (A.D. 798) represents Christ, who delivers the
+keys to St. Peter and the banner to Constantine V. (Muratori, Annali
+d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 337.)]
+
+The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and arts of
+Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty years of servitude,
+from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By the Caesars, the triumphs
+of the consuls had been annihilated: in the decline and fall of the
+empire, the god Terminus, the sacred boundary, had insensibly receded
+from the ocean, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was
+reduced to her ancient territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from
+Narni to the mouth of the Tyber. [42] When the kings were banished,
+the republic reposed on the firm basis which had been founded by their
+wisdom and virtue. Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between
+two annual magistrates: the senate continued to exercise the powers
+of administration and counsel; and the legislative authority was
+distributed in the assemblies of the people, by a well-proportioned
+scale of property and service. Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the
+primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war: the
+will of the community was absolute: the rights of individuals were
+sacred: one hundred and thirty thousand citizens were armed for defence
+or conquest; and a band of robbers and outlaws was moulded into a nation
+deserving of freedom and ambitious of glory. [43] When the sovereignty
+of the Greek emperors was extinguished, the ruins of Rome presented
+the sad image of depopulation and decay: her slavery was a habit, her
+liberty an accident; the effect of superstition, and the object of her
+own amazement and terror. The last vestige of the substance, or even the
+forms, of the constitution, was obliterated from the practice and memory
+of the Romans; and they were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to
+build the fabric of a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the offspring
+of slaves and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious
+Barbarians. As often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their most
+bitter contempt of a foe, they called him a Roman; "and in this name,"
+says the bishop Liutprand, "we include whatever is base, whatever is
+cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury,
+and every vice that can prostitute the dignity of human nature." [44]
+[441] By the necessity of their situation, the inhabitants of Rome
+were cast into the rough model of a republican government: they were
+compelled to elect some judges in peace, and some leaders in war: the
+nobles assembled to deliberate, and their resolves could not be executed
+without the union and consent of the multitude. The style of the Roman
+senate and people was revived, [45] but the spirit was fled; and
+their new independence was disgraced by the tumultuous conflict of
+vicentiousness and oppression. The want of laws could only be supplied
+by the influence of religion, and their foreign and domestic counsels
+were moderated by the authority of the bishop. His alms, his sermons,
+his correspondence with the kings and prelates of the West, his recent
+services, their gratitude, and oath, accustomed the Romans to consider
+him as the first magistrate or prince of the city. The Christian
+humility of the popes was not offended by the name of Dominus, or Lord;
+and their face and inscription are still apparent on the most ancient
+coins. [46] Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by the reverence
+of a thousand years; and their noblest title is the free choice of a
+people, whom they had redeemed from slavery.
+
+[Footnote 42: I have traced the Roman duchy according to the maps, and
+the maps according to the excellent dissertation of father Beretti,
+(de Chorographia Italiae Medii Aevi, sect. xx. p. 216-232.) Yet I must
+nicely observe, that Viterbo is of Lombard foundation, (p. 211,) and
+that Terracina was usurped by the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 43: On the extent, population, &c., of the Roman kingdom,
+the reader may peruse, with pleasure, the Discours Preliminaire to the
+Republique Romaine of M. de Beaufort, (tom. i.,) who will not be accused
+of too much credulity for the early ages of Rome.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Quos (Romanos) nos, Longobardi scilicet, Saxones, Franci,
+Locharingi, Bajoarii, Suevi, Burgundiones, tanto dedignamur ut inimicos
+nostros commoti, nil aliud contumeliarum nisi Romane, dicamus: hoc solo,
+id est Romanorum nomine, quicquid ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis,
+quicquid avaritiae, quicquid luxuriae, quicquid mendacii, immo quicquid
+vitiorum est comprehendentes, (Liutprand, in Legat Script. Ital. tom.
+ii. para i. p. 481.) For the sins of Cato or Tully Minos might have
+imposed as a fit penance the daily perusal of this barbarous passage.]
+
+[Footnote 441: Yet this contumelious sentence, quoted by Robertson
+(Charles V note 2) as well as Gibbon, was applied by the angry bishop
+to the Byzantine Romans, whom, indeed, he admits to be the genuine
+descendants of Romulus.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Pipino regi Francorum, omnis senatus, atque universa
+populi generalitas a Deo servatae Romanae urbis. Codex Carolin. epist.
+36, in Script. Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 160. The names of senatus and
+senator were never totally extinct, (Dissert. Chorograph. p. 216,
+217;) but in the middle ages they signified little more than nobiles,
+optimates, &c., (Ducange, Gloss. Latin.)]
+
+[Footnote 46: See Muratori, Antiquit. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. ii.
+Dissertat xxvii. p. 548. On one of these coins we read Hadrianus Papa
+(A.D. 772;) on the reverse, Vict. Ddnn. with the word Conob, which
+the Pere Joubert (Science des Medailles, tom. ii. p. 42) explains by
+Constantinopoli Officina B (secunda.)]
+
+In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis enjoyed a
+perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and in the exercise
+of the Olympic games. [47] Happy would it have been for the Romans, if
+a similar privilege had guarded the patrimony of St. Peter from the
+calamities of war; if the Christians, who visited the holy threshold,
+would have sheathed their swords in the presence of the apostle and his
+successor. But this mystic circle could have been traced only by the
+wand of a legislator and a sage: this pacific system was incompatible
+with the zeal and ambition of the popes the Romans were not addicted,
+like the inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent and placid labors of
+agriculture; and the Barbarians of Italy, though softened by the
+climate, were far below the Grecian states in the institutions of
+public and private life. A memorable example of repentance and piety was
+exhibited by Liutprand, king of the Lombards. In arms, at the gate of
+the Vatican, the conqueror listened to the voice of Gregory the Second,
+[48] withdrew his troops, resigned his conquests, respectfully visited
+the church of St. Peter, and after performing his devotions, offered
+his sword and dagger, his cuirass and mantle, his silver cross, and his
+crown of gold, on the tomb of the apostle. But this religious fervor was
+the illusion, perhaps the artifice, of the moment; the sense of interest
+is strong and lasting; the love of arms and rapine was congenial to the
+Lombards; and both the prince and people were irresistibly tempted
+by the disorders of Italy, the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike
+profession of her new chief. On the first edicts of the emperor, they
+declared themselves the champions of the holy images: Liutprand invaded
+the province of Romagna, which had already assumed that distinctive
+appellation; the Catholics of the Exarchate yielded without reluctance
+to his civil and military power; and a foreign enemy was introduced for
+the first time into the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. That city and
+fortress were speedily recovered by the active diligence and maritime
+forces of the Venetians; and those faithful subjects obeyed the
+exhortation of Gregory himself, in separating the personal guilt of Leo
+from the general cause of the Roman empire. [49] The Greeks were
+less mindful of the service, than the Lombards of the injury: the two
+nations, hostile in their faith, were reconciled in a dangerous and
+unnatural alliance: the king and the exarch marched to the conquest of
+Spoleto and Rome: the storm evaporated without effect, but the policy
+of Liutprand alarmed Italy with a vexatious alternative of hostility and
+truce. His successor Astolphus declared himself the equal enemy of the
+emperor and the pope: Ravenna was subdued by force or treachery, [50]
+and this final conquest extinguished the series of the exarchs, who had
+reigned with a subordinate power since the time of Justinian and
+the ruin of the Gothic kingdom. Rome was summoned to acknowledge the
+victorious Lombard as her lawful sovereign; the annual tribute of a
+piece of gold was fixed as the ransom of each citizen, and the sword of
+destruction was unsheathed to exact the penalty of her disobedience. The
+Romans hesitated; they entreated; they complained; and the threatening
+Barbarians were checked by arms and negotiations, till the popes had
+engaged the friendship of an ally and avenger beyond the Alps. [51]
+
+[Footnote 47: See West's Dissertation on the Olympic Games, (Pindar.
+vol. ii. p. 32-36, edition in 12mo.,) and the judicious reflections of
+Polybius (tom. i. l. iv. p. 466, edit Gronov.)]
+
+[Footnote 48: The speech of Gregory to the Lombard is finely composed
+by Sigonius, (de Regno Italiae, l. iii. Opera, tom. ii. p. 173,) who
+imitates the license and the spirit of Sallust or Livy.]
+
+[Footnote 49: The Venetian historians, John Sagorninus, (Chron. Venet.
+p. 13,) and the doge Andrew Dandolo, (Scriptores Rer. Ital. tom. xii. p.
+135,) have preserved this epistle of Gregory. The loss and recovery of
+Ravenna are mentioned by Paulus Diaconus, (de Gest. Langobard, l. vi.
+c. 42, 54, in Script. Ital. tom. i. pars i. p. 506, 508;) but our
+chronologists, Pagi, Muratori, &c., cannot ascertain the date or
+circumstances]
+
+[Footnote 50: The option will depend on the various readings of the Mss.
+of Anastasius--deceperat, or decerpserat, (Script. Ital. tom. iii. pars
+i. p. 167.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: The Codex Carolinus is a collection of the epistles of
+the popes to Charles Martel, (whom they style Subregulus,) Pepin, and
+Charlemagne, as far as the year 791, when it was formed by the last of
+these princes. His original and authentic Ms. (Bibliothecae Cubicularis)
+is now in the Imperial library of Vienna, and has been published by
+Lambecius and Muratori, (Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 75,
+&c.)]
+
+In his distress, the first [511] Gregory had implored the aid of the
+hero of the age, of Charles Martel, who governed the French monarchy
+with the humble title of mayor or duke; and who, by his signal victory
+over the Saracens, had saved his country, and perhaps Europe, from the
+Mahometan yoke. The ambassadors of the pope were received by Charles
+with decent reverence; but the greatness of his occupations, and the
+shortness of his life, prevented his interference in the affairs of
+Italy, except by a friendly and ineffectual mediation. His son Pepin,
+the heir of his power and virtues, assumed the office of champion of
+the Roman church; and the zeal of the French prince appears to have been
+prompted by the love of glory and religion. But the danger was on the
+banks of the Tyber, the succor on those of the Seine, and our sympathy
+is cold to the relation of distant misery. Amidst the tears of the city,
+Stephen the Third embraced the generous resolution of visiting in person
+the courts of Lombardy and France, to deprecate the injustice of his
+enemy, or to excite the pity and indignation of his friend. After
+soothing the public despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this
+laborious journey with the ambassadors of the French monarch and the
+Greek emperor. The king of the Lombards was inexorable; but his threats
+could not silence the complaints, nor retard the speed of the Roman
+pontiff, who traversed the Pennine Alps, reposed in the abbey of St.
+Maurice, and hastened to grasp the right hand of his protector; a hand
+which was never lifted in vain, either in war or friendship. Stephen
+was entertained as the visible successor of the apostle; at the next
+assembly, the field of March or of May, his injuries were exposed to a
+devout and warlike nation, and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant,
+but as a conqueror, at the head of a French army, which was led by
+the king in person. The Lombards, after a weak resistance, obtained an
+ignominious peace, and swore to restore the possessions, and to respect
+the sanctity, of the Roman church. But no sooner was Astolphus delivered
+from the presence of the French arms, than he forgot his promise and
+resented his disgrace. Rome was again encompassed by his arms; and
+Stephen, apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his Transalpine allies
+enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the name and
+person of St. Peter himself. [52] The apostle assures his adopted sons,
+the king, the clergy, and the nobles of France, that, dead in the flesh,
+he is still alive in the spirit; that they now hear, and must obey, the
+voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman church; that the Virgin,
+the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven,
+unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that
+riches, victory, and paradise, will crown their pious enterprise, and
+that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they
+suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people, to fall into the hands of
+the perfidious Lombards. The second expedition of Pepin was not less
+rapid and fortunate than the first: St. Peter was satisfied, Rome
+was again saved, and Astolphus was taught the lessons of justice
+and sincerity by the scourge of a foreign master. After this double
+chastisement, the Lombards languished about twenty years in a state
+of languor and decay. But their minds were not yet humbled to their
+condition; and instead of affecting the pacific virtues of the feeble,
+they peevishly harassed the Romans with a repetition of claims,
+evasions, and inroads, which they undertook without reflection, and
+terminated without glory. On either side, their expiring monarchy was
+pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian the First, the genius,
+the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne, the son of Pepin; these
+heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic
+friendship, and while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished
+their proceedings with the fairest colors of equity and moderation. [53]
+The passes of the Alps, and the walls of Pavia, were the only defence
+of the Lombards; the former were surprised, the latter were invested, by
+the son of Pepin; and after a blockade of two years, [531] Desiderius,
+the last of their native princes, surrendered his sceptre and his
+capital.
+
+Under the dominion of a foreign king, but in the possession of their
+national laws, the Lombards became the brethren, rather than the
+subjects, of the Franks; who derived their blood, and manners, and
+language, from the same Germanic origin. [54]
+
+[Footnote 511: Gregory I. had been dead above a century; read Gregory
+III.--M]
+
+[Footnote 52: See this most extraordinary letter in the Codex Carolinus,
+epist iii. p. 92. The enemies of the popes have charged them with fraud
+and blasphemy; yet they surely meant to persuade rather than deceive.
+This introduction of the dead, or of immortals, was familiar to the
+ancient orators, though it is executed on this occasion in the rude
+fashion of the age.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Except in the divorce of the daughter of Desiderius, whom
+Charlemagne repudiated sine aliquo crimine. Pope Stephen IV. had most
+furiously opposed the alliance of a noble Frank--cum perfida, horrida
+nec dicenda, foetentissima natione Longobardorum--to whom he imputes the
+first stain of leprosy, (Cod. Carolin. epist. 45, p. 178, 179.)
+Another reason against the marriage was the existence of a first
+wife, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 232, 233, 236, 237.) But
+Charlemagne indulged himself in the freedom of polygamy or concubinage.]
+
+[Footnote 531: Of fifteen months. James, Life of Charlemagne, p.
+187.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 54: See the Annali d'Italia of Muratori, tom. vi., and the
+three first Dissertations of his Antiquitates Italiae Medii Aevi, tom.
+i.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part III.
+
+The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family form
+the important link of ancient and modern, of civil and ecclesiastical,
+history. In the conquest of Italy, the champions of the Roman church
+obtained a favorable occasion, a specious title, the wishes of the
+people, the prayers and intrigues of the clergy. But the most essential
+gifts of the popes to the Carlovingian race were the dignities of
+king of France, [55] and of patrician of Rome. I. Under the sacerdotal
+monarchy of St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice of
+seeking, on the banks of the Tyber, their kings, their laws, and the
+oracles of their fate. The Franks were perplexed between the name and
+substance of their government. All the powers of royalty were exercised
+by Pepin, mayor of the palace; and nothing, except the regal title,
+was wanting to his ambition. His enemies were crushed by his valor;
+his friends were multiplied by his liberality; his father had been the
+savior of Christendom; and the claims of personal merit were repeated
+and ennobled in a descent of four generations. The name and image of
+royalty was still preserved in the last descendant of Clovis, the feeble
+Childeric; but his obsolete right could only be used as an instrument
+of sedition: the nation was desirous of restoring the simplicity of
+the constitution; and Pepin, a subject and a prince, was ambitious to
+ascertain his own rank and the fortune of his family. The mayor and the
+nobles were bound, by an oath of fidelity, to the royal phantom: the
+blood of Clovis was pure and sacred in their eyes; and their common
+ambassadors addressed the Roman pontiff, to dispel their scruples, or
+to absolve their promise. The interest of Pope Zachary, the successor of
+the two Gregories, prompted him to decide, and to decide in their favor:
+he pronounced that the nation might lawfully unite in the same person
+the title and authority of king; and that the unfortunate Childeric, a
+victim of the public safety, should be degraded, shaved, and confined
+in a monastery for the remainder of his days. An answer so agreeable to
+their wishes was accepted by the Franks as the opinion of a casuist, the
+sentence of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet: the Merovingian race
+disappeared from the earth; and Pepin was exalted on a buckler by the
+suffrage of a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and to march
+under his standard. His coronation was twice performed, with the
+sanction of the popes, by their most faithful servant St. Boniface, the
+apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third,
+who, in the monastery of St. Denys placed the diadem on the head of his
+benefactor. The royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously
+applied: [56] the successor of St. Peter assumed the character of a
+divine ambassador: a German chieftain was transformed into the Lord's
+anointed; and this Jewish rite has been diffused and maintained by the
+superstition and vanity of modern Europe. The Franks were absolved from
+their ancient oath; but a dire anathema was thundered against them
+and their posterity, if they should dare to renew the same freedom of
+choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious race of
+the Carlovingian princes. Without apprehending the future danger, these
+princes gloried in their present security: the secretary of Charlemagne
+affirms, that the French sceptre was transferred by the authority of
+the popes; [57] and in their boldest enterprises, they insist, with
+confidence, on this signal and successful act of temporal jurisdiction.
+
+[Footnote 55: Besides the common historians, three French critics,
+Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. l. vii. epist. 9, p. 477-487,) Pagi,
+(Critica, A.D. 751, No. 1-6, A.D. 752, No. 1-10,) and Natalis Alexander,
+(Hist. Novi Testamenti, dissertat, ii. p. 96-107,) have treated this
+subject of the deposition of Childeric with learning and attention, but
+with a strong bias to save the independence of the crown. Yet they are
+hard pressed by the texts which they produce of Eginhard, Theophanes,
+and the old annals, Laureshamenses, Fuldenses, Loisielani]
+
+[Footnote 56: Not absolutely for the first time. On a less conspicuous
+theatre it had been used, in the vith and viith centuries, by
+the provincial bishops of Britain and Spain. The royal unction of
+Constantinople was borrowed from the Latins in the last age of the
+empire. Constantine Manasses mentions that of Charlemagne as a foreign,
+Jewish, incomprehensible ceremony. See Selden's Titles of Honor, in his
+Works, vol. iii. part i. p. 234-249.]
+
+[Footnote 57: See Eginhard, in Vita Caroli Magni, c. i. p. 9, &c.,
+c. iii. p. 24. Childeric was deposed--jussu, the Carlovingians were
+established--auctoritate, Pontificis Romani. Launoy, &c., pretend that
+these strong words are susceptible of a very soft interpretation. Be
+it so; yet Eginhard understood the world, the court, and the Latin
+language.]
+
+II. In the change of manners and language the patricians of Rome
+[58] were far removed from the senate of Romulus, on the palace of
+Constantine, from the free nobles of the republic, or the fictitious
+parents of the emperor. After the recovery of Italy and Africa by the
+arms of Justinian, the importance and danger of those remote provinces
+required the presence of a supreme magistrate; he was indifferently
+styled the exarch or the patrician; and these governors of Ravenna,
+who fill their place in the chronology of princes, extended their
+jurisdiction over the Roman city. Since the revolt of Italy and the loss
+of the Exarchate, the distress of the Romans had exacted some sacrifice
+of their independence. Yet, even in this act, they exercised the right
+of disposing of themselves; and the decrees of the senate and people
+successively invested Charles Martel and his posterity with the honors
+of patrician of Rome. The leaders of a powerful nation would have
+disdained a servile title and subordinate office; but the reign of the
+Greek emperors was suspended; and, in the vacancy of the empire, they
+derived a more glorious commission from the pope and the republic. The
+Roman ambassadors presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine
+of St. Peter, as a pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner
+which it was their right and duty to unfurl in the defence of the
+church and city. [59] In the time of Charles Martel and of Pepin, the
+interposition of the Lombard kingdom covered the freedom, while it
+threatened the safety, of Rome; and the patriciate represented only the
+title, the service, the alliance, of these distant protectors. The power
+and policy of Charlemagne annihilated an enemy, and imposed a master.
+In his first visit to the capital, he was received with all the honors
+which had formerly been paid to the exarch, the representative of the
+emperor; and these honors obtained some new decorations from the joy and
+gratitude of Pope Adrian the First. [60] No sooner was he informed of
+the sudden approach of the monarch, than he despatched the magistrates
+and nobles of Rome to meet him, with the banner, about thirty miles from
+the city. At the distance of one mile, the Flaminian way was lined with
+the schools, or national communities, of Greeks, Lombards, Saxons, &c.:
+the Roman youth were under arms; and the children of a more tender age,
+with palms and olive branches in their hands, chanted the praises of
+their great deliverer. At the aspect of the holy crosses, and ensigns
+of the saints, he dismounted from his horse, led the procession of his
+nobles to the Vatican, and, as he ascended the stairs, devoutly kissed
+each step of the threshold of the apostles. In the portico, Adrian
+expected him at the head of his clergy: they embraced, as friends and
+equals; but in their march to the altar, the king or patrician assumed
+the right hand of the pope. Nor was the Frank content with these vain
+and empty demonstrations of respect. In the twenty-six years that
+elapsed between the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation,
+Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own,
+to the sceptre of Charlemagne. The people swore allegiance to his person
+and family: in his name money was coined, and justice was administered;
+and the election of the popes was examined and confirmed by his
+authority. Except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignty,
+there was not any prerogative remaining, which the title of emperor
+could add to the patrician of Rome. [61]
+
+[Footnote 58: For the title and powers of patrician of Rome, see
+Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 149-151,) Pagi, (Critica, A.D. 740,
+No. 6-11,) Muratori, (Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 308-329,) and St.
+Marc, (Abrege Chronologique d'Italie, tom. i. p. 379-382.) Of these the
+Franciscan Pagi is the most disposed to make the patrician a lieutenant
+of the church, rather than of the empire.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The papal advocates can soften the symbolic meaning of the
+banner and the keys; but the style of ad regnum dimisimus, or direximus,
+(Codex Carolin. epist. i. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 76,) seems to allow of
+no palliation or escape. In the Ms. of the Vienna library, they read,
+instead of regnum, rogum, prayer or request (see Ducange;) and the
+royalty of Charles Martel is subverted by this important correction,
+(Catalani, in his Critical Prefaces, Annali d'Italia, tom. xvii. p.
+95-99.)]
+
+[Footnote 60: In the authentic narrative of this reception, the Liber
+Pontificalis observes--obviam illi ejus sanctitas dirigens venerabiles
+cruces, id est signa; sicut mos est ad exarchum, aut patricium
+suscipiendum, sum cum ingenti honore suscipi fecit, (tom. iii. pars i.
+p. 185.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: Paulus Diaconus, who wrote before the empire of
+Charlemagne describes Rome as his subject city--vestrae civitates
+(ad Pompeium Festum) suis addidit sceptris, (de Metensis Ecclesiae
+Episcopis.) Some Carlovingian medals, struck at Rome, have engaged
+Le Blanc to write an elaborate, though partial, dissertation on their
+authority at Rome, both as patricians and emperors, (Amsterdam, 1692, in
+4to.)]
+
+The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these obligations,
+and their names are consecrated, as the saviors and benefactors of the
+Roman church. Her ancient patrimony of farms and houses was transformed
+by their bounty into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and
+the donation of the Exarchate was the first-fruits of the conquests of
+Pepin. [62] Astolphus with a sigh relinquished his prey; the keys
+and the hostages of the principal cities were delivered to the French
+ambassador; and, in his master's name, he presented them before the tomb
+of St. Peter. The ample measure of the Exarchate [63] might comprise all
+the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the emperor and his vicegerent;
+but its strict and proper limits were included in the territories
+of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara: its inseparable dependency was the
+Pentapolis, which stretched along the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona,
+and advanced into the midland-country as far as the ridges of the
+Apennine. In this transaction, the ambition and avarice of the popes
+have been severely condemned. Perhaps the humility of a Christian priest
+should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which it was not easy for him
+to govern without renouncing the virtues of his profession. Perhaps
+a faithful subject, or even a generous enemy, would have been less
+impatient to divide the spoils of the Barbarian; and if the emperor
+had intrusted Stephen to solicit in his name the restitution of the
+Exarchate, I will not absolve the pope from the reproach of treachery
+and falsehood. But in the rigid interpretation of the laws, every one
+may accept, without injury, whatever his benefactor can bestow without
+injustice. The Greek emperor had abdicated, or forfeited, his right to
+the Exarchate; and the sword of Astolphus was broken by the stronger
+sword of the Carlovingian. It was not in the cause of the Iconoclast
+that Pepin has exposed his person and army in a double expedition beyond
+the Alps: he possessed, and might lawfully alienate, his conquests:
+and to the importunities of the Greeks he piously replied that no human
+consideration should tempt him to resume the gift which he had conferred
+on the Roman Pontiff for the remission of his sins, and the salvation
+of his soul. The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute
+dominion, and the world beheld for the first time a Christian bishop
+invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the choice of
+magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and
+the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard
+kingdom, the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto [64] sought a refuge
+from the storm, shaved their heads after the Roman fashion, declared
+themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by
+this voluntary surrender, the present circle of the ecclesiastical
+state. That mysterious circle was enlarged to an indefinite extent, by
+the verbal or written donation of Charlemagne, [65] who, in the first
+transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of
+the cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the Exarchate.
+But, in the cooler moments of absence and reflection, he viewed, with
+an eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness of his ecclesiastical
+ally. The execution of his own and his father's promises was
+respectfully eluded: the king of the Franks and Lombards asserted the
+inalienable rights of the empire; and, in his life and death, Ravenna,
+[66] as well as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan
+cities. The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the
+popes; they found in the archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic
+rival: [67] the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a priest; and
+in the disorders of the times, they could only retain the memory of an
+ancient claim, which, in a more prosperous age, they have revived and
+realized.
+
+[Footnote 62: Mosheim (Institution, Hist. Eccles. p. 263) weighs this
+donation with fair and deliberate prudence. The original act has never
+been produced; but the Liber Pontificalis represents, (p. 171,) and the
+Codex Carolinus supposes, this ample gift. Both are contemporary records
+and the latter is the more authentic, since it has been preserved, not
+in the Papal, but the Imperial, library.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Between the exorbitant claims, and narrow concessions, of
+interest and prejudice, from which even Muratori (Antiquitat. tom. i. p.
+63-68) is not exempt, I have been guided, in the limits of the Exarchate
+and Pentapolis, by the Dissertatio Chorographica Italiae Medii Aevi,
+tom. x. p. 160-180.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Spoletini deprecati sunt, ut eos in servitio B. Petri
+receperet et more Romanorum tonsurari faceret, (Anastasius, p. 185.)
+Yet it may be a question whether they gave their own persons or their
+country.]
+
+[Footnote 65: The policy and donations of Charlemagne are carefully
+examined by St. Marc, (Abrege, tom. i. p. 390-408,) who has well studied
+the Codex Carolinus. I believe, with him, that they were only verbal.
+The most ancient act of donation that pretends to be extant, is that of
+the emperor Lewis the Pious, (Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opera,
+tom. ii. p. 267-270.) Its authenticity, or at least its integrity, are
+much questioned, (Pagi, A.D. 817, No. 7, &c. Muratori, Annali, tom.
+vi. p. 432, &c. Dissertat. Chorographica, p. 33, 34;) but I see no
+reasonable objection to these princes so freely disposing of what was
+not their own.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Charlemagne solicited and obtained from the proprietor,
+Hadrian I., the mosaics of the palace of Ravenna, for the decoration of
+Aix-la-Chapelle, (Cod. Carolin. epist. 67, p. 223.)]
+
+[Footnote 67: The popes often complain of the usurpations of Leo of
+Ravenna, (Codex Carolin, epist. 51, 52, 53, p. 200-205.) Sir corpus St.
+Andreae fratris germani St. Petri hic humasset, nequaquam nos Romani
+pontifices sic subjugassent, (Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis, in
+Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. ii. pars. i. p. 107.)]
+
+Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong, though
+ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal
+policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture,
+which, according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various
+collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or suspicious, acts, as they
+tended to promote the interest of the Roman church. Before the end
+of the eighth century, some apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious
+Isidore, composed the decretals, and the donation of Constantine, the
+two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.
+This memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of
+Adrian the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality, and
+revive the name, of the great Constantine. [68] According to the legend,
+the first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and
+purified in the waters of baptism, by St. Silvester, the Roman bishop;
+and never was physician more gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte
+withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his
+resolution of founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to
+the popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the
+provinces of the West. [69] This fiction was productive of the most
+beneficial effects. The Greek princes were convicted of the guilt
+of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of his lawful
+inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt of gratitude; and
+the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the just and
+irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state.
+The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a fickle
+people; and the successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested
+with the purple and prerogatives of the Caesars. So deep was the
+ignorance and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was
+received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in France, and is still
+enrolled among the decrees of the canon law. [70] The emperors, and the
+Romans, were incapable of discerning a forgery, that subverted their
+rights and freedom; and the only opposition proceeded from a Sabine
+monastery, which, in the beginning of the twelfth century, disputed the
+truth and validity of the donation of Constantine. [71] In the revival
+of letters and liberty, this fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen
+of Laurentius Valla, the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot.
+[72] His contemporaries of the fifteenth century were astonished at his
+sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and irresistible progress
+of reason, that, before the end of the next age, the fable was rejected
+by the contempt of historians [73] and poets, [74] and the tacit or
+modest censure of the advocates of the Roman church. [75] The popes
+themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; [76]
+but a false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the
+same fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles,
+the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.
+
+[Footnote 68: Piissimo Constantino magno, per ejus largitatem S.
+R. Ecclesia elevata et exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperiae
+partibus largiri olignatus est.... Quia ecce novus Constantinus his
+temporibus, &c., (Codex Carolin. epist. 49, in tom. iii. part ii. p.
+195.) Pagi (Critica, A.D. 324, No. 16) ascribes them to an impostor of
+the viiith century, who borrowed the name of St. Isidore: his humble
+title of Peccator was ignorantly, but aptly, turned into Mercator: his
+merchandise was indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold
+for much wealth and power.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 4-7) has enumerated
+the several editions of this Act, in Greek and Latin. The copy which
+Laurentius Valla recites and refutes, appears to be taken either from
+the spurious Acts of St. Silvester or from Gratian's Decree, to which,
+according to him and others, it has been surreptitiously tacked.]
+
+[Footnote 70: In the year 1059, it was believed (was it believed?)
+by Pope Leo IX. Cardinal Peter Damianus, &c. Muratori places (Annali
+d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 23, 24) the fictitious donations of Lewis the
+Pious, the Othos, &c., de Donatione Constantini. See a Dissertation of
+Natalis Alexander, seculum iv. diss. 25, p. 335-350.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See a large account of the controversy (A.D. 1105) which
+arose from a private lawsuit, in the Chronicon Farsense, (Script. Rerum
+Italicarum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 637, &c.,) a copious extract from the
+archives of that Benedictine abbey. They were formerly accessible to
+curious foreigners, (Le Blanc and Mabillon,) and would have enriched the
+first volume of the Historia Monastica Italiae of Quirini. But they are
+now imprisoned (Muratori, Scriptores R. I. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 269) by
+the timid policy of the court of Rome; and the future cardinal yielded
+to the voice of authority and the whispers of ambition, (Quirini,
+Comment. pars ii. p. 123-136.)]
+
+[Footnote 72: I have read in the collection of Schardius (de Potestate
+Imperiali Ecclesiastica, p. 734-780) this animated discourse, which was
+composed by the author, A.D. 1440, six years after the flight of Pope
+Eugenius IV. It is a most vehement party pamphlet: Valla justifies and
+animates the revolt of the Romans, and would even approve the use of a
+dagger against their sacerdotal tyrant. Such a critic might expect the
+persecution of the clergy; yet he made his peace, and is buried in the
+Lateran, (Bayle, Dictionnaire Critique, Valla; Vossius, de Historicis
+Latinis, p. 580.)]
+
+[Footnote 73: See Guicciardini, a servant of the popes, in that long and
+valuable digression, which has resumed its place in the last edition,
+correctly published from the author's Ms. and printed in four volumes in
+quarto, under the name of Friburgo, 1775, (Istoria d'Italia, tom. i. p.
+385-395.)]
+
+[Footnote 74: The Paladin Astolpho found it in the moon, among the
+things that were lost upon earth, (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv. 80.) Di vari
+fiore ad un grand monte passa, Ch'ebbe gia buono odore, or puzza forte:
+Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece) Che Constantino al buon Silvestro
+fece. Yet this incomparable poem has been approved by a bull of Leo X.]
+
+[Footnote 75: See Baronius, A.D. 324, No. 117-123, A.D. 1191, No. 51,
+&c. The cardinal wishes to suppose that Rome was offered by Constantine,
+and refused by Silvester. The act of donation he considers strangely
+enough, as a forgery of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Baronius n'en dit guerres contre; encore en a-t'il trop
+dit, et l'on vouloit sans moi, (Cardinal du Perron,) qui l'empechai,
+censurer cette partie de son histoire. J'en devisai un jour avec le
+Pape, et il ne me repondit autre chose "che volete? i Canonici la
+tengono," il le disoit en riant, (Perroniana, p. 77.)]
+
+While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the
+images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the Eastern
+empire. [77] Under the reign of Constantine the Fifth, the union
+of civil and ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree, without
+extirpating the root, of superstition. The idols (for such they were
+now held) were secretly cherished by the order and the sex most prone
+to devotion; and the fond alliance of the monks and females obtained
+a final victory over the reason and authority of man. Leo the Fourth
+maintained with less rigor the religion of his father and grandfather;
+but his wife, the fair and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the
+Athenians, the heirs of the Idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of
+their ancestors. During the life of her husband, these sentiments
+were inflamed by danger and dissimulation, and she could only labor
+to protect and promote some favorite monks whom she drew from their
+caverns, and seated on the metropolitan thrones of the East. But as soon
+as she reigned in her own name and that of her son, Irene more seriously
+undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts; and the first step of her future
+persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience.
+
+In the restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed to the
+public veneration; a thousand legends were inverted of their sufferings
+and miracles. By the opportunities of death or removal, the episcopal
+seats were judiciously filled the most eager competitors for earthly
+or celestial favor anticipated and flattered the judgment of their
+sovereign; and the promotion of her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the
+patriarch of Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church.
+But the decrees of a general council could only be repealed by a
+similar assembly: [78] the Iconoclasts whom she convened were bold in
+possession, and averse to debate; and the feeble voice of the bishops
+was reechoed by the more formidable clamor of the soldiers and people of
+Constantinople. The delay and intrigues of a year, the separation of the
+disaffected troops, and the choice of Nice for a second orthodox synod,
+removed these obstacles; and the episcopal conscience was again, after
+the Greek fashion, in the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen
+days were allowed for the consummation of this important work: the
+Iconoclasts appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents:
+the scene was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian and the Eastern
+patriarchs, [79] the decrees were framed by the president Taracius,
+and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of three hundred and
+fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images
+is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the
+church: but they hesitate whether that worship be relative or direct;
+whether the Godhead, and the figure of Christ, be entitled to the same
+mode of adoration. Of this second Nicene council the acts are still
+extant; a curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood
+and folly. I shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the
+comparative merit of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a
+truce with the daemon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his
+daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted
+him to consult the abbot. "Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and
+his Mother in their holy images, it would be better for you," replied
+the casuist, "to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the
+city." [80] For the honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the
+Roman church, it is somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who
+convened the two councils of Nice are both stained with the blood of
+their sons. The second of these assemblies was approved and rigorously
+executed by the despotism of Irene, and she refused her adversaries the
+toleration which at first she had granted to her friends. During the
+five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years, the contest
+was maintained, with unabated rage and various success, between the
+worshippers and the breakers of the images; but I am not inclined
+to pursue with minute diligence the repetition of the same events.
+Nicephorus allowed a general liberty of speech and practice; and the
+only virtue of his reign is accused by the monks as the cause of his
+temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition and weakness formed the
+character of Michael the First, but the saints and images were incapable
+of supporting their votary on the throne. In the purple, Leo the Fifth
+asserted the name and religion of an Armenian; and the idols, with their
+seditious adherents, were condemned to a second exile. Their applause
+would have sanctified the murder of an impious tyrant, but his assassin
+and successor, the second Michael, was tainted from his birth with
+the Phrygian heresies: he attempted to mediate between the contending
+parties; and the intractable spirit of the Catholics insensibly cast him
+into the opposite scale. His moderation was guarded by timidity; but his
+son Theophilus, alike ignorant of fear and pity, was the last and most
+cruel of the Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly
+against them; and the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated
+and punished by the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus, the
+final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, his widow
+Theodora, whom he left the guardian of the empire. Her measures were
+bold and decisive. The fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame
+and the soul of her deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast
+patriarch was commuted from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of
+two hundred lashes: the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the
+festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the
+images. A single question yet remained, whether they are endowed with
+any proper and inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of
+the eleventh century; [81] and as this opinion has the strongest
+recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it was not more
+explicitly decided in the affirmative. In the West, Pope Adrian the
+First accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which
+is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general
+councils. Rome and Italy were docile to the voice of their father; but
+the greatest part of the Latin Christians were far behind in the race
+of superstition. The churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain,
+steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction
+of images, which they admitted into their temples, not as objects of
+worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. An
+angry book of controversy was composed and published in the name of
+Charlemagne: [82] under his authority a synod of three hundred
+bishops was assembled at Frankfort: [83] they blamed the fury of the
+Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure against the
+superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their pretended council,
+which was long despised by the Barbarians of the West. [84] Among them
+the worship of images advanced with a silent and insensible progress;
+but a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the
+gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the
+countries, both in Europe and America, which are still immersed in the
+gloom of superstition.
+
+[Footnote 77: The remaining history of images, from Irene to Theodora,
+is collected, for the Catholics, by Baronius and Pagi, (A.D. 780-840.)
+Natalis Alexander, (Hist. N. T. seculum viii. Panoplia adversus
+Haereticos p. 118-178,) and Dupin, (Bibliot. Eccles. tom. vi. p.
+136-154;) for the Protestants, by Spanheim, (Hist. Imag. p. 305-639.)
+Basnage, (Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 556-572, tom. ii. p. 1362-1385,)
+and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. secul. viii. et ix.) The
+Protestants, except Mosheim, are soured with controversy; but the
+Catholics, except Dupin, are inflamed by the fury and superstition of
+the monks; and even Le Beau, (Hist. du Bas Empire,) a gentleman and a
+scholar, is infected by the odious contagion.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See the Acts, in Greek and Latin, of the second Council
+of Nice, with a number of relative pieces, in the viiith volume of the
+Councils, p. 645-1600. A faithful version, with some critical notes,
+would provoke, in different readers, a sigh or a smile.]
+
+[Footnote 79: The pope's legates were casual messengers, two priests
+without any special commission, and who were disavowed on their return.
+Some vagabond monks were persuaded by the Catholics to represent the
+Oriental patriarchs. This curious anecdote is revealed by Theodore
+Studites, (epist. i. 38, in Sirmond. Opp. tom. v. p. 1319,) one of the
+warmest Iconoclasts of the age.]
+
+[Footnote 80: These visits could not be innocent since the daemon of
+fornication, &c. Actio iv. p. 901, Actio v. p. 1081]
+
+[Footnote 81: See an account of this controversy in the Alexius of Anna
+Compena, (l. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 371,
+372.)]
+
+[Footnote 82: The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443-529,) composed in
+the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at Worms, A.D. 790, and
+sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who answered them by a grandis et
+verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 1553.) The Carolines propose
+120 objections against the Nicene synod and such words as these are the
+flowers of their rhetoric--Dementiam.... priscae Gentilitatis obsoletum
+errorem .... argumenta insanissima et absurdissima.... derisione dignas
+naenias, &c., &c.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as well as
+ecclesiastical; and the three hundred members, (Nat. Alexander, sec.
+viii. p. 53,) who sat and voted at Frankfort, must include not only the
+bishops, but the abbots, and even the principal laymen.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et
+sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes
+contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom. ix. p.
+101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be hard-hearted indeed, who
+does not pity the efforts of Baronius, Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c.,
+to elude this unlucky sentence.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part IV.
+
+It was after the Nycene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene,
+that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the
+translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were
+compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole
+motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of
+their friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic
+virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had
+perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from
+each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism
+the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their
+submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant;
+and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the
+tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the
+images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates [85] and the
+Illyrian diocese, [86] which the Iconociasts had torn away from the
+successors of St. Peter; and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence
+of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy.
+[87] The Greeks were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted
+by the breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious;
+but a discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion, from
+the use, to the adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was
+stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror
+himself conformed, with the temper of a statesman, to the various
+practice of France and Italy. In his four pilgrimages or visits to the
+Vatican, he embraced the popes in the communion of friendship and
+piety; knelt before the tomb, and consequently before the image, of the
+apostle; and joined, without scruple, in all the prayers and processions
+of the Roman liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to
+renounce their benefactor? Had they a right to alienate his gift of the
+Exarchate? Had they power to abolish his government of Rome? The title
+of patrician was below the merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and
+it was only by reviving the Western empire that they could pay their
+obligations or secure their establishment. By this decisive measure they
+would finally eradicate the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement
+of a provincial town, the majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin
+Christians would be united, under a supreme head, in their ancient
+metropolis; and the conquerors of the West would receive their crown
+from the successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire
+a zealous and respectable advocate; and, under the shadow of the
+Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with honor and safety,
+the government of the city. [88]
+
+[Footnote 85: Theophanes (p. 343) specifies those of Sicily and
+Calabria, which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a half of
+gold, (perhaps 7000 L. sterling.) Liutprand more pompously enumerates the
+patrimonies of the Roman church in Greece, Judaea, Persia, Mesopotamia
+Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya, which were detained by the injustice of the
+Greek emperor, (Legat. ad Nicephorum, in Script. Rerum Italica rum, tom.
+ii. pars i. p. 481.)]
+
+[Footnote 86: The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with Apulia,
+Calabria, and Sicily, (Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p.
+145: ) by the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch of Constantinople
+had detached from Rome the metropolitans of Thessalonica, Athens
+Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patrae, (Luc. Holsten. Geograph. Sacra, p. 22)
+and his spiritual conquests extended to Naples and Amalphi (Istoria
+Civile di Napoli, tom. i. p. 517-524, Pagi, A. D 780, No. 11.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore
+reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant
+errore.... de diocessi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum increpantes
+commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticum eum pro hujusmodi
+errore perseverantia decernemus, (Epist. Hadrian. Papae ad Carolum
+Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p. 1598;) to which he adds a reason, most
+directly opposite to his conduct, that he preferred the salvation of
+souls and rule of faith to the goods of this transitory world.]
+
+[Footnote 88: Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than the
+advocates of the church, (advocatus et defensor S. R. E. See Ducange,
+Gloss Lat. tom. i. p. 297.) His antagonist Muratori reduces the popes to
+be no more than the exarchs of the emperor. In the more equitable view
+of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under
+the empire as the most honorable species of fief or benefice--premuntur
+nocte caliginosa!]
+
+Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy
+bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people
+was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more
+important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the
+leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of
+Adrian the First [89] surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages;
+[90] the walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards,
+and the friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he
+secretly edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow
+space the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the
+next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to
+the nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first
+dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised,
+above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
+procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed
+multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of
+the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed,
+perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the
+ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood,
+he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved
+to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had
+been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins. [91] From
+his prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to
+his rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of
+Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman
+pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and bishops,
+the guards of his safety and the judges of his innocence; and it was not
+without reluctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
+ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office. In his fourth
+and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king
+and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the crimes
+imputed to his charge: his enemies were silenced, and the sacrilegious
+attempt against his life was punished by the mild and insufficient
+penalty of exile. On the festival of Christmas, the last year of the
+eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the church of St. Peter; and,
+to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the simple dress of his
+country for the habit of a patrician. [92] After the celebration of the
+holy mysteries, Leo suddenly placed a precious crown on his head, [93]
+and the dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, "Long life
+and victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God
+the great and pacific emperor of the Romans!" The head and body of
+Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction: after the example
+of the Caesars, he was saluted or adored by the pontiff: his coronation
+oath represents a promise to maintain the faith and privileges of the
+church; and the first-fruits were paid in his rich offerings to the
+shrine of his apostle. In his familiar conversation, the emperor
+protested the ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have
+disappointed by his absence on that memorable day. But the preparations
+of the ceremony must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of
+Charlemagne reveals his knowledge and expectation: he had acknowledged
+that the Imperial title was the object of his ambition, and a Roman
+synod had pronounced, that it was the only adequate reward of his merit
+and services. [94]
+
+[Footnote 89: His merits and hopes are summed up in an epitaph of
+thirty-eight-verses, of which Charlemagne declares himself the author,
+(Concil. tom. viii. p. 520.) Post patrem lacrymans Carolus haec carmina
+scripsi. Tu mihi dulcis amor, te modo plango pater... Nomina jungo simul
+titulis, clarissime, nostra Adrianus, Carolus, rex ego, tuque pater. The
+poetry might be supplied by Alcuin; but the tears, the most glorious
+tribute, can only belong to Charlemagne.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Every new pope is admonished--"Sancte Pater, non videbis
+annos Petri," twenty-five years. On the whole series the average is
+about eight years--a short hope for an ambitious cardinal.]
+
+[Footnote 91: The assurance of Anastasius (tom. iii. pars i. p. 197,
+198) is supported by the credulity of some French annalists; but
+Eginhard, and other writers of the same age, are more natural and
+sincere. "Unus ei oculus paullulum est laesus," says John the deacon of
+Naples, (Vit. Episcop. Napol. in Scriptores Muratori, tom. i. pars ii.
+p. 312.) Theodolphus, a contemporary bishop of Orleans, observes with
+prudence (l. iii. carm. 3.)
+
+     Reddita sunt? mirum est: mirum est auferre nequtsse.
+     Est tamen in dubio, hinc mirer an inde magis.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Twice, at the request of Hadrian and Leo, he appeared at
+Rome,--longa tunica et chlamyde amictus, et calceamentis quoque
+Romano more formatis. Eginhard (c. xxiii. p. 109-113) describes, like
+Suetonius the simplicity of his dress, so popular in the nation,
+that when Charles the Bald returned to France in a foreign habit, the
+patriotic dogs barked at the apostate, (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne,
+tom. iv. p. 109.)]
+
+[Footnote 93: See Anastasius (p. 199) and Eginhard, (c.xxviii. p.
+124-128.) The unction is mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 399,) the oath
+by Sigonius, (from the Ordo Romanus,) and the Pope's adoration more
+antiquorum principum, by the Annales Bertiniani, (Script. Murator. tom.
+ii. pars ii. p. 505.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: This great event of the translation or restoration of
+the empire is related and discussed by Natalis Alexander, (secul. ix.
+dissert. i. p. 390-397,) Pagi, (tom. iii. p. 418,) Muratori, (Annali
+d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 339-352,) Sigonius, (de Regno Italiae, l. iv.
+Opp. tom. ii. p. 247-251,) Spanheim, (de ficta Translatione Imperii,)
+Giannone, (tom. i. p. 395-405,) St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom.
+i. p. 438-450,) Gaillard, (Hist. de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 386-446.)
+Almost all these moderns have some religious or national bias.]
+
+The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes
+deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the title
+has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the
+addition of saint, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint,
+by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians and
+philosophers of an enlightened age. [95] His real merit is doubtless
+enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he
+emerged: but the apparent magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged by
+an unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendor
+from the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his
+fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the
+restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity is
+not the most conspicuous: [96] but the public happiness could not
+be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various
+indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his
+bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and
+licentious manners of his daughters, [97] whom the father was suspected
+of loving with too fond a passion. [971] I shall be scarcely
+permitted to accuse the ambition of a conqueror; but in a day of equal
+retribution, the sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes
+of Aquitain, and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded
+on the same spot, would have something to allege against the justice and
+humanity of Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons [98]
+was an abuse of the right of conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary
+than his arms, and in the discussion of his motives, whatever is
+subtracted from bigotry must be imputed to temper. The sedentary reader
+is amazed by his incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects
+and enemies were not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the
+moment when they believed him at the most distant extremity of the
+empire; neither peace nor war, nor summer nor winter, were a season of
+repose; and our fancy cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign
+with the geography of his expeditions. [981] But this activity was a
+national, rather than a personal, virtue; the vagrant life of a Frank
+was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in military adventures; and the
+journeys of Charlemagne were distinguished only by a more numerous train
+and a more important purpose. His military renown must be tried by
+the scrutiny of his troops, his enemies, and his actions. Alexander
+conquered with the arms of Philip, but the two heroes who preceded
+Charlemagne bequeathed him their name, their examples, and the
+companions of their victories. At the head of his veteran and superior
+armies, he oppressed the savage or degenerate nations, who were
+incapable of confederating for their common safety: nor did he ever
+encounter an equal antagonist in numbers, in discipline, or in arms The
+science of war has been lost and revived with the arts of peace; but
+his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or battle of singular
+difficulty and success; and he might behold, with envy, the Saracen
+trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish expedition, his
+rear-guard was defeated in the Pyrenaean mountains; and the soldiers,
+whose situation was irretrievable, and whose valor was useless, might
+accuse, with their last breath, the want of skill or caution of their
+general. [99] I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly
+applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a
+series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses,
+the reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his
+poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the laws
+and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and
+imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate evils of the
+times were suspended or mollified by his government; [100] but in his
+institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal
+spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of
+posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life
+of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his
+kingdoms among his sons; and after his numerous diets, the whole
+constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and
+despotism. His esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted
+him to intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil
+jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and degraded
+by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his
+father. His laws enforced the imposition of tithes, because the daemons
+had proclaimed in the air that the default of payment had been the
+cause of the last scarcity. [101] The literary merits of Charlemagne
+are attested by the foundation of schools, the introduction of arts, the
+works which were published in his name, and his familiar connection with
+the subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate
+both the prince and people. His own studies were tardy, laborious,
+and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and understood Greek, he derived the
+rudiments of knowledge from conversation, rather than from books;
+and, in his mature age, the emperor strove to acquire the practice
+of writing, which every peasant now learns in his infancy. [102] The
+grammar and logic, the music and astronomy, of the times, were only
+cultivated as the handmaids of superstition; but the curiosity of
+the human mind must ultimately tend to its improvement, and the
+encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre
+on the character of Charlemagne. [103] The dignity of his person, [104]
+the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigor of his
+government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish him from
+the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new aera from his restoration of the
+Western empire.
+
+[Footnote 95: By Mably, (Observations sur l'Histoire de France,)
+Voltaire, (Histoire Generale,) Robertson, (History of Charles V.,) and
+Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 18.) In the year 1782, M.
+Gaillard published his Histoire de Charlemagne, (in 4 vols. in 12mo.,)
+which I have freely and profitably used. The author is a man of sense
+and humanity; and his work is labored with industry and elegance. But I
+have likewise examined the original monuments of the reigns of Pepin and
+Charlemagne, in the 5th volume of the Historians of France.]
+
+[Footnote 96: The vision of Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven years
+after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory, with a vulture,
+who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member, while the rest of his
+body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound and perfect, (see Gaillard
+tom. ii. p. 317-360.)]
+
+[Footnote 97: The marriage of Eginhard with Imma, daughter of
+Charlemagne, is, in my opinion, sufficiently refuted by the probum and
+suspicio that sullied these fair damsels, without excepting his own
+wife, (c. xix. p. 98-100, cum Notis Schmincke.) The husband must have
+been too strong for the historian.]
+
+[Footnote 971: This charge of incest, as Mr. Hallam justly observes,
+"seems to have originated in a misinterpreted passage of Eginhard."
+Hallam's Middle Ages, vol.i. p. 16.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 98: Besides the massacres and transmigrations, the pain of
+death was pronounced against the following crimes: 1. The refusal of
+baptism. 2. The false pretence of baptism. 3. A relapse to idolatry. 4.
+The murder of a priest or bishop. 5. Human sacrifices. 6. Eating meat
+in Lent. But every crime might be expiated by baptism or penance,
+(Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 241-247;) and the Christian Saxons became the
+friends and equals of the Franks, (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae,
+p.133.)]
+
+[Footnote 981: M. Guizot (Cours d'Histoire Moderne, p. 270, 273) has
+compiled the following statement of Charlemagne's military campaigns:--
+
+     1. Against the Aquitanians.
+
+     18.   "    the Saxons.
+
+     5.    "    the Lombards.
+
+     7.    "    the Arabs in Spain.
+
+     1.    "    the Thuringians.
+
+     4.    "    the Avars.
+
+     2.    "    the Bretons.
+
+     1.    "    the Bavarians.
+
+     4.    "    the Slaves beyond the Elbe
+
+     5.    "    the Saracens in Italy.
+
+     3.    "    the Danes.
+
+     2.    "    the Greeks.
+         ___
+
+     53 total.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 99: In this action the famous Rutland, Rolando, Orlando,
+was slain--cum compluribus aliis. See the truth in Eginhard, (c. 9, p.
+51-56,) and the fable in an ingenious Supplement of M. Gaillard, (tom.
+iii. p. 474.) The Spaniards are too proud of a victory, which history
+ascribes to the Gascons, and romance to the Saracens. * Note: In
+fact, it was a sudden onset of the Gascons, assisted by the Beaure
+mountaineers, and possibly a few Navarrese.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Yet Schmidt, from the best authorities, represents the
+interior disorders and oppression of his reign, (Hist. des Allemands,
+tom. ii. p. 45-49.)]
+
+[Footnote 101: Omnis homo ex sua proprietate legitimam decimam ad
+ecclesiam conferat. Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo illa valida
+fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a daemonibus devoratas, et voces
+exprobationis auditas. Such is the decree and assertion of the great
+Council of Frankfort, (canon xxv. tom. ix. p. 105.) Both Selden (Hist.
+of Tithes; Works, vol. iii. part ii. p. 1146) and Montesquieu (Esprit
+des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 12) represent Charlemagne as the first legal
+author of tithes. Such obligations have country gentlemen to his
+memory!]
+
+[Footnote 102: Eginhard (c. 25, p. 119) clearly affirms, tentabat et
+scribere... sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus et sero
+inchoatus. The moderns have perverted and corrected this obvious
+meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard's dissertation (tom. iii. p.
+247-260) betrays his partiality. * Note: This point has been contested;
+but Mr. Hallam and Monsieur Sismondl concur with Gibbon. See Middle
+Ages, iii. 330, Histoire de Francais, tom. ii. p. 318. The sensible
+observations of the latter are quoted in the Quarterly Review, vol.
+xlviii. p. 451. Fleury, I may add, quotes from Mabillon a remarkable
+evidence that Charlemagne "had a mark to himself like an honest,
+plain-dealing man." Ibid.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 103: See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138-176, and Schmidt, tom.
+ii. p. 121-129.]
+
+[Footnote 104: M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372) fixes the true stature of
+Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad calcem Eginhart,
+p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French, about six feet one inch
+and a fourth English, measure. The romance writers have increased it
+to eight feet, and the giant was endowed with matchless strength and
+appetite: at a single stroke of his good sword Joyeuse, he cut asunder
+a horseman and his horse; at a single repast, he devoured a goose, two
+fowls, a quarter of mutton, &c.]
+
+That empire was not unworthy of its title; [105] and some of the fairest
+kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince, who
+reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
+[106] I. The Roman province of Gaul had been transformed into the name
+and monarchy of France; but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its
+limits were contracted by the independence of the Britons and the revolt
+of Aquitain. Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the
+shores of the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language
+are so different from the French, was chastised by the imposition of
+tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive contest, the
+rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by the forfeiture of
+their province, their liberty, and their lives.
+
+Harsh and rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious
+governors, who had too faithfully copied the mayors of the palace. But
+a recent discovery [107] has proved that these unhappy princes were the
+last and lawful heirs of the blood and sceptre of Clovis, and younger
+branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of the Merovingian house. Their
+ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties
+of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the foot of the Pyrenees: their race
+was propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth century; and after
+surviving their Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved to feel
+the injustice, or the favors, of a third dynasty. By the reunion of
+Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present boundaries, with the
+additions of the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine. II.
+
+The Saracens had been expelled from France by the grandfather and father
+of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the greatest part of Spain,
+from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. Amidst their civil
+divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored his protection in the
+diet of Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the expedition, restored
+the emir, and, without distinction of faith, impartially crushed the
+resistance of the Christians, and rewarded the obedience and services
+of the Mahometans. In his absence he instituted the Spanish march, [108]
+which extended from the Pyrenees to the River Ebro: Barcelona was the
+residence of the French governor: he possessed the counties of Rousillon
+and Catalonia; and the infant kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon were
+subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king of the Lombards, and patrician
+of Rome, he reigned over the greatest part of Italy, [109] a tract of
+a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders of Calabria. The duchy of
+Beneventum, a Lombard fief, had spread, at the expense of the Greeks,
+over the modern kingdom of Naples. But Arrechis, the reigning duke,
+refused to be included in the slavery of his country; assumed the
+independent title of prince; and opposed his sword to the Carlovingian
+monarchy. His defence was firm, his submission was not inglorious, and
+the emperor was content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his
+fortresses, and the acknowledgement, on his coins, of a supreme lord.
+The artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of father,
+but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and Benventum insensibly
+escaped from the French yoke. [110] IV. Charlemagne was the first who
+united Germany under the same sceptre. The name of Oriental France
+is preserved in the circle of Franconia; and the people of Hesse and
+Thuringia were recently incorporated with the victors, by the conformity
+of religion and government. The Alemanni, so formidable to the Romans,
+were the faithful vassals and confederates of the Franks; and their
+country was inscribed within the modern limits of Alsace, Swabia, and
+Switzerland. The Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their laws and
+manners, were less patient of a master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo
+justified the abolition of their hereditary dukes; and their power was
+shared among the counts, who judged and guarded that important frontier.
+But the north of Germany, from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still
+hostile and Pagan; nor was it till after a war of thirty-three years
+that the Saxons bowed under the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne.
+The idols and their votaries were extirpated: the foundation of eight
+bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen,
+Verden, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt, define, on either side of the
+Weser, the bounds of ancient Saxony these episcopal seats were the first
+schools and cities of that savage land; and the religion and humanity
+of the children atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the parents.
+Beyond the Elbe, the Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar manners and
+various denominations, overspread the modern dominions of Prussia,
+Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient marks of obedience have tempted
+the French historian to extend the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula.
+The conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more recent age;
+but the first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be justly
+ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or
+Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had inflicted on the
+nations. Their rings, the wooden fortifications which encircled their
+districts and villages, were broken down by the triple effort of a
+French army, that was poured into their country by land and water,
+through the Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the Danube.
+After a bloody conflict of eight years, the loss of some French generals
+was avenged by the slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the
+nation submitted the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and
+unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years,
+enriched the victorious troops, or decorated the churches of Italy and
+Gaul. [111] After the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne
+was bounded only by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the
+Save: the provinces of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy,
+though unprofitable, accession; and it was an effect of his moderation,
+that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty
+of the Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the
+reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any
+ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant
+life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of communication between the
+rivers, the Saone and the Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly
+attempted. [112] Their execution would have vivified the empire; and
+more cost and labor were often wasted in the structure of a cathedral.
+[1121]
+
+[Footnote 105: See the concise, but correct and original, work of
+D'Anville, (Etats Formes en Europe apres la Chute de l'Empire Romain
+en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.,) whose map includes the empire of
+Charlemagne; the different parts are illustrated, by Valesius (Notitia
+Galliacum) for France, Beretti (Dissertatio Chorographica) for Italy, De
+Marca (Marca Hispanica) for Spain. For the middle geography of Germany,
+I confess myself poor and destitute.]
+
+[Footnote 106: After a brief relation of his wars and conquests, (Vit.
+Carol. c. 5-14,) Eginhard recapitulates, in a few words, (c. 15,) the
+countries subject to his empire. Struvius, (Corpus Hist. German. p.
+118-149) was inserted in his Notes the texts of the old Chronicles.]
+
+[Footnote 107: On a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon (A.D. 845)
+by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal pedigree. I doubt whether
+some subsequent links of the ixth and xth centuries are equally firm;
+yet the whole is approved and defended by M. Gaillard, (tom. ii.
+p.60-81, 203-206,) who affirms that the family of Montesquiou (not
+of the President de Montesquieu) is descended, in the female line, from
+Clotaire and Clovis--an innocent pretension!]
+
+[Footnote 108: The governors or counts of the Spanish march revolted
+from Charles the Simple about the year 900; and a poor pittance,
+the Rousillon, has been recovered in 1642 by the kings of France,
+(Longuerue, Description de la France, tom i. p. 220-222.) Yet the
+Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and annually pays 2,600,000 livres,
+(Necker, Administration des Finances, tom. i. p. 278, 279;) more people,
+perhaps, and doubtless more money than the march of Charlemagne.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 200, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 110: See Giannone, tom. i. p 374, 375, and the Annals of
+Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Quot praelia in eo gesta! quantum sanguinis effusum sit!
+Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus in quo regia Cagani
+fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem humanae habitationis appareat.
+Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis
+pecunia et congesti ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt. Eginhard,
+cxiii.]
+
+[Footnote 112: The junction of the Rhine and Danube was undertaken only
+for the service of the Pannonian war, (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne,
+tom. ii. p. 312-315.) The canal, which would have been only two leagues
+in length, and of which some traces are still extant in Swabia, was
+interrupted by excessive rains, military avocations, and superstitious
+fears, (Schaepflin, Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p.
+256. Molimina fluviorum, &c., jungendorum, p. 59-62.)]
+
+[Footnote 1121: I should doubt this in the time of Charlemagne, even if
+the term "expended" were substituted for "wasted."--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part V.
+
+If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen
+that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the
+Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy
+of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany
+and Denmark. The personal and political importance of Charlemagne
+was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The
+islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes
+of Saxon or Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian
+and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
+range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the
+power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honor and
+support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole
+and supreme emperor of the West. [113] He maintained a more equal
+intercourse with the caliph Harun al Rashid, [114] whose dominion
+stretched from Africa to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a
+tent, a water-clock, an elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It
+is not easy to conceive the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab,
+who were strangers to each other's person, and language, and religion:
+but their public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote
+situation left no room for a competition of interest. Two thirds of the
+Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency
+was amply supplied by his command of the inaccessible or invincible
+nations of Germany. But in the choice of his enemies, [1141] we may be
+reasonably surprised that he so often preferred the poverty of the north
+to the riches of the south. The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously
+consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to
+assert the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from
+Italy and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have
+insured an easy victory; and the holy crusade against the Saracens
+would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and loudly justified by
+religion and policy. Perhaps, in his expeditions beyond the Rhine and
+the Elbe, he aspired to save his monarchy from the fate of the Roman
+empire, to disarm the enemies of civilized society, and to eradicate the
+seed of future emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that, in a
+light of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could
+be universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a larger
+sphere of hostility. [115] The subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil
+which had so long concealed the continent or islands of Scandinavia
+from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened the torpid courage of their
+barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters escaped from
+the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the North; the Ocean and
+Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne
+beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less
+than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 113: See Eginhard, c. 16, and Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-385,
+who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of Charlemagne and
+Egbert, the emperor's gift of his own sword, and the modest answer of
+his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if genuine, would have adorned our
+English histories.]
+
+[Footnote 114: The correspondence is mentioned only in the French
+annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph's friendship for
+the Christian dog--a polite appellation, which Harun bestows on the
+emperor of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 1141: Had he the choice? M. Guizot has eloquently described
+the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons. Il y fit face par le
+conquete; la guerre defensive prit la forme offensive: il transporta la
+lutte sur le territoire des peuples qui voulaient envahir le sien: il
+travailla a asservir les races etrangeres, et extirper les croyances
+ennemies. De la son mode de gouvernement et la fondation de son empire:
+la guerre offensive et la conquete voulaient cette vaste et redoutable
+unite. Compare observations in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii., and
+James's Life of Charlemagne.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-365, 471-476, 492. I have
+borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne's plan of conquest, and
+the judicious distinction of his enemies of the first and the second
+enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.)]
+
+Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution, the
+titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne for
+the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy, must have
+ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But the association
+of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy and
+conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have foreseen and
+prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded
+to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on
+his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation.
+[116] The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in
+the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the
+Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal
+descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced
+to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes,
+who were already invested with their power and dominions. The
+pious Lewis survived his brothers, and embraced the whole empire
+of Charlemagne; but the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his
+children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired
+by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre,
+while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or
+battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was
+divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial
+and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever
+separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the
+Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial dignity
+of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two
+recent and transitory kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children;
+and Lewis the Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of
+Italy, the proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his
+death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his
+uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion
+of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on
+the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of
+the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited
+any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the
+bard, the stammerer, the fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and
+uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the
+failure of the collateral branches, the whole inheritance devolved to
+Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his insanity authorized
+the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed in a diet,
+and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by whose contempt his life
+and liberty had been spared. According to the measure of their force,
+the governors, the bishops, and the lords, usurped the fragments of
+the falling empire; and some preference was shown to the female or
+illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title
+and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the
+contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army
+at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their
+modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of
+Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy,
+from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the
+First.
+
+[Footnote 116: Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation:
+and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 813, No. 13, &c. See
+Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508,) howsoever adverse to the claims
+of the popes. For the series of the Carlovingians, see the historians of
+France, Italy, and Germany; Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even
+Voltaire, whose pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]
+
+Otho [117] was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he truly
+descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne,
+the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to reign over their
+conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was elected, by the suffrage
+of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits
+[118] were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of
+the Othos. A portion of Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks
+of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose
+blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Caesar and
+Tacitus.
+
+Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho
+acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and
+Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho,
+the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder:
+the marches of Brandenburgh and Sleswick were fortified with German
+colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia,
+confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious
+army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
+pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of
+Germany. From that memorable aera, two maxims of public jurisprudence
+were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. That the prince, who
+was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject
+kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the
+titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the
+hands of the Roman pontiff. [119]
+
+[Footnote 117: He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose
+favor the Duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858. Ruotgerus, the
+biographer of a St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianae Catalog. tom. iii. vol.
+ii. p. 679,) gives a splendid character of his family. Atavorum atavi
+usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe
+ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur, (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist.
+German. p. 216.) Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of
+his descent from Witikind.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See the treatise of Conringius, (de Finibus Imperii
+Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to.: ) he rejects the extravagant and
+improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian empires, and discusses with
+moderation the rights of Germany, her vassals, and her neighbors.]
+
+[Footnote 119: The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I. and
+Henry I., the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which was never
+assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians, Muratori for instance,
+are more scrupulous and correct, and only reckon the princes who have
+been crowned at Rome.]
+
+The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the
+alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek
+emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation
+of brother. [120] Perhaps in his connection with Irene he aspired to
+the name of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of
+peace and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with
+that ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a
+mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such a
+union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
+conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to
+suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge
+her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers
+of the West. [121] The French ambassadors were the spectators, and
+had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the
+national hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and
+sacrilege of ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends
+and bad neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to
+provoke a neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of
+St. Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious
+journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him
+in his camp, on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne affected to
+confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp,
+or at least the pride, of the Byzantine palace. [122] The Greeks were
+successively led through four halls of audience: in the first they were
+ready to fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state,
+till he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or
+master of the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same
+answer, were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the
+steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually
+heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open,
+and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with
+the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled with the love and
+reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was
+concluded between the two empires, and the limits of the East and West
+were defined by the right of present possession. But the Greeks [123]
+soon forgot this humiliating equality, or remembered it only to hate the
+Barbarians by whom it was extorted. During the short union of virtue
+and power, they respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne, with the
+acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these
+qualities were separated in the person of his pious son, the Byzantine
+letters were inscribed, "To the king, or, as he styles himself, the
+emperor of the Franks and Lombards." When both power and virtue were
+extinct, they despoiled Lewis the Second of his hereditary title, and
+with the barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the
+crowd of Latin princes. His reply [124] is expressive of his weakness:
+he proves, with some learning, that, both in sacred and profane history,
+the name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus: if, at
+Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial sense,
+he claims from his ancestors, and from the popes, a just participation
+of the honors of the Roman purple. The same controversy was revived
+in the reign of the Othos; and their ambassador describes, in lively
+colors, the insolence of the Byzantine court. [125] The Greeks affected
+to despise the poverty and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in
+their last decline refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the
+title of Roman emperors.
+
+[Footnote 120: Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P. imperatoribus
+super hoc indignantibus) magna tulit patientia, vicitque eorum
+contumaciam... mittendo ad eos crebras legationes, et in epistolis
+fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28, p. 128. Perhaps it was on their
+account that, like Augustus, he affected some reluctance to receive the
+empire.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of
+Charles (Chronograph. p. 399,) and of his treaty of marriage with
+Irene, (p. 402,) which is unknown to the Latins. Gaillard relates his
+transactions with the Greek empire, (tom. ii. p. 446-468.)]
+
+[Footnote 122: Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant was a
+farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed represented in
+the presence, and for the benefit, of children of a larger growth.]
+
+[Footnote 123: Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi,
+(tom. iii. A.D. 812, No. 7, A.D. 824, No. 10, &c.,) the contrast of
+Charlemagne and his son; to the former the ambassadors of Michael (who
+were indeed disavowed) more suo, id est lingua Graeca laudes dixerunt,
+imperatorem eum et appellantes; to the latter, Vocato imperatori
+Francorum, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 124: See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous writer
+of Salerno, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 243-254, c. 93-107,)
+whom Baronius (A.D. 871, No. 51-71) mistook for Erchempert, when he
+transcribed it in his Annals.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est sua lingua, sed
+ob indignationem, id est regem nostra vocabat, Liutprand, in Legat. in
+Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 479. The pope had exhorted Nicephorus,
+emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with Otho, the august emperor of
+the Romans--quae inscriptio secundum Graecos peccatoria et temeraria...
+imperatorem inquiunt, universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum,
+Nicephorum, (p. 486.)]
+
+These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to exercise the
+powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the
+importance of this prerogative increased with the temporal estate
+and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman church. In the Christian
+aristocracy, the principal members of the clergy still formed a senate
+to assist the administration, and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop.
+Rome was divided into twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was
+governed by a cardinal priest, or presbyter, a title which, however
+common or modest in its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of
+kings. Their number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons
+of the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
+Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical senate
+was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, who
+were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia, Porto, Velitrae,
+Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, than by their weekly
+service in the Lateran, and their superior share in the honors and
+authority of the apostolic see. On the death of the pope, these bishops
+recommended a successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals,
+[126] and their choice was ratified or rejected by the applause or
+clamor of the Roman people. But the election was imperfect; nor could
+the pontiff be legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the
+church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The
+royal commissioner examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of
+the proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the
+qualifications of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of fidelity,
+and confirmed the donations which had successively enriched the
+patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms, the rival claims were
+submitted to the sentence of the emperor; and in a synod of bishops he
+presumed to judge, to condemn, and to punish, the crimes of a guilty
+pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty on the senate and people, who
+engaged to prefer the candidate most acceptable to his majesty: [127]
+his successors anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed
+the Roman benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their
+chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a Frank or
+Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition of foreign power.
+These acts of prerogative were most speciously excused by the vices of a
+popular election. The competitor who had been excluded by the cardinals
+appealed to the passions or avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and
+the Lateran were stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the
+marquises of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see
+in a long and disgraceful servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the ninth
+and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their
+tyrants; and such was their indigence, after the loss and usurpation
+of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support
+the state of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest. [128] The
+influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded
+on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the
+most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and
+their reign [129] may have suggested to the darker ages [130] the fable
+[131] of a female pope. [132] The bastard son, the grandson, and the
+great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair
+of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the second of
+these became the head of the Latin church. [1321] His youth and manhood
+were of a suitable complexion; and the nations of pilgrims could bear
+testimony to the charges that were urged against him in a Roman synod,
+and in the presence of Otho the Great. As John XII. had renounced the
+dress and decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be
+dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt, the
+flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming and
+hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of distress; and his
+blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it be true, could not
+possibly be serious. But we read, with some surprise, that the worthy
+grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome;
+that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for prostitution, and
+that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims
+from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they
+should be violated by his successor. [133] The Protestants have dwelt
+with malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a
+philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than
+their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic see was
+reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. That
+ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two projects. I.
+To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of
+election, and forever to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors
+and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as
+a fief or benefice [134] of the church, and to extend his temporal
+dominion over the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of
+fifty years, the first of these designs was accomplished by the firm
+support of the ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with
+that of their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with
+some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the
+secular power, and finally extinguished by the improvement of human
+reason.
+
+[Footnote 126: The origin and progress of the title of cardinal may be
+found in Themassin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1261-1298,)
+Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. vi. Dissert. lxi. p.
+159-182,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 345-347,)
+who accurately remarks the form and changes of the election. The
+cardinal-bishops so highly exalted by Peter Damianus, are sunk to a
+level with the rest of the sacred college.]
+
+[Footnote 127: Firmiter jurantes, nunquam se papam electuros aut
+audinaturos, praeter consensum et electionem Othonis et filii sui.
+(Liutprand, l. vi. c. 6, p. 472.) This important concession may either
+supply or confirm the decree of the clergy and people of Rome, so
+fiercely rejected by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori, (A.D. 964,) and so
+well defended and explained by St. Marc, (Abrege, tom. ii. p. 808-816,
+tom. iv. p. 1167-1185.) Consult the historical critic, and the Annals
+of Muratori, for for the election and confirmation of each pope.]
+
+[Footnote 128: The oppression and vices of the Roman church, in the xth
+century, are strongly painted in the history and legation of Liutprand,
+(see p. 440, 450, 471-476, 479, &c.;) and it is whimsical enough to
+observe Muratori tempering the invectives of Baronius against the
+popes. But these popes had been chosen, not by the cardinals, but by
+lay-patrons.]
+
+[Footnote 129: The time of Pope Joan (papissa Joanna) is placed somewhat
+earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of her imaginary
+reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and Benedict III. But the
+contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links the death of Leo and
+the elevation of Benedict, (illico, mox, p. 247;) and the accurate
+chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and Leibnitz, fixes both events to the
+year 857.]
+
+[Footnote 130: The advocates for Pope Joan produce one hundred and fifty
+witnesses, or rather echoes, of the xivth, xvth, and xvith centuries.
+They bear testimony against themselves and the legend, by multiplying
+the proof that so curious a story must have been repeated by writers
+of every description to whom it was known. On those of the ixth and
+xth centuries, the recent event would have flashed with a double force.
+Would Photius have spared such a reproach? Could Liutprand have missed
+such scandal? It is scarcely worth while to discuss the various readings
+of Martinus Polonus, Sigeber of Gamblours, or even Marianus Scotus;
+but a most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan, which has been
+foisted into some Mss. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.]
+
+[Footnote 131: As false, it deserves that name; but I would not
+pronounce it incredible. Suppose a famous French chevalier of our own
+times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the church, instead
+of the army: her merit or fortune might have raised her to St. Peter's
+chair; her amours would have been natural: her delivery in the streets
+unlucky, but not improbable.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Till the reformation the tale was repeated and believed
+without offence: and Joan's female statue long occupied her place among
+the popes in the cathedral of Sienna, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p.
+624-626.) She has been annihilated by two learned Protestants, Blondel
+and Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, Papesse, Polonus, Blondel;) but their
+brethren were scandalized by this equitable and generous criticism.
+Spanheim and Lenfant attempt to save this poor engine of controversy,
+and even Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion, (p.
+289.)]
+
+[Footnote 1321: John XI. was the son of her husband Alberic, not of her
+lover, Pope Sergius III., as Muratori has distinctly proved, Ann. ad
+ann. 911, tom. p. 268. Her grandson Octavian, otherwise called John
+XII., was pope; but a great-grandson cannot be discovered in any of
+the succeeding popes; nor does our historian himself, in his subsequent
+narration, (p. 202,) seem to know of one. Hobhouse, Illustrations of
+Childe Harold, p. 309.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Lateranense palatium... prostibulum meretricum ... Testis
+omnium gentium, praeterquam Romanorum, absentia mulierum, quae sanctorum
+apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent visere, cum nonnullas ante dies
+paucos, hunc audierint conjugatas, viduas, virgines vi oppressisse,
+(Liutprand, Hist. l. vi. c. 6, p. 471. See the whole affair of John
+XII., p. 471-476.)]
+
+[Footnote 134: A new example of the mischief of equivocation is the
+beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope conferred on
+the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may signify either a legal
+fief, or a simple favor, an obligation, (we want the word bienfait.)
+(See Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. iii. p. 393-408. Pfeffel,
+Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p. 229, 296, 317, 324, 420, 430, 500, 505,
+509, &c.)]
+
+In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor
+the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces which were
+lost, as they had been won, by the chance of arms. But the Romans were
+free to choose a master for themselves; and the powers which had been
+delegated to the patrician, were irrevocably granted to the French
+and Saxon emperors of the West. The broken records of the times [135]
+preserve some remembrance of their palace, their mint, their tribunal,
+their edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth
+century, was derived from Caesar to the praefect of the city. [136]
+Between the arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this
+supremacy was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of
+emperor and Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert
+this local jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their ambition was
+diverted by more alluring objects; and in the decay and division of
+the empire, they were oppressed by the defence of their hereditary
+provinces. Amidst the ruins of Italy, the famous Marozia invited one
+of the usurpers to assume the character of her third husband; and Hugh,
+king of Burgundy was introduced by her faction into the mole of Hadrian
+or Castle of St. Angelo, which commands the principal bridge and
+entrance of Rome. Her son by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled
+to attend at the nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful
+service was chastised with a blow by his new father. The blow was
+productive of a revolution. "Romans," exclaimed the youth, "once you
+were the masters of the world, and these Burgundians the most abject of
+your slaves. They now reign, these voracious and brutal savages, and
+my injury is the commencement of your servitude." [137] The alarum bell
+rang to arms in every quarter of the city: the Burgundians retreated
+with haste and shame; Marozia was imprisoned by her victorious son, and
+his brother, Pope John XI., was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual
+functions. With the title of prince, Alberic possessed above twenty
+years the government of Rome; and he is said to have gratified the
+popular prejudice, by restoring the office, or at least the title,
+of consuls and tribunes. His son and heir Octavian assumed, with
+the pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his predecessor, he was
+provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer for the church
+and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded with the Imperial
+dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans were impatient, the
+festival of the coronation was disturbed by the secret conflict of
+prerogative and freedom, and Otho commanded his sword-bearer not to stir
+from his person, lest he should be assaulted and murdered at the foot of
+the altar. [138] Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor chastised
+the revolt of the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The pope was
+degraded in a synod; the praefect was mounted on an ass, whipped through
+the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty were
+hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe process was
+justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian. The voice
+of fame has accused the second Otho of a perfidious and bloody act, the
+massacre of the senators, whom he had invited to his table under the
+fair semblance of hospitality and friendship. [139] In the minority of
+his son Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon
+yoke, and the consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From
+the condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command
+of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a
+conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek emperors. [1391] In
+the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an obstinate siege, till the
+unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety: his body was
+suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of
+the castle. By a reverse of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops,
+was besieged three days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful
+escape saved him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator
+Ptolemy was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
+enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a poison
+which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the design of Otho
+the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the North, to erect his
+throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy.
+But his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of the
+Tyber, to receive their crown in the Vatican. [140] Their absence was
+contemptible, their presence odious and formidable. They descended
+from the Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
+enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult
+and bloodshed. [141] A faint remembrance of their ancestors still
+tormented the Romans; and they beheld with pious indignation the
+succession of Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and Bohemians, who usurped the
+purple and prerogatives of the Caesars.
+
+[Footnote 135: For the history of the emperors in Rome and Italy, see
+Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, Opp. tom. ii., with the Notes of Saxius, and
+the Annals of Muratori, who might refer more distinctly to the authors
+of his great collection.]
+
+[Footnote 136: See the Dissertations of Le Blanc at the end of his
+treatise des Monnoyes de France, in which he produces some Roman coins
+of the French emperors.]
+
+[Footnote 137: Romanorum aliquando servi, scilicet Burgundiones, Romanis
+imperent?.... Romanae urbis dignitas ad tantam est stultitiam ducta,
+ut meretricum etiam imperio pareat? (Liutprand, l. iii. c. 12, p.
+450.) Sigonius (l. vi. p. 400) positively affirms the renovation of the
+consulship; but in the old writers Albericus is more frequently styled
+princeps Romanorum.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Ditmar, p. 354, apud Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 439.]
+
+[Footnote 139: This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse in the
+Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p. 436, 437,)
+who flourished towards the end of the xiith century, (Fabricius Bibliot.
+Latin. Med. et Infimi Aevi, tom. iii. p. 69, edit. Mansi;) but his
+evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is reasonably suspected by Muratori
+(Annali, tom. viii. p. 177.)]
+
+[Footnote 1391: The Marquis Maffei's gallery contained a medal with Imp.
+Caes August. P. P. Crescentius. Hence Hobhouse infers that he affected
+the empire. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold, p. 252.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 140: The coronation of the emperor, and some original
+ceremonies of the xth century are preserved in the Panegyric on
+Berengarius, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 405-414,) illustrated
+by the Notes of Hadrian Valesius and Leibnitz. Sigonius has related
+the whole process of the Roman expedition, in good Latin, but with some
+errors of time and fact, (l. vii. p. 441-446.)]
+
+[Footnote 141: In a quarrel at the coronation of Conrad II. Muratori
+takes leave to observe--doveano ben essere allora, indisciplinati,
+Barbari, e bestials Tedeschi. Annal. tom. viii. p. 368.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part VI.
+
+There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold
+in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to
+their inclination and interest. A torrent of Barbarians may pass over
+the earth, but an extensive empire must be supported by a refined system
+of policy and oppression; in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in
+action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the
+extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion;
+a regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined
+army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far
+different was the situation of the German Caesars, who were ambitious to
+enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial estates were stretched
+along the Rhine, or scattered in the provinces; but this ample domain
+was alienated by the imprudence or distress of successive princes;
+and their revenue, from minute and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely
+sufficient for the maintenance of their household. Their troops were
+formed by the legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who
+passed the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
+disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the campaign.
+Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential influence of the
+climate: the survivors brought back the bones of their princes and
+nobles, [142] and the effects of their own intemperance were often
+imputed to the treachery and malice of the Italians, who rejoiced at
+least in the calamities of the Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might
+contend on equal terms with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the
+people, or the reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel.
+But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the
+flame of industry and freedom; and the generous example was at length
+imitated by the republics of Tuscany. [1421] In the Italian cities a
+municipal government had never been totally abolished; and their first
+privileges were granted by the favor and policy of the emperors, who
+were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of
+the nobles. But their rapid progress, the daily extension of their power
+and pretensions, were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising
+communities. [143] Each city filled the measure of her diocese or
+district: the jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises
+and counts, was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were
+persuaded or compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to embrace
+the more honorable character of freemen and magistrates. The legislative
+authority was inherent in the general assembly; but the executive powers
+were intrusted to three consuls, annually chosen from the three orders
+of captains, valvassors, [144] and commons, into which the republic was
+divided. Under the protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture
+and commerce were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the
+Lombards was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the
+bell was rung, or the standard [145] erected, the gates of the city
+poured forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their own cause
+was soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At the foot of these
+popular ramparts, the pride of the Caesars was overthrown; and the
+invincible genius of liberty prevailed over the two Frederics, the
+greatest princes of the middle age; the first, superior perhaps in
+military prowess; the second, who undoubtedly excelled in the softer
+accomplishments of peace and learning.
+
+[Footnote 142: After boiling away the flesh. The caldrons for that
+purpose were a necessary piece of travelling furniture; and a German who
+was using it for his brother, promised it to a friend, after it should
+have been employed for himself, (Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 423, 424.) The
+same author observes that the whole Saxon line was extinguished in
+Italy, (tom. ii. p. 440.)]
+
+[Footnote 1421: Compare Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques Italiannes.
+Hallam Middle Ages. Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstauffen. Savigny,
+Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, vol. iii. p. 19 with the authors
+quoted.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Otho, bishop of Frisingen, has left an important passage
+on the Italian cities, (l. ii. c. 13, in Script. Ital. tom. vi. p.
+707-710: ) and the rise, progress, and government of these republics
+are perfectly illustrated by Muratori, (Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Aevi,
+tom. iv. dissert xlv.--lii. p. 1-675. Annal. tom. viii. ix. x.)]
+
+[Footnote 144: For these titles, see Selden, (Titles of Honor, vol. iii.
+part 1 p. 488.) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p. 140, tom. vi. p.
+776,) and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 719.)]
+
+[Footnote 145: The Lombards invented and used the carocium, a standard
+planted on a car or wagon, drawn by a team of oxen, (Ducange, tom. ii.
+p. 194, 195. Muratori Antiquitat tom. ii. dis. xxvi. p. 489-493.)]
+
+Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the First
+invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a statesman, the
+valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant. The recent discovery of
+the Pandects had renewed a science most favorable to despotism; and his
+venal advocates proclaimed the emperor the absolute master of the lives
+and properties of his subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious
+sense, were acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of
+Italy was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, [146] which were
+multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal officers.
+The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the force of his
+arms: his captives were delivered to the executioner, or shot from
+his military engines; and. after the siege and surrender of Milan,
+the buildings of that stately capital were razed to the ground, three
+hundred hostages were sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were
+dispersed in four villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror.
+[147] But Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
+cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope
+Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of oppression
+was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of Constance, Frederic
+subscribed, with some reservations, the freedom of four-and-twenty
+cities. His grandson contended with their vigor and maturity; but
+Frederic the Second [148] was endowed with some personal and peculiar
+advantages. His birth and education recommended him to the Italians;
+and in the implacable discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were
+attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of
+liberty and the church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father
+Henry the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of
+Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son derived an
+ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet Frederic the Second
+was finally oppressed by the arms of the Lombards and the thunders of
+the Vatican: his kingdom was given to a stranger, and the last of his
+family was beheaded at Naples on a public scaffold. During sixty years,
+no emperor appeared in Italy, and the name was remembered only by the
+ignominious sale of the last relics of sovereignty.
+
+[Footnote 146: Gunther Ligurinus, l. viii. 584, et seq., apud Schmidt,
+tom. iii. p. 399.]
+
+[Footnote 147: Solus imperator faciem suam firmavit ut petram, (Burcard.
+de Excidio Mediolani, Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 917.) This volume of
+Muratori contains the originals of the history of Frederic the First,
+which must be compared with due regard to the circumstances and
+prejudices of each German or Lombard writer. * Note: Von Raumer has
+traced the fortunes of the Swabian house in one of the ablest historical
+works of modern times. He may be compared with the spirited and
+independent Sismondi.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 148: For the history of Frederic II. and the house of Swabia
+at Naples, see Giannone, Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xiv. -xix.]
+
+The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate their
+chief with the title of emperor; but it was not their design to invest
+him with the despotism of Constantine and Justinian. The persons of the
+Germans were free, their conquests were their own, and their
+national character was animated by a spirit which scorned the servile
+jurisprudence of the new or the ancient Rome. It would have been a vain
+and dangerous attempt to impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who
+were impatient of a magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the
+powerful, who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was
+distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the counts of
+the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches or frontiers,
+who all united the civil and military authority as it had been delegated
+to the lieutenants of the first Caesars. The Roman governors, who,
+for the most part, were soldiers of fortune, seduced their mercenary
+legions, assumed the Imperial purple, and either failed or succeeded in
+their revolt, without wounding the power and unity of government. If the
+dukes, margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in
+their claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and
+pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank,
+they silently labored to establish and appropriate their provincial
+independence. Their ambition was seconded by the weight of their estates
+and vassals, their mutual example and support, the common interest
+of the subordinate nobility, the change of princes and families, the
+minorities of Otho the Third and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the
+popes, and the vain pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome.
+All the attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually
+usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace and war,
+of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign alliance and
+domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by violence, was ratified
+by favor or distress, was granted as the price of a doubtful vote or a
+voluntary service; whatever had been granted to one could not, without
+injury, be denied to his successor or equal; and every act of local or
+temporary possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the
+Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the duke or
+count was interposed between the throne and the nobles; the subjects of
+the law became the vassals of a private chief; and the standard which he
+received from his sovereign, was often raised against him in the field.
+The temporal power of the clergy was cherished and exalted by the
+superstition or policy of the Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who
+blindly depended on their moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of
+Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and
+population, to the most ample states of the military order. As long
+as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy
+these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was maintained
+by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favorites. But in the
+quarrel of the investitures, they were deprived of their influence over
+the episcopal chapters; the freedom of election was restored, and the
+sovereign was reduced, by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the
+recommendation, once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church.
+The secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a
+superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers. In the
+first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to the duchy
+or county of his father, was solicited as a favor; it was gradually
+obtained as a custom, and extorted as a right: the lineal succession was
+often extended to the collateral or female branches; the states of the
+empire (their popular, and at length their legal, appellation) were
+divided and alienated by testament and sale; and all idea of a public
+trust was lost in that of a private and perpetual inheritance. The
+emperor could not even be enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and
+extinction: within the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the
+vacant fief; and, in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to
+consult either the general or the provincial diet.
+
+After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a monster with
+a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates disputed the ruins of
+the empire: the lords of innumerable castles were less prone to obey,
+than to imitate, their superiors; and, according to the measure of their
+strength, their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest
+or robbery. Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and
+manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were shivered
+into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But the Italian
+cities and the French vassals were divided and destroyed, while the
+union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a
+great system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the
+perpetual institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and
+the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three
+branches or colleges of the electors, the princes, and the free and
+Imperial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories
+were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the
+exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors
+were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
+Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops
+of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college of princes and
+prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous multitude: they reduced to
+four representative votes the long series of independent counts, and
+excluded the nobles or equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in
+the Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election.
+III. The pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely
+adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the
+progress of society, they were introduced about the same aera into the
+national assemblies of France England, and Germany.
+
+The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the north:
+the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the
+inland country; the influence of the cities has been adequate to their
+wealth and policy, and their negative still invalidates the acts of the
+two superior colleges of electors and princes. [149]
+
+[Footnote 149: In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of Germany,
+I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had rather trust to
+one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a multitude of names
+and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the author of the best legal
+and constitutional history that I know of any country, (Nouvel Abrege
+Chronologique de l'Histoire et du Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776,
+2 vols. in 4to.) His learning and judgment have discerned the most
+interesting facts; his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space.
+His chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and
+an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To this
+work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was gratefully indebted
+for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern changes of the
+Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae Germanicae of Struvius has been
+likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that huge compilation is
+fortified in every page with the original texts. * Note: For the rise
+and progress of the Hanseatic League, consult the authoritative history
+by Sartorius; Geschichte des Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen,
+1802. New and improved edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830. The
+original Hanseatic League comprehended Cologne and many of the great
+cities in the Netherlands and on the Rhine.--M.]
+
+It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest light
+the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, which no longer
+held, except on the borders of the Rhine and Danube, a single province
+of Trajan or Constantine. Their unworthy successors were the counts of
+Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor
+Henry the Seventh procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and
+his grandson Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and
+barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves. [150] After the
+excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise
+of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and
+captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death
+of his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was
+unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and future emperor; a title
+which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Caesars of Germany and
+Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent
+magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village
+that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of
+presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at
+his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
+adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the
+richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps
+consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose,
+Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which tradition ascribed to the
+Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the
+gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held
+a captive by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the
+sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the
+golden crown of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the
+Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
+within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, [151] whose fancy
+revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the
+ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries could
+observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative
+sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election
+of his son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that
+his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was
+detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of
+his expenses.
+
+[Footnote 150: Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be considered as
+a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he recovered the use of the
+Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the emperor conversed and wrote with
+equal facility in French, Latin, Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615,
+616.) Petrarch always represents him as a polite and learned prince.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Besides the German and Italian historians, the expedition
+of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original colors in the curious
+Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 376-430, by the Abbe de
+Sade, whose prolixity has never been blamed by any reader of taste and
+curiosity.]
+
+From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty of the
+same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes
+the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign
+and legislator. A hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted
+their own dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their
+chief or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers,
+the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed
+their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple
+kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and
+Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles.
+The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver
+measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately
+dismounted to regulate the order of the guests The great steward, the
+count palatine of the Rhine, place the dishes on the table. The great
+chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast,
+the golden ewer and basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great
+cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor's brother, the duke of
+Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great
+huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns
+and hounds. [152] Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined
+to Germany alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the
+preeminence of his rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian
+princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the West: [153] to
+his person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed
+with the pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling
+councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a
+pensioner of Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the
+doctrine, that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the
+earth, from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was
+condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the gospel had
+pronounced, "And there went forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, that
+all the world should be taxed." [154]
+
+[Footnote 152: See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]
+
+[Footnote 153: The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor at its
+head, was never represented with more dignity than in the council of
+Constance. See Lenfant's History of that assembly.]
+
+[Footnote 154: Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]
+
+If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus and
+Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the two
+Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the mask of
+ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength under the
+semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious legions, in his
+reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and Euphrates to the Atlantic
+Ocean, Augustus professed himself the servant of the state and the equal
+of his fellow-citizens. The conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed
+a popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will
+was the law of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed
+the voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their
+master accepted and renewed his temporary commission to administer the
+republic. In his dress, his domestics, [155] his titles, in all the
+offices of social life, Augustus maintained the character of a private
+Roman; and his most artful flatterers respected the secret of his
+absolute and perpetual monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 155: Six thousand urns have been discovered of the slaves and
+freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the division of office,
+that one slave was appointed to weigh the wool which was spun by the
+empress's maids, another for the care of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera
+Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract of his work in the Bibliotheque
+Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.)
+But these servants were of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous
+than those of Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of
+the city.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part I.
+
+     Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Birth,
+     Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet.--He Preaches At Mecca.--
+     Flies To Medina.--Propagates His Religion By The Sword.--
+     Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.--His Death
+     And Successors.--The Claims And Fortunes Of Ali And His
+     Descendants.
+
+After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars of
+Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on
+the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted
+by the Persian war, and the church was distracted by the Nestorian and
+Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in
+the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.
+The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the
+spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of
+the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most
+memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and lasting character
+on the nations of the globe. [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: As in this and the following chapter I shall display much
+Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the Oriental
+tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters, who have
+transfused their science into the Latin, French, and English languages.
+Their collections, versions, and histories, I shall occasionally
+notice.]
+
+In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia, the
+Arabian peninsula [2] may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but
+irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles [3] on the
+Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the Straits
+of Bebelmandel and the land of frankincense. About half this length may
+be allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora
+to Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. [4] The sides of the
+triangle are gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a
+front of a thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the
+peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or France;
+but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets
+of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked, by the
+hand of nature, with lofty trees and luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome
+traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of
+vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of
+sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
+desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense
+rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds,
+particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious and even deadly
+vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter,
+are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole
+armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits
+of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity
+of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the
+element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which
+fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the
+torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth: the
+rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their
+roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the
+night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts:
+the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the
+pilgrim of Mecca, [5] after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by
+the taste of the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt.
+Such is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia.
+The experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
+enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh water, are
+sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to the fortunate spots
+which can afford food and refreshment to themselves and their cattle,
+and which encourage their industry in the cultivation of the palmtree
+and the vine. The high lands that border on the Indian Ocean are
+distinguished by their superior plenty of wood and water; the air is
+more temperate, the fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human
+race more numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the
+toil of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense [6] and
+coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the world. If
+it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this sequestered region
+may truly deserve the appellation of the happy; and the splendid
+coloring of fancy and fiction has been suggested by contrast, and
+countenanced by distance. It was for this earthly paradise that Nature
+had reserved her choicest favors and her most curious workmanship: the
+incompatible blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the
+natives: the soil was impregnated with gold [7] and gems, and both the
+land and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This
+division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to the
+Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and it is
+singular enough, that a country, whose language and inhabitants have
+ever been the same, should scarcely retain a vestige of its ancient
+geography. The maritime districts of Bahrein and Oman are opposite to
+the realm of Persia. The kingdom of Yemen displays the limits, or at
+least the situation, of Arabia Felix: the name of Neged is extended over
+the inland space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province
+of Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea. [8]
+
+[Footnote 2: The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three
+classes: 1. The Greeks and Latins, whose progressive knowledge may be
+traced in Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, in Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom.
+i.,) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. ii. p. 159-167, l. iii. p. 211-216,
+edit. Wesseling,) Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1112-1114, from Eratosthenes, p.
+1122-1132, from Artemidorus,) Dionysius, (Periegesis, 927-969,) Pliny,
+(Hist. Natur. v. 12, vi. 32,) and Ptolemy, (Descript. et Tabulae Urbium,
+in Hudson, tom. iii.) 2. The Arabic writers, who have treated the
+subject with the zeal of patriotism or devotion: the extracts of Pocock
+(Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 125-128) from the Geography of the Sherif
+al Edrissi, render us still more dissatisfied with the version or
+abridgment (p. 24-27, 44-56, 108, &c., 119, &c.) which the Maronites
+have published under the absurd title of Geographia Nubiensis, (Paris,
+1619;) but the Latin and French translators, Greaves (in Hudson, tom.
+iii.) and Galland, (Voyage de la Palestine par La Roque, p. 265-346,)
+have opened to us the Arabia of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct
+account of the peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the
+Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim. 3.
+The European travellers; among whom Shaw (p. 438-455) and Niebuhr
+(Description, 1773; Voyages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an honorable
+distinction: Busching (Geographie par Berenger, tom. viii. p. 416-510)
+has compiled with judgment, and D'Anville's Maps (Orbis Veteribus
+Notus, and 1re Partie de l'Asie) should lie before the reader, with his
+Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208-231. * Note: Of modern travellers
+may be mentioned the adventurer who called himself Ali Bey; but above
+all, the intelligent, the enterprising the accurate Burckhardt.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Abulfed. Descript. Arabiae, p. 1. D'Anville, l'Euphrate et
+le Tigre, p. 19, 20. It was in this place, the paradise or garden of
+a satrap, that Xenophon and the Greeks first passed the Euphrates,
+(Anabasis, l. i. c. 10, p. 29, edit. Wells.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning,
+
+1. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a part of the
+Mare Rubrum, which was extended to the indefinite space of the Indian
+Ocean.
+
+2. That the synonymous words, allude to the color of the blacks or
+negroes, (Dissert Miscell. tom. i. p. 59-117.)]
+
+[Footnote 5: In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and Mecca,
+there are fifteen destitute of good water. See the route of the Hadjees,
+in Shaw's Travels, p. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense, of
+Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny. Our great poet (Paradise Lost,
+l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors that are blown by the
+north-east wind from the Sabaean coast:----Many a league, Pleased with
+the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles. (Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 42.)]
+
+[Footnote 7: Agatharcides affirms, that lumps of pure gold were found,
+from the size of an olive to that of a nut; that iron was twice, and
+silver ten times, the value of gold, (de Mari Rubro, p. 60.) These real
+or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no gold mines are at present
+known in Arabia, (Niebuhr, Description, p. 124.) * Note: A brilliant
+passage in the geographical poem of Dionysius Periegetes embodies the
+notions of the ancients on the wealth and fertility of Yemen. Greek
+mythology, and the traditions of the "gorgeous east," of India as well
+as Arabia, are mingled together in indiscriminate splendor. Compare on
+the southern coast of Arabia, the recent travels of Lieut. Wellsted--M.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Hostoriae Arabum of
+Pocock, (Oxon. 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text and version are
+extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory Abulpharagius, which Pocock
+afterwards translated, (Oxon. 1663, in 4to.;) the three hundred and
+fifty-eight notes form a classic and original work on the Arabian
+antiquities.]
+
+The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence;
+and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be outnumbered by the
+subjects of a fertile and industrious province. Along the shores of the
+Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and even of the Red Sea, the Icthyophagi,
+[9] or fish eaters, continued to wander in quest of their precarious
+food. In this primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of
+society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or
+language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
+Generations and ages might roll away in silent oblivion, and the
+helpless savage was restrained from multiplying his race by the wants
+and pursuits which confined his existence to the narrow margin of the
+seacoast. But in an early period of antiquity the great body of the
+Arabs had emerged from this scene of misery; and as the naked wilderness
+could not maintain a people of hunters, they rose at once to the more
+secure and plentiful condition of the pastoral life. The same life
+is uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the
+portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of their
+ancestors, [10] who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt under similar
+tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and sheep, to the same
+springs and the same pastures. Our toil is lessened, and our wealth
+is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals; and the Arabian
+shepherd had acquired the absolute possession of a faithful friend and
+a laborious slave. [11] Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the
+genuine and original country of the horse; the climate most propitious,
+not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that
+generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the English
+breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: [12] the Bedoweens
+preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and the memory of the
+purest race: the males are sold at a high price, but the females are
+seldom alienated; and the birth of a noble foal was esteemed among the
+tribes, as a subject of joy and mutual congratulation. These horses are
+educated in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a
+tender familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness
+and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their
+sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the
+whip: their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit:
+but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than
+they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their friend
+be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop till he has
+recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and Arabia, the camel is a
+sacred and precious gift. That strong and patient beast of burden can
+perform, without eating or drinking, a journey of several days; and a
+reservoir of fresh water is preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach
+of the animal, whose body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the
+larger breed is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds;
+and the dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the
+fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part of the
+camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and nutritious: the
+young and tender flesh has the taste of veal: [13] a valuable salt is
+extracted from the urine: the dung supplies the deficiency of fuel;
+and the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely
+manufactured into the garments, the furniture, and the tents of the
+Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons, they consume the rare and insufficient
+herbage of the desert: during the heats of summer and the scarcity of
+winter, they remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of
+Yemen, or the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the
+dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the villages
+of Syria and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is a life of
+danger and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or exchange, he may
+appropriate the fruits of industry, a private citizen in Europe is in
+the possession of more solid and pleasing luxury than the proudest emir,
+who marches in the field at the head of ten thousand horse.
+
+[Footnote 9: Arrian remarks the Icthyophagi of the coast of Hejez,
+(Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 12,) and beyond Aden, (p. 15.) It seems
+probable that the shores of the Red Sea (in the largest sense) were
+occupied by these savages in the time, perhaps, of Cyrus; but I can
+hardly believe that any cannibals were left among the savages in the
+reign of Justinian. (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19.)]
+
+[Footnote 10: See the Specimen Historiae Arabum of Pocock, p. 2, 5, 86,
+&c. The journey of M. d'Arvieux, in 1664, to the camp of the emir of
+Mount Carmel, (Voyage de la Palestine, Amsterdam, 1718,) exhibits a
+pleasing and original picture of the life of the Bedoweens, which may
+be illustrated from Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 327-344) and
+Volney, (tom. i. p. 343-385,) the last and most judicious of our Syrian
+travellers.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Read (it is no unpleasing task) the incomparable articles
+of the Horse and the Camel, in the Natural History of M. de Buffon.]
+
+[Footnote 12: For the Arabian horses, see D'Arvieux (p. 159-173) and
+Niebuhr, (p. 142-144.) At the end of the xiiith century, the horses of
+Neged were esteemed sure-footed, those of Yemen strong and serviceable,
+those of Hejaz most noble. The horses of Europe, the tenth and last
+class, were generally despised as having too much body and too little
+spirit, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 339: ) their strength was
+requisite to bear the weight of the knight and his armor]
+
+[Footnote 13: Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces sunt, was
+the opinion of an Arabian physician, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 88.) Mahomet
+himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow, and does not even
+mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and Medina was already more
+luxurious, (Gagnier Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 404.)]
+
+Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of Scythia
+and the Arabian tribes; since many of the latter were collected into
+towns, and employed in the labors of trade and agriculture. A part of
+their time and industry was still devoted to the management of their
+cattle: they mingled, in peace and war, with their brethren of the
+desert; and the Bedoweens derived from their useful intercourse some
+supply of their wants, and some rudiments of art and knowledge. Among
+the forty-two cities of Arabia, [14] enumerated by Abulfeda, the most
+ancient and populous were situate in the happy Yemen: the towers of
+Saana, [15] and the marvellous reservoir of Merab, [16] were constructed
+by the kings of the Homerites; but their profane lustre was eclipsed by
+the prophetic glories of Medina [17] and Mecca, [18] near the Red Sea,
+and at the distance from each other of two hundred and seventy miles.
+The last of these holy places was known to the Greeks under the name
+of Macoraba; and the termination of the word is expressive of its
+greatness, which has not, indeed, in the most flourishing period,
+exceeded the size and populousness of Marseilles. Some latent motive,
+perhaps of superstition, must have impelled the founders, in the choice
+of a most unpromising situation. They erected their habitations of mud
+or stone, in a plain about two miles long and one mile broad, at the
+foot of three barren mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even of
+the holy well of Zemzem is bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote
+from the city; and grapes are transported above seventy miles from the
+gardens of Tayef. The fame and spirit of the Koreishites, who reigned in
+Mecca, were conspicuous among the Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful
+soil refused the labors of agriculture, and their position was favorable
+to the enterprises of trade. By the seaport of Gedda, at the distance
+only of forty miles, they maintained an easy correspondence with
+Abyssinia; and that Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the
+disciples of Mahomet. The treasures of Africa were conveyed over the
+Peninsula to Gerrha or Katif, in the province of Bahrein, a city built,
+as it is said, of rock-salt, by the Chaldaean exiles; [19] and from
+thence with the native pearls of the Persian Gulf, they were floated on
+rafts to the mouth of the Euphrates. Mecca is placed almost at an equal
+distance, a month's journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on
+the left hand. The former was the winter, the latter the summer, station
+of her caravans; and their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of
+India from the tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the
+markets of Saana and Merab, in the harbors of Oman and Aden, the camels
+of the Koreishites were laden with a precious cargo of aromatics; a
+supply of corn and manufactures was purchased in the fairs of Bostra
+and Damascus; the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and riches in the
+streets of Mecca; and the noblest of her sons united the love of arms
+with the profession of merchandise. [20]
+
+[Footnote 14: Yet Marcian of Heraclea (in Periplo, p. 16, in tom. i.
+Hudson, Minor. Geograph.) reckons one hundred and sixty-four towns in
+Arabia Felix. The size of the towns might be small--the faith of the
+writer might be large.]
+
+[Footnote 15: It is compared by Abulfeda (in Hudson, tom. ii. p. 54) to
+Damascus, and is still the residence of the Iman of Yemen, (Voyages
+de Niebuhr, tom. i. p. 331-342.) Saana is twenty-four parasangs from
+Dafar, (Abulfeda, p. 51,) and sixty-eight from Aden, (p. 53.)]
+
+[Footnote 16: Pocock, Specimen, p. 57. Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 52.
+Meriaba, or Merab, six miles in circumference, was destroyed by the
+legions of Augustus, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32,) and had not revived in
+the xivth century, (Abulfed. Descript. Arab. p. 58.) * Note: See note
+2 to chap. i. The destruction of Meriaba by the Romans is doubtful. The
+town never recovered the inundation which took place from the bursting
+of a large reservoir of water--an event of great importance in
+the Arabian annals, and discussed at considerable length by modern
+Orientalists.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The name of city, Medina, was appropriated, to Yatreb.
+(the Iatrippa of the Greeks,) the seat of the prophet. The distances
+from Medina are reckoned by Abulfeda in stations, or days' journey of a
+caravan, (p. 15: ) to Bahrein, xv.; to Bassora, xviii.; to Cufah, xx.;
+to Damascus or Palestine, xx.; to Cairo, xxv.; to Mecca. x.; from Mecca
+to Saana, (p. 52,) or Aden, xxx.; to Cairo, xxxi. days, or 412 hours,
+(Shaw's Travels, p. 477;) which, according to the estimate of D'Anville,
+(Mesures Itineraires, p. 99,) allows about twenty-five English miles
+for a day's journey. From the land of frankincense (Hadramaut, in Yemen,
+between Aden and Cape Fartasch) to Gaza in Syria, Pliny (Hist. Nat. xii.
+32) computes lxv. mansions of camels. These measures may assist fancy
+and elucidate facts.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Our notions of Mecca must be drawn from the Arabians,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368-371. Pocock, Specimen, p.
+125-128. Abulfeda, p. 11-40.) As no unbeliever is permitted to enter
+the city, our travellers are silent; and the short hints of Thevenot
+(Voyages du Levant, part i. p. 490) are taken from the suspicious mouth
+of an African renegado. Some Persians counted 6000 houses, (Chardin.
+tom. iv. p. 167.) * Note: Even in the time of Gibbon, Mecca had not been
+so inaccessible to Europeans. It had been visited by Ludovico Barthema,
+and by one Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, who was taken prisoner by the Moors,
+and forcibly converted to Mahometanism. His volume is a curious, though
+plain, account of his sufferings and travels. Since that time Mecca has
+been entered, and the ceremonies witnessed, by Dr. Seetzen, whose papers
+were unfortunately lost; by the Spaniard, who called himself Ali Bey;
+and, lastly, by Burckhardt, whose description leaves nothing wanting to
+satisfy the curiosity.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1110. See one of these salt houses near
+Bassora, in D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Mirum dictu ex innumeris populis pars aequa in commerciis
+aut in latrociniis degit, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32.) See Sale's Koran,
+Sura. cvi. p. 503. Pocock, Specimen, p. 2. D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient.
+p. 361. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 5. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom.
+i. p. 72, 120, 126, &c.]
+
+The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise
+among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this
+singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity
+of Ismael. [21] Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed
+nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is
+superfluous; the kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the
+Abyssinians, the Persians, the sultans of Egypt, [22] and the Turks;
+[23] the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under
+a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia [24] embraced the
+peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons must have pitched their
+tents in the face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary
+or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most
+powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey
+and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present
+sovereign of the Turks [25] may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but
+his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is
+dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of
+their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs.
+Many ages before Mahomet, [26] their intrepid valor had been severely
+felt by their neighbors in offensive and defensive war. The patient
+and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits
+and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is
+abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the
+banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practise
+the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the cimeter. The long memory
+of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity and
+succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to
+maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are suspended on the
+approach of a common enemy; and in their last hostilities against the
+Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by fourscore
+thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of
+victory is in the front; in the rear, the assurance of a retreat. Their
+horses and camels, who, in eight or ten days, can perform a march of
+four or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret
+waters of the desert elude his search, and his victorious troops
+are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an
+invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart
+of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens are not
+only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the
+happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated by the
+luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in
+disease and lassitude; [27] and it is only by a naval power that the
+reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When Mahomet erected
+his holy standard, [28] that kingdom was a province of the Persian
+empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the
+mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his
+distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of
+Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided
+by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of
+Gassan was allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory: the princes of
+Hira were permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward
+of the ruins of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and
+vigorous; but their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their
+enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these
+roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned
+to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of
+Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes [29] were
+confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of
+Saracens, [30] a name which every Christian mouth has been taught to
+pronounce with terror and abhorrence.
+
+[Footnote 21: A nameless doctor (Universal Hist. vol. xx. octavo
+edition) has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the
+independence of the Arabs. A critic, besides the exceptions of fact,
+might dispute the meaning of the text (Gen. xvi. 12,) the extent of the
+application, and the foundation of the pedigree. * Note: See note 3 to
+chap. xlvi. The atter point is probably the least contestable of the
+three.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 22: It was subdued, A.D. 1173, by a brother of the great
+Saladin, who founded a dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites, (Guignes, Hist.
+des Huns, tom. i. p. 425. D'Herbelot, p. 477.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: By the lieutenant of Soliman I. (A.D. 1538) and Selim
+II., (1568.) See Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p. 201, 221. The
+pacha, who resided at Saana, commanded twenty-one beys; but no revenue
+was ever remitted to the Porte, (Marsigli, Stato Militare dell' Imperio
+Ottomanno, p. 124,) and the Turks were expelled about the year 1630,
+(Niebuhr, p. 167, 168.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and the
+third Palestine, the principal cities were Bostra and Petra, which
+dated their aera from the year 105, when they were subdued by Palma, a
+lieutenant of Trajan, (Dion. Cassius, l. lxviii.) Petra was the capital
+of the Nabathaeans; whose name is derived from the eldest of the sons
+of Ismael, (Gen. xxv. 12, &c., with the Commentaries of Jerom, Le Clerc,
+and Calmet.) Justinian relinquished a palm country of ten days' journey
+to the south of Aelah, (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19,) and the
+Romans maintained a centurion and a custom-house, (Arrian in Periplo
+Maris Erythraei, p. 11, in Hudson, tom. i.,) at a place (Pagus Albus,
+Hawara) in the territory of Medina, (D'Anville, Memoire sur l'Egypte, p.
+243.) These real possessions, and some naval inroads of Trajan, (Peripl.
+p. 14, 15,) are magnified by history and medals into the Roman conquest
+of Arabia. * Note: On the ruins of Petra, see the travels of Messrs.
+Irby and Mangles, and of Leon de Laborde.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 302, 303, 329-331)
+affords the most recent and authentic intelligence of the Turkish empire
+in Arabia. * Note: Niebuhr's, notwithstanding the multitude of later
+travellers, maintains its ground, as the classical work on Arabia.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Diodorus Siculus (tom. ii. l. xix. p. 390-393, edit.
+Wesseling) has clearly exposed the freedom of the Nabathaean Arabs, who
+resisted the arms of Antigonus and his son.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1127-1129. Plin. Hist. Natur. vi. 32.
+Aelius Gallus landed near Medina, and marched near a thousand miles into
+the part of Yemen between Mareb and the Ocean. The non ante devictis
+Sabeae regibus, (Od. i. 29,) and the intacti Arabum thesanri (Od. iii.
+24) of Horace, attest the virgin purity of Arabia.]
+
+[Footnote 28: See the imperfect history of Yemen in Pocock, Specimen, p.
+55-66, of Hira, p. 66-74, of Gassan, p. 75-78, as far as it could be
+known or preserved in the time of ignorance. * Note: Compare the
+Hist. Yemanae, published by Johannsen at Bonn 1880 particularly the
+translator's preface.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 29: They are described by Menander, (Excerpt. Legation p.
+149,) Procopius, (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 17, 19, l. ii. c. 10,) and,
+in the most lively colors, by Ammianus Marcellinus, (l. xiv. c. 4,) who
+had spoken of them as early as the reign of Marcus.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more
+confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been
+derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from
+the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly from the
+Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation,
+(Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Specimen, p.
+33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and
+most popular of these etymologies is refuted by Ptolemy, (Arabia, p. 2,
+18, in Hudson, tom. iv.,) who expressly remarks the western and southern
+position of the Saracens, then an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt.
+The appellation cannot therefore allude to any national character; and,
+since it was imposed by strangers, it must be found, not in the Arabic,
+but in a foreign language. * Note: Dr. Clarke, (Travels, vol. ii. p.
+491,) after expressing contemptuous pity for Gibbon's ignorance, derives
+the word from Zara, Zaara, Sara, the Desert, whence Saraceni, the
+children of the Desert. De Marles adopts the derivation from Sarrik, a
+robber, (Hist. des Arabes, vol. i. p. 36, S.L. Martin from Scharkioun,
+or Sharkun, Eastern, vol. xi. p. 55.)--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part II.
+
+The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national
+independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some
+degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives
+of nature. In every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune,
+has exalted a particular family above the heads of their equals. The
+dignities of sheick and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but
+the order of succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or
+aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though important,
+office of composing disputes by their advice, and guiding valor by their
+example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command
+the countrymen of Zenobia. [31] The momentary junction of several tribes
+produces an army: their more lasting union constitutes a nation; and
+the supreme chief, the emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their
+head, may deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly
+name.
+
+If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly punished by
+the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed to a mild and
+parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are unconfined,
+the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held together by a
+mutual and voluntary compact. The softer natives of Yemen supported
+the pomp and majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave his palace
+without endangering his life, [32] the active powers of government must
+have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates. The cities of Mecca
+and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the form, or rather the
+substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of Mahomet, and his lineal
+ancestors, appear in foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of
+their country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or the
+Medici at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity;
+their influence was divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was
+transferred from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of the
+tribe of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of
+the people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to
+obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the
+clearest evidence of public freedom. [33] But their simple freedom was
+of a very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the
+Greek and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided
+share of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more
+simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her
+sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is
+fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the
+love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command;
+and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of
+pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is
+conspicuous in his outward demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and
+concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of
+stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of
+his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and
+his superiors without awe. [34] The liberty of the Saracens survived
+their conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and familiar
+language of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade and
+edify the congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was
+removed to the Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous
+ceremonial of the Persian and Byzantine courts.
+
+[Footnote 31: Saraceni... mulieres aiunt in eos regnare, (Expositio
+totius Mundi, p. 3, in Hudson, tom. iii.) The reign of Mavia is famous
+in ecclesiastical story Pocock, Specimen, p. 69, 83.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The report of Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 63, 64, in
+Hudson, tom. i.) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. iii. c. 47, p. 215,) and
+Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1124.) But I much suspect that this is one of
+the popular tales, or extraordinary accidents, which the credulity of
+travellers so often transforms into a fact, a custom, and a law.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Non gloriabantur antiquitus Arabes, nisi gladio, hospite,
+et eloquentia (Sephadius apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 161, 162.) This gift
+of speech they shared only with the Persians; and the sententious
+Arabs would probably have disdained the simple and sublime logic of
+Demosthenes.]
+
+[Footnote 34: I must remind the reader that D'Arvieux, D'Herbelot,
+and Niebuhr, represent, in the most lively colors, the manners and
+government of the Arabs, which are illustrated by many incidental
+passages in the Life of Mahomet. * Note: See, likewise the curious
+romance of Antar, the most vivid and authentic picture of Arabian
+manners.--M.]
+
+In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that render
+them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge,
+to mollify or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the
+Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas
+of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a
+maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present
+hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and
+fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human
+family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by
+fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly
+deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are
+equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse
+the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the
+remote times of Job and Sesostris, [35] have been the victims of
+their rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary
+traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice,
+"Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment." A ready
+submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor,
+and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in
+legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are branded
+with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the
+character of lawful and honorable war. The temper of a people thus armed
+against mankind was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine,
+murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace
+and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much
+smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity
+and renown, might point his javelin against the life of his countrymen.
+The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of
+language and manners; and in each community, the jurisdiction of
+the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance which
+preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles [36] are recorded by
+tradition: hostility was imbittered with the rancor of civil faction;
+and the recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient
+to rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile
+tribes. In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge
+and avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of honor, which
+weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
+quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their beards,
+is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be
+expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient
+inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of
+revenge. A fine or compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians
+of every age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to
+accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law of
+retaliation. The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the head
+of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty person, and
+transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the race
+by whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are
+exposed, in their turn, to the danger of reprisals, the interest and
+principal of the bloody debt are accumulated: the individuals of
+either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may
+sometimes elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled.
+[37] This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been
+moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in every
+private encounter some decent equality of age and strength, of numbers
+and weapons. An annual festival of two, perhaps of four, months, was
+observed by the Arabs before the time of Mahomet, during which their
+swords were religiously sheathed both in foreign and domestic hostility;
+and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of
+anarchy and warfare. [38]
+
+[Footnote 35: Observe the first chapter of Job, and the long wall of
+1500 stadia which Sesostris built from Pelusium to Heliopolis, (Diodor.
+Sicul. tom. i. l. i. p. 67.) Under the name of Hycsos, the shepherd
+kings, they had formerly subdued Egypt, (Marsham, Canon. Chron. p.
+98-163) &c.) * Note: This origin of the Hycsos, though probable, is
+by no means so certain here is some reason for supposing them
+Scythians.--M]
+
+[Footnote 36: Or, according to another account, 1200, (D'Herbelot,
+Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 75: ) the two historians who wrote of the
+Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in the 9th and 10th
+century. The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was occasioned by two
+horses, lasted forty years, and ended in a proverb, (Pocock, Specimen,
+p. 48.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the revenge
+of murder are described by Niebuhr, (Description, p. 26-31.) The harsher
+features of antiquity may be traced in the Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p.
+230, with Sale's Observations.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Procopius (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 16) places the two
+holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians consecrate four
+months of the year--the first, seventh, eleventh, and twelfth; and
+pretend, that in a long series of ages the truce was infringed only four
+or six times, (Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 147-150, and Notes
+on the ixth chapter of the Koran, p. 154, &c. Casiri, Bibliot.
+Hispano-Arabica, tom. ii. p. 20, 21.)]
+
+But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder
+influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed
+by the most civilized nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the
+friend of mankind; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds
+of knowledge and politeness into the cities, and even the camps of the
+desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is
+derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and
+the Chaldaean tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by
+their peculiar dialects; [39] but each, after their own, allowed a just
+preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as
+well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement
+of manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey,
+the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand
+of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to
+the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites
+were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic
+letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the
+banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by
+a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The
+arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn
+eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their
+fancy luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, [40] and their more
+elaborate compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the
+minds of their hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was
+celebrated by the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn
+banquet was prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals,
+and displaying the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their
+sons and husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion
+had now appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised
+his voice to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes
+resorted to an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the
+first Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine
+and harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange,
+not only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize
+was disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
+performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and
+we may read in our own language, the seven original poems which were
+inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of Mecca. [41]
+The Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age; and
+if they sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the
+virtues, of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and
+valor was the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed
+their keenest satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the
+bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women
+to deny. [42] The same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and
+celebrated by Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The
+ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry
+or hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honor and to
+enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the
+wealth, or the poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he
+is dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with
+gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a
+brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public
+applause, must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion and
+experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of Mecca, was
+entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive application was
+made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah,
+the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in
+the stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the uncle
+of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!" He instantly
+dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel, her rich caparison,
+and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold, excepting only the sword,
+either for its intrinsic value, or as the gift of an honored kinsman.
+The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that his master was
+asleep: but he immediately added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand
+pieces of gold, (it is all we have in the house,) and here is an order,
+that will entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as
+he awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a gentle
+reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted his bounty.
+The third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was
+supporting his steps on the shoulders of two slaves. "Alas!" he replied,
+"my coffers are empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce
+them." At these words, pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall
+with his staff.
+
+The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian virtue: [43] he
+was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful robber; forty
+camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at the prayer of a
+suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and the spoil. The freedom
+of his countrymen disdained the laws of justice; they proudly indulged
+the spontaneous impulse of pity and benevolence.
+
+[Footnote 39: Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Periplo Maris
+Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the dialects of
+the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously treated by Pocock,
+(Specimen, p. 150-154,) Casiri, (Bibliot. Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p.
+1, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.,) and Niebuhr, (Description de l'Arabie,
+p. 72-36) I pass slightly; I am not fond of repeating words like a
+parrot.]
+
+[Footnote 40: A familiar tale in Voltaire's Zadig (le Chien et le
+Cheval) is related, to prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 120, 121. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom.
+i. p. 37-46: ) but D'Arvieux, or rather La Roque, (Voyage de Palestine,
+p. 92,) denies the boasted superiority of the Bedoweens. The one hundred
+and sixty-nine sentences of Ali (translated by Ockley, London, 1718)
+afford a just and favorable specimen of Arabian wit. * Note: Compare the
+Arabic proverbs translated by Burckhardt. London. 1830--M.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Pocock (Specimen, p. 158-161) and Casiri (Bibliot.
+Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 48, 84, &c., 119, tom. ii. p. 17, &c.) speak
+of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven poems of the Caaba
+have been published in English by Sir William Jones; but his honorable
+mission to India has deprived us of his own notes, far more interesting
+than the obscure and obsolete text.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 29, 30]
+
+[Footnote 43: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 458. Gagnier, Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 118. Caab and Hesnus (Pocock, Specimen, p. 43, 46,
+48) were likewise conspicuous for their liberality; and the latter
+is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: "Videbis eum cum accesseris
+exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo petis." * Note: See the
+translation of the amusing Persian romance of Hatim Tai, by Duncan
+Forbes, Esq., among the works published by the Oriental Translation
+Fund.--M.]
+
+The religion of the Arabs, [44] as well as of the Indians, consisted in
+the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a primitive and
+specious mode of superstition. The bright luminaries of the sky display
+the visible image of a Deity: their number and distance convey to a
+philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye, the idea of boundless space:
+the character of eternity is marked on these solid globes, that seem
+incapable of corruption or decay: the regularity of their motions may
+be ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or
+imaginary, influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and
+its inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of
+astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the Arabs was
+a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they
+steered by the guidance of the stars: their names, and order, and daily
+station, were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween;
+and he was taught by experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the
+zodiac of the moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with
+salutary rains, the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs
+could not be extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical
+powers were necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the
+resurrection of bodies: a camel was left to perish on the grave, that he
+might serve his master in another life; and the invocation of departed
+spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and
+power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the
+Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth,
+of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe,
+each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites and
+the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has
+bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine
+antiquity of the Caaba ascends beyond the Christian aera; in describing
+the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus [45] has
+remarked, between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, a famous temple,
+whose superior sanctity was revered by all the Arabians; the linen or
+silken veil, which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first
+offered by a pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred
+years before the time of Mahomet. [46] A tent, or a cavern, might
+suffice for the worship of the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay
+has been erected in its place; and the art and power of the monarchs
+of the East have been confined to the simplicity of the original model.
+[47] A spacious portico encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba; a square
+chapel, twenty-four cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven
+high: a door and a window admit the light; the double roof is supported
+by three pillars of wood; a spout (now of gold) discharges the
+rain-water, and the well Zemzen is protected by a dome from accidental
+pollution. The tribe of Koreish, by fraud and force, had acquired the
+custody of the Caaba: the sacerdotal office devolved through four
+lineal descents to the grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the
+Hashemites, from whence he sprung, was the most respectable and sacred
+in the eyes of their country. [48] The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the
+rights of sanctuary; and, in the last month of each year, the city and
+the temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims, who presented
+their vows and offerings in the house of God. The same rites which are
+now accomplished by the faithful Mussulman, were invented and practised
+by the superstition of the idolaters. At an awful distance they cast
+away their garments: seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the
+Caaba, and kissed the black stone: seven times they visited and adored
+the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley
+of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a
+sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails
+in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or introduced in the
+Caaba their domestic worship: the temple was adorned, or defiled, with
+three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and
+most conspicuous was the statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in
+his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the instruments and
+symbols of profane divination. But this statue was a monument of Syrian
+arts: the devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a
+tablet; and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in
+imitation of the black stone [49] of Mecca, which is deeply tainted with
+the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to Peru, the use of
+sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the votary has expressed his
+gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming, in honor of the gods,
+the dearest and most precious of their gifts. The life of a man [50] is
+the most precious oblation to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of
+Phoenicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human
+gore: the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the
+third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the
+Dumatians; [51] and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the
+prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor Justinian.
+[52] A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits the most painful
+and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention, was
+sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of
+Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the
+equivalent of a hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs,
+like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh;
+[53] they circumcised [54] their children at the age of puberty: the
+same customs, without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have
+been silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has
+been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the
+stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that
+he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing
+that a practice congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless
+or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.
+
+[Footnote 44: Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the ancient
+Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p. 89-136, 163, 164.) His
+profound erudition is more clearly and concisely interpreted by Sale,
+(Preliminary Discourse, p. 14-24;) and Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient tom.
+iv. p. 580-590) has added some valuable remarks.]
+
+[Footnote 45: (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 211.) The character and
+position are so correctly apposite, that I am surprised how this curious
+passage should have been read without notice or application. Yet this
+famous temple had been overlooked by Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro,
+p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.,) whom Diodorus copies in the rest of the
+description. Was the Sicilian more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was the
+Caaba built between the years of Rome 650 and 746, the dates of their
+respective histories? (Dodwell, in Dissert. ad tom. i. Hudson, p.
+72. Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 770.) * Note: Mr. Forster
+(Geography of Arabia, vol. ii. p. 118, et seq.) has raised an objection,
+as I think, fatal to this hypothesis of Gibbon. The temple, situated in
+the country of the Banizomeneis, was not between the Thamudites and
+the Sabaeans, but higher up than the coast inhabited by the former. Mr.
+Forster would place it as far north as Moiiah. I am not quite satisfied
+that this will agree with the whole description of Diodorus--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Pocock, Specimen, p. 60, 61. From the death of Mahomet we
+ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the Christian aera.
+The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and gold, was no more than a
+piece of Egyptian linen, (Abulfeda, in Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14.)]
+
+[Footnote 47: The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely copied
+in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish draught, which Reland
+(de Religione Mohammedica, p. 113-123) has corrected and explained
+from the best authorities. For the description and legend of the Caaba,
+consult Pocock, (Specimen, p. 115-122,) the Bibliotheque Orientale
+of D'Herbelot, (Caaba, Hagir, Zemzem, &c.,) and Sale (Preliminary
+Discourse, p. 114-122.)]
+
+[Footnote 48: Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have usurped the
+Caaba A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by Jannabi, (Gagnier,
+Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 65-69,) and by Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c.
+6, p. 13.)]
+
+[Footnote 49: In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes to the
+Arabs the worship of a stone, (Dissert. viii. tom. i. p. 142, edit.
+Reiske;) and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the Christians,
+(Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40. Arnobius contra Gentes, l. vi.
+p. 246.) Yet these stones were no other than of Syria and Greece, so
+renowned in sacred and profane antiquity, (Euseb. Praep. Evangel. l. i.
+p. 37. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 54-56.)]
+
+[Footnote 50: The two horrid subjects are accurately discussed by
+the learned Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chron. p. 76-78, 301-304.)
+Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the example of
+Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived before, or after,
+Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all.]
+
+[Footnote 51: The reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes to the
+Roman the same barbarous custom, which, A. U. C. 657, had been finally
+abolished. Dumaetha, Daumat al Gendai, is noticed by Ptolemy (Tabul.
+p. 37, Arabia, p. 9-29) and Abulfeda, (p. 57,) and may be found in
+D'Anville's maps, in the mid-desert between Chaibar and Tadmor.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Prcoopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 28,) Evagrius,
+(l. vi. c. 21,) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 72, 86,) attest the human
+sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The danger and escape of
+Abdallah is a tradition rather than a fact, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet,
+tom. i. p. 82-84.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus, (Polyhistor. c.
+33,) who copies Pliny (l. viii. c. 68) in the strange supposition, that
+hogs can not live in Arabia. The Egyptians were actuated by a natural
+and superstitious horror for that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p.
+205.) The old Arabians likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of
+ablution, (Herodot. l. i. c. 80,) which is sanctified by the Mahometan
+law, (Reland, p. 75, &c., Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shah Abbas,
+tom. iv. p. 71, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject; yet
+they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even pretend that
+Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin, (Pocock, Specimen, p.
+319, 320. Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 106, 107.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part III.
+
+Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of
+conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land
+where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they
+professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and
+Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In
+a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the
+science of the Chaldaeans [55] and the arms of the Assyrians. From
+the observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of
+Babylon [56] deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They
+adored the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven
+planets, and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The
+attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac,
+and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern
+hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans; the seven days of
+the week were dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed
+thrice each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of
+their pilgrimage. [57] But the flexible genius of their faith was always
+ready either to teach or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the
+deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their
+Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
+Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last
+remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the
+territory of Bassora. [58] The altars of Babylon were overturned by the
+Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were revenged by the sword of
+Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke;
+and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of
+idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert.
+[59] Seven hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were
+settled in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the
+Holy Land in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles
+aspired to liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the cities, and
+castles in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts were confounded
+with the children of Israel, whom they resembled in the outward mark
+of circumcision. The Christian missionaries were still more active and
+successful: the Catholics asserted their universal reign; the sects
+whom they oppressed, successively retired beyond the limits of the
+Roman empire; the Marcionites and Manichaeans dispersed their fantastic
+opinions and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes
+of Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite
+and Nestorian bishops. [60] The liberty of choice was presented to the
+tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private religion:
+and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with the sublime
+theology of saints and philosophers. A fundamental article of faith was
+inculcated by the consent of the learned strangers; the existence of one
+supreme God who is exalted above the powers of heaven and earth, but who
+has often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels
+and prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable
+miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs
+acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; [61] and it
+was habit rather than conviction that still attached them to the relics
+of idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the people of the Book; the
+Bible was already translated into the Arabic language, [62] and the
+volume of the Old Testament was accepted by the concord of these
+implacable enemies. In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs
+were pleased to discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the
+birth and promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham;
+traced his pedigree and their own to the creation of the first man, and
+imbibed, with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the
+dreams and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.
+
+[Footnote 55: Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142-145) has cast
+on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a Greek. Their
+astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the
+telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the
+number of the planets or of the fixed stars.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii. com.
+xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474, who doubts
+the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The earliest date of
+the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234 before Christ. After the
+conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated at the request
+of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals
+of science!]
+
+[Footnote 57: Pocock, (Specimen, p. 138-146,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient.
+p. 162-203,) Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124, 128, &c.,)
+D'Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p.
+14, 15,) rather excite than gratify our curiosity; and the last of these
+writers confounds Sabianism with the primitive religion of the Arabs.]
+
+[Footnote 58: D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130-137) will
+fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus (Bibliot.
+Oriental. tom. iv. p. 607-614) may explain their tenets. But it is a
+slippery task to ascertain the creed of an ignorant people afraid
+and ashamed to disclose their secret traditions. * Note: The Codex
+Nasiraeus, their sacred book, has been published by Norberg whose
+researches contain almost all that is known of this singular people. But
+their origin is almost as obscure as ever: if ancient, their creed
+has been so corrupted with mysticism and Mahometanism, that its native
+lineaments are very indistinct.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The Magi were fixed in the province of Bhrein, (Gagnier,
+Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 114,) and mingled with the old Arabians,
+(Pocock, Specimen, p. 146-150.)]
+
+[Footnote 60: The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is
+described by Pocock from Sharestani, &c., (Specimen, p. 60, 134, &c.,)
+Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 212-238,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient.
+p. 474-476,) Basnage, (Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii. p. 185, tom. viii. p.
+280,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 22, &c., 33, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God for the
+profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more irritable, patron,
+(Pocock, Specimen, p. 108, 109.)]
+
+[Footnote 62: Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or Christian,
+appear more recent than the Koran; but the existence of a prior
+translation may be fairly inferred,--1. From the perpetual practice of
+the synagogue of expounding the Hebrew lesson by a paraphrase in the
+vulgar tongue of the country; 2. From the analogy of the Armenian,
+Persian, Aethiopic versions, expressly quoted by the fathers of the
+fifth century, who assert that the Scriptures were translated into all
+the Barbaric languages, (Walton, Prolegomena ad Biblia Polyglot, p. 34,
+93-97. Simon, Hist. Critique du V. et du N. Testament, tom. i. p. 180,
+181, 282-286, 293, 305, 306, tom. iv. p. 206.)]
+
+The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny of
+the Christians, [63] who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their
+adversary. His descent from Ismael was a national privilege or fable;
+but if the first steps of the pedigree [64] are dark and doubtful, he
+could produce many generations of pure and genuine nobility: he sprung
+from the tribe of Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious
+of the Arabs, the princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the
+Caaba. The grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem,
+a wealthy and generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine with
+the supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality
+of the father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom of Yemen
+was subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah
+was provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy
+city was invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A
+treaty was proposed; and, in the first audience, the grandfather of
+Mahomet demanded the restitution of his cattle. "And why," said Abrahah,
+"do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple, which I
+have threatened to destroy?" "Because," replied the intrepid chief, "the
+cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and they will defend
+their house from injury and sacrilege." The want of provisions, or
+the valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful
+retreat: their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight
+of birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the
+deliverance was long commemorated by the aera of the elephant. [65] The
+glory of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness; his life
+was prolonged to the age of one hundred and ten years; and he became the
+father of six daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah
+was the most beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth; and in the first
+night, when he consummated his marriage with Amina, [651] of the noble
+race of the Zahrites, two hundred virgins are said to have expired of
+jealousy and despair. Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son
+of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, four years after the death
+of Justinian, and two months after the defeat of the Abyssinians, [66]
+whose victory would have introduced into the Caaba the religion of the
+Christians. In his early infancy, he was deprived of his father, his
+mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and,
+in the division of the inheritance, the orphan's share was reduced to
+five camels and an Aethiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace
+and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide
+and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered into the
+service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded
+his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage
+contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the mutual love of
+Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe
+of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty
+camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. [67] By
+this alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of
+his ancestors; and the judicious matron was content with his domestic
+virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, [68] he assumed the
+title of a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.
+
+[Footnote 63: In eo conveniunt omnes, ut plebeio vilique genere ortum,
+&c, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 136.) Yet Theophanes, the most ancient
+of the Greeks, and the father of many a lie, confesses that Mahomet was
+of the race of Ismael, (Chronograph. p. 277.)]
+
+[Footnote 64: Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed. c. 1, 2) and Gagnier (Vie de
+Mahomet, p. 25-97) describe the popular and approved genealogy of the
+prophet. At Mecca, I would not dispute its authenticity: at Lausanne,
+I will venture to observe, 1. That from Ismael to Mahomet, a period of
+2500 years, they reckon thirty, instead of seventy five, generations: 2.
+That the modern Bedoweens are ignorant of their history, and careless
+of their pedigree, (Voyage de D'Arvieux p. 100, 103.) * Note: The most
+orthodox Mahometans only reckon back the ancestry of the prophet for
+twenty generations, to Adnan. Weil, Mohammed der Prophet, p. 1.--M.
+1845.]
+
+[Footnote 65: The seed of this history, or fable, is contained in the
+cvth chapter of the Koran; and Gagnier (in Praefat. ad Vit. Moham. p.
+18, &c.) has translated the historical narrative of Abulfeda, which may
+be illustrated from D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 12) and Pocock,
+(Specimen, p. 64.) Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 48) calls it a lie of
+the coinage of Mahomet; but Sale, (Koran, p. 501-503,) who is half a
+Mussulman, attacks the inconsistent faith of the Doctor for believing
+the miracles of the Delphic Apollo. Maracci (Alcoran, tom. i. part ii.
+p. 14, tom. ii. p. 823) ascribes the miracle to the devil, and extorts
+from the Mahometans the confession, that God would not have defended
+against the Christians the idols of the Caaba. * Note: Dr. Weil says
+that the small-pox broke out in the army of Abrahah, but he does not
+give his authority, p. 10.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 651: Amina, or Emina, was of Jewish birth. V. Hammer,
+Geschichte der Assass. p. 10.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The safest aeras of Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. i. p. 2,) of
+Alexander, or the Greeks, 882, of Bocht Naser, or Nabonassar, 1316,
+equally lead us to the year 569. The old Arabian calendar is too dark
+and uncertain to support the Benedictines, (Art. de Verifer les Dates,
+p. 15,) who, from the day of the month and week, deduce a new mode of
+calculation, and remove the birth of Mahomet to the year of Christ 570,
+the 10th of November. Yet this date would agree with the year 882 of
+the Greeks, which is assigned by Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 5) and
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 101, and Errata, Pocock's version.) While we
+refine our chronology, it is possible that the illiterate prophet was
+ignorant of his own age. * Note: The date of the birth of Mahomet is not
+yet fixed with precision. It is only known from Oriental authors that
+he was born on a Monday, the 10th Reby 1st, the third month of the
+Mahometan year; the year 40 or 42 of Chosroes Nushirvan, king of Persia;
+the year 881 of the Seleucidan aera; the year 1316 of the aera of
+Nabonassar. This leaves the point undecided between the years 569, 570,
+571, of J. C. See the Memoir of M. Silv. de Sacy, on divers events in
+the history of the Arabs before Mahomet, Mem. Acad. des Loscript. vol.
+xlvii. p. 527, 531. St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 59.--M. ----Dr. Weil decides
+on A.D. 571. Mahomet died in 632, aged 63; but the Arabs reckoned his
+life by lunar years, which reduces his life nearly to 61 (p. 21.)--M.
+1845]
+
+[Footnote 67: I copy the honorable testimony of Abu Taleb to his family
+and nephew. Laus Dei, qui nos a stirpe Abrahami et semine Ismaelis
+constituit, et nobis regionem sacram dedit, et nos judices hominibus
+statuit. Porro Mohammed filius Abdollahi nepotis mei (nepos meus) quo
+cum ex aequo librabitur e Koraishidis quispiam cui non praeponderaturus
+est, bonitate et excellentia, et intellectu et gloria, et acumine etsi
+opum inops fuerit, (et certe opes umbra transiens sunt et depositum
+quod reddi debet,) desiderio Chadijae filiae Chowailedi tenetur, et
+illa vicissim ipsius, quicquid autem dotis vice petieritis, ego in me
+suscipiam, (Pocock, Specimen, e septima parte libri Ebn Hamduni.)]
+
+[Footnote 68: The private life of Mahomet, from his birth to his
+mission, is preserved by Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. 3-7,) and the Arabian
+writers of genuine or apocryphal note, who are alleged by Hottinger,
+(Hist. Orient. p. 204-211) Maracci, (tom. i. p. 10-14,) and Gagnier,
+(Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 97-134.)]
+
+According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet [69] was
+distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is
+seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. Before
+he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or
+private audience. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic
+aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his
+countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures
+that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of
+life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness
+of his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was
+dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of
+Mecca: the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views;
+and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or
+universal benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive; his wit
+easy and social; his imagination sublime; his judgment clear, rapid,
+and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and,
+although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first
+idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an
+original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the
+bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia;
+and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice
+of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence,
+Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian: his youth had never been instructed
+in the arts of reading and writing; [70] the common ignorance exempted
+him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of
+existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our
+mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man
+was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political
+and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian
+traveller. [71] He compares the nations and the regions of the earth;
+discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds,
+with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times; and resolves
+to unite under one God and one king the invincible spirit and primitive
+virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that,
+instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the
+two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra
+and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied
+the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as
+soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty
+and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects
+invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be
+cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language
+must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life
+or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the
+limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world,
+the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion
+and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in
+his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the
+tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some
+useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of
+hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian,
+and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the
+composition of the Koran. [72] Conversation enriches the understanding,
+but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work
+denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet
+was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of
+Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of Cadijah: in
+the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, [73] he consulted the spirit
+of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in
+the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he
+preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth,
+and a necessary fiction, That there is only one God, and that Mahomet is
+the apostle of God.
+
+[Footnote 69: Abulfeda, in Vit. c. lxv. lxvi. Gagnier, Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 272-289. The best traditions of the person
+and conversation of the prophet are derived from Ayesha, Ali, and Abu
+Horaira, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 267. Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol.
+ii. p. 149,) surnamed the Father of a Cat, who died in the year 59 of
+the Hegira. * Note: Compare, likewise, the new Life of Mahomet (Mohammed
+der prophet) by Dr. Weil, (Stuttgart, 1843.) Dr. Weil has a new
+tradition, that Mahomet was at one time a shepherd. This assimilation
+to the life of Moses, instead of giving probability to the story, as Dr.
+Weil suggests, makes it more suspicious. Note, p. 34.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Those who believe that Mahomet could read or write are
+incapable of reading what is written with another pen, in the Suras, or
+chapters of the Koran, vii. xxix. xcvi. These texts, and the tradition
+of the Sonna, are admitted, without doubt, by Abulfeda, (in Vit. vii.,)
+Gagnier, (Not. ad Abulfed. p. 15,) Pocock, (Specimen, p. 151,) Reland,
+(de Religione Mohammedica, p. 236,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse,
+p. 42.) Mr. White, almost alone, denies the ignorance, to accuse the
+imposture, of the prophet. His arguments are far from satisfactory. Two
+short trading journeys to the fairs of Syria were surely not sufficient
+to infuse a science so rare among the citizens of Mecca: it was not in
+the cool, deliberate act of treaty, that Mahomet would have dropped
+the mask; nor can any conclusion be drawn from the words of disease
+and delirium. The lettered youth, before he aspired to the prophetic
+character, must have often exercised, in private life, the arts of
+reading and writing; and his first converts, of his own family, would
+have been the first to detect and upbraid his scandalous hypocrisy,
+(White's Sermons, p. 203, 204, Notes, p. xxxvi.--xxxviii.) * Note:
+(Academ. des Inscript. I. p. 295) has observed that the text of the
+seveth Sura implies that Mahomet could read, the tradition alone denies
+it, and, according to Dr. Weil, (p. 46,) there is another reading of
+the tradition, that "he could not read well." Dr. Weil is not quite so
+successful in explaining away Sura xxix. It means, he thinks that he had
+not read any books, from which he could have borrowed.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 71: The count de Boulainvilliers (Vie de Mahomet, p. 202-228)
+leads his Arabian pupil, like the Telemachus of Fenelon, or the Cyrus of
+Ramsay. His journey to the court of Persia is probably a fiction nor
+can I trace the origin of his exclamation, "Les Grecs sont pour tant des
+hommes." The two Syrian journeys are expressed by almost all the Arabian
+writers, both Mahometans and Christians, (Gagnier Abulfed. p. 10.)]
+
+[Footnote 72: I am not at leisure to pursue the fables or conjectures
+which name the strangers accused or suspected by the infidels of Mecca,
+(Koran, c. 16, p. 223, c. 35, p. 297, with Sale's Remarks. Prideaux's
+Life of Mahomet, p. 22-27. Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 11, 74.
+Maracci, tom. ii. p. 400.) Even Prideaux has observed, that the
+transaction must have been secret, and that the scene lay in the heart
+of Arabia.]
+
+[Footnote 73: Abulfeda in Vit. c. 7, p. 15. Gagnier, tom. i. p. 133,
+135. The situation of Mount Hera is remarked by Abulfeda (Geograph. Arab
+p. 4.) Yet Mahomet had never read of the cave of Egeria, ubi nocturnae
+Numa constituebat amicae, of the Idaean Mount, where Minos conversed
+with Jove, &c.]
+
+It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the learned nations
+of antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism, their simple
+ancestors of Palestine preserved the knowledge and worship of the true
+God. The moral attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with
+the standard of human virtue: his metaphysical qualities are darkly
+expressed; but each page of the Pentateuch and the Prophets is an
+evidence of his power: the unity of his name is inscribed on the first
+table of the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible
+image of the invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple, the
+faith of the Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened, by the
+spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of Mahomet will
+not justify his perpetual reproach, that the Jews of Mecca or Medina
+adored Ezra as the son of God. [74] But the children of Israel had
+ceased to be a people; and the religions of the world were guilty,
+at least in the eyes of the prophet, of giving sons, or daughters, or
+companions, to the supreme God. In the rude idolatry of the Arabs, the
+crime is manifest and audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the
+preeminence of the first planet, or intelligence, in their celestial
+hierarchy; and in the Magian system the conflict of the two principles
+betrays the imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh
+century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism: their
+public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that
+disgraced the temples of the East: the throne of the Almighty was
+darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of
+popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in
+the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and
+honors of a goddess. [75] The mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation
+appear to contradict the principle of the divine unity. In their obvious
+sense, they introduce three equal deities, and transform the man Jesus
+into the substance of the Son of God: [76] an orthodox commentary will
+satisfy only a believing mind: intemperate curiosity and zeal had torn
+the veil of the sanctuary; and each of the Oriental sects was eager to
+confess that all, except themselves, deserved the reproach of idolatry
+and polytheism. The creed of Mahomet is free from suspicion or
+ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the unity of God.
+The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of idols and men, of stars and
+planets, on the rational principle that whatever rises must set, that
+whatever is born must die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and
+perish. [77] In the Author of the universe, his rational enthusiasm
+confessed and adored an infinite and eternal being, without form or
+place, without issue or similitude, present to our most secret thoughts,
+existing by the necessity of his own nature, and deriving from himself
+all moral and intellectual perfection. These sublime truths, thus
+announced in the language of the prophet, [78] are firmly held by his
+disciples, and defined with metaphysical precision by the interpreters
+of the Koran. A philosophic theist might subscribe the popular creed
+of the Mahometans; [79] a creed too sublime, perhaps, for our present
+faculties. What object remains for the fancy, or even the understanding,
+when we have abstracted from the unknown substance all ideas of time
+and space, of motion and matter, of sensation and reflection? The
+first principle of reason and revolution was confirmed by the voice of
+Mahomet: his proselytes, from India to Morocco, are distinguished by the
+name of Unitarians; and the danger of idolatry has been prevented by
+the interdiction of images. The doctrine of eternal decrees and
+absolute predestination is strictly embraced by the Mahometans; and they
+struggle, with the common difficulties, how to reconcile the prescience
+of God with the freedom and responsibility of man; how to explain
+the permission of evil under the reign of infinite power and infinite
+goodness.
+
+[Footnote 74: Koran, c. 9, p. 153. Al Beidawi, and the other
+commentators quoted by Sale, adhere to the charge; but I do not
+understand that it is colored by the most obscure or absurd tradition of
+the Talmud.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 225-228. The Collyridian
+heresy was carried from Thrace to Arabia by some women, and the name was
+borrowed from the cake, which they offered to the goddess. This example,
+that of Beryllus bishop of Bostra, (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. vi. c. 33,)
+and several others, may excuse the reproach, Arabia haerese haersewn
+ferax.]
+
+[Footnote 76: The three gods in the Koran (c. 4, p. 81, c. 5, p. 92)
+are obviously directed against our Catholic mystery: but the Arabic
+commentators understand them of the Father, the Son, and the Virgin
+Mary, an heretical Trinity, maintained, as it is said, by some
+Barbarians at the Council of Nice, (Eutych. Annal. tom. i. p. 440.)
+But the existence of the Marianites is denied by the candid Beausobre,
+(Hist. de Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 532;) and he derives the mistake from
+the word Roxah, the Holy Ghost, which in some Oriental tongues is of the
+feminine gender, and is figuratively styled the mother of Christ in the
+Gospel of the Nazarenes.]
+
+[Footnote 77: This train of thought is philosophically exemplified in
+the character of Abraham, who opposed in Chaldaea the first introduction
+of idolatry, (Koran, c. 6, p. 106. D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 13.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: See the Koran, particularly the second, (p. 30,) the
+fifty-seventh, (p. 437,) the fifty-eighth (p. 441) chapters, which
+proclaim the omnipotence of the Creator.]
+
+[Footnote 79: The most orthodox creeds are translated by Pocock,
+(Specimen, p. 274, 284-292,) Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii.
+p. lxxxii.--xcv.,) Reland, (de Religion. Moham. l. i. p. 7-13,) and
+Chardin, (Voyages en Perse, tom. iv. p. 4-28.) The great truth, that
+God is without similitude, is foolishly criticized by Maracci, (Alcoran,
+tom. i. part iii. p. 87-94,) because he made man after his own image.]
+
+The God of nature has written his existence on all his works, and his
+law in the heart of man. To restore the knowledge of the one, and
+the practice of the other, has been the real or pretended aim of
+the prophets of every age: the liberality of Mahomet allowed to his
+predecessors the same credit which he claimed for himself; and the chain
+of inspiration was prolonged from the fall of Adam to the promulgation
+of the Koran. [80] During that period, some rays of prophetic light
+had been imparted to one hundred and twenty-four thousand of the elect,
+discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and grace; three
+hundred and thirteen apostles were sent with a special commission
+to recall their country from idolatry and vice; one hundred and four
+volumes have been dictated by the Holy Spirit; and six legislators of
+transcendent brightness have announced to mankind the six successive
+revelations of various rites, but of one immutable religion. The
+authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and
+Mahomet, rise in just gradation above each other; but whosoever hates
+or rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with the infidels. The
+writings of the patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of
+the Greeks and Syrians: [81] the conduct of Adam had not entitled him
+to the gratitude or respect of his children; the seven precepts of Noah
+were observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the proselytes of
+the synagogue; [82] and the memory of Abraham was obscurely revered by
+the Sabians in his native land of Chaldaea: of the myriads of prophets,
+Moses and Christ alone lived and reigned; and the remnant of the
+inspired writings was comprised in the books of the Old and the New
+Testament. The miraculous story of Moses is consecrated and embellished
+in the Koran; [83] and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of
+imposing their own belief on the nations whose recent creeds they
+deride. For the author of Christianity, the Mahometans are taught by
+the prophet to entertain a high and mysterious reverence. [84] "Verily,
+Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his word,
+which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him; honorable
+in this world, and in the world to come, and one of those who approach
+near to the presence of God." [85] The wonders of the genuine and
+apocryphal gospels [86] are profusely heaped on his head; and the
+Latin church has not disdained to borrow from the Koran the immaculate
+conception [87] of his virgin mother. Yet Jesus was a mere mortal; and,
+at the day of judgment, his testimony will serve to condemn both the
+Jews, who reject him as a prophet, and the Christians, who adore him as
+the Son of God. The malice of his enemies aspersed his reputation,
+and conspired against his life; but their intention only was guilty;
+a phantom or a criminal was substituted on the cross; and the innocent
+saint was translated to the seventh heaven. [88] During six hundred
+years the gospel was the way of truth and salvation; but the Christians
+insensibly forgot both the laws and example of their founder; and
+Mahomet was instructed by the Gnostics to accuse the church, as well as
+the synagogue, of corrupting the integrity of the sacred text. [89]
+The piety of Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the assurance of a future
+prophet, more illustrious than themselves: the evangelical promise
+of the Paraclete, or Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the name, and
+accomplished in the person, of Mahomet, [90] the greatest and the last
+of the apostles of God.
+
+[Footnote 80: Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. i. p. 17-47. Sale's
+Preliminary Discourse, p. 73-76. Voyage de Chardin, tom. iv. p. 28-37,
+and 37-47, for the Persian addition, "Ali is the vicar of God!" Yet the
+precise number of the prophets is not an article of faith.]
+
+[Footnote 81: For the apocryphal books of Adam, see Fabricius, Codex
+Pseudepigraphus V. T. p. 27-29; of Seth, p. 154-157; of Enoch, p.
+160-219. But the book of Enoch is consecrated, in some measure, by
+the quotation of the apostle St. Jude; and a long legendary fragment is
+alleged by Syncellus and Scaliger. * Note: The whole book has since been
+recovered in the Ethiopic language,--and has been edited and translated
+by Archbishop Lawrence, Oxford, 1881--M.]
+
+[Footnote 82: The seven precepts of Noah are explained by Marsham,
+(Canon Chronicus, p. 154-180,) who adopts, on this occasion, the
+learning and credulity of Selden.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The articles of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, &c., in the
+Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot, are gayly bedecked with the fanciful legends
+of the Mahometans, who have built on the groundwork of Scripture and the
+Talmud.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Koran, c. 7, p. 128, &c., c. 10, p. 173, &c. D'Herbelot,
+p. 647, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Koran, c. 3, p. 40, c. 4. p. 80. D'Herbelot, p. 399, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 86: See the Gospel of St. Thomas, or of the Infancy, in
+the Codex Apocryphus N. T. of Fabricius, who collects the various
+testimonies concerning it, (p. 128-158.) It was published in Greek by
+Cotelier, and in Arabic by Sike, who thinks our present copy more recent
+than Mahomet. Yet his quotations agree with the original about the
+speech of Christ in his cradle, his living birds of clay, &c. (Sike, c.
+i. p. 168, 169, c. 36, p. 198, 199, c. 46, p. 206. Cotelier, c. 2, p.
+160, 161.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: It is darkly hinted in the Koran, (c. 3, p. 39,) and more
+clearly explained by the tradition of the Sonnites, (Sale's Note,
+and Maracci, tom. ii. p. 112.) In the xiith century, the immaculate
+conception was condemned by St. Bernard as a presumptuous novelty, (Fra
+Paolo, Istoria del Concilio di Trento, l. ii.)]
+
+[Footnote 88: See the Koran, c. 3, v. 53, and c. 4, v. 156, of Maracci's
+edition. Deus est praestantissimus dolose agentium (an odd praise)...
+nec crucifixerunt eum, sed objecta est eis similitudo; an expression
+that may suit with the system of the Docetes; but the commentators
+believe (Maracci, tom. ii. p. 113-115, 173. Sale, p. 42, 43, 79) that
+another man, a friend or an enemy, was crucified in the likeness of
+Jesus; a fable which they had read in the Gospel of St. Barnabus,
+and which had been started as early as the time of Irenaeus, by some
+Ebionite heretics, (Beausobre, Hist. du Manicheisme, tom. ii. p. 25,
+Mosheim. de Reb. Christ. p. 353.)]
+
+[Footnote 89: This charge is obscurely urged in the Koran, (c. 3, p.
+45;) but neither Mahomet, nor his followers, are sufficiently versed in
+languages and criticism to give any weight or color to their suspicions.
+Yet the Arians and Nestorians could relate some stories, and the
+illiterate prophet might listen to the bold assertions of the
+Manichaeans. See Beausobre, tom. i. p. 291-305.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Among the prophecies of the Old and New Testament, which
+are perverted by the fraud or ignorance of the Mussulmans, they apply to
+the prophet the promise of the Paraclete, or Comforter, which had been
+already usurped by the Montanists and Manichaeans, (Beausobre, Hist.
+Critique du Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 263, &c.;) and the easy change of
+letters affords the etymology of the name of Mohammed, (Maracci, tom. i.
+part i. p. 15-28.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part IV.
+
+The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and
+language: the discourse of a philosopher would vibrate without effect
+on the ear of a peasant; yet how minute is the distance of their
+understandings, if it be compared with the contact of an infinite and a
+finite mind, with the word of God expressed by the tongue or the pen of
+a mortal! The inspiration of the Hebrew prophets, of the apostles and
+evangelists of Christ, might not be incompatible with the exercise of
+their reason and memory; and the diversity of their genius is strongly
+marked in the style and composition of the books of the Old and New
+Testament. But Mahomet was content with a character, more humble, yet
+more sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of the Koran, [91]
+according to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal;
+subsisting in the essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen of
+light on the table of his everlasting decrees. A paper copy, in a volume
+of silk and gems, was brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel
+Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched
+on the most important errands; and this trusty messenger successively
+revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet. Instead of a
+perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the
+Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation
+is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all
+contradiction is removed by the saving maxim, that any text of Scripture
+is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God, and
+of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves
+and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or
+connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of
+his wives. Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was
+collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker: the work
+was revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira;
+and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous
+privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of
+enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the
+merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate
+the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone
+could dictate this incomparable performance. [92] This argument is most
+powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith
+and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose
+ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius.
+[93] The harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version,
+the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless
+incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom
+excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and
+is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy
+of the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the
+sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the
+same country, and in the same language. [94] If the composition of the
+Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should
+we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes? In all
+religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of his written
+revelation: the sayings of Mahomet were so many lessons of truth; his
+actions so many examples of virtue; and the public and private memorials
+were preserved by his wives and companions. At the end of two hundred
+years, the Sonna, or oral law, was fixed and consecrated by the
+labors of Al Bochari, who discriminated seven thousand two hundred and
+seventy-five genuine traditions, from a mass of three hundred thousand
+reports, of a more doubtful or spurious character. Each day the pious
+author prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions with
+the water of Zemzem: the pages were successively deposited on the pulpit
+and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been approved by the
+four orthodox sects of the Sonnites. [95]
+
+[Footnote 91: For the Koran, see D'Herbelot, p. 85-88. Maracci, tom. i.
+in Vit. Mohammed. p. 32-45. Sale, Preliminary Discourse, p. 58-70.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Koran, c. 17, v. 89. In Sale, p. 235, 236. In Maracci, p.
+410. * Note: Compare Von Hammer Geschichte der Assassinen p. 11.-M.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Yet a sect of Arabians was persuaded, that it might be
+equalled or surpassed by a human pen, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 221, &c.;)
+and Maracci (the polemic is too hard for the translator) derides the
+rhyming affectation of the most applauded passage, (tom. i. part ii. p.
+69-75.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: Colloquia (whether real or fabulous) in media Arabia
+atque ab Arabibus habita, (Lowth, de Poesi Hebraeorum. Praelect. xxxii.
+xxxiii. xxxiv, with his German editor, Michaelis, Epimetron iv.)
+Yet Michaelis (p. 671-673) has detected many Egyptian images, the
+elephantiasis, papyrus, Nile, crocodile, &c. The language is ambiguously
+styled Arabico-Hebraea. The resemblance of the sister dialects was much
+more visible in their childhood, than in their mature age, (Michaelis,
+p. 682. Schultens, in Praefat. Job.) * Note: The age of the book of Job
+is still and probably will still be disputed. Rosenmuller thus states
+his own opinion: "Certe serioribus reipublicae temporibus assignandum
+esse librum, suadere videtur ad Chaldaismum vergens sermo." Yet the
+observations of Kosegarten, which Rosenmuller has given in a note, and
+common reason, suggest that this Chaldaism may be the native form of
+a much earlier dialect; or the Chaldaic may have adopted the poetical
+archaisms of a dialect, differing from, but not less ancient than, the
+Hebrew. See Rosenmuller, Proleg. on Job, p. 41. The poetry appears to me
+to belong to a much earlier period.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Ali Bochari died A. H. 224. See D'Herbelot, p. 208, 416,
+827. Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. c. 19, p. 33.]
+
+The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus had been
+confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was repeatedly urged,
+by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to produce a similar evidence of
+his divine legation; to call down from heaven the angel or the volume
+of his revelation, to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a
+conflagration in the unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by
+the demands of the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of
+vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and
+shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs
+and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and aggravate
+the guilt of infidelity But the modest or angry tone of his apologies
+betrays his weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal
+established, beyond suspicion, the integrity of the Koran. [96] The
+votaries of Mahomet are more assured than himself of his miraculous
+gifts; and their confidence and credulity increase as they are farther
+removed from the time and place of his spiritual exploits. They believe
+or affirm that trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by
+stones; that water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry,
+cured the sick, and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a
+camel complained to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him of its
+being poisoned; and that both animate and inanimate nature were equally
+subject to the apostle of God. [97] His dream of a nocturnal journey is
+seriously described as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious
+animal, the Borak, conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of
+Jerusalem: with his companion Gabriel he successively ascended the seven
+heavens, and received and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs,
+the prophets, and the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the
+seventh heaven, Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the
+veil of unity, approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt a
+cold that pierced him to the heart, when his shoulder was touched by
+the hand of God. After this familiar, though important conversation, he
+again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the Borak, returned to Mecca,
+and performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand
+years. [98] According to another legend, the apostle confounded in a
+national assembly the malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless
+word split asunder the orb of the moon: the obedient planet stooped from
+her station in the sky, accomplished the seven revolutions round the
+Caaba, saluted Mahomet in the Arabian tongue, and, suddenly contracting
+her dimensions, entered at the collar, and issued forth through the
+sleeve, of his shirt. [99] The vulgar are amused with these marvellous
+tales; but the gravest of the Mussulman doctors imitate the modesty of
+their master, and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation. [100]
+They might speciously allege, that in preaching the religion it was
+needless to violate the harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with
+mystery may be excused from miracles; and that the sword of Mahomet was
+not less potent than the rod of Moses.
+
+[Footnote 96: See, more remarkably, Koran, c. 2, 6, 12, 13, 17. Prideaux
+(Life of Mahomet, p. 18, 19) has confounded the impostor. Maracci, with
+a more learned apparatus, has shown that the passages which deny his
+miracles are clear and positive, (Alcoran, tom. i. part ii. p. 7-12,)
+and those which seem to assert them are ambiguous and insufficient, (p.
+12-22.)]
+
+[Footnote 97: See the Specimen Hist. Arabum, the text of Abulpharagius,
+p. 17, the notes of Pocock, p. 187-190. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque
+Orientale, p. 76, 77. Voyages de Chardin, tom. iv. p. 200-203. Maracci
+(Alcoran, tom. i. p. 22-64) has most laboriously collected and confuted
+the miracles and prophecies of Mahomet, which, according to some
+writers, amount to three thousand.]
+
+[Footnote 98: The nocturnal journey is circumstantially related by
+Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed, c. 19, p. 33,) who wishes to think it a
+vision; by Prideaux, (p. 31-40,) who aggravates the absurdities; and
+by Gagnier (tom. i. p. 252-343,) who declares, from the zealous Al
+Jannabi, that to deny this journey, is to disbelieve the Koran. Yet the
+Koran without naming either heaven, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, has only
+dropped a mysterious hint: Laus illi qui transtulit servum suum ab
+oratorio Haram ad oratorium remotissimum, (Koran, c. 17, v. 1; in
+Maracci, tom. ii. p. 407; for Sale's version is more licentious.) A
+slender basis for the aerial structure of tradition.]
+
+[Footnote 99: In the prophetic style, which uses the present or past for
+the future, Mahomet had said, Appropinquavit hora, et scissa est luna,
+(Koran, c. 54, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii. p. 688.) This figure of
+rhetoric has been converted into a fact, which is said to be attested
+by the most respectable eye-witnesses, (Maracci, tom. ii. p. 690.) The
+festival is still celebrated by the Persians, (Chardin, tom. iv. p.
+201;) and the legend is tediously spun out by Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet,
+tom. i. p. 183-234,) on the faith, as it should seem, of the credulous
+Al Jannabi. Yet a Mahometan doctor has arraigned the credit of
+the principal witness, (apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 187;) the best
+interpreters are content with the simple sense of the Koran. (Al
+Beidawi, apud Hottinger, Hist. Orient. l. ii. p. 302;) and the silence
+of Abulfeda is worthy of a prince and a philosopher. * Note: Compare
+Hamaker Notes to Inc. Auct. Lib. de Exped. Memphides, p. 62--M.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Abulpharagius, in Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 17; and his
+scepticism is justified in the notes of Pocock, p. 190-194, from the
+purest authorities.]
+
+The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of
+superstition: a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven
+with the essence of the Mosaic law; and the spirit of the gospel had
+evaporated in the pageantry of the church. The prophet of Mecca was
+tempted by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to sanctify the rites
+of the Arabians, and the custom of visiting the holy stone of the
+Caaba. But the precepts of Mahomet himself inculcates a more simple and
+rational piety: prayer, fasting, and alms, are the religious duties of a
+Mussulman; and he is encouraged to hope, that prayer will carry him half
+way to God, fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms
+will gain him admittance. [101] I. According to the tradition of the
+nocturnal journey, the apostle, in his personal conference with the
+Deity, was commanded to impose on his disciples the daily obligation of
+fifty prayers. By the advice of Moses, he applied for an alleviation
+of this intolerable burden; the number was gradually reduced to five;
+without any dispensation of business or pleasure, or time or place:
+the devotion of the faithful is repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the
+afternoon, in the evening, and at the first watch of the night; and in
+the present decay of religious fervor, our travellers are edified by the
+profound humility and attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness
+is the key of prayer: the frequent lustration of the hands, the face,
+and the body, which was practised of old by the Arabs, is solemnly
+enjoined by the Koran; and a permission is formally granted to
+supply with sand the scarcity of water. The words and attitudes of
+supplication, as it is performed either sitting, or standing, or
+prostrate on the ground, are prescribed by custom or authority; but the
+prayer is poured forth in short and fervent ejaculations; the measure of
+zeal is not exhausted by a tedious liturgy; and each Mussulman for
+his own person is invested with the character of a priest. Among the
+theists, who reject the use of images, it has been found necessary
+to restrain the wanderings of the fancy, by directing the eye and the
+thought towards a kebla, or visible point of the horizon. The prophet
+was at first inclined to gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem;
+but he soon returned to a more natural partiality; and five times every
+day the eyes of the nations at Astracan, at Fez, at Delhi, are devoutly
+turned to the holy temple of Mecca. Yet every spot for the service of
+God is equally pure: the Mahometans indifferently pray in their chamber
+or in the street. As a distinction from the Jews and Christians, the
+Friday in each week is set apart for the useful institution of public
+worship: the people is assembled in the mosch; and the imam, some
+respectable elder, ascends the pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce
+the sermon. But the Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or
+sacrifice; and the independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with
+contempt on the ministers and the slaves of superstition. [1011]
+
+II. The voluntary [102] penance of the ascetics, the torment and glory
+of their lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his companions
+a rash vow of abstaining from flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly
+declared, that he would suffer no monks in his religion. [103] Yet
+he instituted, in each year, a fast of thirty days; and strenuously
+recommended the observance as a discipline which purifies the soul and
+subdues the body, as a salutary exercise of obedience to the will of
+God and his apostle. During the month of Ramadan, from the rising to the
+setting of the sun, the Mussulman abstains from eating, and drinking,
+and women, and baths, and perfumes; from all nourishment that can
+restore his strength, from all pleasure that can gratify his senses. In
+the revolution of the lunar year, the Ramadan coincides, by turns, with
+the winter cold and the summer heat; and the patient martyr, without
+assuaging his thirst with a drop of water, must expect the close of
+a tedious and sultry day. The interdiction of wine, peculiar to some
+orders of priests or hermits, is converted by Mahomet alone into a
+positive and general law; [104] and a considerable portion of the globe
+has abjured, at his command, the use of that salutary, though dangerous,
+liquor. These painful restraints are, doubtless, infringed by the
+libertine, and eluded by the hypocrite; but the legislator, by whom they
+are enacted, cannot surely be accused of alluring his proselytes by
+the indulgence of their sensual appetites. III. The charity of the
+Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and the Koran repeatedly
+inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and indispensable duty, the
+relief of the indigent and unfortunate. Mahomet, perhaps, is the only
+lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of charity: the standard
+may vary with the degree and nature of property, as it consists either
+in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or merchandise; but the Mussulman
+does not accomplish the law, unless he bestows a tenth of his revenue;
+and if his conscience accuses him of fraud or extortion, the tenth,
+under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a fifth. [105] Benevolence
+is the foundation of justice, since we are forbid to injure those whom
+we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal the secrets of heaven and
+of futurity; but in his moral precepts he can only repeat the lessons of
+our own hearts.
+
+[Footnote 101: The most authentic account of these precepts, pilgrimage,
+prayer, fasting, alms, and ablutions, is extracted from the Persian and
+Arabian theologians by Maracci, (Prodrom. part iv. p. 9-24,) Reland,
+(in his excellent treatise de Religione Mohammedica, Utrecht, 1717, p.
+67-123,) and Chardin, (Voyages in Perse, tom. iv. p. 47-195.) Marace
+is a partial accuser; but the jeweller, Chardin, had the eyes of a
+philosopher; and Reland, a judicious student, had travelled over the
+East in his closet at Utrecht. The xivth letter of Tournefort (Voyage du
+Levont, tom. ii. p. 325-360, in octavo) describes what he had seen of
+the religion of the Turks.]
+
+[Footnote 1011: Such is Mahometanism beyond the precincts of the Holy
+City. But Mahomet retained, and the Koran sanctions, (Sale's Koran, c.
+5, in inlt. c. 22, vol. ii. p. 171, 172,) the sacrifice of sheep and
+camels (probably according to the old Arabian rites) at Mecca; and
+the pilgrims complete their ceremonial with sacrifices, sometimes as
+numerous and costly as those of King Solomon. Compare note, vol. iv. c.
+xxiii. p. 96, and Forster's Mahometanism Unveiled, vol. i. p. 420. This
+author quotes the questionable authority of Benjamin of Tudela, for the
+sacrifice of a camel by the caliph at Bosra; but sacrifice undoubtedly
+forms no part of the ordinary Mahometan ritual; nor will the sanctity of
+the caliph, as the earthly representative of the prophet, bear any close
+analogy to the priesthood of the Mosaic or Gentila religions.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 102: Mahomet (Sale's Koran, c. 9, p. 153) reproaches the
+Christians with taking their priests and monks for their lords, besides
+God. Yet Maracci (Prodromus, part iii. p. 69, 70) excuses the worship,
+especially of the pope, and quotes, from the Koran itself, the case of
+Eblis, or Satan, who was cast from heaven for refusing to adore Adam.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Koran, c. 5, p. 94, and Sale's note, which refers to
+the authority of Jallaloddin and Al Beidawi. D'Herbelot declares,
+that Mahomet condemned la vie religieuse; and that the first swarms of
+fakirs, dervises, &c., did not appear till after the year 300 of the
+Hegira, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 292, 718.)]
+
+[Footnote 104: See the double prohibition, (Koran, c. 2, p. 25, c. 5,
+p. 94;) the one in the style of a legislator, the other in that of a
+fanatic. The public and private motives of Mahomet are investigated by
+Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 62-64) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse,
+p. 124.)]
+
+[Footnote 105: The jealousy of Maracci (Prodromus, part iv. p. 33)
+prompts him to enumerate the more liberal alms of the Catholics of Rome.
+Fifteen great hospitals are open to many thousand patients and pilgrims;
+fifteen hundred maidens are annually portioned; fifty-six charity
+schools are founded for both sexes; one hundred and twenty
+confraternities relieve the wants of their brethren, &c. The benevolence
+of London is still more extensive; but I am afraid that much more is to
+be ascribed to the humanity, than to the religion, of the people.]
+
+The two articles of belief, and the four practical duties, of Islam, are
+guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Mussulman
+is devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment and the last day.
+The prophet has not presumed to determine the moment of that awful
+catastrophe, though he darkly announces the signs, both in heaven and
+earth, which will precede the universal dissolution, when life shall
+be destroyed, and the order of creation shall be confounded in the
+primitive chaos. At the blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into
+being: angels, genii, and men will arise from the dead, and the human
+soul will again be united to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection
+was first entertained by the Egyptians; [106] and their mummies were
+embalmed, their pyramids were constructed, to preserve the ancient
+mansion of the soul, during a period of three thousand years. But the
+attempt is partial and unavailing; and it is with a more philosophic
+spirit that Mahomet relies on the omnipotence of the Creator, whose word
+can reanimate the breathless clay, and collect the innumerable atoms,
+that no longer retain their form or substance. [107] The intermediate
+state of the soul it is hard to decide; and those who most firmly
+believe her immaterial nature, are at a loss to understand how she can
+think or act without the agency of the organs of sense.
+
+[Footnote 106: See Herodotus (l. ii. c. 123) and our learned countryman
+Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chronicus, p. 46.) The same writer (p.
+254-274) is an elaborate sketch of the infernal regions, as they were
+painted by the fancy of the Egyptians and Greeks, of the poets and
+philosophers of antiquity.]
+
+[Footnote 107: The Koran (c. 2, p. 259, &c.; of Sale, p. 32; of Maracci,
+p. 97) relates an ingenious miracle, which satisfied the curiosity, and
+confirmed the faith, of Abraham.]
+
+The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the final judgment
+of mankind; and in his copy of the Magian picture, the prophet has too
+faithfully represented the forms of proceeding, and even the slow
+and successive operations, of an earthly tribunal. By his intolerant
+adversaries he is upbraided for extending, even to themselves, the hope
+of salvation, for asserting the blackest heresy, that every man who
+believes in God, and accomplishes good works, may expect in the last day
+a favorable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to the
+character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger from heaven
+should depreciate the value and necessity of his own revelation. In the
+idiom of the Koran, [108] the belief of God is inseparable from that
+of Mahomet: the good works are those which he has enjoined, and the two
+qualifications imply the profession of Islam, to which all nations and
+all sects are equally invited.
+
+Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and crowned with
+virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments; and the tears which
+Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother for whom he was forbidden to
+pray, display a striking contrast of humanity and enthusiasm. [109]
+The doom of the infidels is common: the measure of their guilt and
+punishment is determined by the degree of evidence which they have
+rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which they have entertained:
+the eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the
+Magians, and idolaters, are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the
+lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed
+the mask of religion. After the greater part of mankind has been
+condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be judged by
+their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will be accurately
+weighed in a real or allegorical balance; and a singular mode of
+compensation will be allowed for the payment of injuries: the aggressor
+will refund an equivalent of his own good actions, for the benefit of
+the person whom he has wronged; and if he should be destitute of any
+moral property, the weight of his sins will be loaded with an adequate
+share of the demerits of the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt
+or virtue shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all,
+without distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of
+the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mahomet, will
+gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty will fall into
+the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of expiation will
+vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet has
+judiciously promised, that all his disciples, whatever may be their
+sins, shall be saved, by their own faith and his intercession from
+eternal damnation. It is not surprising that superstition should act
+most powerfully on the fears of her votaries, since the human fancy can
+paint with more energy the misery than the bliss of a future life. With
+the two simple elements of darkness and fire, we create a sensation
+of pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea of
+endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite effect on
+the continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present enjoyments is
+obtained from the relief, or the comparison, of evil. It is natural
+enough that an Arabian prophet should dwell with rapture on the groves,
+the fountains, and the rivers of paradise; but instead of inspiring
+the blessed inhabitants with a liberal taste for harmony and science,
+conversation and friendship, he idly celebrates the pearls and diamonds,
+the robes of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines,
+artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of sensual
+and costly luxury, which becomes insipid to the owner, even in the short
+period of this mortal life. Seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls,
+of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite
+sensibility, will be created for the use of the meanest believer;
+a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years; and his
+faculties will be increased a hundred fold, to render him worthy of his
+felicity. Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of heaven will
+be open to both sexes; but Mahomet has not specified the male companions
+of the female elect, lest he should either alarm the jealousy of their
+former husbands, or disturb their felicity, by the suspicion of an
+everlasting marriage. This image of a carnal paradise has provoked the
+indignation, perhaps the envy, of the monks: they declaim against the
+impure religion of Mahomet; and his modest apologists are driven to
+the poor excuse of figures and allegories. But the sounder and more
+consistent party adhere without shame, to the literal interpretation of
+the Koran: useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it were
+restored to the possession and exercise of its worthiest faculties; and
+the union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment is requisite to complete
+the happiness of the double animal, the perfect man. Yet the joys of the
+Mahometan paradise will not be confined to the indulgence of luxury
+and appetite; and the prophet has expressly declared that all meaner
+happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs, who
+shall be admitted to the beatitude of the divine vision. [110]
+
+[Footnote 108: The candid Reland has demonstrated, that Mahomet damns
+all unbelievers, (de Religion. Moham. p. 128-142;) that devils will not
+be finally saved, (p. 196-199;) that paradise will not solely consist
+of corporeal delights, (p. 199-205;) and that women's souls are
+immortal. (p. 205-209.)]
+
+[Footnote 109: A Beidawi, apud Sale. Koran, c. 9, p. 164. The refusal to
+pray for an unbelieving kindred is justified, according to Mahomet, by
+the duty of a prophet, and the example of Abraham, who reprobated his
+own father as an enemy of God. Yet Abraham (he adds, c. 9, v. 116.
+Maracci, tom. ii. p. 317) fuit sane pius, mitis.]
+
+[Footnote 110: For the day of judgment, hell, paradise, &c., consult
+the Koran, (c. 2, v. 25, c. 56, 78, &c.;) with Maracci's virulent, but
+learned, refutation, (in his notes, and in the Prodromus, part iv. p.
+78, 120, 122, &c.;) D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368, 375;)
+Reland, (p. 47-61;) and Sale, (p. 76-103.) The original ideas of the
+Magi are darkly and doubtfully explored by their apologist, Dr. Hyde,
+(Hist. Religionis Persarum, c. 33, p. 402-412, Oxon. 1760.) In the
+article of Mahomet, Bayle has shown how indifferently wit and philosophy
+supply the absence of genuine information.]
+
+The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet [111] were those of his
+wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend; [112] since he presented
+himself as a prophet to those who were most conversant with his
+infirmities as a man. Yet Cadijah believed the words, and cherished the
+glory, of her husband; the obsequious and affectionate Zeid was tempted
+by the prospect of freedom; the illustrious Ali, the son of Abu Taleb,
+embraced the sentiments of his cousin with the spirit of a youthful
+hero; and the wealth, the moderation, the veracity of Abubeker confirmed
+the religion of the prophet whom he was destined to succeed. By
+his persuasion, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were
+introduced to the private lessons of Islam; they yielded to the voice
+of reason and enthusiasm; they repeated the fundamental creed, "There is
+but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;" and their faith, even
+in this life, was rewarded with riches and honors, with the command
+of armies and the government of kingdoms. Three years were silently
+employed in the conversion of fourteen proselytes, the first-fruits of
+his mission; but in the fourth year he assumed the prophetic office, and
+resolving to impart to his family the light of divine truth, he
+prepared a banquet, a lamb, as it is said, and a bowl of milk, for
+the entertainment of forty guests of the race of Hashem. "Friends and
+kinsmen," said Mahomet to the assembly, "I offer you, and I alone can
+offer, the most precious of gifts, the treasures of this world and of
+the world to come. God has commanded me to call you to his service. Who
+among you will support my burden? Who among you will be my companion
+and my vizier?" [113] No answer was returned, till the silence of
+astonishment, and doubt, and contempt, was at length broken by the
+impatient courage of Ali, a youth in the fourteenth year of his age. "O
+prophet, I am the man: whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his
+teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet,
+I will be thy vizier over them." Mahomet accepted his offer with
+transport, and Abu Taled was ironically exhorted to respect the superior
+dignity of his son. In a more serious tone, the father of Ali advised
+his nephew to relinquish his impracticable design.
+
+"Spare your remonstrances," replied the intrepid fanatic to his uncle
+and benefactor; "if they should place the sun on my right hand, and
+the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my course." He
+persevered ten years in the exercise of his mission; and the religion
+which has overspread the East and the West advanced with a slow and
+painful progress within the walls of Mecca. Yet Mahomet enjoyed the
+satisfaction of beholding the increase of his infant congregation of
+Unitarians, who revered him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably
+dispensed the spiritual nourishment of the Koran. The number of
+proselytes may be esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and
+eighteen women, who retired to Aethiopia in the seventh year of his
+mission; and his party was fortified by the timely conversion of his
+uncle Hamza, and of the fierce and inflexible Omar, who signalized
+in the cause of Islam the same zeal, which he had exerted for its
+destruction. Nor was the charity of Mahomet confined to the tribe of
+Koreish, or the precincts of Mecca: on solemn festivals, in the days
+of pilgrimage, he frequented the Caaba, accosted the strangers of every
+tribe, and urged, both in private converse and public discourse, the
+belief and worship of a sole Deity. Conscious of his reason and of his
+weakness, he asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use
+of religious violence: [114] but he called the Arabs to repentance, and
+conjured them to remember the ancient idolaters of Ad and Thamud, whom
+the divine justice had swept away from the face of the earth. [115]
+
+[Footnote 111: Before I enter on the history of the prophet, it is
+incumbent on me to produce my evidence. The Latin, French, and English
+versions of the Koran are preceded by historical discourses, and the
+three translators, Maracci, (tom. i. p. 10-32,) Savary, (tom. i. p.
+1-248,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 33-56,) had accurately
+studied the language and character of their author. Two professed Lives
+of Mahomet have been composed by Dr. Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, seventh
+edition, London, 1718, in octavo) and the count de Boulainvilliers, (Vie
+de Mahomed, Londres, 1730, in octavo: ) but the adverse wish of finding
+an impostor or a hero, has too often corrupted the learning of the
+doctor and the ingenuity of the count. The article in D'Herbelot
+(Bibliot. Orient. p. 598-603) is chiefly drawn from Novairi and
+Mirkond; but the best and most authentic of our guides is M. Gagnier, a
+Frenchman by birth, and professor at Oxford of the Oriental tongues.
+In two elaborate works, (Ismael Abulfeda de Vita et Rebus gestis
+Mohammedis, &c. Latine vertit, Praefatione et Notis illustravit Johannes
+Gagnier, Oxon. 1723, in folio. La Vie de Mahomet traduite et compilee
+de l'Alcoran, des Traditions Authentiques de la Sonna et des meilleurs
+Auteurs Arabes; Amsterdam, 1748, 3 vols. in 12mo.,) he has interpreted,
+illustrated, and supplied the Arabic text of Abulfeda and Al Jannabi;
+the first, an enlightened prince who reigned at Hamah, in Syria, A.D.
+1310-1332, (see Gagnier Praefat. ad Abulfed.;) the second, a credulous
+doctor, who visited Mecca A.D. 1556. (D'Herbelot, p. 397. Gagnier, tom.
+iii. p. 209, 210.) These are my general vouchers, and the inquisitive
+reader may follow the order of time, and the division of chapters. Yet
+I must observe that both Abulfeda and Al Jannabi are modern historians,
+and that they cannot appeal to any writers of the first century of the
+Hegira. * Note: A new Life, by Dr. Weil, (Stuttgart. 1843,) has added
+some few traditions unknown in Europe. Of Dr. Weil's Arabic scholarship,
+which professes to correct many errors in Gagnier, in Maracci, and in
+M. von Hammer, I am no judge. But it is remarkable that he does not
+seem acquainted with the passage of Tabari, translated by Colonel Vans
+Kennedy, in the Bombay Transactions, (vol. iii.,) the earliest and
+most important addition made to the traditionary Life of Mahomet. I am
+inclined to think Colonel Vans Kennedy's appreciation of the prophet's
+character, which may be overlooked in a criticism on Voltaire's Mahomet,
+the most just which I have ever read. The work of Dr. Weil appears to me
+most valuable in its dissection and chronological view of the Koran.--M.
+1845]
+
+[Footnote 112: After the Greeks, Prideaux (p. 8) discloses the secret
+doubts of the wife of Mahomet. As if he had been a privy counsellor
+of the prophet, Boulainvilliers (p. 272, &c.) unfolds the sublime and
+patriotic views of Cadijah and the first disciples.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Vezirus, portitor, bajulus, onus ferens; and this
+plebeian name was transferred by an apt metaphor to the pillars of the
+state, (Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 19.) I endeavor to preserve the
+Arabian idiom, as far as I can feel it myself in a Latin or French
+translation.]
+
+[Footnote 114: The passages of the Koran in behalf of toleration are
+strong and numerous: c. 2, v. 257, c. 16, 129, c. 17, 54, c. 45, 15,
+c. 50, 39, c. 88, 21, &c., with the notes of Maracci and Sale. This
+character alone may generally decide the doubts of the learned, whether
+a chapter was revealed at Mecca or Medina.]
+
+[Footnote 115: See the Koran, (passim, and especially c. 7, p. 123, 124,
+&c.,) and the tradition of the Arabs, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 35-37.)
+The caverns of the tribe of Thamud, fit for men of the ordinary stature,
+were shown in the midway between Medina and Damascus. (Abulfed Arabiae
+Descript. p. 43, 44,) and may be probably ascribed to the Throglodytes
+of the primitive world, (Michaelis, ad Lowth de Poesi Hebraeor. p.
+131-134. Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 48, &c.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part V.
+
+The people of Mecca were hardened in their unbelief by superstition and
+envy. The elders of the city, the uncles of the prophet, affected to
+despise the presumption of an orphan, the reformer of his country: the
+pious orations of Mahomet in the Caaba were answered by the clamors of
+Abu Taleb. "Citizens and pilgrims, listen not to the tempter, hearken
+not to his impious novelties. Stand fast in the worship of Al Lata and
+Al Uzzah." Yet the son of Abdallah was ever dear to the aged chief: and
+he protected the fame and person of his nephew against the assaults of
+the Koreishites, who had long been jealous of the preeminence of
+the family of Hashem. Their malice was colored with the pretence of
+religion: in the age of Job, the crime of impiety was punished by
+the Arabian magistrate; [116] and Mahomet was guilty of deserting and
+denying the national deities. But so loose was the policy of Mecca,
+that the leaders of the Koreish, instead of accusing a criminal,
+were compelled to employ the measures of persuasion or violence. They
+repeatedly addressed Abu Taleb in the style of reproach and menace.
+"Thy nephew reviles our religion; he accuses our wise forefathers of
+ignorance and folly; silence him quickly, lest he kindle tumult and
+discord in the city. If he persevere, we shall draw our swords against
+him and his adherents, and thou wilt be responsible for the blood of
+thy fellow-citizens." The weight and moderation of Abu Taleb eluded
+the violence of religious faction; the most helpless or timid of the
+disciples retired to Aethiopia, and the prophet withdrew himself to
+various places of strength in the town and country. As he was still
+supported by his family, the rest of the tribe of Koreish engaged
+themselves to renounce all intercourse with the children of Hashem,
+neither to buy nor sell, neither to marry not to give in marriage, but
+to pursue them with implacable enmity, till they should deliver the
+person of Mahomet to the justice of the gods. The decree was suspended
+in the Caaba before the eyes of the nation; the messengers of the
+Koreish pursued the Mussulman exiles in the heart of Africa: they
+besieged the prophet and his most faithful followers, intercepted
+their water, and inflamed their mutual animosity by the retaliation
+of injuries and insults. A doubtful truce restored the appearances of
+concord till the death of Abu Taleb abandoned Mahomet to the power of
+his enemies, at the moment when he was deprived of his domestic comforts
+by the loss of his faithful and generous Cadijah. Abu Sophian, the chief
+of the branch of Ommiyah, succeeded to the principality of the republic
+of Mecca. A zealous votary of the idols, a mortal foe of the line of
+Hashem, he convened an assembly of the Koreishites and their allies,
+to decide the fate of the apostle. His imprisonment might provoke the
+despair of his enthusiasm; and the exile of an eloquent and popular
+fanatic would diffuse the mischief through the provinces of Arabia. His
+death was resolved; and they agreed that a sword from each tribe should
+be buried in his heart, to divide the guilt of his blood, and baffle
+the vengeance of the Hashemites. An angel or a spy revealed their
+conspiracy; and flight was the only resource of Mahomet. [117] At the
+dead of night, accompanied by his friend Abubeker, he silently escaped
+from his house: the assassins watched at the door; but they were
+deceived by the figure of Ali, who reposed on the bed, and was covered
+with the green vestment of the apostle. The Koreish respected the piety
+of the heroic youth; but some verses of Ali, which are still extant,
+exhibit an interesting picture of his anxiety, his tenderness, and
+his religious confidence. Three days Mahomet and his companion were
+concealed in the cave of Thor, at the distance of a league from Mecca;
+and in the close of each evening, they received from the son and
+daughter of Abubeker a secret supply of intelligence and food. The
+diligence of the Koreish explored every haunt in the neighborhood of the
+city: they arrived at the entrance of the cavern; but the providential
+deceit of a spider's web and a pigeon's nest is supposed to convince
+them that the place was solitary and inviolate. "We are only two," said
+the trembling Abubeker. "There is a third," replied the prophet; "it is
+God himself." No sooner was the pursuit abated than the two fugitives
+issued from the rock, and mounted their camels: on the road to Medina,
+they were overtaken by the emissaries of the Koreish; they redeemed
+themselves with prayers and promises from their hands. In this eventful
+moment, the lance of an Arab might have changed the history of the
+world. The flight of the prophet from Mecca to Medina has fixed
+the memorable aera of the Hegira, [118] which, at the end of twelve
+centuries, still discriminates the lunar years of the Mahometan nations.
+[119]
+
+[Footnote 116: In the time of Job, the crime of impiety was punished
+by the Arabian magistrate, (c. 21, v. 26, 27, 28.) I blush for a
+respectable prelate (de Poesi Hebraeorum, p. 650, 651, edit. Michaelis;
+and letter of a late professor in the university of Oxford, p. 15-53,)
+who justifies and applauds this patriarchal inquisition.]
+
+[Footnote 117: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 445. He quotes a
+particular history of the flight of Mahomet.]
+
+[Footnote 118: The Hegira was instituted by Omar, the second caliph, in
+imitation of the aera of the martyrs of the Christians, (D'Herbelot,
+p. 444;) and properly commenced sixty-eight days before the flight of
+Mahomet, with the first of Moharren, or first day of that Arabian year
+which coincides with Friday, July 16th, A.D. 622, (Abulfeda, Vit Moham,
+c. 22, 23, p. 45-50; and Greaves's edition of Ullug Beg's Epochae
+Arabum, &c., c. 1, p. 8, 10, &c.) * Note: Chronologists dispute between
+the 15th and 16th of July. St. Martin inclines to the 8th, ch. xi. p.
+70.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Mahomet's life, from his mission to the Hegira, may
+be found in Abulfeda (p. 14-45) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p. 134-251,
+342-383.) The legend from p. 187-234 is vouched by Al Jannabi, and
+disdained by Abulfeda.]
+
+The religion of the Koran might have perished in its cradle, had not
+Medina embraced with faith and reverence the holy outcasts of Mecca.
+Medina, or the city, known under the name of Yathreb, before it was
+sanctified by the throne of the prophet, was divided between the tribes
+of the Charegites and the Awsites, whose hereditary feud was rekindled
+by the slightest provocations: two colonies of Jews, who boasted a
+sacerdotal race, were their humble allies, and without converting
+the Arabs, they introduced the taste of science and religion, which
+distinguished Medina as the city of the Book. Some of her noblest
+citizens, in a pilgrimage to the Canaba, were converted by the preaching
+of Mahomet; on their return, they diffused the belief of God and his
+prophet, and the new alliance was ratified by their deputies in two
+secret and nocturnal interviews on a hill in the suburbs of Mecca. In
+the first, ten Charegites and two Awsites united in faith and love,
+protested, in the name of their wives, their children, and their absent
+brethren, that they would forever profess the creed, and observe the
+precepts, of the Koran. The second was a political association, the
+first vital spark of the empire of the Saracens. [120] Seventy-three
+men and two women of Medina held a solemn conference with Mahomet, his
+kinsman, and his disciples; and pledged themselves to each other by a
+mutual oath of fidelity. They promised, in the name of the city, that if
+he should be banished, they would receive him as a confederate, obey him
+as a leader, and defend him to the last extremity, like their wives and
+children. "But if you are recalled by your country," they asked with
+a flattering anxiety, "will you not abandon your new allies?" "All
+things," replied Mahomet with a smile, "are now common between us your
+blood is as my blood, your ruin as my ruin. We are bound to each other
+by the ties of honor and interest. I am your friend, and the enemy of
+your foes." "But if we are killed in your service, what," exclaimed
+the deputies of Medina, "will be our reward?" "Paradise," replied the
+prophet. "Stretch forth thy hand." He stretched it forth, and they
+reiterated the oath of allegiance and fidelity. Their treaty was
+ratified by the people, who unanimously embraced the profession of
+Islam; they rejoiced in the exile of the apostle, but they trembled for
+his safety, and impatiently expected his arrival. After a perilous and
+rapid journey along the sea-coast, he halted at Koba, two miles from
+the city, and made his public entry into Medina, sixteen days after his
+flight from Mecca. Five hundred of the citizens advanced to meet him;
+he was hailed with acclamations of loyalty and devotion; Mahomet was
+mounted on a she-camel, an umbrella shaded his head, and a turban was
+unfurled before him to supply the deficiency of a standard. His bravest
+disciples, who had been scattered by the storm, assembled round
+his person; and the equal, though various, merit of the Moslems was
+distinguished by the names of Mohagerians and Ansars, the fugitives
+of Mecca, and the auxiliaries of Medina. To eradicate the seeds of
+jealousy, Mahomet judiciously coupled his principal followers with the
+rights and obligations of brethren; and when Ali found himself without a
+peer, the prophet tenderly declared, that he would be the companion and
+brother of the noble youth. The expedient was crowned with success; the
+holy fraternity was respected in peace and war, and the two parties vied
+with each other in a generous emulation of courage and fidelity. Once
+only the concord was slightly ruffled by an accidental quarrel: a
+patriot of Medina arraigned the insolence of the strangers, but the
+hint of their expulsion was heard with abhorrence; and his own son most
+eagerly offered to lay at the apostle's feet the head of his father.
+
+[Footnote 120: The triple inauguration of Mahomet is described by
+Abulfeda (p. 30, 33, 40, 86) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p. 342, &c., 349,
+&c., tom. ii. p. 223 &c.)]
+
+From his establishment at Medina, Mahomet assumed the exercise of the
+regal and sacerdotal office; and it was impious to appeal from a judge
+whose decrees were inspired by the divine wisdom. A small portion of
+ground, the patrimony of two orphans, was acquired by gift or purchase;
+[121] on that chosen spot he built a house and a mosch, more venerable
+in their rude simplicity than the palaces and temples of the Assyrian
+caliphs. His seal of gold, or silver, was inscribed with the apostolic
+title; when he prayed and preached in the weekly assembly, he leaned
+against the trunk of a palm-tree; and it was long before he indulged
+himself in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough timber. [122] After a
+reign of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the field,
+renewed their oath of allegiance; and their chief repeated the
+assurance of protection till the death of the last member, or the final
+dissolution of the party. It was in the same camp that the deputy of
+Mecca was astonished by the attention of the faithful to the words and
+looks of the prophet, by the eagerness with which they collected his
+spittle, a hair that dropped on the ground, the refuse water of his
+lustrations, as if they participated in some degree of the prophetic
+virtue. "I have seen," said he, "the Chosroes of Persia and the Caesar
+of Rome, but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet
+among his companions." The devout fervor of enthusiasm acts with more
+energy and truth than the cold and formal servility of courts.
+
+[Footnote 121: Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 44) reviles the wickedness
+of the impostor, who despoiled two poor orphans, the sons of a
+carpenter; a reproach which he drew from the Disputatio contra
+Saracenos, composed in Arabic before the year 1130; but the honest
+Gagnier (ad Abulfed. p. 53) has shown that they were deceived by the
+word Al Nagjar, which signifies, in this place, not an obscure trade,
+but a noble tribe of Arabs. The desolate state of the ground is
+described by Abulfeda; and his worthy interpreter has proved, from Al
+Bochari, the offer of a price; from Al Jannabi, the fair purchase; and
+from Ahmeq Ben Joseph, the payment of the money by the generous Abubeker
+On these grounds the prophet must be honorably acquitted.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 246, 324) describes
+the seal and pulpit, as two venerable relics of the apostle of God; and
+the portrait of his court is taken from Abulfeda, (c. 44, p. 85.)]
+
+In the state of nature, every man has a right to defend, by force of
+arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even to prevent, the
+violence of his enemies, and to extend his hostilities to a reasonable
+measure of satisfaction and retaliation. In the free society of the
+Arabs, the duties of subject and citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and
+Mahomet, in the exercise of a peaceful and benevolent mission, had been
+despoiled and banished by the injustice of his countrymen. The choice of
+an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca to the rank of
+a sovereign; and he was invested with the just prerogative of forming
+alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war. The imperfection
+of human rights was supplied and armed by the plenitude of divine power:
+the prophet of Medina assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and
+more sanguinary tone, which proves that his former moderation was the
+effect of weakness: [123] the means of persuasion had been tried, the
+season of forbearance was elapsed, and he was now commanded to propagate
+his religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments of idolatry,
+and, without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue
+the unbelieving nations of the earth. The same bloody precepts, so
+repeatedly inculcated in the Koran, are ascribed by the author to the
+Pentateuch and the Gospel. But the mild tenor of the evangelic style may
+explain an ambiguous text, that Jesus did not bring peace on the earth,
+but a sword: his patient and humble virtues should not be confounded
+with the intolerant zeal of princes and bishops, who have disgraced
+the name of his disciples. In the prosecution of religious war, Mahomet
+might appeal with more propriety to the example of Moses, of the Judges,
+and the kings of Israel. The military laws of the Hebrews are still
+more rigid than those of the Arabian legislator. [124] The Lord of hosts
+marched in person before the Jews: if a city resisted their summons, the
+males, without distinction, were put to the sword: the seven nations
+of Canaan were devoted to destruction; and neither repentance nor
+conversion, could shield them from the inevitable doom, that no creature
+within their precincts should be left alive. [1241] The fair option of
+friendship, or submission, or battle, was proposed to the enemies of
+Mahomet. If they professed the creed of Islam, they were admitted to
+all the temporal and spiritual benefits of his primitive disciples,
+and marched under the same banner to extend the religion which they had
+embraced. The clemency of the prophet was decided by his interest: yet
+he seldom trampled on a prostrate enemy; and he seems to promise,
+that on the payment of a tribute, the least guilty of his unbelieving
+subjects might be indulged in their worship, or at least in their
+imperfect faith. In the first months of his reign he practised the
+lessons of holy warfare, and displayed his white banner before the
+gates of Medina: the martial apostle fought in person at nine battles or
+sieges; [125] and fifty enterprises of war were achieved in ten years by
+himself or his lieutenants. The Arab continued to unite the professions
+of a merchant and a robber; and his petty excursions for the defence or
+the attack of a caravan insensibly prepared his troops for the conquest
+of Arabia. The distribution of the spoil was regulated by a divine law:
+[126] the whole was faithfully collected in one common mass: a fifth
+of the gold and silver, the prisoners and cattle, the movables and
+immovables, was reserved by the prophet for pious and charitable uses;
+the remainder was shared in adequate portions by the soldiers who had
+obtained the victory or guarded the camp: the rewards of the slain
+devolved to their widows and orphans; and the increase of cavalry was
+encouraged by the allotment of a double share to the horse and to the
+man. From all sides the roving Arabs were allured to the standard of
+religion and plunder: the apostle sanctified the license of embracing
+the female captives as their wives or concubines, and the enjoyment of
+wealth and beauty was a feeble type of the joys of paradise prepared for
+the valiant martyrs of the faith. "The sword," says Mahomet, "is the key
+of heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night
+spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer:
+whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment
+his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk;
+and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and
+cherubim." The intrepid souls of the Arabs were fired with enthusiasm:
+the picture of the invisible world was strongly painted on their
+imagination; and the death which they had always despised became an
+object of hope and desire. The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute
+sense, the tenets of fate and predestination, which would extinguish
+both industry and virtue, if the actions of man were governed by his
+speculative belief. Yet their influence in every age has exalted the
+courage of the Saracens and Turks. The first companions of Mahomet
+advanced to battle with a fearless confidence: there is no danger where
+there is no chance: they were ordained to perish in their beds; or they
+were safe and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. [127]
+
+[Footnote 123: The viiith and ixth chapters of the Koran are the loudest
+and most vehement; and Maracci (Prodromus, part iv. p. 59-64) has
+inveighed with more justice than discretion against the double dealing
+of the impostor.]
+
+[Footnote 124: The xth and xxth chapters of Deuteronomy, with the
+practical comments of Joshua, David, &c., are read with more awe
+than satisfaction by the pious Christians of the present age. But
+the bishops, as well as the rabbis of former times, have beat the
+drum-ecclesiastic with pleasure and success. (Sale's Preliminary
+Discourse, p. 142, 143.)]
+
+[Footnote 1241: The editor's opinions on this subject may be read in the
+History of the Jews vol. i. p. 137.--M]
+
+[Footnote 125: Abulfeda, in Vit. Moham. p. 156. The private arsenal
+of the apostle consisted of nine swords, three lances, seven pikes or
+half-pikes, a quiver and three bows, seven cuirasses, three shields,
+and two helmets, (Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 328-334,) with a large white
+standard, a black banner, (p. 335,) twenty horses, (p. 322, &c.) Two of
+his martial sayings are recorded by tradition, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 88,
+334.)]
+
+[Footnote 126: The whole subject de jure belli Mohammedanorum
+is exhausted in a separate dissertation by the learned Reland,
+(Dissertationes Miscellaneae, tom. iii. Dissertat. x. p. 3-53.)]
+
+[Footnote 127: The doctrine of absolute predestination, on which few
+religions can reproach each other, is sternly exposed in the Koran, (c.
+3, p. 52, 53, c. 4, p. 70, &c., with the notes of Sale, and c. 17, p.
+413, with those of Maracci.) Reland (de Relig. Moham. p. 61-64) and
+Sale (Prelim. Discourse, p. 103) represent the opinions of the doctors,
+and our modern travellers the confidence, the fading confidence, of the
+Turks]
+
+Perhaps the Koreish would have been content with the dight of Mahomet,
+had they not been provoked and alarmed by the vengeance of an enemy, who
+could intercept their Syrian trade as it passed and repassed through
+the territory of Medina. Abu Sophian himself, with only thirty or forty
+followers, conducted a wealthy caravan of a thousand camels; the fortune
+or dexterity of his march escaped the vigilance of Mahomet; but the
+chief of the Koreish was informed that the holy robbers were placed in
+ambush to await his return. He despatched a messenger to his brethren of
+Mecca, and they were roused, by the fear of losing their merchandise and
+their provisions, unless they hastened to his relief with the military
+force of the city. The sacred band of Mahomet was formed of three
+hundred and thirteen Moslems, of whom seventy-seven were fugitives, and
+the rest auxiliaries; they mounted by turns a train of seventy camels,
+(the camels of Yathreb were formidable in war;) but such was the poverty
+of his first disciples, that only two could appear on horseback in
+the field. [128] In the fertile and famous vale of Beder, [129] three
+stations from Medina, he was informed by his scouts of the caravan that
+approached on one side; of the Koreish, one hundred horse, eight hundred
+and fifty foot, who advanced on the other. After a short debate, he
+sacrificed the prospect of wealth to the pursuit of glory and revenge,
+and a slight intrenchment was formed, to cover his troops, and a stream
+of fresh water, that glided through the valley. "O God," he exclaimed,
+as the numbers of the Koreish descended from the hills, "O God, if these
+are destroyed, by whom wilt thou be worshipped on the earth?--Courage,
+my children; close your ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day is
+your own." At these words he placed himself, with Abubeker, on a throne
+or pulpit, [130] and instantly demanded the succor of Gabriel and
+three thousand angels. His eye was fixed on the field of battle: the
+Mussulmans fainted and were pressed: in that decisive moment the prophet
+started from his throne, mounted his horse, and cast a handful of sand
+into the air: "Let their faces be covered with confusion." Both armies
+heard the thunder of his voice: their fancy beheld the angelic warriors:
+[131] the Koreish trembled and fled: seventy of the bravest were slain;
+and seventy captives adorned the first victory of the faithful. The
+dead bodies of the Koreish were despoiled and insulted: two of the most
+obnoxious prisoners were punished with death; and the ransom of the
+others, four thousand drams of silver, compensated in some degree the
+escape of the caravan. But it was in vain that the camels of Abu Sophian
+explored a new road through the desert and along the Euphrates: they
+were overtaken by the diligence of the Mussulmans; and wealthy must
+have been the prize, if twenty thousand drams could be set apart for
+the fifth of the apostle. The resentment of the public and private loss
+stimulated Abu Sophian to collect a body of three thousand men, seven
+hundred of whom were armed with cuirasses, and two hundred were mounted
+on horseback; three thousand camels attended his march; and his wife
+Henda, with fifteen matrons of Mecca, incessantly sounded their timbrels
+to animate the troops, and to magnify the greatness of Hobal, the most
+popular deity of the Caaba. The standard of God and Mahomet was upheld
+by nine hundred and fifty believers: the disproportion of numbers was
+not more alarming than in the field of Beder; and their presumption of
+victory prevailed against the divine and human sense of the apostle.
+The second battle was fought on Mount Ohud, six miles to the north of
+Medina; [132] the Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent; and the
+right wing of cavalry was led by Caled, the fiercest and most successful
+of the Arabian warriors. The troops of Mahomet were skilfully posted on
+the declivity of the hill; and their rear was guarded by a detachment of
+fifty archers. The weight of their charge impelled and broke the centre
+of the idolaters: but in the pursuit they lost the advantage of their
+ground: the archers deserted their station: the Mussulmans were tempted
+by the spoil, disobeyed their general, and disordered their ranks. The
+intrepid Caled, wheeling his cavalry on their flank and rear, exclaimed,
+with a loud voice, that Mahomet was slain. He was indeed wounded in the
+face with a javelin: two of his teeth were shattered with a stone; yet,
+in the midst of tumult and dismay, he reproached the infidels with the
+murder of a prophet; and blessed the friendly hand that stanched his
+blood, and conveyed him to a place of safety Seventy martyrs died for
+the sins of the people; they fell, said the apostle, in pairs, each
+brother embracing his lifeless companion; [133] their bodies were
+mangled by the inhuman females of Mecca; and the wife of Abu Sophian
+tasted the entrails of Hamza, the uncle of Mahomet. They might applaud
+their superstition, and satiate their fury; but the Mussulmans soon
+rallied in the field, and the Koreish wanted strength or courage to
+undertake the siege of Medina. It was attacked the ensuing year by an
+army of ten thousand enemies; and this third expedition is variously
+named from the nations, which marched under the banner of Abu Sophian,
+from the ditch which was drawn before the city, and a camp of three
+thousand Mussulmans. The prudence of Mahomet declined a general
+engagement: the valor of Ali was signalized in single combat; and
+the war was protracted twenty days, till the final separation of the
+confederates. A tempest of wind, rain, and hail, overturned their tents:
+their private quarrels were fomented by an insidious adversary; and
+the Koreish, deserted by their allies, no longer hoped to subvert the
+throne, or to check the conquests, of their invincible exile. [134]
+
+[Footnote 128: Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 9) allows him
+seventy or eighty horse; and on two other occasions, prior to the
+battle of Ohud, he enlists a body of thirty (p. 10) and of 500 (p. 66)
+troopers. Yet the Mussulmans, in the field of Ohud, had no more than two
+horses, according to the better sense of Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c.
+xxxi. p. 65.) In the Stony province, the camels were numerous; but the
+horse appears to have been less numerous than in the Happy or the Desert
+Arabia.]
+
+[Footnote 129: Bedder Houneene, twenty miles from Medina, and forty from
+Mecca, is on the high road of the caravan of Egypt; and the pilgrims
+annually commemorate the prophet's victory by illuminations, rockets,
+&c. Shaw's Travels, p. 477.]
+
+[Footnote 130: The place to which Mahomet retired during the action is
+styled by Gagnier (in Abulfeda, c. 27, p. 58. Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii.
+p. 30, 33) Umbraculum, une loge de bois avec une porte. The same Arabic
+word is rendered by Reiske (Annales Moslemici Abulfedae, p. 23) by
+Solium, Suggestus editior; and the difference is of the utmost moment
+for the honor both of the interpreter and of the hero. I am sorry
+to observe the pride and acrimony with which Reiske chastises his
+fellow-laborer. Saepi sic vertit, ut integrae paginae nequeant nisi una
+litura corrigi Arabice non satis callebat, et carebat judicio critico.
+J. J. Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalisae Tabulas, p. 228, ad calcero
+Abulfedae Syriae Tabulae; Lipsiae, 1766, in 4to.]
+
+[Footnote 131: The loose expressions of the Koran (c. 3, p. 124, 125,
+c. 8, p. 9) allow the commentators to fluctuate between the numbers of
+1000, 3000, or 9000 angels; and the smallest of these might suffice for
+the slaughter of seventy of the Koreish, (Maracci, Alcoran, tom. ii.
+p. 131.) Yet the same scholiasts confess that this angelic band was not
+visible to any mortal eye, (Maracci, p. 297.) They refine on the words
+(c. 8, 16) "not thou, but God," &c. (D'Herbelot. Bibliot. Orientale p.
+600, 601.)]
+
+[Footnote 132: Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 133: In the iiid chapter of the Koran, (p. 50-53) with Sale's
+notes, the prophet alleges some poor excuses for the defeat of Ohud. *
+Note: Dr. Weil has added some curious circumstances, which he gives as
+on good traditional authority, on the rescue of Mahomet. The prophet was
+attacked by Ubeijj Ibn Challaf, whom he struck on the neck with a mortal
+wound. This was the only time, it is added, that Mahomet personally
+engaged in battle. (p. 128.)--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 134: For the detail of the three Koreish wars, of Beder, of
+Ohud, and of the ditch, peruse Abulfeda, (p. 56-61, 64-69, 73-77,)
+Gagnier (tom. i. p. 23-45, 70-96, 120-139,) with the proper articles
+of D'Herbelot, and the abridgments of Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 6, 7)
+and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 102.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part VI.
+
+The choice of Jerusalem for the first kebla of prayer discovers the
+early propensity of Mahomet in favor of the Jews; and happy would it
+have been for their temporal interest, had they recognized, in the
+Arabian prophet, the hope of Israel and the promised Messiah. Their
+obstinacy converted his friendship into implacable hatred, with which he
+pursued that unfortunate people to the last moment of his life; and in
+the double character of an apostle and a conqueror, his persecution was
+extended to both worlds. [135] The Kainoka dwelt at Medina under the
+protection of the city; he seized the occasion of an accidental tumult,
+and summoned them to embrace his religion, or contend with him in
+battle. "Alas!" replied the trembling Jews, "we are ignorant of the use
+of arms, but we persevere in the faith and worship of our fathers; why
+wilt thou reduce us to the necessity of a just defence?" The unequal
+conflict was terminated in fifteen days; and it was with extreme
+reluctance that Mahomet yielded to the importunity of his allies, and
+consented to spare the lives of the captives. But their riches were
+confiscated, their arms became more effectual in the hands of the
+Mussulmans; and a wretched colony of seven hundred exiles was driven,
+with their wives and children, to implore a refuge on the confines
+of Syria. The Nadhirites were more guilty, since they conspired, in
+a friendly interview, to assassinate the prophet. He besieged their
+castle, three miles from Medina; but their resolute defence obtained an
+honorable capitulation; and the garrison, sounding their trumpets and
+beating their drums, was permitted to depart with the honors of war. The
+Jews had excited and joined the war of the Koreish: no sooner had the
+nations retired from the ditch, than Mahomet, without laying aside his
+armor, marched on the same day to extirpate the hostile race of the
+children of Koraidha. After a resistance of twenty-five days, they
+surrendered at discretion. They trusted to the intercession of their old
+allies of Medina; they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates
+the feelings of humanity. A venerable elder, to whose judgment they
+appealed, pronounced the sentence of their death; seven hundred Jews
+were dragged in chains to the market-place of the city; they descended
+alive into the grave prepared for their execution and burial; and the
+apostle beheld with an inflexible eye the slaughter of his helpless
+enemies. Their sheep and camels were inherited by the Mussulmans: three
+hundred cuirasses, five hundred piles, a thousand lances, composed the
+most useful portion of the spoil. Six days' journey to the north-east
+of Medina, the ancient and wealthy town of Chaibar was the seat of the
+Jewish power in Arabia: the territory, a fertile spot in the desert,
+was covered with plantations and cattle, and protected by eight castles,
+some of which were esteemed of impregnable strength. The forces of
+Mahomet consisted of two hundred horse and fourteen hundred foot: in
+the succession of eight regular and painful sieges they were exposed to
+danger, and fatigue, and hunger; and the most undaunted chiefs despaired
+of the event. The apostle revived their faith and courage by the example
+of Ali, on whom he bestowed the surname of the Lion of God: perhaps we
+may believe that a Hebrew champion of gigantic stature was cloven to the
+chest by his irresistible cimeter; but we cannot praise the modesty of
+romance, which represents him as tearing from its hinges the gate of
+a fortress and wielding the ponderous buckler in his left hand. [136]
+After the reduction of the castles, the town of Chaibar submitted to the
+yoke. The chief of the tribe was tortured, in the presence of Mahomet,
+to force a confession of his hidden treasure: the industry of the
+shepherds and husbandmen was rewarded with a precarious toleration: they
+were permitted, so long as it should please the conqueror, to improve
+their patrimony, in equal shares, for his emolument and their own. Under
+the reign of Omar, the Jews of Chaibar were transported to Syria; and
+the caliph alleged the injunction of his dying master; that one and the
+true religion should be professed in his native land of Arabia. [137]
+
+[Footnote 135: The wars of Mahomet against the Jewish tribes of Kainoka,
+the Nadhirites, Koraidha, and Chaibar, are related by Abulfeda (p. 61,
+71, 77, 87, &c.) and Gagnier, (tom. ii. p. 61-65, 107-112, 139-148,
+268-294.)]
+
+[Footnote 136: Abu Rafe, the servant of Mahomet, is said to affirm that
+he himself, and seven other men, afterwards tried, without success, to
+move the same gate from the ground, (Abulfeda, p. 90.) Abu Rafe was an
+eye-witness, but who will be witness for Abu Rafe?]
+
+[Footnote 137: The banishment of the Jews is attested by Elmacin (Hist.
+Saracen, p. 9) and the great Al Zabari, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 285.)
+Yet Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 324) believes that the Jewish
+religion, and Karaite sect, are still professed by the tribe of Chaibar;
+and that, in the plunder of the caravans, the disciples of Moses are the
+confederates of those of Mahomet.]
+
+Five times each day the eyes of Mahomet were turned towards Mecca, [138]
+and he was urged by the most sacred and powerful motives to revisit, as
+a conqueror, the city and the temple from whence he had been driven as
+an exile. The Caaba was present to his waking and sleeping fancy: an
+idle dream was translated into vision and prophecy; he unfurled the holy
+banner; and a rash promise of success too hastily dropped from the lips
+of the apostle. His march from Medina to Mecca displayed the peaceful
+and solemn pomp of a pilgrimage: seventy camels, chosen and bedecked for
+sacrifice, preceded the van; the sacred territory was respected; and
+the captives were dismissed without ransom to proclaim his clemency and
+devotion. But no sooner did Mahomet descend into the plain, within
+a day's journey of the city, than he exclaimed, "They have clothed
+themselves with the skins of tigers:" the numbers and resolution of the
+Koreish opposed his progress; and the roving Arabs of the desert might
+desert or betray a leader whom they had followed for the hopes of spoil.
+The intrepid fanatic sunk into a cool and cautious politician: he waived
+in the treaty his title of apostle of God; concluded with the Koreish
+and their allies a truce of ten years; engaged to restore the fugitives
+of Mecca who should embrace his religion; and stipulated only, for the
+ensuing year, the humble privilege of entering the city as a friend,
+and of remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage.
+A cloud of shame and sorrow hung on the retreat of the Mussulmans, and
+their disappointment might justly accuse the failure of a prophet who
+had so often appealed to the evidence of success. The faith and hope of
+the pilgrims were rekindled by the prospect of Mecca: their swords
+were sheathed; [1381] seven times in the footsteps of the apostle
+they encompassed the Caaba: the Koreish had retired to the hills, and
+Mahomet, after the customary sacrifice, evacuated the city on the fourth
+day. The people was edified by his devotion; the hostile chiefs were
+awed, or divided, or seduced; and both Kaled and Amrou, the future
+conquerors of Syria and Egypt, most seasonably deserted the sinking
+cause of idolatry. The power of Mahomet was increased by the submission
+of the Arabian tribes; ten thousand soldiers were assembled for the
+conquest of Mecca; and the idolaters, the weaker party, were easily
+convicted of violating the truce. Enthusiasm and discipline impelled
+the march, and preserved the secret till the blaze of ten thousand fires
+proclaimed to the astonished Koreish the design, the approach, and the
+irresistible force of the enemy. The haughty Abu Sophian presented the
+keys of the city, admired the variety of arms and ensigns that passed
+before him in review; observed that the son of Abdallah had acquired a
+mighty kingdom, and confessed, under the cimeter of Omar, that he was
+the apostle of the true God. The return of Marius and Scylla was stained
+with the blood of the Romans: the revenge of Mahomet was stimulated by
+religious zeal, and his injured followers were eager to execute or to
+prevent the order of a massacre. Instead of indulging their passions and
+his own, [139] the victorious exile forgave the guilt, and united the
+factions, of Mecca. His troops, in three divisions, marched into the
+city: eight-and-twenty of the inhabitants were slain by the sword of
+Caled; eleven men and six women were proscribed by the sentence of
+Mahomet; but he blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant; and several of the
+most obnoxious victims were indebted for their lives to his clemency or
+contempt. The chiefs of the Koreish were prostrate at his feet. "What
+mercy can you expect from the man whom you have wronged?" "We confide
+in the generosity of our kinsman." "And you shall not confide in vain:
+begone! you are safe, you are free" The people of Mecca deserved their
+pardon by the profession of Islam; and after an exile of seven years,
+the fugitive missionary was enthroned as the prince and prophet of his
+native country. [140] But the three hundred and sixty idols of the Caaba
+were ignominiously broken: the house of God was purified and adorned: as
+an example to future times, the apostle again fulfilled the duties of a
+pilgrim; and a perpetual law was enacted that no unbeliever should dare
+to set his foot on the territory of the holy city. [141]
+
+[Footnote 138: The successive steps of the reduction of Mecca are
+related by Abulfeda (p. 84-87, 97-100, 102-111) and Gagnier, (tom.
+ii. p. 202-245, 309-322, tom. iii. p. 1-58,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen.
+p. 8, 9, 10,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 103.)]
+
+[Footnote 1381: This peaceful entrance into Mecca took place, according
+to the treaty the following year. Weil, p. 202--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 139: After the conquest of Mecca, the Mahomet of Voltaire
+imagines and perpetuates the most horrid crimes. The poet confesses,
+that he is not supported by the truth of history, and can only allege,
+que celui qui fait la guerre a sa patrie au nom de Dieu, est capable
+de tout, (Oeuvres de Voltaire, tom. xv. p. 282.) The maxim is neither
+charitable nor philosophic; and some reverence is surely due to the
+fame of heroes and the religion of nations. I am informed that a Turkish
+ambassador at Paris was much scandalized at the representation of this
+tragedy.]
+
+[Footnote 140: The Mahometan doctors still dispute, whether Mecca was
+reduced by force or consent, (Abulfeda, p. 107, et Gagnier ad locum;)
+and this verbal controversy is of as much moment as our own about
+William the Conqueror.]
+
+[Footnote 141: In excluding the Christians from the peninsula of
+Arabia, the province of Hejaz, or the navigation of the Red Sea, Chardin
+(Voyages en Perse, tom. iv. p. 166) and Reland (Dissertat. Miscell.
+tom. iii. p. 61) are more rigid than the Mussulmans themselves. The
+Christians are received without scruple into the ports of Mocha, and
+even of Gedda; and it is only the city and precincts of Mecca that are
+inaccessible to the profane, (Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p. 308,
+309, Voyage en Arabie, tom. i. p. 205, 248, &c.)]
+
+The conquest of Mecca determined the faith and obedience of the Arabian
+tribes; [142] who, according to the vicissitudes of fortune, had obeyed,
+or disregarded, the eloquence or the arms of the prophet. Indifference
+for rites and opinions still marks the character of the Bedoweens; and
+they might accept, as loosely as they hold, the doctrine of the Koran.
+Yet an obstinate remnant still adhered to the religion and liberty of
+their ancestors, and the war of Honain derived a proper appellation from
+the idols, whom Mahomet had vowed to destroy, and whom the confederates
+of Tayef had sworn to defend. [143] Four thousand Pagans advanced with
+secrecy and speed to surprise the conqueror: they pitied and despised
+the supine negligence of the Koreish, but they depended on the wishes,
+and perhaps the aid, of a people who had so lately renounced their gods,
+and bowed beneath the yoke of their enemy. The banners of Medina and
+Mecca were displayed by the prophet; a crowd of Bedoweens increased
+the strength or numbers of the army, and twelve thousand Mussulmans
+entertained a rash and sinful presumption of their invincible strength.
+They descended without precaution into the valley of Honain: the heights
+had been occupied by the archers and slingers of the confederates; their
+numbers were oppressed, their discipline was confounded, their courage
+was appalled, and the Koreish smiled at their impending destruction. The
+prophet, on his white mule, was encompassed by the enemies: he attempted
+to rush against their spears in search of a glorious death: ten of his
+faithful companions interposed their weapons and their breasts; three of
+these fell dead at his feet: "O my brethren," he repeatedly cried, with
+sorrow and indignation, "I am the son of Abdallah, I am the apostle of
+truth! O man, stand fast in the faith! O God, send down thy succor!" His
+uncle Abbas, who, like the heroes of Homer, excelled in the loudness
+of his voice, made the valley resound with the recital of the gifts and
+promises of God: the flying Moslems returned from all sides to the holy
+standard; and Mahomet observed with pleasure that the furnace was again
+rekindled: his conduct and example restored the battle, and he animated
+his victorious troops to inflict a merciless revenge on the authors of
+their shame. From the field of Honain, he marched without delay to the
+siege of Tayef, sixty miles to the south-east of Mecca, a fortress of
+strength, whose fertile lands produce the fruits of Syria in the midst
+of the Arabian desert. A friendly tribe, instructed (I know not how)
+in the art of sieges, supplied him with a train of battering-rams and
+military engines, with a body of five hundred artificers. But it was in
+vain that he offered freedom to the slaves of Tayef; that he violated
+his own laws by the extirpation of the fruit-trees; that the ground was
+opened by the miners; that the breach was assaulted by the troops. After
+a siege of twenty-days, the prophet sounded a retreat; but he retreated
+with a song of devout triumph, and affected to pray for the repentance
+and safety of the unbelieving city. The spoils of this fortunate
+expedition amounted to six thousand captives, twenty-four thousand
+camels, forty thousand sheep, and four thousand ounces of silver: a
+tribe who had fought at Hoinan redeemed their prisoners by the sacrifice
+of their idols; but Mahomet compensated the loss, by resigning to the
+soldiers his fifth of the plunder, and wished, for their sake, that he
+possessed as many head of cattle as there were trees in the province
+of Tehama. Instead of chastising the disaffection of the Koreish, he
+endeavored to cut out their tongues, (his own expression,) and to secure
+their attachment by a superior measure of liberality: Abu Sophian alone
+was presented with three hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver; and
+Mecca was sincerely converted to the profitable religion of the Koran.
+
+[Footnote 142: Abulfeda, p. 112-115. Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 67-88.
+D'Herbelot, Mohammed.]
+
+[Footnote 143: The siege of Tayef, division of the spoil, &c., are
+related by Abulfeda (p. 117-123) and Gagnier, (tom. iii. p. 88-111.)
+It is Al Jannabi who mentions the engines and engineers of the tribe of
+Daws. The fertile spot of Tayef was supposed to be a piece of the land
+of Syria detached and dropped in the general deluge]
+
+The fugitives and auxiliaries complained, that they who had borne the
+burden were neglected in the season of victory "Alas!" replied their
+artful leader, "suffer me to conciliate these recent enemies, these
+doubtful proselytes, by the gift of some perishable goods. To your guard
+I intrust my life and fortunes. You are the companions of my exile, of
+my kingdom, of my paradise." He was followed by the deputies of Tayef,
+who dreaded the repetition of a siege. "Grant us, O apostle of God! a
+truce of three years, with the toleration of our ancient worship."
+"Not a month, not an hour." "Excuse us at least from the obligation of
+prayer." "Without prayer religion is of no avail." They submitted
+in silence: their temples were demolished, and the same sentence of
+destruction was executed on all the idols of Arabia. His lieutenants,
+on the shores of the Red Sea, the Ocean, and the Gulf of Persia, were
+saluted by the acclamations of a faithful people; and the ambassadors,
+who knelt before the throne of Medina, were as numerous (says the
+Arabian proverb) as the dates that fall from the maturity of a
+palm-tree. The nation submitted to the God and the sceptre of Mahomet:
+the opprobrious name of tribute was abolished: the spontaneous or
+reluctant oblations of arms and tithes were applied to the service of
+religion; and one hundred and fourteen thousand Moslems accompanied the
+last pilgrimage of the apostle. [144]
+
+[Footnote 144: The last conquests and pilgrimage of Mahomet are
+contained in Abulfeda, (p. 121, 133,) Gagnier, (tom. iii. p. 119-219,)
+Elmacin, (p. 10, 11,) Abulpharagius, (p. 103.) The ixth of the Hegira
+was styled the Year of Embassies, (Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 121.)]
+
+When Heraclius returned in triumph from the Persian war, he entertained,
+at Emesa, one of the ambassadors of Mahomet, who invited the princes and
+nations of the earth to the profession of Islam. On this foundation the
+zeal of the Arabians has supposed the secret conversion of the Christian
+emperor: the vanity of the Greeks has feigned a personal visit of the
+prince of Medina, who accepted from the royal bounty a rich domain, and
+a secure retreat, in the province of Syria. [145] But the friendship
+of Heraclius and Mahomet was of short continuance: the new religion had
+inflamed rather than assuaged the rapacious spirit of the Saracens, and
+the murder of an envoy afforded a decent pretence for invading, with
+three thousand soldiers, the territory of Palestine, that extends to the
+eastward of the Jordan. The holy banner was intrusted to Zeid; and such
+was the discipline or enthusiasm of the rising sect, that the noblest
+chiefs served without reluctance under the slave of the prophet. On the
+event of his decease, Jaafar and Abdallah were successively substituted
+to the command; and if the three should perish in the war, the troops
+were authorized to elect their general. The three leaders were slain
+in the battle of Muta, [146] the first military action, which tried the
+valor of the Moslems against a foreign enemy. Zeid fell, like a soldier,
+in the foremost ranks: the death of Jaafar was heroic and memorable: he
+lost his right hand: he shifted the standard to his left: the left
+was severed from his body: he embraced the standard with his bleeding
+stumps, till he was transfixed to the ground with fifty honorable
+wounds. [1461] "Advance," cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant
+place, "advance with confidence: either victory or paradise is our own."
+The lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the falling standard
+was rescued by Caled, the proselyte of Mecca: nine swords were broken in
+his hand; and his valor withstood and repulsed the superior numbers of
+the Christians. In the nocturnal council of the camp he was chosen to
+command: his skilful evolutions of the ensuing day secured either the
+victory or the retreat of the Saracens; and Caled is renowned among his
+brethren and his enemies by the glorious appellation of the Sword of
+God. In the pulpit, Mahomet described, with prophetic rapture, the
+crowns of the blessed martyrs; but in private he betrayed the feelings
+of human nature: he was surprised as he wept over the daughter of Zeid:
+"What do I see?" said the astonished votary. "You see," replied the
+apostle, "a friend who is deploring the loss of his most faithful
+friend." After the conquest of Mecca, the sovereign of Arabia affected
+to prevent the hostile preparations of Heraclius; and solemnly
+proclaimed war against the Romans, without attempting to disguise
+the hardships and dangers of the enterprise. [147] The Moslems were
+discouraged: they alleged the want of money, or horses, or provisions;
+the season of harvest, and the intolerable heat of the summer: "Hell is
+much hotter," said the indignant prophet. He disdained to compel
+their service: but on his return he admonished the most guilty, by an
+excommunication of fifty days. Their desertion enhanced the merit of
+Abubeker, Othman, and the faithful companions who devoted their lives
+and fortunes; and Mahomet displayed his banner at the head of ten
+thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Painful indeed was the distress
+of the march: lassitude and thirst were aggravated by the scorching and
+pestilential winds of the desert: ten men rode by turns on one camel;
+and they were reduced to the shameful necessity of drinking the water
+from the belly of that useful animal. In the mid-way, ten days' journey
+from Medina and Damascus, they reposed near the grove and fountain of
+Tabuc. Beyond that place Mahomet declined the prosecution of the war:
+he declared himself satisfied with the peaceful intentions, he was more
+probably daunted by the martial array, of the emperor of the East. But
+the active and intrepid Caled spread around the terror of his name; and
+the prophet received the submission of the tribes and cities, from
+the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. To his Christian
+subjects, Mahomet readily granted the security of their persons, the
+freedom of their trade, the property of their goods, and the toleration
+of their worship. [148] The weakness of their Arabian brethren had
+restrained them from opposing his ambition; the disciples of Jesus
+were endeared to the enemy of the Jews; and it was the interest of a
+conqueror to propose a fair capitulation to the most powerful religion
+of the earth.
+
+[Footnote 145: Compare the bigoted Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii.
+p. 232-255) with the no less bigoted Greeks, Theophanes, (p. 276-227,)
+Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 86,) and Cedrenus, (p. 421.)]
+
+[Footnote 146: For the battle of Muta, and its consequences, see
+Abulfeda (p 100-102) and Gagnier, (tom. ii. p. 327-343.).]
+
+[Footnote 1461: To console the afflicted relatives of his kinsman
+Jauffer, he (Mahomet) represented that, in Paradise, in exchange for
+the arms which he had lost, he had been furnished with a pair of wings,
+resplendent with the blushing glories of the ruby, and with which he
+was become the inseparable companion of the archangal Gabriel, in
+his volitations through the regions of eternal bliss. Hence, in the
+catalogue of the martyrs, he has been denominated Jauffer teyaur, the
+winged Jauffer. Price, Chronological Retrospect of Mohammedan History,
+vol. i. p. 5.-M.]
+
+[Footnote 147: The expedition of Tabuc is recorded by our ordinary
+historians Abulfeda (Vit. Moham. p. 123-127) and Gagnier, (Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 147-163: ) but we have the advantage of appealing
+to the original evidence of the Koran, (c. 9, p. 154, 165,) with Sale's
+learned and rational notes.]
+
+[Footnote 148: The Diploma securitatis Ailensibus is attested by Ahmed
+Ben Joseph, and the author Libri Splendorum, (Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfe
+dam, p. 125;) but Abulfeda himself, as well as Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen.
+p. 11,) though he owns Mahomet's regard for the Christians, (p 13,) only
+mentions peace and tribute. In the year 1630, Sionita published at Paris
+the text and version of Mahomet's patent in favor of the Christians;
+which was admitted and reprobated by the opposite taste of Salmasius
+and Grotius, (Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Aa.) Hottinger doubts of its
+authenticity, (Hist. Orient. p. 237;) Renaudot urges the consent of the
+Mohametans, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 169;) but Mosheim (Hist. Eccles.
+p. 244) shows the futility of their opinion and inclines to believe
+it spurious. Yet Abulpharagius quotes the impostor's treaty with the
+Nestorian patriarch, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 418;) but
+Abulpharagius was primate of the Jacobites.]
+
+Till the age of sixty-three years, the strength of Mahomet was equal to
+the temporal and spiritual fatigues of his mission. His epileptic fits,
+an absurd calumny of the Greeks, would be an object of pity rather than
+abhorrence; [149] but he seriously believed that he was poisoned at
+Chaibar by the revenge of a Jewish female. [150] During four years,
+the health of the prophet declined; his infirmities increased; but
+his mortal disease was a fever of fourteen days, which deprived him
+by intervals of the use of reason. As soon as he was conscious of
+his danger, he edified his brethren by the humility of his virtue or
+penitence. "If there be any man," said the apostle from the pulpit,
+"whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of
+retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of a Mussulman? let him
+proclaim my thoughts in the face of the congregation. Has any one been
+despoiled of his goods? the little that I possess shall compensate the
+principal and the interest of the debt." "Yes," replied a voice from
+the crowd, "I am entitled to three drams of silver." Mahomet heard the
+complaint, satisfied the demand, and thanked his creditor for accusing
+him in this world rather than at the day of judgment. He beheld with
+temperate firmness the approach of death; enfranchised his slaves
+(seventeen men, as they are named, and eleven women;) minutely directed
+the order of his funeral, and moderated the lamentations of his weeping
+friends, on whom he bestowed the benediction of peace. Till the third
+day before his death, he regularly performed the function of public
+prayer: the choice of Abubeker to supply his place, appeared to mark
+that ancient and faithful friend as his successor in the sacerdotal
+and regal office; but he prudently declined the risk and envy of a
+more explicit nomination. At a moment when his faculties were visibly
+impaired, he called for pen and ink to write, or, more properly,
+to dictate, a divine book, the sum and accomplishment of all his
+revelations: a dispute arose in the chamber, whether he should be
+allowed to supersede the authority of the Koran; and the prophet was
+forced to reprove the indecent vehemence of his disciples. If the
+slightest credit may be afforded to the traditions of his wives and
+companions, he maintained, in the bosom of his family, and to the last
+moments of his life, the dignity [1501] of an apostle, and the faith of
+an enthusiast; described the visits of Gabriel, who bade an everlasting
+farewell to the earth, and expressed his lively confidence, not only
+of the mercy, but of the favor, of the Supreme Being. In a familiar
+discourse he had mentioned his special prerogative, that the angel of
+death was not allowed to take his soul till he had respectfully asked
+the permission of the prophet. The request was granted; and Mahomet
+immediately fell into the agony of his dissolution: his head was
+reclined on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of all his wives; he
+fainted with the violence of pain; recovering his spirits, he raised his
+eyes towards the roof of the house, and, with a steady look, though a
+faltering voice, uttered the last broken, though articulate, words:
+"O God!..... pardon my sins....... Yes, ...... I come,...... among my
+fellow-citizens on high;" and thus peaceably expired on a carpet spread
+upon the floor. An expedition for the conquest of Syria was stopped by
+this mournful event; the army halted at the gates of Medina; the chiefs
+were assembled round their dying master. The city, more especially
+the house, of the prophet, was a scene of clamorous sorrow of silent
+despair: fanaticism alone could suggest a ray of hope and consolation.
+"How can he be dead, our witness, our intercessor, our mediator, with
+God? By God he is not dead: like Moses and Jesus, he is wrapped in a
+holy trance, and speedily will he return to his faithful people." The
+evidence of sense was disregarded; and Omar, unsheathing his cimeter,
+threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels, who should dare
+to affirm that the prophet was no more. The tumult was appeased by the
+weight and moderation of Abubeker. "Is it Mahomet," said he to Omar and
+the multitude, "or the God of Mahomet, whom you worship? The God of
+Mahomet liveth forever; but the apostle was a mortal like ourselves, and
+according to his own prediction, he has experienced the common fate of
+mortality." He was piously interred by the hands of his nearest kinsman,
+on the same spot on which he expired: [151] Medina has been sanctified
+by the death and burial of Mahomet; and the innumerable pilgrims of
+Mecca often turn aside from the way, to bow, in voluntary devotion,
+[152] before the simple tomb of the prophet. [153]
+
+[Footnote 149: The epilepsy, or falling-sickness, of Mahomet is asserted
+by Theophanes, Zonaras, and the rest of the Greeks; and is greedily
+swallowed by the gross bigotry of Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 10, 11,)
+Prideaux, (Life of Mahomet, p. 12,) and Maracci, (tom. ii. Alcoran, p.
+762, 763.) The titles (the wrapped-up, the covered) of two chapters of
+the Koran, (73, 74) can hardly be strained to such an interpretation:
+the silence, the ignorance of the Mahometan commentators, is more
+conclusive than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is
+espoused by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, tom. i. p. 301,) Gagnier,
+(ad Abulfedam, p. 9. Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 118,) and Sale, (Koran,
+p. 469-474.) * Note: Dr Weil believes in the epilepsy, and adduces
+strong evidence for it; and surely it may be believed, in perfect
+charity; and that the prophet's visions were connected, as they appear
+to have been, with these fits. I have little doubt that he saw and
+believed these visions, and visions they were. Weil, p. 43.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 150: This poison (more ignominious since it was offered as
+a test of his prophetic knowledge) is frankly confessed by his zealous
+votaries, Abulfeda (p. 92) and Al Jannabi, (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p.
+286-288.)]
+
+[Footnote 1501: Major Price, who writes with the authority of one widely
+conversant with the original sources of Eastern knowledge, and in a very
+candid tone, takes a very different view of the prophet's death. "In
+tracing the circumstances of Mahommed's illness, we look in vain for
+any proofs of that meek and heroic firmness which might be expected to
+dignify and embellish the last moments of the apostle of God. On some
+occasions he betrayed such want of fortitude, such marks of childish
+impatience, as are in general to be found in men only of the most
+ordinary stamp; and such as extorted from his wife Ayesha, in
+particular, the sarcastic remark, that in herself, or any of her
+family, a similar demeanor would long since have incurred his severe
+displeasure. * * * He said that the acuteness and violence of his
+sufferings were necessarily in the proportion of those honors with which
+it had ever pleased the hand of Omnipotence to distinguish its peculiar
+favorites." Price, vol. i. p. 13.--M]
+
+[Footnote 151: The Greeks and Latins have invented and propagated the
+vulgar and ridiculous story, that Mahomet's iron tomb is suspended in
+the air at Mecca, (Laonicus Chalcondyles, de Rebus Turcicis, l. iii.
+p. 66,) by the action of equal and potent loadstones, (Dictionnaire de
+Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Ee. Ff.) Without any philosophical inquiries, it
+may suffice, that, 1. The prophet was not buried at Mecca; and, 2. That
+his tomb at Medina, which has been visited by millions, is placed on the
+ground, (Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. ii. c. 19, p. 209-211. Gagnier,
+Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 263-268.) * Note: According to the
+testimony of all the Eastern authors, Mahomet died on Monday the 12th
+Reby 1st, in the year 11 of the Hegira, which answers in reality to the
+8th June, 632, of J. C. We find in Ockley (Hist. of Saracens) that it
+was on Monday the 6th June, 632. This is a mistake; for the 6th June of
+that year was a Saturday, not a Monday; the 8th June, therefore, was a
+Monday. It is easy to discover that the lunar year, in this calculation
+has been confounded with the solar. St. Martin vol. xi. p. 186.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Al Jannabi enumerates (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p.
+372-391) the multifarious duties of a pilgrim who visits the tombs of
+the prophet and his companions; and the learned casuist decides, that
+this act of devotion is nearest in obligation and merit to a divine
+precept. The doctors are divided which, of Mecca or Medina, be the most
+excellent, (p. 391-394.)]
+
+[Footnote 153: The last sickness, death, and burial of Mahomet, are
+described by Abulfeda and Gagnier, (Vit. Moham. p. 133-142. --Vie
+de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 220-271.) The most private and interesting
+circumstances were originally received from Ayesha, Ali, the sons of
+Abbas, &c.; and as they dwelt at Medina, and survived the prophet many
+years, they might repeat the pious tale to a second or third generation
+of pilgrims.]
+
+At the conclusion of the life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be expected,
+that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide
+whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to
+that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of
+Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain:
+at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade
+through a cloud of religious incense; and could I truly delineate the
+portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply
+to the solitary of Mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the
+conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have
+been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition: so soon as
+marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the
+paths of ambition and avarice; and till the age of forty he lived with
+innocence, and would have died without a name. The unity of God is an
+idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation
+with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the
+idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the
+doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin
+and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object,
+would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm
+suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the
+inspirations of Heaven; the labor of thought would expire in rapture
+and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be
+described with the form and attributes of an angel of God. [154] From
+enthusiasm to imposture, the step is perilous and slippery: the daemon
+of Socrates [155] affords a memorable instance, how a wise man may
+deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience
+may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and
+voluntary fraud. Charity may believe that the original motives of
+Mahomet were those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human
+missionary is incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who
+reject his claims despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he
+might forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies
+of God; the stern passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the
+bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the
+destruction of the rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of Mecca
+and the choice of Medina, transformed the citizen into a prince, the
+humble preacher into the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated
+by the example of the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful
+world with pestilence and earthquakes, might inspire for their
+conversion or chastisement the valor of his servants. In the exercise
+of political government, he was compelled to abate of the stern rigor of
+fanaticism, to comply in some measure with the prejudices and passions
+of his followers, and to employ even the vices of mankind as the
+instruments of their salvation. The use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty
+and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation of the faith;
+and Mahomet commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and
+idolaters who had escaped from the field of battle. By the repetition
+of such acts, the character of Mahomet must have been gradually stained;
+and the influence of such pernicious habits would be poorly compensated
+by the practice of the personal and social virtues which are necessary
+to maintain the reputation of a prophet among his sectaries and friends.
+Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician
+will suspect, that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at the
+enthusiasm of his youth, and the credulity of his proselytes. [156] A
+philosopher will observe, that their credulity and his success would
+tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his divine mission,
+that his interest and religion were inseparably connected, and that
+his conscience would be soothed by the persuasion, that he alone was
+absolved by the Deity from the obligation of positive and moral laws. If
+he retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet may
+be allowed as an evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth, the
+arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal; and he would have
+started at the foulness of the means, had he not been satisfied of the
+importance and justice of the end. Even in a conqueror or a priest, I
+can surprise a word or action of unaffected humanity; and the decree
+of Mahomet, that, in the sale of captives, the mothers should never be
+separated from their children, may suspend, or moderate, the censure of
+the historian. [157]
+
+[Footnote 154: The Christians, rashly enough, have assigned to Mahomet a
+tame pigeon, that seemed to descend from heaven and whisper in his ear.
+As this pretended miracle is urged by Grotius, (de Veritate Religionis
+Christianae,) his Arabic translator, the learned Pocock, inquired of him
+the names of his authors; and Grotius confessed, that it is unknown to
+the Mahometans themselves. Lest it should provoke their indignation and
+laughter, the pious lie is suppressed in the Arabic version; but it has
+maintained an edifying place in the numerous editions of the Latin
+text, (Pocock, Specimen, Hist. Arabum, p. 186, 187. Reland, de Religion.
+Moham. l. ii. c. 39, p. 259-262.)]
+
+[Footnote 155: (Plato, in Apolog. Socrat. c. 19, p. 121, 122, edit.
+Fischer.) The familiar examples, which Socrates urges in his Dialogue
+with Theages, (Platon. Opera, tom. i. p. 128, 129, edit. Hen. Stephan.)
+are beyond the reach of human foresight; and the divine inspiration of
+the philosopher is clearly taught in the Memorabilia of Xenophon. The
+ideas of the most rational Platonists are expressed by Cicero, (de
+Divinat. i. 54,) and in the xivth and xvth Dissertations of Maximus of
+Tyre, (p. 153-172, edit. Davis.)]
+
+[Footnote 156: In some passage of his voluminous writings, Voltaire
+compares the prophet, in his old age, to a fakir, "qui detache la chaine
+de son cou pour en donner sur les oreilles a ses confreres."]
+
+[Footnote 157: Gagnier relates, with the same impartial pen, this humane
+law of the prophet, and the murders of Caab, and Sophian, which he
+prompted and approved, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 69, 97, 208.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part VII.
+
+The good sense of Mahomet [158] despised the pomp of royalty: the
+apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family: he kindled
+the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own
+hands his shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining the penance and
+merit of a hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious
+diet of an Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his
+companions with rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life,
+many weeks would elapse without a tire being kindled on the hearth of
+the prophet. The interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example;
+his hunger was appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread:
+he delighted in the taste of milk and honey; but his ordinary food
+consisted of dates and water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual
+enjoyments which his nature required, and his religion did not forbid;
+and Mahomet affirmed, that the fervor of his devotion was increased by
+these innocent pleasures. The heat of the climate inflames the blood
+of the Arabs; and their libidinous complexion has been noticed by the
+writers of antiquity. [159] Their incontinence was regulated by the
+civil and religious laws of the Koran: their incestuous alliances were
+blamed; the boundless license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate
+wives or concubines; their rights both of bed and of dowry were
+equitably determined; the freedom of divorce was discouraged, adultery
+was condemned as a capital offence; and fornication, in either sex, was
+punished with a hundred stripes. [160] Such were the calm and rational
+precepts of the legislator: but in his private conduct, Mahomet indulged
+the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. A special
+revelation dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his
+nation: the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires;
+and this singular prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal,
+the veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans. If we
+remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the
+wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused
+no more than seventeen or fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated who
+occupied at Medina their separate apartments round the house of the
+apostle, and enjoyed in their turns the favor of his conjugal society.
+What is singular enough, they were all widows, excepting only Ayesha,
+the daughter of Abubeker. She was doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet
+consummated his nuptials (such is the premature ripeness of the climate)
+when she was only nine years of age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit
+of Ayesha, gave her a superior ascendant: she was beloved and trusted
+by the prophet; and, after his death, the daughter of Abubeker was long
+revered as the mother of the faithful. Her behavior had been ambiguous
+and indiscreet: in a nocturnal march she was accidentally left behind;
+and in the morning Ayesha returned to the camp with a man. The temper of
+Mahomet was inclined to jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him
+of her innocence: he chastised her accusers, and published a law of
+domestic peace, that no woman should be condemned unless four male
+witnesses had seen her in the act of adultery. [161] In his adventures
+with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the
+amorous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of
+Zeid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a loose undress, the
+beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and
+desire. The servile, or grateful, freedman understood the hint, and
+yielded without hesitation to the love of his benefactor. But as the
+filial relation had excited some doubt and scandal, the angel Gabriel
+descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to annul the adoption, and
+gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence of his God.
+One of his wives, Hafna, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on her own
+bed, in the embraces of his Egyptian captive: she promised secrecy and
+forgiveness, he swore that he would renounce the possession of Mary.
+Both parties forgot their engagements; and Gabriel again descended with
+a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him from his oath, and to exhort him
+freely to enjoy his captives and concubines, without listening to the
+clamors of his wives. In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he labored,
+alone with Mary, to fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and
+revenge were satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven wives,
+reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and threatened them with
+a sentence of divorce, both in this world and in the next; a dreadful
+sentence, since those who had ascended the bed of the prophet were
+forever excluded from the hope of a second marriage. Perhaps the
+incontinence of Mahomet may be palliated by the tradition of his natural
+or preternatural gifts; [162] he united the manly virtue of thirty of
+the children of Adam: and the apostle might rival the thirteenth labor
+[163] of the Grecian Hercules. [164] A more serious and decent excuse
+may be drawn from his fidelity to Cadijah. During the twenty-four years
+of their marriage, her youthful husband abstained from the right of
+polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never
+insulted by the society of a rival. After her death, he placed her in
+the rank of the four perfect women, with the sister of Moses, the mother
+of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters. "Was she not
+old?" said Ayesha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty; "has not God
+given you a better in her place?" "No, by God," said Mahomet, with an
+effusion of honest gratitude, "there never can be a better! She believed
+in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and
+persecuted by the world." [165]
+
+[Footnote 158: For the domestic life of Mahomet, consult Gagnier, and
+the corresponding chapters of Abulfeda; for his diet, (tom. iii. p.
+285-288;) his children, (p. 189, 289;) his wives, (p. 290-303;) his
+marriage with Zeineb, (tom. ii. p. 152-160;) his amour with Mary,
+(p. 303-309;) the false accusation of Ayesha, (p. 186-199.) The most
+original evidence of the three last transactions is contained in
+the xxivth, xxxiiid, and lxvith chapters of the Koran, with Sale's
+Commentary. Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 80-90) and Maracci (Prodrom.
+Alcoran, part iv. p. 49-59) have maliciously exaggerated the frailties
+of Mahomet.]
+
+[Footnote 159: Incredibile est quo ardore apud eos in Venerem uterque
+solvitur sexus, (Ammian. Marcellin. l. xiv. c. 4.)]
+
+[Footnote 160: Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 133-137) has
+recapitulated the laws of marriage, divorce, &c.; and the curious reader
+of Selden's Uror Hebraica will recognize many Jewish ordinances.]
+
+[Footnote 161: In a memorable case, the Caliph Omar decided that all
+presumptive evidence was of no avail; and that all the four witnesses
+must have actually seen stylum in pyxide, (Abulfedae Annales Moslemici,
+p. 71, vers. Reiske.)]
+
+[Footnote 162: Sibi robur ad generationem, quantum triginta viri habent,
+inesse jacteret: ita ut unica hora posset undecim foeminis satisfacere,
+ut ex Arabum libris refert Stus. Petrus Paschasius, c. 2., (Maracci,
+Prodromus Alcoran, p. iv. p. 55. See likewise Observations de Belon,
+l. iii. c. 10, fol. 179, recto.) Al Jannabi (Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 287)
+records his own testimony, that he surpassed all men in conjugal vigor;
+and Abulfeda mentions the exclamation of Ali, who washed the body after
+his death, "O propheta, certe penis tuus coelum versus erectus est," in
+Vit. Mohammed, p. 140.]
+
+[Footnote 163: I borrow the style of a father of the church, (Greg.
+Nazianzen, Orat. iii. p. 108.)]
+
+[Footnote 164: The common and most glorious legend includes, in a single
+night the fifty victories of Hercules over the virgin daughters of
+Thestius, (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iv. p. 274. Pausanias, l. ix. p.
+763. Statius Sylv. l. i. eleg. iii. v. 42.) But Athenaeus allows seven
+nights, (Deipnosophist, l. xiii. p. 556,) and Apollodorus fifty, for
+this arduous achievement of Hercules, who was then no more than eighteen
+years of age, (Bibliot. l. ii. c. 4, p. 111, cum notis Heyne, part i. p.
+332.)]
+
+[Footnote 165: Abulfeda in Vit. Moham. p. 12, 13, 16, 17, cum Notis
+Gagnier]
+
+In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion and
+empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous posterity and
+a lineal succession. The hopes of Mahomet were fatally disappointed. The
+virgin Ayesha, and his ten widows of mature age and approved fertility,
+were barren in his potent embraces. The four sons of Cadijah died in
+their infancy. Mary, his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the
+birth of Ibrahim. At the end of fifteen months the prophet wept over his
+grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery of his enemies, and
+checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems, by the assurance that
+an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by the death of the infant.
+Cadijah had likewise given him four daughters, who were married to
+the most faithful of his disciples: the three eldest died before their
+father; but Fatima, who possessed his confidence and love, became the
+wife of her cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny.
+The merit and misfortunes of Ali and his descendants will lead me to
+anticipate, in this place, the series of the Saracen caliphs, a title
+which describes the commanders of the faithful as the vicars and
+successors of the apostle of God. [166]
+
+[Footnote 166: This outline of the Arabian history is drawn from the
+Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, (under the names of Aboubecre,
+Omar Othman, Ali, &c.;) from the Annals of Abulfeda, Abulpharagius, and
+Elmacin, (under the proper years of the Hegira,) and especially from
+Ockley's History of the Saracens, (vol. i. p. 1-10, 115-122, 229, 249,
+363-372, 378-391, and almost the whole of the second volume.) Yet we
+should weigh with caution the traditions of the hostile sects; a stream
+which becomes still more muddy as it flows farther from the source.
+Sir John Chardin has too faithfully copied the fables and errors of the
+modern Persians, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 235-250, &c.)]
+
+The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali, which exalted him above
+the rest of his countrymen, might justify his claim to the vacant throne
+of Arabia. The son of Abu Taleb was, in his own right, the chief of the
+family of Hashem, and the hereditary prince or guardian of the city and
+temple of Mecca. The light of prophecy was extinct; but the husband
+of Fatima might expect the inheritance and blessing of her father:
+the Arabs had sometimes been patient of a female reign; and the two
+grandsons of the prophet had often been fondled in his lap, and shown
+in his pulpit as the hope of his age, and the chief of the youth of
+paradise. The first of the true believers might aspire to march before
+them in this world and in the next; and if some were of a graver and
+more rigid cast, the zeal and virtue of Ali were never outstripped by
+any recent proselyte. He united the qualifications of a poet, a soldier,
+and a saint: his wisdom still breathes in a collection of moral and
+religious sayings; [167] and every antagonist, in the combats of the
+tongue or of the sword, was subdued by his eloquence and valor. From the
+first hour of his mission to the last rites of his funeral, the apostle
+was never forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to name his
+brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second Moses. The
+son of Abu Taleb was afterwards reproached for neglecting to secure his
+interest by a solemn declaration of his right, which would have silenced
+all competition, and sealed his succession by the decrees of Heaven. But
+the unsuspecting hero confided in himself: the jealousy of empire,
+and perhaps the fear of opposition, might suspend the resolutions of
+Mahomet; and the bed of sickness was besieged by the artful Ayesha, the
+daughter of Abubeker, and the enemy of Ali. [1671]
+
+[Footnote 167: Ockley (at the end of his second volume) has given
+an English version of 169 sentences, which he ascribes, with some
+hesitation, to Ali, the son of Abu Taleb. His preface is colored by
+the enthusiasm of a translator; yet these sentences delineate a
+characteristic, though dark, picture of human life.]
+
+[Footnote 1671: Gibbon wrote chiefly from the Arabic or Sunnite account
+of these transactions, the only sources accessible at the time when he
+composed his History. Major Price, writing from Persian authorities,
+affords us the advantage of comparing throughout what may be fairly
+considered the Shiite Version. The glory of Ali is the constant burden
+of their strain. He was destined, and, according to some accounts,
+designated, for the caliphate by the prophet; but while the others were
+fiercely pushing their own interests, Ali was watching the remains of
+Mahomet with pious fidelity. His disinterested magnanimity, on each
+separate occasion, declined the sceptre, and gave the noble example of
+obedience to the appointed caliph. He is described, in retirement,
+on the throne, and in the field of battle, as transcendently pious,
+magnanimous, valiant, and humane. He lost his empire through his excess
+of virtue and love for the faithful his life through his confidence in
+God, and submission to the decrees of fate. Compare the curious account
+of this apathy in Price, chapter ii. It is to be regretted, I must add,
+that Major Price has contented himself with quoting the names of the
+Persian works which he follows, without any account of their character,
+age, and authority.--M.]
+
+The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of the people;
+and his companions convened an assembly to deliberate on the choice
+of his successor. The hereditary claim and lofty spirit of Ali were
+offensive to an aristocracy of elders, desirous of bestowing and
+resuming the sceptre by a free and frequent election: the Koreish could
+never be reconciled to the proud preeminence of the line of Hashem; the
+ancient discord of the tribes was rekindled, the fugitives of Mecca and
+the auxiliaries of Medina asserted their respective merits; and the rash
+proposal of choosing two independent caliphs would have crushed in their
+infancy the religion and empire of the Saracens. The tumult was appeased
+by the disinterested resolution of Omar, who, suddenly renouncing his
+own pretensions, stretched forth his hand, and declared himself the
+first subject of the mild and venerable Abubeker. [1672] The urgency
+of the moment, and the acquiescence of the people, might excuse this
+illegal and precipitate measure; but Omar himself confessed from the
+pulpit, that if any Mulsulman should hereafter presume to anticipate
+the suffrage of his brethren, both the elector and the elected would be
+worthy of death. [168] After the simple inauguration of Abubeker, he
+was obeyed in Medina, Mecca, and the provinces of Arabia: the Hashemites
+alone declined the oath of fidelity; and their chief, in his own house,
+maintained, above six months, a sullen and independent reserve; without
+listening to the threats of Omar, who attempted to consume with fire the
+habitation of the daughter of the apostle. The death of Fatima, and
+the decline of his party, subdued the indignant spirit of Ali: he
+condescended to salute the commander of the faithful, accepted his
+excuse of the necessity of preventing their common enemies, and wisely
+rejected his courteous offer of abdicating the government of the
+Arabians. After a reign of two years, the aged caliph was summoned by
+the angel of death. In his testament, with the tacit approbation of his
+companions, he bequeathed the sceptre to the firm and intrepid virtue of
+Omar. "I have no occasion," said the modest candidate, "for the place."
+"But the place has occasion for you," replied Abubeker; who expired with
+a fervent prayer, that the God of Mahomet would ratify his choice, and
+direct the Mussulmans in the way of concord and obedience. The prayer
+was not ineffectual, since Ali himself, in a life of privacy and prayer,
+professed to revere the superior worth and dignity of his rival; who
+comforted him for the loss of empire, by the most flattering marks of
+confidence and esteem. In the twelfth year of his reign, Omar received
+a mortal wound from the hand of an assassin: he rejected with equal
+impartiality the names of his son and of Ali, refused to load his
+conscience with the sins of his successor, and devolved on six of the
+most respectable companions the arduous task of electing a commander
+of the faithful. On this occasion, Ali was again blamed by his friends
+[169] for submitting his right to the judgment of men, for recognizing
+their jurisdiction by accepting a place among the six electors. He might
+have obtained their suffrage, had he deigned to promise a strict and
+servile conformity, not only to the Koran and tradition, but likewise to
+the determinations of two seniors. [170] With these limitations, Othman,
+the secretary of Mahomet, accepted the government; nor was it till after
+the third caliph, twenty-four years after the death of the prophet, that
+Ali was invested, by the popular choice, with the regal and sacerdotal
+office. The manners of the Arabians retained their primitive simplicity,
+and the son of Abu Taleb despised the pomp and vanity of this world.
+At the hour of prayer, he repaired to the mosch of Medina, clothed in a
+thin cotton gown, a coarse turban on his head, his slippers in one hand,
+and his bow in the other, instead of a walking-staff. The companions of
+the prophet, and the chiefs of the tribes, saluted their new sovereign,
+and gave him their right hands as a sign of fealty and allegiance.
+
+[Footnote 1672: Abubeker, the father of the virgin Ayesha. St. Martin,
+vol. XL, p. 88--M.]
+
+[Footnote 168: Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 5, 6,) from
+an Arabian Ms., represents Ayesha as adverse to the substitution of her
+father in the place of the apostle. This fact, so improbable in itself,
+is unnoticed by Abulfeda, Al Jannabi, and Al Bochari, the last of whom
+quotes the tradition of Ayesha herself, (Vit. Mohammed, p. 136 Vie de
+Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 236.)]
+
+[Footnote 169: Particularly by his friend and cousin Abdallah, the
+son of Abbas, who died A.D. 687, with the title of grand doctor of the
+Moslems. In Abulfeda he recapitulates the important occasions in which
+Ali had neglected his salutary advice, (p. 76, vers. Reiske;) and
+concludes, (p. 85,) O princeps fidelium, absque controversia tu quidem
+vere fortis es, at inops boni consilii, et rerum gerendarum parum
+callens.]
+
+[Footnote 170: I suspect that the two seniors (Abulpharagius, p. 115.
+Ockley, tom. i. p. 371,) may signify not two actual counsellors, but his
+two predecessors, Abubeker and Omar.]
+
+The mischiefs that flow from the contests of ambition are usually
+confined to the times and countries in which they have been agitated.
+But the religious discord of the friends and enemies of Ali has been
+renewed in every age of the Hegira, and is still maintained in the
+immortal hatred of the Persians and Turks. [171] The former, who are
+branded with the appellation of Shiites or sectaries, have enriched
+the Mahometan creed with a new article of faith; and if Mahomet be
+the apostle, his companion Ali is the vicar, of God. In their private
+converse, in their public worship, they bitterly execrate the three
+usurpers who intercepted his indefeasible right to the dignity of Imam
+and Caliph; and the name of Omar expresses in their tongue the perfect
+accomplishment of wickedness and impiety. [172] The Sonnites, who
+are supported by the general consent and orthodox tradition of the
+Mussulmans, entertain a more impartial, or at least a more decent,
+opinion. They respect the memory of Abubeker, Omar, Othman, and Ali, the
+holy and legitimate successors of the prophet. But they assign the last
+and most humble place to the husband of Fatima, in the persuasion that
+the order of succession was determined by the decrees of sanctity.
+[173] An historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand unshaken by
+superstition, will calmly pronounce that their manners were alike pure
+and exemplary; that their zeal was fervent, and probably sincere; and
+that, in the midst of riches and power, their lives were devoted to
+the practice of moral and religious duties. But the public virtues
+of Abubeker and Omar, the prudence of the first, the severity of the
+second, maintained the peace and prosperity of their reigns. The feeble
+temper and declining age of Othman were incapable of sustaining the
+weight of conquest and empire. He chose, and he was deceived; he
+trusted, and he was betrayed: the most deserving of the faithful
+became useless or hostile to his government, and his lavish bounty was
+productive only of ingratitude and discontent. The spirit of discord
+went forth in the provinces: their deputies assembled at Medina; and
+the Charegites, the desperate fanatics who disclaimed the yoke of
+subordination and reason, were confounded among the free-born Arabs,
+who demanded the redress of their wrongs and the punishment of their
+oppressors. From Cufa, from Bassora, from Egypt, from the tribes of
+the desert, they rose in arms, encamped about a league from Medina,
+and despatched a haughty mandate to their sovereign, requiring him to
+execute justice, or to descend from the throne. His repentance began to
+disarm and disperse the insurgents; but their fury was rekindled by
+the arts of his enemies; and the forgery of a perfidious secretary was
+contrived to blast his reputation and precipitate his fall. The caliph
+had lost the only guard of his predecessors, the esteem and confidence
+of the Moslems: during a siege of six weeks his water and provisions
+were intercepted, and the feeble gates of the palace were protected only
+by the scruples of the more timorous rebels. Forsaken by those who had
+abused his simplicity, the hopeless and venerable caliph expected the
+approach of death: the brother of Ayesha marched at the head of the
+assassins; and Othman, with the Koran in his lap, was pierced with
+a multitude of wounds. [1731] A tumultuous anarchy of five days was
+appeased by the inauguration of Ali: his refusal would have provoked a
+general massacre. In this painful situation he supported the becoming
+pride of the chief of the Hashemites; declared that he had rather serve
+than reign; rebuked the presumption of the strangers; and required the
+formal, if not the voluntary, assent of the chiefs of the nation. He
+has never been accused of prompting the assassin of Omar; though Persia
+indiscreetly celebrates the festival of that holy martyr. The quarrel
+between Othman and his subjects was assuaged by the early mediation of
+Ali; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons, was insulted and wounded in the
+defence of the caliph. Yet it is doubtful whether the father of Hassan
+was strenuous and sincere in his opposition to the rebels; and it is
+certain that he enjoyed the benefit of their crime. The temptation was
+indeed of such magnitude as might stagger and corrupt the most obdurate
+virtue. The ambitious candidate no longer aspired to the barren sceptre
+of Arabia; the Saracens had been victorious in the East and West; and
+the wealthy kingdoms of Persia, Syria, and Egypt were the patrimony of
+the commander of the faithful.
+
+[Footnote 171: The schism of the Persians is explained by all our
+travellers of the last century, especially in the iid and ivth volumes
+of their master, Chardin. Niebuhr, though of inferior merit, has the
+advantage of writing so late as the year 1764, (Voyages en Arabie, &c.,
+tom. ii. p. 208-233,) since the ineffectual attempt of Nadir Shah to
+change the religion of the nation, (see his Persian History translated
+into French by Sir William Jones, tom. ii. p. 5, 6, 47, 48, 144-155.)]
+
+[Footnote 172: Omar is the name of the devil; his murderer is a saint.
+When the Persians shoot with the bow, they frequently cry, "May this
+arrow go to the heart of Omar!" (Voyages de Chardin, tom. ii. p 239,
+240, 259, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 173: This gradation of merit is distinctly marked in a creed
+illustrated by Reland, (de Relig. Mohamm. l. i. p. 37;) and a Sonnite
+argument inserted by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, tom. ii. p. 230.)
+The practice of cursing the memory of Ali was abolished, after forty
+years, by the Ommiades themselves, (D'Herbelot, p. 690;) and there are
+few among the Turks who presume to revile him as an infidel, (Voyages de
+Chardin, tom. iv. p. 46.)]
+
+[Footnote 1731: Compare Price, p. 180.--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part VIII.
+
+A life of prayer and contemplation had not chilled the martial activity
+of Ali; but in a mature age, after a long experience of mankind, he
+still betrayed in his conduct the rashness and indiscretion of youth.
+[1732] In the first days of his reign, he neglected to secure, either
+by gifts or fetters, the doubtful allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two
+of the most powerful of the Arabian chiefs. They escaped from Medina to
+Mecca, and from thence to Bassora; erected the standard of revolt;
+and usurped the government of Irak, or Assyria, which they had vainly
+solicited as the reward of their services. The mask of patriotism is
+allowed to cover the most glaring inconsistencies; and the enemies,
+perhaps the assassins, of Othman now demanded vengeance for his blood.
+They were accompanied in their flight by Ayesha, the widow of the
+prophet, who cherished, to the last hour of her life, an implacable
+hatred against the husband and the posterity of Fatima. The most
+reasonable Moslems were scandalized, that the mother of the faithful
+should expose in a camp her person and character; [1733] but the
+superstitious crowd was confident that her presence would sanctify the
+justice, and assure the success, of their cause. At the head of twenty
+thousand of his loyal Arabs, and nine thousand valiant auxiliaries of
+Cufa, the caliph encountered and defeated the superior numbers of the
+rebels under the walls of Bassora. [1734] Their leaders, Telha and
+Zobeir, [1735] were slain in the first battle that stained with civil
+blood the arms of the Moslems. [1736] After passing through the ranks to
+animate the troops, Ayesha had chosen her post amidst the dangers of the
+field. In the heat of the action, seventy men, who held the bridle of
+her camel, were successively killed or wounded; and the cage or litter,
+in which she sat, was stuck with javelins and darts like the quills of a
+porcupine. The venerable captive sustained with firmness the reproaches
+of the conqueror, and was speedily dismissed to her proper station at
+the tomb of Mahomet, with the respect and tenderness that was still due
+to the widow of the apostle. [1737] After this victory, which was styled
+the Day of the Camel, Ali marched against a more formidable adversary;
+against Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, who had assumed the title of
+caliph, and whose claim was supported by the forces of Syria and the
+interest of the house of Ommiyah. From the passage of Thapsacus, the
+plain of Siffin [174] extends along the western bank of the Euphrates.
+On this spacious and level theatre, the two competitors waged a
+desultory war of one hundred and ten days. In the course of ninety
+actions or skirmishes, the loss of Ali was estimated at twenty-five,
+that of Moawiyah at forty-five, thousand soldiers; and the list of the
+slain was dignified with the names of five-and-twenty veterans who
+had fought at Beder under the standard of Mahomet. In this sanguinary
+contest the lawful caliph displayed a superior character of valor and
+humanity. [1741] His troops were strictly enjoined to await the first
+onset of the enemy, to spare their flying brethren, and to respect
+the bodies of the dead, and the chastity of the female captives. He
+generously proposed to save the blood of the Moslems by a single
+combat; but his trembling rival declined the challenge as a sentence of
+inevitable death. The ranks of the Syrians were broken by the charge of
+a hero who was mounted on a piebald horse, and wielded with irresistible
+force his ponderous and two-edged sword. As often as he smote a rebel,
+he shouted the Allah Acbar, "God is victorious!" and in the tumult of
+a nocturnal battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that
+tremendous exclamation. The prince of Damascus already meditated his
+flight; but the certain victory was snatched from the grasp of Ali by
+the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their conscience was awed
+by the solemn appeal to the books of the Koran which Moawiyah exposed
+on the foremost lances; and Ali was compelled to yield to a disgraceful
+truce and an insidious compromise. He retreated with sorrow and
+indignation to Cufa; his party was discouraged; the distant provinces
+of Persia, of Yemen, and of Egypt, were subdued or seduced by his crafty
+rival; and the stroke of fanaticism, which was aimed against the three
+chiefs of the nation, was fatal only to the cousin of Mahomet. In the
+temple of Mecca, three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed of the
+disorders of the church and state: they soon agreed, that the deaths of
+Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the viceroy of Egypt, would
+restore the peace and unity of religion. Each of the assassins chose his
+victim, poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly repaired
+to the scene of action. Their resolution was equally desperate: but the
+first mistook the person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied
+his seat; the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the second; the
+lawful caliph, in the mosch of Cufa, received a mortal wound from the
+hand of the third. He expired in the sixty-third year of his age, and
+mercifully recommended to his children, that they would despatch the
+murderer by a single stroke. [1742] The sepulchre of Ali [175] was
+concealed from the tyrants of the house of Ommiyah; [176] but in the
+fourth age of the Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the ruins
+of Cufa. [177] Many thousands of the Shiites repose in holy ground at
+the feet of the vicar of God; and the desert is vivified by the numerous
+and annual visits of the Persians, who esteem their devotion not less
+meritorious than the pilgrimage of Mecca.
+
+[Footnote 1732: Ali had determined to supersede all the lieutenants in
+the different provinces. Price, p. 191. Compare, on the conduct of Telha
+and Zobeir, p. 193--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1733: See the very curious circumstances which took place
+before and during her flight. Price, p. 196.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1734: The reluctance of Ali to shed the blood of true
+believers is strikingly described by Major Price's Persian historians.
+Price, p. 222.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1735: See (in Price) the singular adventures of Zobeir. He was
+murdered after having abandoned the army of the insurgents. Telha was
+about to do the same, when his leg was pierced with an arrow by one of
+his own party The wound was mortal. Price, p. 222.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1736: According to Price, two hundred and eighty of the Benni
+Beianziel alone lost a right hand in this service, (p. 225.)--M]
+
+[Footnote 1737: She was escorted by a guard of females disguised as
+soldiers. When she discovered this, Ayesha was as much gratified by the
+delicacy of the arrangement, as she had been offended by the familiar
+approach of so many men. Price, p. 229.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 174: The plain of Siffin is determined by D'Anville
+(l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 29) to be the Campus Barbaricus of
+Procopius.]
+
+[Footnote 1741: The Shiite authors have preserved a noble instance of
+Ali's magnanimity. The superior generalship of Moawiyah had cut off the
+army of Ali from the Euphrates; his soldiers were perishing from want
+of water. Ali sent a message to his rival to request free access to the
+river, declaring that under the same circumstances he would not allow
+any of the faithful, though his adversaries, to perish from thirst.
+After some debate, Moawiyah determined to avail himself of the advantage
+of his situation, and to reject the demand of Ali. The soldiers of Ali
+became desperate; forced their way through that part of the hostile army
+which commanded the river, and in their turn entirely cut off the
+troops of Moawiyah from the water. Moawiyah was reduced to make the same
+supplication to Ali. The generous caliph instantly complied; and both
+armies, with their cattle enjoyed free and unmolested access to the
+river. Price, vol. i. p. 268, 272--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1742: His son Hassan was recognized as caliph in Arabia and
+Irak; but voluntarily abdicated the throne, after six or seven months,
+in favor of Moawiyah St. Martin, vol. xi. p 375.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Abulfeda, a moderate Sonnite, relates the different
+opinions concerning the burial of Ali, but adopts the sepulchre of Cufa,
+hodie fama numeroque religiose frequentantium celebratum. This number is
+reckoned by Niebuhr to amount annually to 2000 of the dead, and 5000 of
+the living, (tom. ii. p. 208, 209.)]
+
+[Footnote 176: All the tyrants of Persia, from Adhad el Dowlat (A.D.
+977, D'Herbelot, p. 58, 59, 95) to Nadir Shah, (A.D. 1743, Hist. de
+Nadir Shah, tom. ii. p. 155,) have enriched the tomb of Ali with the
+spoils of the people. The dome is copper, with a bright and massy
+gilding, which glitters to the sun at the distance of many a mile.]
+
+[Footnote 177: The city of Meshed Ali, five or six miles from the ruins
+of Cufa, and one hundred and twenty to the south of Bagdad, is of the
+size and form of the modern Jerusalem. Meshed Hosein, larger and more
+populous, is at the distance of thirty miles.]
+
+The persecutors of Mahomet usurped the inheritance of his children; and
+the champions of idolatry became the supreme heads of his religion and
+empire. The opposition of Abu Sophian had been fierce and obstinate;
+his conversion was tardy and reluctant; his new faith was fortified by
+necessity and interest; he served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and
+the sins of the time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits
+of the family of Ommiyah. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, and of the
+cruel Henda, was dignified, in his early youth, with the office or title
+of secretary of the prophet: the judgment of Omar intrusted him with the
+government of Syria; and he administered that important province above
+forty years, either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing
+the fame of valor and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity
+and moderation: a grateful people was attached to their benefactor;
+and the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of Cyprus and
+Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of Othman was the
+engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody shirt of the martyr
+was exposed in the mosch of Damascus: the emir deplored the fate of his
+injured kinsman; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in his service
+by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt,
+himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and
+divulged the dangerous secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created
+elsewhere than in the city of the prophet. [178] The policy of
+Moawiyah eluded the valor of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he
+negotiated the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above
+or below the government of the world, and who retired without a
+sigh from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the tomb of his
+grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally crowned
+by the important change of an elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some
+murmurs of freedom or fanaticism attested the reluctance of the Arabs,
+and four citizens of Medina refused the oath of fidelity; but the
+designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigor and address; and his son
+Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as the commander of
+the faithful and the successor on the apostle of God.
+
+[Footnote 178: I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and
+expression of Tacitus, (Hist. i. 4: ) Evulgato imperii arcano posse
+imperatorem alni quam Romae fieri.]
+
+A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons of
+Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropped a dish of
+scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to
+deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran: "Paradise
+is for those who command their anger: "--"I am not angry: "--"and for
+those who pardon offences: "--"I pardon your offence: "--"and for those
+who return good for evil: "--"I give you your liberty and four hundred
+pieces of silver." With an equal measure of piety, Hosein, the younger
+brother of Hassan, inherited a remnant of his father's spirit, and
+served with honor against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople.
+The primogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy character of
+grandson of the apostle, had centred in his person, and he was at
+liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid, the tyrant of Damascus,
+whose vices he despised, and whose title he had never deigned to
+acknowledge. A list was secretly transmitted from Cufa to Medina, of one
+hundred and forty thousand Moslems, who professed their attachment to
+his cause, and who were eager to draw their swords so soon as he should
+appear on the banks of the Euphrates. Against the advice of his wisest
+friends, he resolved to trust his person and family in the hands of a
+perfidious people. He traversed the desert of Arabia with a timorous
+retinue of women and children; but as he approached the confines of
+Irak he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the country,
+and suspected either the defection or ruin of his party. His fears
+were just: Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished the first
+sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela, was
+encompassed by a body of five thousand horse, who intercepted his
+communication with the city and the river. He might still have escaped
+to a fortress in the desert, that had defied the power of Caesar and
+Chosroes, and confided in the fidelity of the tribe of Tai, which would
+have armed ten thousand warriors in his defence.
+
+In a conference with the chief of the enemy, he proposed the option
+of three honorable conditions: that he should be allowed to return to
+Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison against the Turks, or
+safely conducted to the presence of Yezid. But the commands of the
+caliph, or his lieutenant, were stern and absolute; and Hosein was
+informed that he must either submit as a captive and a criminal to the
+commander of the faithful, or expect the consequences of his rebellion.
+"Do you think," replied he, "to terrify me with death?" And, during
+the short respite of a night, [1781] he prepared with calm and solemn
+resignation to encounter his fate. He checked the lamentations of
+his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin of his house. "Our
+trust," said Hosein, "is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and
+earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, my father,
+my mother, were better than me, and every Mussulman has an example in
+the prophet." He pressed his friends to consult their safety by a timely
+flight: they unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved
+master: and their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer and the
+assurance of paradise. On the morning of the fatal day, he mounted on
+horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Koran in the other: his
+generous band of martyrs consisted only of thirty-two horse and forty
+foot; but their flanks and rear were secured by the tent-ropes, and by a
+deep trench which they had filled with lighted fagots, according to the
+practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with reluctance, and one of
+their chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to claim the partnership
+of inevitable death. In every close onset, or single combat, the despair
+of the Fatimites was invincible; but the surrounding multitudes galled
+them from a distance with a cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were
+successively slain; a truce was allowed on both sides for the hour
+of prayer; and the battle at length expired by the death of the last
+companions of Hosein. Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at
+the door of his tent. As he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced in
+the mouth with a dart; and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths,
+were killed in his arms. He lifted his hands to heaven; they were full
+of blood; and he uttered a funeral prayer for the living and the dead.
+In a transport of despair his sister issued from the tent, and adjured
+the general of the Cufians, that he would not suffer Hosein to be
+murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled down his venerable beard; and
+the boldest of his soldiers fell back on every side as the dying hero
+threw himself among them. The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the
+faithful, reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was
+slain with three-and-thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they had
+trampled on his body, they carried his head to the castle of Cufa, and
+the inhuman Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a cane: "Alas,"
+exclaimed an aged Mussulman, "on these lips have I seen the lips of the
+apostle of God!" In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the
+death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader. [179]
+[1791] On the annual festival of his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage
+to his sepulchre, his Persian votaries abandon their souls to the
+religious frenzy of sorrow and indignation. [180]
+
+[Footnote 1781: According to Major Price's authorities a much longer
+time elapsed (p. 198 &c.)--M.]
+
+[Footnote 179: I have abridged the interesting narrative of Ockley,
+(tom. ii. p. 170-231.) It is long and minute: but the pathetic, almost
+always, consists in the detail of little circumstances.]
+
+[Footnote 1791: The account of Hosein's death, in the Persian Tarikh
+Tebry, is much longer; in some circumstances, more pathetic, than that
+of Ockley, followed by Gibbon. His family, after his defenders were all
+slain, perished in succession before his eyes. They had been cut off
+from the water, and suffered all the agonies of thirst. His eldest son,
+Ally Akbar, after ten different assaults on the enemy, in each of which
+he slew two or three, complained bitterly of his sufferings from heat
+and thirst. "His father arose, and introducing his own tongue within
+the parched lips of his favorite child, thus endeavored to alleviate his
+sufferings by the only means of which his enemies had not yet been able
+to deprive him." Ally was slain and cut to pieces in his sight: this
+wrung from him his first and only cry; then it was that his sister
+Zeyneb rushed from the tent. The rest, including his nephew, fell in
+succession. Hosein's horse was wounded--he fell to the ground. The hour
+of prayer, between noon and sunset, had arrived; the Imaun began the
+religious duties:--as Hosein prayed, he heard the cries of his infant
+child Abdallah, only twelve months old. The child was, at his desire,
+placed on his bosom: as he wept over it, it was transfixed by an arrow.
+Hosein dragged himself to the Euphrates: as he slaked his burning
+thirst, his mouth was pierced by an arrow: he drank his own blood.
+Wounded in four-and-thirty places, he still gallantly resisted. A
+soldier named Zeraiah gave the fatal wound: his head was cut off by
+Ziliousheng. Price, p. 402, 410.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Niebuhr the Dane (Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p.
+208, &c.) is, perhaps, the only European traveller who has dared to
+visit Meshed Ali and Meshed Hosein. The two sepulchres are in the hands
+of the Turks, who tolerate and tax the devotion of the Persian heretics.
+The festival of the death of Hosein is amply described by Sir John
+Chardin, a traveller whom I have often praised.]
+
+When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains to the
+throne of Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate the enmity of
+a popular and hostile race, whom he had injured beyond the hope of
+reconciliation. But Yezid preferred the councils of mercy; and the
+mourning family was honorably dismissed to mingle their tears with
+their kindred at Medina. The glory of martyrdom superseded the right of
+primogeniture; and the twelve imams, [181] or pontiffs, of the Persian
+creed, are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein
+to the ninth generation. Without arms, or treasures, or subjects, they
+successively enjoyed the veneration of the people, and provoked the
+jealousy of the reigning caliphs: their tombs, at Mecca or Medina, on
+the banks of the Euphrates, or in the province of Chorasan, are still
+visited by the devotion of their sect. Their names were often the
+pretence of sedition and civil war; but these royal saints despised the
+pomp of the world: submitted to the will of God and the injustice of
+man; and devoted their innocent lives to the study and practice of
+religion. The twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title
+of Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his
+predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and
+place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still
+lives, and will appear before the day of judgment to overthrow the
+tyranny of Dejal, or the Antichrist. [182] In the lapse of two or three
+centuries, the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet, had multiplied
+to the number of thirty-three thousand: [183] the race of Ali might
+be equally prolific: the meanest individual was above the first and
+greatest of princes; and the most eminent were supposed to excel the
+perfection of angels. But their adverse fortune, and the wide extent of
+the Mussulman empire, allowed an ample scope for every bold and artful
+imposture, who claimed affinity with the holy seed: the sceptre of the
+Almohades, in Spain and Africa; of the Fatimites, in Egypt and Syria;
+[184] of the Sultans of Yemen; and of the Sophis of Persia; [185] has
+been consecrated by this vague and ambiguous title. Under their reigns
+it might be dangerous to dispute the legitimacy of their birth; and one
+of the Fatimite caliphs silenced an indiscreet question by drawing
+his cimeter: "This," said Moez, "is my pedigree; and these," casting
+a handful of gold to his soldiers,--"and these are my kindred and my
+children." In the various conditions of princes, or doctors, or
+nobles, or merchants, or beggars, a swarm of the genuine or fictitious
+descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honored with the appellation
+of sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire they are
+distinguished by a green turban; receive a stipend from the treasury;
+are judged only by their chief; and, however debased by fortune or
+character, still assert the proud preeminence of their birth. A family
+of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph
+Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of
+Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve
+centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of their
+native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian
+race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty
+of the kings of the earth. [186]
+
+[Footnote 181: The general article of Imam, in D'Herbelot's
+Bibliotheque, will indicate the succession; and the lives of the twelve
+are given under their respective names.]
+
+[Footnote 182: The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but the
+Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every religion, (Sale's
+Preliminary Discourse, p. 80, 82.) In the royal stable of Ispahan, two
+horses were always kept saddled, one for the Mahadi himself, the other
+for his lieutenant, Jesus the son of Mary.]
+
+[Footnote 183: In the year of the Hegira 200, (A.D. 815.) See
+D'Herbelot, p. 146]
+
+[Footnote 184: D'Herbelot, p. 342. The enemies of the Fatimites
+disgraced them by a Jewish origin. Yet they accurately deduced their
+genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam; and the impartial Abulfeda
+allows (Annal. Moslem. p. 230) that they were owned by many, qui absque
+controversia genuini sunt Alidarum, homines propaginum suae gentis
+exacte callentes. He quotes some lines from the celebrated Scherif or
+Rahdi, Egone humilitatem induam in terris hostium? (I suspect him to
+be an Edrissite of Sicily,) cum in Aegypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii,
+quocum ego communem habeo patrem et vindicem.]
+
+[Footnote 185: The kings of Persia in the last century are descended
+from Sheik Sefi, a saint of the xivth century, and through him, from
+Moussa Cassem, the son of Hosein, the son of Ali, (Olearius, p. 957.
+Chardin, tom. iii. p. 288.) But I cannot trace the intermediate degrees
+in any genuine or fabulous pedigree. If they were truly Fatimites, they
+might draw their origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in
+the ixth century, (D'Herbelot, p. 96.)]
+
+[Footnote 186: The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali is
+most accurately described by Demetrius Cantemir (Hist. of the Othmae
+Empire, p. 94) and Niebuhr, (Description de l'Arabie, p. 9-16, 317
+&c.) It is much to be lamented, that the Danish traveller was unable to
+purchase the chronicles of Arabia.]
+
+The talents of Mahomet are entitled to our applause; but his success
+has, perhaps, too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised
+that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the
+passions of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church, the same
+seduction has been tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to
+that of the reformers. Does it seem incredible that a private citizen
+should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and
+erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the
+dynasties of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a
+baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger
+scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike instructed to preach and
+to fight; and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced
+his merit, contributed to his success: the operation of force and
+persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other,
+till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power. His voice
+invited the Arabs to freedom and victory, to arms and rapine, to the
+indulgence of their darling passions in this world and the other: the
+restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the credit of
+the prophet, and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the
+only objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity and
+perfections of God. It is not the propagation, but the permanency,
+of his religion, that deserves our wonder: the same pure and perfect
+impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina, is preserved, after
+the revolutions of twelve centuries, by the Indian, the African, and the
+Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or
+St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the
+name of the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that
+magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less
+surprise; but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the
+catechism of the church, and to study the orthodox commentators on their
+own writings and the words of their Master. But the Turkish dome of St.
+Sophia, with an increase of splendor and size, represents the humble
+tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mahomet. The Mahometans
+have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their
+faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. "I
+believe in one God, and Mahomet the apostle of God," is the simple and
+invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has
+never been degraded by any visible idol; the honors of the prophet have
+never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts
+have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of
+reason and religion. The votaries of Ali have, indeed, consecrated
+the memory of their hero, his wife, and his children; and some of the
+Persian doctors pretend that the divine essence was incarnate in the
+person of the Imams; but their superstition is universally condemned
+by the Sonnites; and their impiety has afforded a seasonable warning
+against the worship of saints and martyrs. The metaphysical questions on
+the attributes of God, and the liberty of man, have been agitated in the
+schools of the Mahometans, as well as in those of the Christians; but
+among the former they have never engaged the passions of the people,
+or disturbed the tranquillity of the state. The cause of this important
+difference may be found in the separation or union of the regal
+and sacerdotal characters. It was the interest of the caliphs, the
+successors of the prophet and commanders of the faithful, to repress
+and discourage all religious innovations: the order, the discipline,
+the temporal and spiritual ambition of the clergy, are unknown to the
+Moslems; and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and
+the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran
+is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology, but
+of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate the
+actions and the property of mankind are guarded by the infallible and
+immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious servitude is
+attended with some practical disadvantage; the illiterate legislator had
+been often misled by his own prejudices and those of his country; and
+the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth
+and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the
+Cadhi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes a
+dexterous interpretation more apposite to the principles of equity, and
+the manners and policy of the times.
+
+His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness is the
+last consideration in the character of Mahomet. The most bitter or
+most bigoted of his Christian or Jewish foes will surely allow that
+he assumed a false commission to inculcate a salutary doctrine, less
+perfect only than their own. He piously supposed, as the basis of his
+religion, the truth and sanctity of their prior revolutions, the virtues
+and miracles of their founders. The idols of Arabia were broken before
+the throne of God; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer,
+and fasting, and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion; and
+his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by the images
+most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation. Mahomet was,
+perhaps, incapable of dictating a moral and political system for the
+use of his countrymen: but he breathed among the faithful a spirit of
+charity and friendship; recommended the practice of the social virtues;
+and checked, by his laws and precepts, the thirst of revenge, and the
+oppression of widows and orphans. The hostile tribes were united in
+faith and obedience, and the valor which had been idly spent in domestic
+quarrels was vigorously directed against a foreign enemy. Had the
+impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home and formidable abroad,
+might have flourished under a succession of her native monarchs.
+Her sovereignty was lost by the extent and rapidity of conquest. The
+colonies of the nation were scattered over the East and West, and their
+blood was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives. After
+the reign of three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to
+the valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities
+were violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a subject,
+perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert, awakening from
+their dream of dominion, resumed their old and solitary independence.
+[187]
+
+[Footnote 187: The writers of the Modern Universal History (vols. i.
+and ii.) have compiled, in 850 folio pages, the life of Mahomet and
+the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage of reading,
+and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet, notwithstanding their
+high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after the conclusion of my work,
+that they have afforded me much (if any) additional information. The
+dull mass is not quickened by a spark of philosophy or taste; and
+the compilers indulge the criticism of acrimonious bigotry against
+Boulainvilliers, Sale, Gagnier, and all who have treated Mahomet with
+favor, or even justice.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part I.
+
+     The Conquest Of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, And Spain, By
+     The Arabs Or Saracens.--Empire Of The Caliphs, Or Successors
+     Of Mahomet.--State Of The Christians, &c., Under Their
+     Government.
+
+The revolution of Arabia had not changed the character of the Arabs: the
+death of Mahomet was the signal of independence; and the hasty structure
+of his power and religion tottered to its foundations. A small and
+faithful band of his primitive disciples had listened to his eloquence,
+and shared his distress; had fled with the apostle from the persecution
+of Mecca, or had received the fugitive in the walls of Medina. The
+increasing myriads, who acknowledged Mahomet as their king and prophet,
+had been compelled by his arms, or allured by his prosperity. The
+polytheists were confounded by the simple idea of a solitary and
+invisible God; the pride of the Christians and Jews disdained the
+yoke of a mortal and contemporary legislator. The habits of faith and
+obedience were not sufficiently confirmed; and many of the new converts
+regretted the venerable antiquity of the law of Moses, or the rites
+and mysteries of the Catholic church; or the idols, the sacrifices, the
+joyous festivals, of their Pagan ancestors. The jarring interests and
+hereditary feuds of the Arabian tribes had not yet coalesced in a system
+of union and subordination; and the Barbarians were impatient of the
+mildest and most salutary laws that curbed their passions, or violated
+their customs. They submitted with reluctance to the religious precepts
+of the Koran, the abstinence from wine, the fast of the Ramadan, and the
+daily repetition of five prayers; and the alms and tithes, which were
+collected for the treasury of Medina, could be distinguished only by
+a name from the payment of a perpetual and ignominious tribute. The
+example of Mahomet had excited a spirit of fanaticism or imposture,
+and several of his rivals presumed to imitate the conduct, and defy
+the authority, of the living prophet. At the head of the fugitives
+and auxiliaries, the first caliph was reduced to the cities of Mecca,
+Medina, and Tayef; and perhaps the Koreish would have restored the
+idols of the Caaba, if their levity had not been checked by a seasonable
+reproof. "Ye men of Mecca, will ye be the last to embrace, and the
+first to abandon, the religion of Islam?" After exhorting the Moslems
+to confide in the aid of God and his apostle, Abubeker resolved, by a
+vigorous attack, to prevent the junction of the rebels. The women
+and children were safely lodged in the cavities of the mountains: the
+warriors, marching under eleven banners, diffused the terror of their
+arms; and the appearance of a military force revived and confirmed the
+loyalty of the faithful. The inconstant tribes accepted, with humble
+repentance, the duties of prayer, and fasting, and alms; and, after
+some examples of success and severity, the most daring apostates fell
+prostrate before the sword of the Lord and of Caled. In the fertile
+province of Yemanah, [1] between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia,
+in a city not inferior to Medina itself, a powerful chief (his name
+was Moseilama) had assumed the character of a prophet, and the tribe of
+Hanifa listened to his voice. A female prophetess [1111] was attracted
+by his reputation; the decencies of words and actions were spurned by
+these favorites of Heaven; [2] and they employed several days in mystic
+and amorous converse. An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book, is yet
+extant; [3] and in the pride of his mission, Moseilama condescended to
+offer a partition of the earth. The proposal was answered by Mahomet
+with contempt; but the rapid progress of the impostor awakened the
+fears of his successor: forty thousand Moslems were assembled under the
+standard of Caled; and the existence of their faith was resigned to
+the event of a decisive battle. [3111] In the first action they
+were repulsed by the loss of twelve hundred men; but the skill and
+perseverance of their general prevailed; their defeat was avenged by the
+slaughter of ten thousand infidels; and Moseilama himself was pierced by
+an Aethiopian slave with the same javelin which had mortally wounded
+the uncle of Mahomet. The various rebels of Arabia without a chief or
+a cause, were speedily suppressed by the power and discipline of
+the rising monarchy; and the whole nation again professed, and more
+steadfastly held, the religion of the Koran. The ambition of the caliphs
+provided an immediate exercise for the restless spirit of the Saracens:
+their valor was united in the prosecution of a holy war; and their
+enthusiasm was equally confirmed by opposition and victory.
+
+[Footnote 1: See the description of the city and country of Al Yamanah,
+in Abulfeda, Descript. Arabiae, p. 60, 61. In the xiiith century, there
+were some ruins, and a few palms; but in the present century, the same
+ground is occupied by the visions and arms of a modern prophet, whose
+tenets are imperfectly known, (Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p.
+296-302.)]
+
+[Footnote 1111: This extraordinary woman was a Christian; she was at
+the head of a numerous and flourishing sect; Moseilama professed to
+recognize her inspiration. In a personal interview he proposed their
+marriage and the union of their sects. The handsome person, the
+impassioned eloquence, and the arts of Moseilama, triumphed over the
+virtue of the prophetesa who was rejected with scorn by her lover, and
+by her notorious unchastity ost her influence with her own followers.
+Gibbon, with that propensity too common, especially in his later
+volumes, has selected only the grosser part of this singular
+adventure.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The first salutation may be transcribed, but cannot be
+translated. It was thus that Moseilama said or sung:--
+
+ Surge tandem itaque strenue permolenda; nam stratus tibi thorus est.
+ Aut in propatulo tentorio si velis, aut in abditiore cubiculo si malis;
+ Aut supinam te humi exporrectam fustigabo, si velis,
+ Aut si malis manibus pedibusque nixam.
+ Aut si velis ejus (Priapi) gemino triente aut si malis totus veniam.
+ Imo, totus venito, O Apostole Dei, clamabat foemina.
+ Id ipsum, dicebat
+ Moseilama, mihi quoque suggessit Deus.
+
+The prophetess Segjah, after the fall of her lover, returned to
+idolatry; but under the reign of Moawiyah, she became a Mussulman, and
+died at Bassora, (Abulfeda, Annal. vers. Reiske, p. 63.)]
+
+[Footnote 3: See this text, which demonstrates a God from the work of
+generation, in Abulpharagius (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 13, and Dynast.
+p. 103) and Abulfeda, (Annal. p. 63.)]
+
+[Footnote 3111: Compare a long account of this battle in Price, p.
+42.--M.]
+
+From the rapid conquests of the Saracens a presumption will naturally
+arise, that the caliphs [311] commanded in person the armies of the
+faithful, and sought the crown of martyrdom in the foremost ranks of
+the battle. The courage of Abubeker, [4] Omar, [5] and Othman, [6] had
+indeed been tried in the persecution and wars of the prophet; and the
+personal assurance of paradise must have taught them to despise the
+pleasures and dangers of the present world. But they ascended the
+throne in a venerable or mature age; and esteemed the domestic cares of
+religion and justice the most important duties of a sovereign.
+Except the presence of Omar at the siege of Jerusalem, their longest
+expeditions were the frequent pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca; and they
+calmly received the tidings of victory as they prayed or preached before
+the sepulchre of the prophet. The austere and frugal measure of
+their lives was the effect of virtue or habit, and the pride of their
+simplicity insulted the vain magnificence of the kings of the earth.
+When Abubeker assumed the office of caliph, he enjoined his daughter
+Ayesha to take a strict account of his private patrimony, that it might
+be evident whether he were enriched or impoverished by the service of
+the state. He thought himself entitled to a stipend of three pieces
+of gold, with the sufficient maintenance of a single camel and a black
+slave; but on the Friday of each week he distributed the residue of his
+own and the public money, first to the most worthy, and then to the most
+indigent, of the Moslems. The remains of his wealth, a coarse garment,
+and five pieces of gold, were delivered to his successor, who lamented
+with a modest sigh his own inability to equal such an admirable model.
+Yet the abstinence and humility of Omar were not inferior to the virtues
+of Abubeker: his food consisted of barley bread or dates; his drink was
+water; he preached in a gown that was torn or tattered in twelve places;
+and the Persian satrap, who paid his homage to the conqueror, found him
+asleep among the beggars on the steps of the mosch of Medina. Oeeconomy
+is the source of liberality, and the increase of the revenue enabled
+Omar to establish a just and perpetual reward for the past and present
+services of the faithful. Careless of his own emolument, he assigned to
+Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, the first and most ample allowance of
+twenty-five thousand drachms or pieces of silver. Five thousand were
+allotted to each of the aged warriors, the relics of the field of Beder;
+and the last and meanest of the companions of Mahomet was distinguished
+by the annual reward of three thousand pieces. One thousand was the
+stipend of the veterans who had fought in the first battles against the
+Greeks and Persians; and the decreasing pay, as low as fifty pieces
+of silver, was adapted to the respective merit and seniority of the
+soldiers of Omar. Under his reign, and that of his predecessor, the
+conquerors of the East were the trusty servants of God and the people;
+the mass of the public treasure was consecrated to the expenses of
+peace and war; a prudent mixture of justice and bounty maintained the
+discipline of the Saracens, and they united, by a rare felicity, the
+despatch and execution of despotism with the equal and frugal maxims of
+a republican government. The heroic courage of Ali, [7] the consummate
+prudence of Moawiyah, [8] excited the emulation of their subjects; and
+the talents which had been exercised in the school of civil discord
+were more usefully applied to propagate the faith and dominion of
+the prophet. In the sloth and vanity of the palace of Damascus, the
+succeeding princes of the house of Ommiyah were alike destitute of the
+qualifications of statesmen and of saints. [9] Yet the spoils of unknown
+nations were continually laid at the foot of their throne, and the
+uniform ascent of the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit
+of the nation rather than the abilities of their chiefs. A large
+deduction must be allowed for the weakness of their enemies. The birth
+of Mahomet was fortunately placed in the most degenerate and disorderly
+period of the Persians, the Romans, and the Barbarians of Europe: the
+empires of Trajan, or even of Constantine or Charlemagne, would
+have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, and the torrent of
+fanaticism might have been obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia.
+
+[Footnote 311: In Arabic, "successors." V. Hammer Geschichte der Assas.
+p. 14--M.]
+
+[Footnote 4: His reign in Eutychius, tom. ii. p. 251. Elmacin, p. 18.
+Abulpharagius, p. 108. Abulfeda, p. 60. D'Herbelot, p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 5: His reign in Eutychius, p. 264. Elmacin, p. 24.
+Abulpharagius, p. 110. Abulfeda, p. 66. D'Herbelot, p. 686.]
+
+[Footnote 6: His reign in Eutychius, p. 323. Elmacin, p. 36.
+Abulpharagius, p. 115. Abulfeda, p. 75. D'Herbelot, p. 695.]
+
+[Footnote 7: His reign in Eutychius, p. 343. Elmacin, p. 51.
+Abulpharagius, p. 117. Abulfeda, p. 83. D'Herbelot, p. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 8: His reign in Eutychius, p. 344. Elmacin, p. 54.
+Abulpharagius, p. 123. Abulfeda, p. 101. D'Herbelot, p. 586.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Their reigns in Eutychius, tom. ii. p. 360-395. Elmacin,
+p. 59-108. Abulpharagius, Dynast. ix. p. 124-139. Abulfeda, p.
+111-141. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 691, and the particular
+articles of the Ommiades.]
+
+In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the aim of
+the senate to confine their councils and legions to a single war,
+and completely to suppress a first enemy before they provoked the
+hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of policy were disdained
+by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the Arabian caliphs. With the same
+vigor and success they invaded the successors of Augustus and those of
+Artaxerxes; and the rival monarchies at the same instant became the prey
+of an enemy whom they had been so long accustomed to despise. In the
+ten years of the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his
+obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand
+churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen hundred
+moschs for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet. One hundred years
+after his flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign of his successors
+extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the various and distant
+provinces, which may be comprised under the names of, I. Persia;
+II. Syria; III. Egypt; IV. Africa; and, V. Spain. Under this general
+division, I shall proceed to unfold these memorable transactions;
+despatching with brevity the remote and less interesting conquests of
+the East, and reserving a fuller narrative for those domestic countries
+which had been included within the pale of the Roman empire. Yet I
+must excuse my own defects by a just complaint of the blindness and
+insufficiency of my guides. The Greeks, so loquacious in controversy,
+have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs of their enemies. [10]
+After a century of ignorance, the first annals of the Mussulmans were
+collected in a great measure from the voice of tradition. [11] Among
+the numerous productions of Arabic and Persian literature, [12] our
+interpreters have selected the imperfect sketches of a more recent
+age. [13] The art and genius of history have ever been unknown to the
+Asiatics; [14] they are ignorant of the laws of criticism; and our
+monkish chronicle of the same period may be compared to their most
+popular works, which are never vivified by the spirit of philosophy and
+freedom.
+
+The Oriental library of a Frenchman [15] would instruct the most learned
+mufti of the East; and perhaps the Arabs might not find in a single
+historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of their own exploits
+as that which will be deduced in the ensuing sheets.
+
+[Footnote 10: For the viith and viiith century, we have scarcely any
+original evidence of the Byzantine historians, except the chronicles of
+Theophanes (Theophanis Confessoris Chronographia, Gr. et Lat. cum notis
+Jacobi Goar. Paris, 1665, in folio) and the Abridgment of Nicephorus,
+(Nicephori Patriarchae C. P. Breviarium Historicum, Gr. et Lat. Paris,
+1648, in folio,) who both lived in the beginning of the ixth century,
+(see Hanckius de Scriptor. Byzant. p. 200-246.) Their contemporary,
+Photius, does not seem to be more opulent. After praising the style of
+Nicephorus, he adds, and only complains of his extreme brevity, (Phot.
+Bibliot. Cod. lxvi. p. 100.) Some additions may be gleaned from the more
+recent histories of Cedrenus and Zonaras of the xiith century.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Tabari, or Al Tabari, a native of Taborestan, a famous
+Imam of Bagdad, and the Livy of the Arabians, finished his general
+history in the year of the Hegira 302, (A.D. 914.) At the request of his
+friends, he reduced a work of 30,000 sheets to a more reasonable
+size. But his Arabic original is known only by the Persian and Turkish
+versions. The Saracenic history of Ebn Amid, or Elmacin, is said to be
+an abridgment of the great Tabari, (Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol.
+ii. preface, p. xxxix. and list of authors, D'Herbelot, p. 866, 870,
+1014.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: Besides the list of authors framed by Prideaux, (Life of
+Mahomet, p. 179-189,) Ockley, (at the end of his second volume,) and
+Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 525-550,) we find in the
+Bibliotheque Orientale Tarikh, a catalogue of two or three hundred
+histories or chronicles of the East, of which not more than three or
+four are older than Tabari. A lively sketch of Oriental literature is
+given by Reiske, (in his Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalifae librum
+memorialem ad calcem Abulfedae Tabulae Syriae, Lipsiae, 1776;) but his
+project and the French version of Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Timur Bec,
+tom. i. preface, p. xlv.) have fallen to the ground.]
+
+[Footnote 13: The particular historians and geographers will be
+occasionally introduced. The four following titles represent the Annals
+which have guided me in this general narrative. 1. Annales Eutychii,
+Patriarchoe Alexandrini, ab Edwardo Pocockio, Oxon. 1656, 2 vols. in
+4to. A pompous edition of an indifferent author, translated by Pocock
+to gratify the Presbyterian prejudices of his friend Selden. 2. Historia
+Saracenica Georgii Elmacini, opera et studio Thomae Erpenii, in 4to.,
+Lugd. Batavorum, 1625. He is said to have hastily translated a corrupt
+Ms., and his version is often deficient in style and sense. 3. Historia
+compendiosa Dynastiarum a Gregorio Abulpharagio, interprete Edwardo
+Pocockio, in 4to., Oxon. 1663. More useful for the literary than the
+civil history of the East. 4. Abulfedoe Annales Moslemici ad Ann.
+Hegiroe ccccvi. a Jo. Jac. Reiske, in 4to., Lipsioe, 1754. The best of
+our chronicles, both for the original and version, yet how far below the
+name of Abulfeda! We know that he wrote at Hamah in the xivth century.
+The three former were Christians of the xth, xiith, and xiiith
+centuries; the two first, natives of Egypt; a Melchite patriarch, and a
+Jacobite scribe.]
+
+[Footnote 14: M. D. Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. pref. p. xix. xx.)
+has characterized, with truth and knowledge, the two sorts of Arabian
+historians--the dry annalist, and the tumid and flowery orator.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Bibliotheque Orientale, par M. D'Herbelot, in folio,
+Paris, 1697. For the character of the respectable author, consult his
+friend Thevenot, (Voyages du Levant, part i. chap. 1.) His work is an
+agreeable miscellany, which must gratify every taste; but I never can
+digest the alphabetical order; and I find him more satisfactory in the
+Persian than the Arabic history. The recent supplement from the papers
+of Mm. Visdelou, and Galland, (in folio, La Haye, 1779,) is of a
+different cast, a medley of tales, proverbs, and Chinese antiquities.]
+
+I. In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Caled, the
+Sword of God, and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to the banks of
+the Euphrates, and reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira. Westward of the
+ruins of Babylon, a tribe of sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the
+verge of the desert; and Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had
+embraced the Christian religion, and reigned above six hundred years
+under the shadow of the throne of Persia. [16] The last of the Mondars
+[1611] was defeated and slain by Caled; his son was sent a captive to
+Medina; his nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet; the people
+was tempted by the example and success of their countrymen; and the
+caliph accepted as the first-fruits of foreign conquest an annual
+tribute of seventy thousand pieces of gold. The conquerors, and even
+their historians, were astonished by the dawn of their future greatness:
+"In the same year," says Elmacin, "Caled fought many signal battles: an
+immense multitude of the infidels was slaughtered; and spoils infinite
+and innumerable were acquired by the victorious Moslems." [17] But the
+invincible Caled was soon transferred to the Syrian war: the invasion
+of the Persian frontier was conducted by less active or less prudent
+commanders: the Saracens were repulsed with loss in the passage of
+the Euphrates; and, though they chastised the insolent pursuit of the
+Magians, their remaining forces still hovered in the desert of Babylon.
+[1711]
+
+[Footnote 16: Pocock will explain the chronology, (Specimen Hist.
+Arabum, p. 66-74,) and D'Anville the geography, (l'Euphrate, et le
+Tigre, p. 125,) of the dynasty of the Almondars. The English scholar
+understood more Arabic than the mufti of Aleppo, (Ockley, vol. ii. p.
+34: ) the French geographer is equally at home in every age and every
+climate of the world.]
+
+[Footnote 1611: Eichhorn and Silvestre de Sacy have written on the
+obscure history of the Mondars.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Fecit et Chaled plurima in hoc anno praelia, in quibus
+vicerunt Muslimi, et infidelium immensa multitudine occisa spolia
+infinita et innumera sunt nacti, (Hist. Saracenica, p. 20.) The
+Christian annalist slides into the national and compendious term of
+infidels, and I often adopt (I hope without scandal) this characteristic
+mode of expression.]
+
+[Footnote 1711: Compare throughout Malcolm, vol. ii. p. 136.--M.]
+
+The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a moment their
+intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the priests and
+nobles, their queen Arzema was deposed; the sixth of the transient
+usurpers, who had arisen and vanished in three or four years since the
+death of Chosroes, and the retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed
+on the head of Yezdegerd, the grandson of Chosroes; and the same aera,
+which coincides with an astronomical period, [18] has recorded the fall
+of the Sassanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. [19] The youth
+and inexperience of the prince (he was only fifteen years of age)
+declined a perilous encounter: the royal standard was delivered into the
+hands of his general Rustam; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular
+troops was swelled in truth, or in opinion, to one hundred and twenty
+thousand subjects, or allies, of the great king. The Moslems, whose
+numbers were reenforced from twelve to thirty thousand, had pitched
+their camp in the plains of Cadesia: [20] and their line, though it
+consisted of fewer men, could produce more soldiers, than the unwieldy
+host of the infidels. I shall here observe, what I must often repeat,
+that the charge of the Arabs was not, like that of the Greeks and
+Romans, the effort of a firm and compact infantry: their military force
+was chiefly formed of cavalry and archers; and the engagement, which
+was often interrupted and often renewed by single combats and flying
+skirmishes, might be protracted without any decisive event to the
+continuance of several days. The periods of the battle of Cadesia
+were distinguished by their peculiar appellations. The first, from
+the well-timed appearance of six thousand of the Syrian brethren, was
+denominated the day of succor. The day of concussion might express
+the disorder of one, or perhaps of both, of the contending armies. The
+third, a nocturnal tumult, received the whimsical name of the night
+of barking, from the discordant clamors, which were compared to
+the inarticulate sounds of the fiercest animals. The morning of the
+succeeding day [2011] determined the fate of Persia; and a seasonable
+whirlwind drove a cloud of dust against the faces of the unbelievers.
+The clangor of arms was reechoed to the tent of Rustam, who, far
+unlike the ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining in a cool and
+tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp, and the train of mules
+that were laden with gold and silver. On the sound of danger he started
+from his couch; but his flight was overtaken by a valiant Arab, who
+caught him by the foot, struck off his head, hoisted it on a lance, and
+instantly returning to the field of battle, carried slaughter and dismay
+among the thickest ranks of the Persians. The Saracens confess a loss
+of seven thousand five hundred men; [2012] and the battle of Cadesia is
+justly described by the epithets of obstinate and atrocious. [21] The
+standard of the monarchy was overthrown and captured in the field--a
+leathern apron of a blacksmith, who in ancient times had arisen the
+deliverer of Persia; but this badge of heroic poverty was disguised,
+and almost concealed, by a profusion of precious gems. [22] After this
+victory, the wealthy province of Irak, or Assyria, submitted to
+the caliph, and his conquests were firmly established by the speedy
+foundation of Bassora, [23] a place which ever commands the trade and
+navigation of the Persians. As the distance of fourscore miles from
+the Gulf, the Euphrates and Tigris unite in a broad and direct current,
+which is aptly styled the river of the Arabs. In the midway, between the
+junction and the mouth of these famous streams, the new settlement was
+planted on the western bank: the first colony was composed of eight
+hundred Moslems; but the influence of the situation soon reared a
+flourishing and populous capital. The air, though excessively hot, is
+pure and healthy: the meadows are filled with palm-trees and cattle; and
+one of the adjacent valleys has been celebrated among the four paradises
+or gardens of Asia. Under the first caliphs the jurisdiction of this
+Arabian colony extended over the southern provinces of Persia: the city
+has been sanctified by the tombs of the companions and martyrs; and the
+vessels of Europe still frequent the port of Bassora, as a convenient
+station and passage of the Indian trade.
+
+[Footnote 18: A cycle of 120 years, the end of which an intercalary
+month of 30 days supplied the use of our Bissextile, and restored the
+integrity of the solar year. In a great revolution of 1440 years this
+intercalation was successively removed from the first to the twelfth
+month; but Hyde and Freret are involved in a profound controversy,
+whether the twelve, or only eight of these changes were accomplished
+before the aera of Yezdegerd, which is unanimously fixed to the 16th
+of June, A.D. 632. How laboriously does the curious spirit of Europe
+explore the darkest and most distant antiquities! (Hyde de Religione
+Persarum, c. 14-18, p. 181-211. Freret in the Mem. de l'Academie des
+Inscriptions, tom. xvi. p. 233-267.)]
+
+[Footnote 19: Nine days after the death of Mahomet (7th June, A.D. 632)
+we find the aera of Yezdegerd, (16th June, A.D. 632,) and his accession
+cannot be postponed beyond the end of the first year. His predecessors
+could not therefore resist the arms of the caliph Omar; and these
+unquestionable dates overthrow the thoughtless chronology of
+Abulpharagius. See Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 130. *
+Note: The Rezont Uzzuffa (Price, p. 105) has a strange account of an
+embassy to Yezdegerd. The Oriental historians take great delight in
+these embassies, which give them an opportunity of displaying their
+Asiatic eloquence--M.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Cadesia, says the Nubian geographer, (p. 121,) is in
+margine solitudinis, 61 leagues from Bagdad, and two stations from Cufa.
+Otter (Voyage, tom. i. p. 163) reckons 15 leagues, and observes, that
+the place is supplied with dates and water.]
+
+[Footnote 2011: The day of cormorants, or according to another reading
+the day of reinforcements. It was the night which was called the night
+of snarling. Price, p. 114.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 2012: According to Malcolm's authorities, only three thousand;
+but he adds "This is the report of Mahomedan historians, who have a
+great disposition of the wonderful, in relating the first actions of the
+faithful" Vol. i. p. 39.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Atrox, contumax, plus semel renovatum, are the well-chosen
+expressions of the translator of Abulfeda, (Reiske, p. 69.)]
+
+[Footnote 22: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 297, 348.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The reader may satisfy himself on the subject of Bassora
+by consulting the following writers: Geograph, Nubiens. p. 121.
+D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 192. D'Anville, l'Euphrate et
+le Tigre, p. 130, 133, 145. Raynal, Hist. Philosophique des deux
+Indes, tom. ii. p. 92-100. Voyages di Pietro della Valle, tom. iv. p.
+370-391. De Tavernier, tom. i. p. 240-247. De Thevenot, tom. ii.
+p. 545-584. D Otter, tom. ii. p. 45-78. De Niebuhr, tom. ii. p.
+172-199.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part II.
+
+After the defeat of Cadesia, a country intersected by rivers and canals
+might have opposed an insuperable barrier to the victorious cavalry; and
+the walls of Ctesiphon or Madayn, which had resisted the battering-rams
+of the Romans, would not have yielded to the darts of the Saracens. But
+the flying Persians were overcome by the belief, that the last day
+of their religion and empire was at hand; the strongest posts were
+abandoned by treachery or cowardice; and the king, with a part of his
+family and treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the Median hills.
+
+In the third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of Omar,
+passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken by assault;
+and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge to the
+sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with religious transport, "This is
+the white palace of Chosroes; this is the promise of the apostle of
+God!" The naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the
+measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure
+secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the
+various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the
+estimate of fancy or numbers; and another historian defines the untold
+and almost infinite mass, by the fabulous computation of three thousands
+of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold. [24] Some minute though
+curious facts represent the contrast of riches and ignorance. From the
+remote islands of the Indian Ocean a large provision of camphire [25]
+had been imported, which is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate
+the palaces of the East. Strangers to the name and properties of that
+odoriferous gum, the Saracens, mistaking it for salt, mingled the
+camphire in their bread, and were astonished at the bitterness of the
+taste. One of the apartments of the palace was decorated with a carpet
+of silk, sixty cubits in length, and as many in breadth: a paradise or
+garden was depictured on the ground: the flowers, fruits, and shrubs,
+were imitated by the figures of the gold embroidery, and the colors of
+the precious stones; and the ample square was encircled by a variegated
+and verdant border. [251] The Arabian general persuaded his soldiers
+to relinquish their claim, in the reasonable hope that the eyes of the
+caliph would be delighted with the splendid workmanship of nature and
+industry. Regardless of the merit of art, and the pomp of royalty, the
+rigid Omar divided the prize among his brethren of Medina: the picture
+was destroyed; but such was the intrinsic value of the materials, that
+the share of Ali alone was sold for twenty thousand drams. A mule that
+carried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and bracelets of Chosroes,
+was overtaken by the pursuers; the gorgeous trophy was presented to
+the commander of the faithful; and the gravest of the companions
+condescended to smile when they beheld the white beard, the hairy arms,
+and uncouth figure of the veteran, who was invested with the spoils of
+the Great King. [26] The sack of Ctesiphon was followed by its desertion
+and gradual decay. The Saracens disliked the air and situation of
+the place, and Omar was advised by his general to remove the seat of
+government to the western side of the Euphrates. In every age, the
+foundation and ruin of the Assyrian cities has been easy and rapid: the
+country is destitute of stone and timber; and the most solid structures
+[27] are composed of bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement
+of the native bitumen. The name of Cufa [28] describes a habitation of
+reeds and earth; but the importance of the new capital was supported
+by the numbers, wealth, and spirit, of a colony of veterans; and their
+licentiousness was indulged by the wisest caliphs, who were apprehensive
+of provoking the revolt of a hundred thousand swords: "Ye men of Cufa,"
+said Ali, who solicited their aid, "you have been always conspicuous by
+your valor. You conquered the Persian king, and scattered his forces,
+till you had taken possession of his inheritance." This mighty conquest
+was achieved by the battles of Jalula and Nehavend. After the loss of
+the former, Yezdegerd fled from Holwan, and concealed his shame and
+despair in the mountains of Farsistan, from whence Cyrus had descended
+with his equal and valiant companions. The courage of the nation
+survived that of the monarch: among the hills to the south of Ecbatana
+or Hamadan, one hundred and fifty thousand Persians made a third and
+final stand for their religion and country; and the decisive battle of
+Nehavend was styled by the Arabs the victory of victories. If it be true
+that the flying general of the Persians was stopped and overtaken in a
+crowd of mules and camels laden with honey, the incident, however slight
+and singular, will denote the luxurious impediments of an Oriental army.
+[29]
+
+[Footnote 24: Mente vix potest numerove comprehendi quanta spolia
+nostris cesserint. Abulfeda, p. 69. Yet I still suspect, that the
+extravagant numbers of Elmacin may be the error, not of the text, but of
+the version. The best translators from the Greek, for instance, I find
+to be very poor arithmeticians. * Note: Ockley (Hist. of Saracens,
+vol. i. p. 230) translates in the same manner three thousand million of
+ducats. See Forster's Mahometanism Unveiled, vol. ii. p. 462; who
+makes this innocent doubt of Gibbon, in which, is to the amount of
+the plunder, I venture to concur, a grave charge of inaccuracy and
+disrespect to the memory of Erpenius. The Persian authorities of
+Price (p. 122) make the booty worth three hundred and thirty millions
+sterling!--M]
+
+[Footnote 25: The camphire-tree grows in China and Japan; but many
+hundred weight of those meaner sorts are exchanged for a single pound of
+the more precious gum of Borneo and Sumatra, (Raynal, Hist. Philosoph.
+tom. i. p. 362-365. Dictionnaire d'Hist. Naturelle par Bomare Miller's
+Gardener's Dictionary.) These may be the islands of the first climate
+from whence the Arabians imported their camphire (Geograph. Nub. p. 34,
+35. D'Herbelot, p. 232.)]
+
+[Footnote 251: Compare Price, p. 122.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 26: See Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 376, 377. I may
+credit the fact, without believing the prophecy.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The most considerable ruins of Assyria are the tower of
+Belus, at Babylon, and the hall of Chosroes, at Ctesiphon: they have
+been visited by that vain and curious traveller Pietro della Valle,
+(tom. i. p. 713-718, 731-735.) * Note: The best modern account is that
+of Claudius Rich Esq. Two Memoirs of Babylon. London, 1818.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Consult the article of Coufah in the Bibliotheque of
+D'Herbelot ( p. 277, 278,) and the second volume of Ockley's History,
+particularly p. 40 and 153.]
+
+[Footnote 29: See the article of Nehavend, in D'Herbelot, p. 667, 668;
+and Voyages en Turquie et en Perse, par Otter, tom. i. 191. * Note:
+Malcolm vol. i. p. 141.--M.]
+
+The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks and Latins;
+but the most illustrious of her cities appear to be more ancient than
+the invasion of the Arabs. By the reduction of Hamadan and Ispahan, of
+Caswin, Tauris, and Rei, they gradually approached the shores of the
+Caspian Sea: and the orators of Mecca might applaud the success and
+spirit of the faithful, who had already lost sight of the northern
+bear, and had almost transcended the bounds of the habitable world. [30]
+Again, turning towards the West and the Roman empire, they repassed
+the Tigris over the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces
+of Armenia and Mesopotamia, embraced their victorious brethren of the
+Syrian army. From the palace of Madayn their Eastern progress was not
+less rapid or extensive. They advanced along the Tigris and the Gulf;
+penetrated through the passes of the mountains into the valley of
+Estachar or Persepolis, and profaned the last sanctuary of the Magian
+empire. The grandson of Chosroes was nearly surprised among the falling
+columns and mutilated figures; a sad emblem of the past and present
+fortune of Persia: [31] he fled with accelerated haste over the desert
+of Kirman, implored the aid of the warlike Segestans, and sought an
+humble refuge on the verge of the Turkish and Chinese power. But a
+victorious army is insensible of fatigue: the Arabs divided their forces
+in the pursuit of a timorous enemy; and the caliph Othman promised the
+government of Chorasan to the first general who should enter that
+large and populous country, the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians. The
+condition was accepted; the prize was deserved; the standard of Mahomet
+was planted on the walls of Herat, Merou, and Balch; and the successful
+leader neither halted nor reposed till his foaming cavalry had tasted
+the waters of the Oxus. In the public anarchy, the independent governors
+of the cities and castles obtained their separate capitulations: the
+terms were granted or imposed by the esteem, the prudence, or the
+compassion, of the victors; and a simple profession of faith established
+the distinction between a brother and a slave. After a noble defence,
+Harmozan, the prince or satrap of Ahwaz and Susa, was compelled to
+surrender his person and his state to the discretion of the caliph;
+and their interview exhibits a portrait of the Arabian manners. In the
+presence, and by the command, of Omar, the gay Barbarian was despoiled
+of his silken robes embroidered with gold, and of his tiara bedecked
+with rubies and emeralds: "Are you now sensible," said the conqueror to
+his naked captive--"are you now sensible of the judgment of God, and
+of the different rewards of infidelity and obedience?" "Alas!" replied
+Harmozan, "I feel them too deeply. In the days of our common ignorance,
+we fought with the weapons of the flesh, and my nation was superior. God
+was then neuter: since he has espoused your quarrel, you have subverted
+our kingdom and religion." Oppressed by this painful dialogue,
+the Persian complained of intolerable thirst, but discovered some
+apprehension lest he should be killed whilst he was drinking a cup of
+water. "Be of good courage," said the caliph; "your life is safe till
+you have drunk this water:" the crafty satrap accepted the assurance,
+and instantly dashed the vase against the ground. Omar would have
+avenged the deceit, but his companions represented the sanctity of an
+oath; and the speedy conversion of Harmozan entitled him not only to a
+free pardon, but even to a stipend of two thousand pieces of gold.
+The administration of Persia was regulated by an actual survey of the
+people, the cattle, and the fruits of the earth; [32] and this monument,
+which attests the vigilance of the caliphs, might have instructed the
+philosophers of every age. [33]
+
+[Footnote 30: It is in such a style of ignorance and wonder that the
+Athenian orator describes the Arctic conquests of Alexander, who
+never advanced beyond the shores of the Caspian. Aeschines contra
+Ctesiphontem, tom. iii. p. 554, edit. Graec. Orator. Reiske. This
+memorable cause was pleaded at Athens, Olymp. cxii. 3, (before Christ
+330,) in the autumn, (Taylor, praefat. p. 370, &c.,) about a year after
+the battle of Arbela; and Alexander, in the pursuit of Darius, was
+marching towards Hyrcania and Bactriana.]
+
+[Footnote 31: We are indebted for this curious particular to the
+Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 116; but it is needless to prove the
+identity of Estachar and Persepolis, (D'Herbelot, p. 327;) and still
+more needless to copy the drawings and descriptions of Sir John Chardin,
+or Corneillo le Bruyn.]
+
+[Footnote 32: After the conquest of Persia, Theophanes adds,
+(Chronograph p. 283.)]
+
+[Footnote 33: Amidst our meagre relations, I must regret that D'Herbelot
+has not found and used a Persian translation of Tabari, enriched, as he
+says, with many extracts from the native historians of the Ghebers or
+Magi, (Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 1014.)]
+
+The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus, and as far
+as the Jaxartes, two rivers [34] of ancient and modern renown, which
+descend from the mountains of India towards the Caspian Sea. He was
+hospitably entertained by Takhan, prince of Fargana, [35] a fertile
+province on the Jaxartes: the king of Samarcand, with the Turkish tribes
+of Sogdiana and Scythia, were moved by the lamentations and promises of
+the fallen monarch; and he solicited, by a suppliant embassy, the more
+solid and powerful friendship of the emperor of China. [36] The virtuous
+Taitsong, [37] the first of the dynasty of the Tang may be justly
+compared with the Antonines of Rome: his people enjoyed the blessings
+of prosperity and peace; and his dominion was acknowledged by forty-four
+hordes of the Barbarians of Tartary. His last garrisons of Cashgar and
+Khoten maintained a frequent intercourse with their neighbors of the
+Jaxartes and Oxus; a recent colony of Persians had introduced into China
+the astronomy of the Magi; and Taitsong might be alarmed by the rapid
+progress and dangerous vicinity of the Arabs. The influence, and perhaps
+the supplies, of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd and the zeal
+of the worshippers of fire; and he returned with an army of Turks to
+conquer the inheritance of his fathers. The fortunate Moslems, without
+unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin and death.
+The grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by his servant, insulted by the
+seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed, defeated, and pursued by
+his Barbarian allies. He reached the banks of a river, and offered his
+rings and bracelets for an instant passage in a miller's boat. Ignorant
+or insensible of royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drams of
+silver were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend
+his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of hesitation and
+delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was overtaken and slaughtered by
+the Turkish cavalry, in the nineteenth year of his unhappy reign. [38]
+[3811] His son Firuz, an humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted
+the station of captain of his guards; and the Magian worship was long
+preserved by a colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bucharia.
+[3812] His grandson inherited the regal name; but after a faint and
+fruitless enterprise, he returned to China, and ended his days in the
+palace of Sigan. The male line of the Sassanides was extinct; but the
+female captives, the daughters of Persia, were given to the conquerors
+in servitude, or marriage; and the race of the caliphs and imams was
+ennobled by the blood of their royal mothers. [39]
+
+[Footnote 34: The most authentic accounts of the two rivers, the Sihon
+(Jaxartes) and the Gihon, (Oxus,) may be found in Sherif al Edrisi
+(Geograph. Nubiens. p. 138,) Abulfeda, (Descript. Chorasan. in Hudson,
+tom. iii. p. 23,) Abulghazi Khan, who reigned on their banks, (Hist.
+Genealogique des Tatars, p. 32, 57, 766,) and the Turkish Geographer,
+a MS. in the king of France's library, (Examen Critique des Historiens
+d'Alexandre, p. 194-360.)]
+
+[Footnote 35: The territory of Fergana is described by Abulfeda, p. 76,
+77.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Eo redegit angustiarum eundem regem exsulem, ut Turcici
+regis, et Sogdiani, et Sinensis, auxilia missis literis imploraret,
+(Abulfed. Annal. p. 74) The connection of the Persian and Chinese
+history is illustrated by Freret (Mem. de l'Academie, tom. xvi. p.
+245-255) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 54-59,) and for
+the geography of the borders, tom. ii. p. 1-43.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Hist. Sinica, p. 41-46, in the iiid part of the Relations
+Curieuses of Thevenot.]
+
+[Footnote 38: I have endeavored to harmonize the various narratives
+of Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 37,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 116,)
+Abulfeda, (Annal. p. 74, 79,) and D'Herbelot, (p. 485.) The end of
+Yezdegerd, was not only unfortunate but obscure.]
+
+[Footnote 3811: The account of Yezdegerd's death in the Habeib 'usseyr
+and Rouzut uzzuffa (Price, p. 162) is much more probable. On the demand
+of the few dhirems, he offered to the miller his sword, and royal
+girdle, of inesturable value. This awoke the cupidity of the miller, who
+murdered him, and threw the body into the stream.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 3812: Firouz died leaving a son called Ni-ni-cha by the
+Chinese, probably Narses. Yezdegerd had two sons, Firouz and Bahram St.
+Martin, vol. xi. p. 318.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The two daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the son of
+Ali, and Mohammed, the son of Abubeker; and the first of these was the
+father of a numerous progeny. The daughter of Phirouz became the wife
+of the caliph Walid, and their son Yezid derived his genuine or fabulous
+descent from the Chosroes of Persia, the Caesars of Rome, and the
+Chagans of the Turks or Avars, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orientale, p. 96,
+487.)]
+
+After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the River Oxus divided the
+territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow boundary was
+soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs; the governors of Chorasan
+extended their successive inroads; and one of their triumphs was adorned
+with the buskin of a Turkish queen, which she dropped in her precipitate
+flight beyond the hills of Bochara. [40] But the final conquest of
+Transoxiana, [41] as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious
+reign of the inactive Walid; and the name of Catibah, the camel driver,
+declares the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of
+his colleagues displayed the first Mahometan banner on the banks of
+the Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the
+Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Catibah to the obedience of the
+prophet and of the caliph. [42] A tribute of two millions of pieces of
+gold was imposed on the infidels; their idols were burnt or broken; the
+Mussulman chief pronounced a sermon in the new mosch of Carizme; after
+several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and
+the emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs.
+To their industry, the prosperity of the province, the Sogdiana of the
+ancients, may in a great measure be ascribed; but the advantages of the
+soil and climate had been understood and cultivated since the reign
+of the Macedonian kings. Before the invasion of the Saracens, Carizme,
+Bochara, and Samarcand were rich and populous under the yoke of the
+shepherds of the north. [4211] These cities were surrounded with a
+double wall; and the exterior fortification, of a larger circumference,
+enclosed the fields and gardens of the adjacent district. The mutual
+wants of India and Europe were supplied by the diligence of the Sogdian
+merchants; and the inestimable art of transforming linen into paper has
+been diffused from the manufacture of Samarcand over the western world.
+[43]
+
+[Footnote 40: It was valued at 2000 pieces of gold, and was the prize of
+Obeidollah, the son of Ziyad, a name afterwards infamous by the murder
+of Hosein, (Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 142, 143,) His
+brother Salem was accompanied by his wife, the first Arabian woman (A.D.
+680) who passed the Oxus: she borrowed, or rather stole, the crown and
+jewels of the princess of the Sogdians, (p. 231, 232.)]
+
+[Footnote 41: A part of Abulfeda's geography is translated by Greaves,
+inserted in Hudson's collection of the minor geographers, (tom. iii.,)
+and entitled Descriptio Chorasmiae et Mawaralnahroe, id est, regionum
+extra fluvium, Oxum, p. 80. The name of Transoxiana, softer in sound,
+equivalent in sense, is aptly used by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de
+Gengiscan, &c.,) and some modern Orientalists, but they are mistaken in
+ascribing it to the writers of antiquity.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The conquests of Catibah are faintly marked by Elmacin,
+(Hist. Saracen. p. 84,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. Catbah, Samarcand
+Valid.,) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 58, 59.)]
+
+[Footnote 4211: The manuscripts Arabian and Persian writers in the royal
+library contain very circumstantial details on the contest between the
+Persians and Arabians. M. St. Martin declined this addition to the work
+of Le Beau, as extending to too great a length. St. Martin vol. xi. p.
+320.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 43: A curious description of Samarcand is inserted in the
+Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 208, &c. The librarian Casiri
+(tom. ii. 9) relates, from credible testimony, that paper was first
+imported from China to Samarcand, A. H. 30, and invented, or rather
+introduced, at Mecca, A. H. 88. The Escurial library contains paper Mss.
+as old as the ivth or vth century of the Hegira.]
+
+II. No sooner had Abubeker restored the unity of faith and government,
+than he despatched a circular letter to the Arabian tribes. "In the name
+of the most merciful God, to the rest of the true believers. Health and
+happiness, and the mercy and blessing of God, be upon you. I praise the
+most high God, and I pray for his prophet Mahomet. This is to acquaint
+you, that I intend to send the true believers into Syria [44] to take
+it out of the hands of the infidels. And I would have you know, that
+the fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God." His messengers
+returned with the tidings of pious and martial ardor which they had
+kindled in every province; and the camp of Medina was successively
+filled with the intrepid bands of the Saracens, who panted for action,
+complained of the heat of the season and the scarcity of provisions,
+and accused with impatient murmurs the delays of the caliph. As soon as
+their numbers were complete, Abubeker ascended the hill, reviewed the
+men, the horses, and the arms, and poured forth a fervent prayer for the
+success of their undertaking. In person, and on foot, he accompanied the
+first day's march; and when the blushing leaders attempted to dismount,
+the caliph removed their scruples by a declaration, that those who
+rode, and those who walked, in the service of religion, were equally
+meritorious. His instructions [45] to the chiefs of the Syrian army were
+inspired by the warlike fanaticism which advances to seize, and affects
+to despise, the objects of earthly ambition. "Remember," said the
+successor of the prophet, "that you are always in the presence of God,
+on the verge of death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of
+paradise. Avoid injustice and oppression; consult with your brethren,
+and study to preserve the love and confidence of your troops. When
+you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without
+turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood
+of women or children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of
+corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such
+as you kill to eat. When you make any covenant or article, stand to it,
+and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious
+persons who live retired in monasteries, and propose to themselves to
+serve God that way: let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy
+their monasteries: [46] And you will find another sort of people, that
+belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shaven crowns; [47] be sure
+you cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter till they either turn
+Mahometans or pay tribute." All profane or frivolous conversation,
+all dangerous recollection of ancient quarrels, was severely prohibited
+among the Arabs: in the tumult of a camp, the exercises of religion
+were assiduously practised; and the intervals of action were employed in
+prayer, meditation, and the study of the Koran. The abuse, or even the
+use, of wine was chastised by fourscore strokes on the soles of the
+feet, and in the fervor of their primitive zeal, many secret sinners
+revealed their fault, and solicited their punishment. After some
+hesitation, the command of the Syrian army was delegated to Abu Obeidah,
+one of the fugitives of Mecca, and companions of Mahomet; whose zeal and
+devotion was assuaged, without being abated, by the singular mildness
+and benevolence of his temper. But in all the emergencies of war, the
+soldiers demanded the superior genius of Caled; and whoever might be
+the choice of the prince, the Sword of God was both in fact and fame the
+foremost leader of the Saracens. He obeyed without reluctance; [4711] he
+was consulted without jealousy; and such was the spirit of the man, or
+rather of the times, that Caled professed his readiness to serve under
+the banner of the faith, though it were in the hands of a child or an
+enemy. Glory, and riches, and dominion, were indeed promised to the
+victorious Mussulman; but he was carefully instructed, that if the goods
+of this life were his only incitement, they likewise would be his only
+reward.
+
+[Footnote 44: A separate history of the conquest of Syria has been
+composed by Al Wakidi, cadi of Bagdad, who was born A.D. 748, and died
+A.D. 822; he likewise wrote the conquest of Egypt, of Diarbekir, &c.
+Above the meagre and recent chronicles of the Arabians, Al Wakidi has
+the double merit of antiquity and copiousness. His tales and traditions
+afford an artless picture of the men and the times. Yet his narrative
+is too often defective, trifling, and improbable. Till something better
+shall be found, his learned and spiritual interpreter (Ockley, in
+his History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 21-342) will not deserve
+the petulant animadversion of Reiske, (Prodidagmata ad Magji Chalifae
+Tabulas, p. 236.) I am sorry to think that the labors of Ockley were
+consummated in a jail, (see his two prefaces to the 1st A.D. 1708, to
+the 2d, 1718, with the list of authors at the end.) * Note: M. Hamaker
+has clearly shown that neither of these works can be inscribed to Al
+Wakidi: they are not older than the end of the xith century or
+later than the middle of the xivth. Praefat. in Inc. Auct. LIb. de
+Expugnatione Memphidis, c. ix. x.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The instructions, &c., of the Syrian war are described
+by Al Wakidi and Ockley, tom. i. p. 22-27, &c. In the sequel it is
+necessary to contract, and needless to quote, their circumstantial
+narrative. My obligations to others shall be noticed.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Notwithstanding this precept, M. Pauw (Recherches sur les
+Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 192, edit. Lausanne) represents the Bedoweens
+as the implacable enemies of the Christian monks. For my own part, I
+am more inclined to suspect the avarice of the Arabian robbers, and the
+prejudices of the German philosopher. * Note: Several modern travellers
+(Mr. Fazakerley, in Walpole's Travels in the East, vol. xi. 371) give
+very amusing accounts of the terms on which the monks of Mount Sinai
+live with the neighboring Bedoweens. Such, probably, was their
+relative state in older times, wherever the Arab retained his Bedoween
+habits.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Even in the seventh century, the monks were generally
+laymen: 'hey wore their hair long and dishevelled, and shaved their
+heads when they were ordained priests. The circular tonsure was sacred
+and mysterious; it was the crown of thorns; but it was likewise a royal
+diadem, and every priest was a king, &c., (Thomassin, Discipline de
+l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 721-758, especially p. 737, 738.)]
+
+[Footnote 4711: Compare Price, p. 90.--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part III.
+
+
+One of the fifteen provinces of Syria, the cultivated lands to the
+eastward of the Jordan, had been decorated by Roman vanity with the name
+of _Arabia_; and the first arms of the Saracens were justified by the
+semblance of a national right. The country was enriched by the various
+benefits of trade; by the vigilance of the emperors it was covered with
+a line of forts; and the populous cities of Gerasa, Philadelphia, and
+Bosra, were secure, at least from a surprise, by the solid structure of
+their walls. The last of these cities was the eighteenth station from
+Medina: the road was familiar to the caravans of Hejaz and Irak, who
+annually visited this plenteous market of the province and the desert:
+the perpetual jealousy of the Arabs had trained the inhabitants to
+arms; and twelve thousand horse could sally from the gates of Bosra, an
+appellation which signifies, in the Syriac language, a strong tower of
+defence. Encouraged by their first success against the open towns and
+flying parties of the borders, a detachment of four thousand Moslems
+presumed to summon and attack the fortress of Bosra. They were oppressed
+by the numbers of the Syrians; they were saved by the presence of Caled,
+with fifteen hundred horse: he blamed the enterprise, restored the
+battle, and rescued his friend, the venerable Serjabil, who had vainly
+invoked the unity of God and the promises of the apostle. After a short
+repose, the Moslems performed their ablutions with sand instead of
+water; and the morning prayer was recited by Caled before they mounted
+on horseback. Confident in their strength, the people of Bosra threw
+open their gates, drew their forces into the plain, and swore to die in
+the defence of their religion. But a religion of peace was incapable of
+withstanding the fanatic cry of "Fight, fight! Paradise, paradise!" that
+reechoed in the ranks of the Saracens; and the uproar of the town,
+the ringing of bells, and the exclamations of the priests and monks
+increased the dismay and disorder of the Christians. With the loss of
+two hundred and thirty men, the Arabs remained masters of the field;
+and the ramparts of Bosra, in expectation of human or divine aid, were
+crowded with holy crosses and consecrated banners. The governor Romanus
+had recommended an early submission: despised by the people, and
+degraded from his office, he still retained the desire and opportunity
+of revenge. In a nocturnal interview, he informed the enemy of a
+subterraneous passage from his house under the wall of the city; the son
+of the caliph, with a hundred volunteers, were committed to the faith of
+this new ally, and their successful intrepidity gave an easy entrance
+to their companions. After Caled had imposed the terms of servitude and
+tribute, the apostate or convert avowed in the assembly of the people
+his meritorious treason: "I renounce your society," said Romanus, "both
+in this world and the world to come. And I deny him that was crucified,
+and whosoever worships him. And I choose God for my Lord, Islam for my
+faith, Mecca for my temple, the Moslems for my brethren, and Mahomet for
+my prophet; who was sent to lead us into the right way, and to exalt the
+true religion in spite of those who join partners with God."
+
+The conquest of Bosra, four days' journey from Damascus, encouraged the
+Arabs to besiege the ancient capital of Syria. At some distance from the
+walls, they encamped among the groves and fountains of that delicious
+territory, and the usual option of the Mahometan faith, of tribute or
+of war, was proposed to the resolute citizens, who had been lately
+strengthened by a reenforcement of five thousand Greeks. In the
+decline, as in the infancy, of the military art, a hostile defiance was
+frequently offered and accepted by the generals themselves: many a lance
+was shivered in the plain of Damascus, and the personal prowess of Caled
+was signalized in the first sally of the besieged. After an obstinate
+combat, he had overthrown and made prisoner one of the Christian
+leaders, a stout and worthy antagonist. He instantly mounted a fresh
+horse, the gift of the governor of Palmyra, and pushed forwards to the
+front of the battle. "Repose yourself for a moment," said his friend
+Derar, "and permit me to supply your place: you are fatigued with
+fighting with this dog." "O Dear!" replied the indefatigable Saracen,
+"we shall rest in the world to come. He that labors to-day shall rest
+to-morrow." With the same unabated ardor, Caled answered, encountered,
+and vanquished a second champion; and the heads of his two captives who
+refused to abandon their religion were indignantly hurled into the midst
+of the city. The event of some general and partial actions reduced the
+Damascenes to a closer defence: but a messenger, whom they dropped from
+the walls, returned with the promise of speedy and powerful succor, and
+their tumultuous joy conveyed the intelligence to the camp of the Arabs.
+After some debate, it was resolved by the generals to raise, or rather
+to suspend, the siege of Damascus, till they had given battle to the
+forces of the emperor. In the retreat, Caled would have chosen the more
+perilous station of the rear-guard; he modestly yielded to the wishes
+of Abu Obeidah. But in the hour of danger he flew to the rescue of his
+companion, who was rudely pressed by a sally of six thousand horse and
+ten thousand foot, and few among the Christians could relate at Damascus
+the circumstances of their defeat. The importance of the contest
+required the junction of the Saracens, who were dispersed on the
+frontiers of Syria and Palestine; and I shall transcribe one of the
+circular mandates which was addressed to Amrou, the future conqueror
+of Egypt. "In the name of the most merciful God: from Caled to Amrou,
+health and happiness. Know that thy brethren the Moslems design to march
+to Aiznadin, where there is an army of seventy thousand Greeks, who
+purpose to come against us, _that they may extinguish the light of
+God with their mouths; but God preserveth his light in spite of the
+infidels_. As soon therefore as this letter of mine shall be delivered
+to thy hands, come with those that are with thee to Aiznadin, where
+thou shalt find us if it please the most high God." The summons was
+cheerfully obeyed, and the forty-five thousand Moslems, who met on the
+same day, on the same spot ascribed to the blessing of Providence the
+effects of their activity and zeal.
+
+About four years after the triumph of the Persian war, the repose of
+Heraclius and the empire was again disturbed by a new enemy, the
+power of whose religion was more strongly felt, than it was
+clearly understood, by the Christians of the East. In his palace of
+Constantinople or Antioch, he was awakened by the invasion of Syria, the
+loss of Bosra, and the danger of Damascus. An army of seventy thousand
+veterans, or new levies, was assembled at Hems or Emesa, under the
+command of his general Werdan: and these troops consisting chiefly of
+cavalry, might be indifferently styled either Syrians, or Greeks, or
+Romans: _Syrians_, from the place of their birth or warfare; _Greeks_
+from the religion and language of their sovereign; and _Romans_, from
+the proud appellation which was still profaned by the successors of
+Constantine. On the plain of Aiznadin, as Werdan rode on a white mule
+decorated with gold chains, and surrounded with ensigns and standards,
+he was surprised by the near approach of a fierce and naked warrior, who
+had undertaken to view the state of the enemy. The adventurous valor of
+Derar was inspired, and has perhaps been adorned, by the enthusiasm of
+his age and country. The hatred of the Christians, the love of spoil,
+and the contempt of danger, were the ruling passions of the audacious
+Saracen; and the prospect of instant death could never shake his
+religious confidence, or ruffle the calmness of his resolution, or
+even suspend the frank and martial pleasantry of his humor. In the most
+hopeless enterprises, he was bold, and prudent, and fortunate: after
+innumerable hazards, after being thrice a prisoner in the hands of the
+infidels, he still survived to relate the achievements, and to enjoy
+the rewards, of the Syrian conquest. On this occasion, his single lance
+maintained a flying fight against thirty Romans, who were detached by
+Werdan; and, after killing or unhorsing seventeen of their number, Derar
+returned in safety to his applauding brethren. When his rashness was
+mildly censured by the general, he excused himself with the simplicity
+of a soldier. "Nay," said Derar, "I did not begin first: but they came
+out to take me, and I was afraid that God should see me turn my back:
+and indeed I fought in good earnest, and without doubt God assisted me
+against them; and had I not been apprehensive of disobeying your orders,
+I should not have come away as I did; and I perceive already that they
+will fall into our hands." In the presence of both armies, a venerable
+Greek advanced from the ranks with a liberal offer of peace; and the
+departure of the Saracens would have been purchased by a gift to each
+soldier, of a turban, a robe, and a piece of gold; ten robes and a
+hundred pieces to their leader; one hundred robes and a thousand pieces
+to the caliph. A smile of indignation expressed the refusal of Caled.
+"Ye Christian dogs, you know your option; the Koran, the tribute, or the
+sword. We are a people whose delight is in war, rather than in peace:
+and we despise your pitiful alms, since we shall be speedily masters
+of your wealth, your families, and your persons." Notwithstanding this
+apparent disdain, he was deeply conscious of the public danger: those
+who had been in Persia, and had seen the armies of Chosroes confessed
+that they never beheld a more formidable array. From the superiority of
+the enemy, the artful Saracen derived a fresh incentive of courage: "You
+see before you," said he, "the united force of the Romans; you cannot
+hope to escape, but you may conquer Syria in a single day. The event
+depends on your discipline and patience. Reserve yourselves till the
+evening. It was in the evening that the Prophet was accustomed to
+vanquish." During two successive engagements, his temperate firmness
+sustained the darts of the enemy, and the murmurs of his troops. At
+length, when the spirits and quivers of the adverse line were almost
+exhausted, Caled gave the signal of onset and victory. The remains of
+the Imperial army fled to Antioch, or Cæsarea, or Damascus; and the
+death of four hundred and seventy Moslems was compensated by the opinion
+that they had sent to hell above fifty thousand of the infidels. The
+spoil was inestimable; many banners and crosses of gold and silver,
+precious stones, silver and gold chains, and innumerable suits of the
+richest armor and apparel. The general distribution was postponed till
+Damascus should be taken; but the seasonable supply of arms became the
+instrument of new victories. The glorious intelligence was transmitted
+to the throne of the caliph; and the Arabian tribes, the coldest or most
+hostile to the prophet's mission, were eager and importunate to share
+the harvest of Syria.
+
+The sad tidings were carried to Damascus by the speed of grief and
+terror; and the inhabitants beheld from their walls the return of the
+heroes of Aiznadin. Amrou led the van at the head of nine thousand
+horse: the bands of the Saracens succeeded each other in formidable
+review; and the rear was closed by Caled in person, with the standard of
+the black eagle. To the activity of Derar he intrusted the commission
+of patrolling round the city with two thousand horse, of scouring the
+plain, and of intercepting all succor or intelligence. The rest of the
+Arabian chiefs were fixed in their respective stations before the
+seven gates of Damascus; and the siege was renewed with fresh vigor and
+confidence. The art, the labor, the military engines, of the Greeks
+and Romans are seldom to be found in the simple, though successful,
+operations of the Saracens: it was sufficient for them to invest a
+city with arms, rather than with trenches; to repel the allies of
+the besieged; to attempt a stratagem or an assault; or to expect the
+progress of famine and discontent. Damascus would have acquiesced in
+the trial of Aiznadin, as a final and peremptory sentence between the
+emperor and the caliph; her courage was rekindled by the example and
+authority of Thomas, a noble Greek, illustrious in a private condition
+by the alliance of Heraclius. The tumult and illumination of the night
+proclaimed the design of the morning sally; and the Christian hero, who
+affected to despise the enthusiasm of the Arabs, employed the resource
+of a similar superstition. At the principal gate, in the sight of both
+armies, a lofty crucifix was erected; the bishop, with his clergy,
+accompanied the march, and laid the volume of the New Testament before
+the image of Jesus; and the contending parties were scandalized or
+edified by a prayer that the Son of God would defend his servants and
+vindicate his truth. The battle raged with incessant fury; and the
+dexterity of Thomas, an incomparable archer, was fatal to the boldest
+Saracens, till their death was revenged by a female heroine. The wife
+of Aban, who had followed him to the holy war, embraced her expiring
+husband. "Happy," said she, "happy art thou, my dear: thou art gone to
+they Lord, who first joined us together, and then parted us asunder. I
+will revenge thy death, and endeavor to the utmost of my power to come
+to the place where thou art, because I love thee. Henceforth shall no
+man ever touch me more, for I have dedicated myself to the service of
+God." Without a groan, without a tear, she washed the corpse of her
+husband, and buried him with the usual rites. Then grasping the manly
+weapons, which in her native land she was accustomed to wield, the
+intrepid widow of Aban sought the place where his murderer fought in
+the thickest of the battle. Her first arrow pierced the hand of his
+standard-bearer; her second wounded Thomas in the eye; and the fainting
+Christians no longer beheld their ensign or their leader. Yet the
+generous champion of Damascus refused to withdraw to his palace: his
+wound was dressed on the rampart; the fight was continued till the
+evening; and the Syrians rested on their arms. In the silence of the
+night, the signal was given by a stroke on the great bell; the gates
+were thrown open, and each gate discharged an impetuous column on the
+sleeping camp of the Saracens. Caled was the first in arms: at the
+head of four hundred horse he flew to the post of danger, and the tears
+trickled down his iron cheeks, as he uttered a fervent ejaculation; "O
+God, who never sleepest, look upon they servants, and do not deliver
+them into the hands of their enemies." The valor and victory of Thomas
+were arrested by the presence of the _Sword of God_; with the knowledge
+of the peril, the Moslems recovered their ranks, and charged the
+assailants in the flank and rear. After the loss of thousands, the
+Christian general retreated with a sigh of despair, and the pursuit of
+the Saracens was checked by the military engines of the rampart.
+
+After a siege of seventy days, the patience, and perhaps the provisions,
+of the Damascenes were exhausted; and the bravest of their chiefs
+submitted to the hard dictates of necessity. In the occurrences of peace
+and war, they had been taught to dread the fierceness of Caled, and to
+revere the mild virtues of Abu Obeidah. At the hour of midnight, one
+hundred chosen deputies of the clergy and people were introduced to the
+tent of that venerable commander. He received and dismissed them with
+courtesy. They returned with a written agreement, on the faith of
+a companion of Mahomet, that all hostilities should cease; that the
+voluntary emigrants might depart in safety, with as much as they could
+carry away of their effects; and that the tributary subjects of the
+caliph should enjoy their lands and houses, with the use and possession
+of seven churches. On these terms, the most respectable hostages,
+and the gate nearest to his camp, were delivered into his hands: his
+soldiers imitated the moderation of their chief; and he enjoyed the
+submissive gratitude of a people whom he had rescued from destruction.
+But the success of the treaty had relaxed their vigilance, and in the
+same moment the opposite quarter of the city was betrayed and taken by
+assault. A party of a hundred Arabs had opened the eastern gate to a
+more inexorable foe. "No quarter," cried the rapacious and sanguinary
+Caled, "no quarter to the enemies of the Lord:" his trumpets sounded,
+and a torrent of Christian blood was poured down the streets of
+Damascus. When he reached the church of St. Mary, he was astonished and
+provoked by the peaceful aspect of his companions; their swords were
+in the scabbard, and they were surrounded by a multitude of priests and
+monks. Abu Obeidah saluted the general: "God," said he, "has delivered
+the city into my hands by way of surrender, and has saved the believers
+the trouble of fighting." "And am I not," replied the indignant Caled,
+"am I not the lieutenant of the commander of the faithful? Have I not
+taken the city by storm? The unbelievers shall perish by the sword. Fall
+on." The hungry and cruel Arabs would have obeyed the welcome command;
+and Damascus was lost, if the benevolence of Abu Obeidah had not been
+supported by a decent and dignified firmness. Throwing himself between
+the trembling citizens and the most eager of the Barbarians, he adjured
+them, by the holy name of God, to respect his promise, to suspend their
+fury, and to wait the determination of their chiefs. The chiefs
+retired into the church of St. Mary; and after a vehement debate, Caled
+submitted in some measure to the reason and authority of his colleague;
+who urged the sanctity of a covenant, the advantage as well as the honor
+which the Moslems would derive from the punctual performance of their
+word, and the obstinate resistance which they must encounter from the
+distrust and despair of the rest of the Syrian cities. It was agreed
+that the sword should be sheathed, that the part of Damascus which
+had surrendered to Abu Obeidah, should be immediately entitled to the
+benefit of his capitulation, and that the final decision should be
+referred to the justice and wisdom of the caliph. A large majority of
+the people accepted the terms of toleration and tribute; and Damascus is
+still peopled by twenty thousand Christians. But the valiant Thomas,
+and the free-born patriots who had fought under his banner, embraced
+the alternative of poverty and exile. In the adjacent meadow, a numerous
+encampment was formed of priests and laymen, of soldiers and citizens,
+of women and children: they collected, with haste and terror, their
+most precious movables; and abandoned, with loud lamentations, or silent
+anguish, their native homes, and the pleasant banks of the Pharpar.
+The inflexible soul of Caled was not touched by the spectacle of their
+distress: he disputed with the Damascenes the property of a magazine of
+corn; endeavored to exclude the garrison from the benefit of the treaty;
+consented, with reluctance, that each of the fugitives should arm
+himself with a sword, or a lance, or a bow; and sternly declared, that,
+after a respite of three days, they might be pursued and treated as the
+enemies of the Moslems.
+
+The passion of a Syrian youth completed the ruin of the exiles of
+Damascus. A nobleman of the city, of the name of Jonas, was betrothed
+to a wealthy maiden; but her parents delayed the consummation of his
+nuptials, and their daughter was persuaded to escape with the man whom
+she had chosen. They corrupted the nightly watchmen of the gate Keisan;
+the lover, who led the way, was encompassed by a squadron of Arabs; but
+his exclamation in the Greek tongue, "The bird is taken," admonished his
+mistress to hasten her return. In the presence of Caled, and of death,
+the unfortunate Jonas professed his belief in one God and his apostle
+Mahomet; and continued, till the season of his martyrdom, to discharge
+the duties of a brave and sincere Mussulman. When the city was taken, he
+flew to the monastery, where Eudocia had taken refuge; but the lover was
+forgotten; the apostate was scorned; she preferred her religion to her
+country; and the justice of Caled, though deaf to mercy, refused to
+detain by force a male or female inhabitant of Damascus. Four days was
+the general confined to the city by the obligation of the treaty, and
+the urgent cares of his new conquest. His appetite for blood and rapine
+would have been extinguished by the hopeless computation of time and
+distance; but he listened to the importunities of Jonas, who assured
+him that the weary fugitives might yet be overtaken. At the head of four
+thousand horse, in the disguise of Christian Arabs, Caled undertook the
+pursuit. They halted only for the moments of prayer; and their guide had
+a perfect knowledge of the country. For a long way the footsteps of the
+Damascenes were plain and conspicuous: they vanished on a sudden; but
+the Saracens were comforted by the assurance that the caravan had turned
+aside into the mountains, and must speedily fall into their hands.
+In traversing the ridges of the Libanus, they endured intolerable
+hardships, and the sinking spirits of the veteran fanatics were
+supported and cheered by the unconquerable ardor of a lover. From a
+peasant of the country, they were informed that the emperor had sent
+orders to the colony of exiles to pursue without delay the road of
+the sea-coast, and of Constantinople, apprehensive, perhaps, that the
+soldiers and people of Antioch might be discouraged by the sight and
+the story of their sufferings. The Saracens were conducted through the
+territories of Gabala and Laodicea, at a cautious distance from the
+walls of the cities; the rain was incessant, the night was dark, a
+single mountain separated them from the Roman army; and Caled, ever
+anxious for the safety of his brethren, whispered an ominous dream
+in the ear of his companion. With the dawn of day, the prospect again
+cleared, and they saw before them, in a pleasant valley, the tents of
+Damascus. After a short interval of repose and prayer, Caled divided his
+cavalry into four squadrons, committing the first to his faithful Derar,
+and reserving the last for himself. They successively rushed on the
+promiscuous multitude, insufficiently provided with arms, and already
+vanquished by sorrow and fatigue. Except a captive, who was pardoned and
+dismissed, the Arabs enjoyed the satisfaction of believing that not a
+Christian of either sex escaped the edge of their cimeters. The gold and
+silver of Damascus was scattered over the camp, and a royal wardrobe of
+three hundred load of silk might clothe an army of naked Barbarians.
+In the tumult of the battle, Jonas sought and found the object of his
+pursuit: but her resentment was inflamed by the last act of his perfidy;
+and as Eudocia struggled in his hateful embraces, she struck a dagger to
+her heart. Another female, the widow of Thomas, and the real or supposed
+daughter of Heraclius, was spared and released without a ransom; but
+the generosity of Caled was the effect of his contempt; and the haughty
+Saracen insulted, by a message of defiance, the throne of the Cæsars.
+Caled had penetrated above a hundred and fifty miles into the heart of
+the Roman province: he returned to Damascus with the same secrecy and
+speed On the accession of Omar, the _Sword of God_ was removed from
+the command; but the caliph, who blamed the rashness, was compelled to
+applaud the vigor and conduct, of the enterprise.
+
+Another expedition of the conquerors of Damascus will equally display
+their avidity and their contempt for the riches of the present world.
+They were informed that the produce and manufactures of the country were
+annually collected in the fair of Abyla, [64] about thirty miles from
+the city; that the cell of a devout hermit was visited at the same
+time by a multitude of pilgrims; and that the festival of trade and
+superstition would be ennobled by the nuptials of the daughter of the
+governor of Tripoli. Abdallah, the son of Jaafar, a glorious and holy
+martyr, undertook, with a banner of five hundred horse, the pious and
+profitable commission of despoiling the infidels. As he approached the
+fair of Abyla, he was astonished by the report of this mighty concourse
+of Jews and Christians, Greeks, and Armenians, of natives of Syria and
+of strangers of Egypt, to the number of ten thousand, besides a guard of
+five thousand horse that attended the person of the bride. The Saracens
+paused: "For my own part," said Abdallah, "I dare not go back: our foes
+are many, our danger is great, but our reward is splendid and secure,
+either in this life or in the life to come. Let every man, according
+to his inclination, advance or retire." Not a Mussulman deserted his
+standard. "Lead the way," said Abdallah to his Christian guide, "and you
+shall see what the companions of the prophet can perform." They charged
+in five squadrons; but after the first advantage of the surprise,
+they were encompassed and almost overwhelmed by the multitude of their
+enemies; and their valiant band is fancifully compared to a white spot
+in the skin of a black camel. [65] About the hour of sunset, when their
+weapons dropped from their hands, when they panted on the verge of
+eternity, they discovered an approaching cloud of dust; they heard the
+welcome sound of the tecbir, [66] and they soon perceived the standard
+of Caled, who flew to their relief with the utmost speed of his cavalry.
+The Christians were broken by his attack, and slaughtered in their
+flight, as far as the river of Tripoli. They left behind them the
+various riches of the fair; the merchandises that were exposed for sale,
+the money that was brought for purchase, the gay decorations of
+the nuptials, and the governor's daughter, with forty of her female
+attendants.
+
+The fruits, provisions, and furniture, the money, plate, and jewels,
+were diligently laden on the backs of horses, asses, and mules; and the
+holy robbers returned in triumph to Damascus. The hermit, after a short
+and angry controversy with Caled, declined the crown of martyrdom, and
+was left alive in the solitary scene of blood and devastation.
+
+[Footnote 64: Dair Abil Kodos. After retrenching the last word, the
+epithet, holy, I discover the Abila of Lysanias between Damascus and
+Heliopolis: the name (Abil signifies a vineyard) concurs with the
+situation to justify my conjecture, (Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p 317,
+tom. ii. p. 526, 527.)]
+
+[Footnote 65: I am bolder than Mr. Ockley, (vol. i. p. 164,) who dares
+not insert this figurative expression in the text, though he observes in
+a marginal note, that the Arabians often borrow their similes from that
+useful and familiar animal. The reindeer may be equally famous in the
+songs of the Laplanders.]
+
+[Footnote 66: We hear the tecbir; so the Arabs call Their shout of
+onset, when with loud appeal They challenge heaven, as if demanding
+conquest. This word, so formidable in their holy wars, is a verb active,
+(says Ockley in his index,) of the second conjugation, from Kabbara,
+which signifies saying Alla Acbar, God is most mighty!]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part IV.
+
+Syria, [67] one of the countries that have been improved by the most
+early cultivation, is not unworthy of the preference. [68] The heat of
+the climate is tempered by the vicinity of the sea and mountains, by the
+plenty of wood and water; and the produce of a fertile soil affords the
+subsistence, and encourages the propagation, of men and animals. From
+the age of David to that of Heraclius, the country was overspread
+with ancient and flourishing cities: the inhabitants were numerous and
+wealthy; and, after the slow ravage of despotism and superstition, after
+the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could still attract
+and reward the rapacious tribes of the desert. A plain, of ten days'
+journey, from Damascus to Aleppo and Antioch, is watered, on the western
+side, by the winding course of the Orontes. The hills of Libanus and
+Anti-Libanus are planted from north to south, between the Orontes and
+the Mediterranean; and the epithet of hollow (Coelesyria) was applied to
+a long and fruitful valley, which is confined in the same direction,
+by the two ridges of snowy mountains. [69] Among the cities, which are
+enumerated by Greek and Oriental names in the geography and conquest
+of Syria, we may distinguish Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis or Baalbec, the
+former as the metropolis of the plain, the latter as the capital of the
+valley. Under the last of the Caesars, they were strong and populous;
+the turrets glittered from afar: an ample space was covered with public
+and private buildings; and the citizens were illustrious by their
+spirit, or at least by their pride; by their riches, or at least by
+their luxury. In the days of Paganism, both Emesa and Heliopolis were
+addicted to the worship of Baal, or the sun; but the decline of their
+superstition and splendor has been marked by a singular variety of
+fortune. Not a vestige remains of the temple of Emesa, which was
+equalled in poetic style to the summits of Mount Libanus, [70] while
+the ruins of Baalbec, invisible to the writers of antiquity, excite the
+curiosity and wonder of the European traveller. [71] The measure of the
+temple is two hundred feet in length, and one hundred in breadth: the
+front is adorned with a double portico of eight columns; fourteen may be
+counted on either side; and each column, forty-five feet in height, is
+composed of three massy blocks of stone or marble. The proportions
+and ornaments of the Corinthian order express the architecture of the
+Greeks: but as Baalbec has never been the seat of a monarch, we are at
+a loss to conceive how the expense of these magnificent structures could
+be supplied by private or municipal liberality. [72] From the conquest
+of Damascus the Saracens proceeded to Heliopolis and Emesa: but I
+shall decline the repetition of the sallies and combats which have been
+already shown on a larger scale. In the prosecution of the war, their
+policy was not less effectual than their sword. By short and separate
+truces they dissolved the union of the enemy; accustomed the Syrians
+to compare their friendship with their enmity; familiarized the idea
+of their language, religion, and manners; and exhausted, by clandestine
+purchase, the magazines and arsenals of the cities which they returned
+to besiege. They aggravated the ransom of the more wealthy, or the more
+obstinate; and Chalcis alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold,
+five thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as many
+figs and olives as would load five thousand asses. But the terms of
+truce or capitulation were faithfully observed; and the lieutenant
+of the caliph, who had promised not to enter the walls of the captive
+Baalbec, remained tranquil and immovable in his tent till the jarring
+factions solicited the interposition of a foreign master. The conquest
+of the plain and valley of Syria was achieved in less than two years.
+Yet the commander of the faithful reproved the slowness of their
+progress; and the Saracens, bewailing their fault with tears of rage and
+repentance, called aloud on their chiefs to lead them forth to fight the
+battles of the Lord. In a recent action, under the walls of Emesa,
+an Arabian youth, the cousin of Caled, was heard aloud to exclaim,
+"Methinks I see the black-eyed girls looking upon me; one of whom,
+should she appear in this world, all mankind would die for love of her.
+And I see in the hand of one of them a handkerchief of green silk, and
+a cap of precious stones, and she beckons me, and calls out, Come hither
+quickly, for I love thee." With these words, charging the Christians, he
+made havoc wherever he went, till, observed at length by the governor of
+Hems, he was struck through with a javelin.
+
+[Footnote 67: In the Geography of Abulfeda, the description of Syria,
+his native country, is the most interesting and authentic portion. It
+was published in Arabic and Latin, Lipsiae, 1766, in quarto, with the
+learned notes of Kochler and Reiske, and some extracts of geography and
+natural history from Ibn Ol Wardii. Among the modern travels, Pocock's
+Description of the East (of Syria and Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 88-209)
+is a work of superior learning and dignity; but the author too often
+confounds what he had seen and what he had read.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The praises of Dionysius are just and lively. Syria, (in
+Periegesi, v. 902, in tom. iv. Geograph. Minor. Hudson.) In another
+place he styles the country differently, (v. 898.) This poetical
+geographer lived in the age of Augustus, and his description of the
+world is illustrated by the Greek commentary of Eustathius, who paid the
+same compliment to Homer and Dionysius, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. l. iv.
+c. 2, tom. iii. p. 21, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 69: The topography of the Libanus and Anti-Libanus is
+excellently described by the learning and sense of Reland, (Palestin.
+tom. i. p. 311-326)]
+
+[Footnote 70:
+
+ --Emesae fastigia celsa renident.
+   Nam diffusa solo latus explicat; ac subit auras
+   Turribus in coelum nitentibus: incola claris
+   Cor studiis acuit...
+   Denique flammicomo devoti pectora soli
+   Vitam agitant.  Libanus frondosa cacumina turget.
+   Et tamen his certant celsi fastigia templi.
+
+These verses of the Latin version of Rufus Avienus are wanting in the
+Greek original of Dionysius; and since they are likewise unnoticed by
+Eustathius, I must, with Fabricius, (Bibliot. Latin. tom. iii. p. 153,
+edit. Ernesti,) and against Salmasius, (ad Vopiscum, p. 366, 367, in
+Hist. August.,) ascribed them to the fancy, rather than the Mss., of
+Avienus.]
+
+[Footnote 71: I am much better satisfied with Maundrell's slight octavo,
+(Journey, p. 134-139), than with the pompous folio of Dr. Pocock,
+(Description of the East, vol. ii. p. 106-113;) but every preceding
+account is eclipsed by the magnificent description and drawings of Mm.
+Dawkins and Wood, who have transported into England the ruins of Pamyra
+and Baalbec.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The Orientals explain the prodigy by a never-failing
+expedient. The edifices of Baalbec were constructed by the fairies or
+the genii, (Hist. de Timour Bec, tom. iii. l. v. c. 23, p. 311, 312.
+Voyage d'Otter, tom. i. p. 83.) With less absurdity, but with equal
+ignorance, Abulfeda and Ibn Chaukel ascribe them to the Sabaeans or
+Aadites Non sunt in omni Syria aedificia magnificentiora his, (Tabula
+Syria p. 108.)]
+
+It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of their valor
+and enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who was taught, by
+repeated losses, that the rovers of the desert had undertaken, and would
+speedily achieve, a regular and permanent conquest. From the provinces
+of Europe and Asia, fourscore thousand soldiers were transported by sea
+and land to Antioch and Caesarea: the light troops of the army consisted
+of sixty thousand Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan. Under the
+banner of Jabalah, the last of their princes, they marched in the
+van; and it was a maxim of the Greeks, that for the purpose of cutting
+diamond, a diamond was the most effectual. Heraclius withheld his person
+from the dangers of the field; but his presumption, or perhaps his
+despondency, suggested a peremptory order, that the fate of the province
+and the war should be decided by a single battle. The Syrians were
+attached to the standard of Rome and of the cross: but the noble, the
+citizen, the peasant, were exasperated by the injustice and cruelty of
+a licentious host, who oppressed them as subjects, and despised them
+as strangers and aliens. [73] A report of these mighty preparations was
+conveyed to the Saracens in their camp of Emesa, and the chiefs, though
+resolved to fight, assembled a council: the faith of Abu Obeidah would
+have expected on the same spot the glory of martyrdom; the wisdom
+of Caled advised an honorable retreat to the skirts of Palestine and
+Arabia, where they might await the succors of their friends, and the
+attack of the unbelievers. A speedy messenger soon returned from the
+throne of Medina, with the blessings of Omar and Ali, the prayers of the
+widows of the prophet, and a reenforcement of eight thousand Moslems. In
+their way they overturned a detachment of Greeks, and when they
+joined at Yermuk the camp of their brethren, they found the pleasing
+intelligence, that Caled had already defeated and scattered the
+Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan. In the neighborhood of Bosra,
+the springs of Mount Hermon descend in a torrent to the plain of
+Decapolis, or ten cities; and the Hieromax, a name which has been
+corrupted to Yermuk, is lost, after a short course, in the Lake of
+Tiberias. [74] The banks of this obscure stream were illustrated by a
+long and bloody encounter. [7411] On this momentous occasion, the public
+voice, and the modesty of Abu Obeidah, restored the command to the most
+deserving of the Moslems. Caled assumed his station in the front, his
+colleague was posted in the rear, that the disorder of the fugitive
+might be checked by his venerable aspect, and the sight of the yellow
+banner which Mahomet had displayed before the walls of Chaibar. The last
+line was occupied by the sister of Derar, with the Arabian women who had
+enlisted in this holy war, who were accustomed to wield the bow and
+the lance, and who in a moment of captivity had defended, against
+the uncircumcised ravishers, their chastity and religion. [75] The
+exhortation of the generals was brief and forcible: "Paradise is before
+you, the devil and hell-fire in your rear." Yet such was the weight
+of the Roman cavalry, that the right wing of the Arabs was broken and
+separated from the main body. Thrice did they retreat in disorder, and
+thrice were they driven back to the charge by the reproaches and blows
+of the women. In the intervals of action, Abu Obeidah visited the tents
+of his brethren, prolonged their repose by repeating at once the prayers
+of two different hours, bound up their wounds with his own hands, and
+administered the comfortable reflection, that the infidels partook of
+their sufferings without partaking of their reward. Four thousand and
+thirty of the Moslems were buried in the field of battle; and the skill
+of the Armenian archers enabled seven hundred to boast that they had
+lost an eye in that meritorious service. The veterans of the Syrian war
+acknowledged that it was the hardest and most doubtful of the days which
+they had seen. But it was likewise the most decisive: many thousands
+of the Greeks and Syrians fell by the swords of the Arabs; many were
+slaughtered, after the defeat, in the woods and mountains; many, by
+mistaking the ford, were drowned in the waters of the Yermuk; and
+however the loss may be magnified, [76] the Christian writers confess
+and bewail the bloody punishment of their sins. [77] Manuel, the Roman
+general, was either killed at Damascus, or took refuge in the monastery
+of Mount Sinai. An exile in the Byzantine court, Jabalah lamented the
+manners of Arabia, and his unlucky preference of the Christian cause.
+[78] He had once inclined to the profession of Islam; but in the
+pilgrimage of Mecca, Jabalah was provoked to strike one of his brethren,
+and fled with amazement from the stern and equal justice of the caliph
+These victorious Saracens enjoyed at Damascus a month of pleasure and
+repose: the spoil was divided by the discretion of Abu Obeidah: an equal
+share was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a double portion
+was reserved for the noble coursers of the Arabian breed.
+
+[Footnote 73: I have read somewhere in Tacitus, or Grotius, Subjectos
+habent tanquam suos, viles tanquam alienos. Some Greek officers ravished
+the wife, and murdered the child, of their Syrian landlord; and Manuel
+smiled at his undutiful complaint.]
+
+[Footnote 74: See Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p. 272, 283, tom. ii. p.
+773, 775. This learned professor was equal to the task of describing
+the Holy Land, since he was alike conversant with Greek and Latin, with
+Hebrew and Arabian literature. The Yermuk, or Hieromax, is noticed by
+Cellarius (Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 392) and D'Anville, (Geographie
+Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 185.) The Arabs, and even Abulfeda himself, do not
+seem to recognize the scene of their victory.]
+
+[Footnote 7411: Compare Price, p. 79. The army of the Romans is swoller
+to 400,000 men of which 70,000 perished.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 75: These women were of the tribe of the Hamyarites, who
+derived their origin from the ancient Amalekites. Their females were
+accustomed to ride on horseback, and to fight like the Amazons of old,
+(Ockley, vol. i. p. 67.)]
+
+[Footnote 76: We killed of them, says Abu Obeidah to the caliph, one
+hundred and fifty thousand, and made prisoners forty thousand, (Ockley
+vol. i. p. 241.) As I cannot doubt his veracity, nor believe his
+computation, I must suspect that the Arabic historians indulge
+themselves in the practice of comparing speeches and letters for their
+heroes.]
+
+[Footnote 77: After deploring the sins of the Christians, Theophanes,
+adds, (Chronograph. p. 276,) does he mean Aiznadin? His account is brief
+and obscure, but he accuses the numbers of the enemy, the adverse wind,
+and the cloud of dust. (Chronograph. p. 280.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 70, 71,) who transcribes
+the poetical complaint of Jabalah himself, and some panegyrical strains
+of an Arabian poet, to whom the chief of Gassan sent from Constantinople
+a gift of five hundred pieces of gold by the hands of the ambassador of
+Omar.]
+
+After the battle of Yermuk, the Roman army no longer appeared in the
+field; and the Saracens might securely choose, among the fortified towns
+of Syria, the first object of their attack. They consulted the caliph
+whether they should march to Caesarea or Jerusalem; and the advice of
+Ali determined the immediate siege of the latter. To a profane eye,
+Jerusalem was the first or second capital of Palestine; but after Mecca
+and Medina, it was revered and visited by the devout Moslems, as the
+temple of the Holy Land which had been sanctified by the revelation of
+Moses, of Jesus, and of Mahomet himself. The son of Abu Sophian was
+sent with five thousand Arabs to try the first experiment of surprise
+or treaty; but on the eleventh day, the town was invested by the whole
+force of Abu Obeidah. He addressed the customary summons to the chief
+commanders and people of Aelia. [79]
+
+[Footnote 79: In the name of the city, the profane prevailed over the
+sacred Jerusalem was known to the devout Christians, (Euseb. de Martyr
+Palest. c xi.;) but the legal and popular appellation of Aelia (the
+colony of Aelius Hadrianus) has passed from the Romans to the Arabs.
+(Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p. 207, tom. ii. p. 835. D'Herbelot,
+Bibliotheque Orientale, Cods, p. 269, Ilia, p. 420.) The epithet of Al
+Cods, the Holy, is used as the proper name of Jerusalem.]
+
+"Health and happiness to every one that follows the right way! We
+require of you to testify that there is but one God, and that Mahomet is
+his apostle. If you refuse this, consent to pay tribute, and be under us
+forthwith. Otherwise I shall bring men against you who love death better
+than you do the drinking of wine or eating hog's flesh. Nor will I ever
+stir from you, if it please God, till I have destroyed those that fight
+for you, and made slaves of your children." But the city was defended
+on every side by deep valleys and steep ascents; since the invasion of
+Syria, the walls and towers had been anxiously restored; the bravest of
+the fugitives of Yermuk had stopped in the nearest place of refuge; and
+in the defence of the sepulchre of Christ, the natives and strangers
+might feel some sparks of the enthusiasm, which so fiercely glowed in
+the bosoms of the Saracens. The siege of Jerusalem lasted four months;
+not a day was lost without some action of sally or assault; the military
+engines incessantly played from the ramparts; and the inclemency of
+the winter was still more painful and destructive to the Arabs. The
+Christians yielded at length to the perseverance of the besiegers.
+The patriarch Sophronius appeared on the walls, and by the voice of
+an interpreter demanded a conference. [7911] After a vain attempt to
+dissuade the lieutenant of the caliph from his impious enterprise, he
+proposed, in the name of the people, a fair capitulation, with this
+extraordinary clause, that the articles of security should be ratified
+by the authority and presence of Omar himself. The question was debated
+in the council of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice
+of Ali, persuaded the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and
+enemies; and the simplicity of his journey is more illustrious than the
+royal pageants of vanity and oppression. The conqueror of Persia and
+Syria was mounted on a red camel, which carried, besides his person,
+a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern bottle of
+water. Wherever he halted, the company, without distinction, was invited
+to partake of his homely fare, and the repast was consecrated by the
+prayer and exhortation of the commander of the faithful. [80] But
+in this expedition or pilgrimage, his power was exercised in the
+administration of justice: he reformed the licentious polygamy of
+the Arabs, relieved the tributaries from extortion and cruelty, and
+chastised the luxury of the Saracens, by despoiling them of their rich
+silks, and dragging them on their faces in the dirt. When he came
+within sight of Jerusalem, the caliph cried with a loud voice, "God is
+victorious. O Lord, give us an easy conquest!" and, pitching his tent
+of coarse hair, calmly seated himself on the ground. After signing
+the capitulation, he entered the city without fear or precaution; and
+courteously discoursed with the patriarch concerning its religious
+antiquities. [81] Sophronius bowed before his new master, and secretly
+muttered, in the words of Daniel, "The abomination of desolation is in
+the holy place." [82] At the hour of prayer they stood together in
+the church of the resurrection; but the caliph refused to perform his
+devotions, and contented himself with praying on the steps of the church
+of Constantine. To the patriarch he disclosed his prudent and honorable
+motive. "Had I yielded," said Omar, "to your request, the Moslems of a
+future age would have infringed the treaty under color of imitating
+my example." By his command the ground of the temple of Solomon was
+prepared for the foundation of a mosch; [83] and, during a residence
+of ten days, he regulated the present and future state of his Syrian
+conquests. Medina might be jealous, lest the caliph should be
+detained by the sanctity of Jerusalem or the beauty of Damascus; her
+apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and voluntary return to the
+tomb of the apostle. [84]
+
+[Footnote 7911: See the explanation of this in Price, with the prophecy
+which was hereby fulfilled, p 85.--M]
+
+[Footnote 80: The singular journey and equipage of Omar are described
+(besides Ockley, vol. i. p. 250) by Murtadi, (Merveilles de l'Egypte, p.
+200-202.)]
+
+[Footnote 81: The Arabs boast of an old prophecy preserved at Jerusalem,
+and describing the name, the religion, and the person of Omar, the
+future conqueror. By such arts the Jews are said to have soothed the
+pride of their foreign masters, Cyrus and Alexander, (Joseph. Ant. Jud.
+l. xi c. 1, 8, p. 447, 579-582.)]
+
+[Footnote 82: Theophan. Chronograph. p. 281. This prediction, which had
+already served for Antiochus and the Romans, was again refitted for
+the present occasion, by the economy of Sophronius, one of the deepest
+theologians of the Monothelite controversy.]
+
+[Footnote 83: According to the accurate survey of D'Anville,
+(Dissertation sun l'ancienne Jerusalem, p. 42-54,) the mosch of Omar,
+enlarged and embellished by succeeding caliphs, covered the ground of
+the ancient temple, (says Phocas,) a length of 215, a breadth of 172,
+toises. The Nubian geographer declares, that this magnificent structure
+was second only in size and beauty to the great mosch of Cordova, (p.
+113,) whose present state Mr. Swinburne has so elegantly represented,
+(Travels into Spain, p. 296-302.)]
+
+[Footnote 84: Of the many Arabic tarikhs or chronicles of Jerusalem,
+(D'Herbelot, p. 867,) Ockley found one among the Pocock Mss. of Oxford,
+(vol. i. p. 257,) which he has used to supply the defective narrative of
+Al Wakidi.]
+
+To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war the caliph had formed two
+separate armies; a chosen detachment, under Amrou and Yezid, was left in
+the camp of Palestine; while the larger division, under the standard
+of Abu Obeidah and Caled, marched away to the north against Antioch
+and Aleppo. The latter of these, the Beraea of the Greeks, was not
+yet illustrious as the capital of a province or a kingdom; and the
+inhabitants, by anticipating their submission and pleading their
+poverty, obtained a moderate composition for their lives and religion.
+But the castle of Aleppo, [85] distinct from the city, stood erect on
+a lofty artificial mound the sides were sharpened to a precipice, and
+faced with free-stone; and the breadth of the ditch might be filled with
+water from the neighboring springs. After the loss of three thousand
+men, the garrison was still equal to the defence; and Youkinna, their
+valiant and hereditary chief, had murdered his brother, a holy monk,
+for daring to pronounce the name of peace. In a siege of four or five
+months, the hardest of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens
+were killed and wounded: their removal to the distance of a mile could
+not seduce the vigilance of Youkinna; nor could the Christians be
+terrified by the execution of three hundred captives, whom they beheaded
+before the castle wall. The silence, and at length the complaints,
+of Abu Obeidah informed the caliph that their hope and patience were
+consumed at the foot of this impregnable fortress. "I am variously
+affected," replied Omar, "by the difference of your success; but I
+charge you by no means to raise the siege of the castle. Your retreat
+would diminish the reputation of our arms, and encourage the infidels
+to fall upon you on all sides. Remain before Aleppo till God shall
+determine the event, and forage with your horse round the adjacent
+country." The exhortation of the commander of the faithful was fortified
+by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes of Arabia, who arrived in
+the camp on horses or camels. Among these was Dames, of a servile birth,
+but of gigantic size and intrepid resolution. The forty-seventh day of
+his service he proposed, with only thirty men, to make an attempt on the
+castle. The experience and testimony of Caled recommended his offer; and
+Abu Obeidah admonished his brethren not to despise the baser origin
+of Dames, since he himself, could he relinquish the public care, would
+cheerfully serve under the banner of the slave. His design was covered
+by the appearance of a retreat; and the camp of the Saracens was pitched
+about a league from Aleppo. The thirty adventurers lay in ambush at the
+foot of the hill; and Dames at length succeeded in his inquiries, though
+he was provoked by the ignorance of his Greek captives. "God curse these
+dogs," said the illiterate Arab; "what a strange barbarous language they
+speak!" At the darkest hour of the night, he scaled the most accessible
+height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the stones
+were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the guard less
+vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on each other's
+shoulders, and the weight of the column was sustained on the broad and
+sinewy back of the gigantic slave. The foremost in this painful ascent
+could grasp and climb the lowest part of the battlements; they silently
+stabbed and cast down the sentinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating
+a pious ejaculation, "O apostle of God, help and deliver us!" were
+successively drawn up by the long folds of their turbans. With bold
+and cautious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the governor, who
+celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of his deliverance. From
+thence, returning to his companions, he assaulted on the inside the
+entrance of the castle. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate,
+let down the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival
+of Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured
+their conquest. Youkinna, a formidable foe, became an active and useful
+proselyte; and the general of the Saracens expressed his regard for the
+most humble merit, by detaining the army at Aleppo till Dames was cured
+of his honorable wounds. The capital of Syria was still covered by the
+castle of Aazaz and the iron bridge of the Orontes. After the loss of
+those important posts, and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies,
+the luxury of Antioch [86] trembled and obeyed. Her safety was ransomed
+with three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the
+successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government of the East,
+which had been decorated by Caesar with the titles of free, and
+holy, and inviolate was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the
+secondary rank of a provincial town. [87]
+
+[Footnote 85: The Persian historian of Timur (tom. iii. l. v. c. 21,
+p. 300) describes the castle of Aleppo as founded on a rock one hundred
+cubits in height; a proof, says the French translator, that he had never
+visited the place. It is now in the midst of the city, of no strength
+with a single gate; the circuit is about 500 or 600 paces, and the
+ditch half full of stagnant water, (Voyages de Tavernier, tom. i. p.
+149 Pocock, vol. ii. part i. p. 150.) The fortresses of the East are
+contemptible to a European eye.]
+
+[Footnote 86: The date of the conquest of Antioch by the Arabs is of
+some importance. By comparing the years of the world in the chronography
+of Theophanes with the years of the Hegira in the history of Elmacin, we
+shall determine, that it was taken between January 23d and September 1st
+of the year of Christ 638, (Pagi, Critica, in Baron. Annal. tom. ii.
+p. 812, 813.) Al Wakidi (Ockley, vol. i. p. 314) assigns that event to
+Tuesday, August 21st, an inconsistent date; since Easter fell that
+year on April 5th, the 21st of August must have been a Friday, (see the
+Tables of the Art de Verifier les Dates.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: His bounteous edict, which tempted the grateful city to
+assume the victory of Pharsalia for a perpetual aera, is given. John
+Malala, in Chron. p. 91, edit. Venet. We may distinguish his authentic
+information of domestic facts from his gross ignorance of general
+history.]
+
+In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war are clouded on
+either hand by the disgrace and weakness of his more early and his later
+days. When the successors of Mahomet unsheathed the sword of war and
+religion, he was astonished at the boundless prospect of toil and
+danger; his nature was indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of
+the emperor be kindled to a second effort. The sense of shame, and the
+importunities of the Syrians, prevented the hasty departure from the
+scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of Damascus and
+Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk, may be imputed in
+some degree to the absence or misconduct of the sovereign. Instead of
+defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved the church and state in a
+metaphysical controversy for the unity of his will; and while Heraclius
+crowned the offspring of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped
+of the most valuable part of their inheritance. In the cathedral of
+Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix,
+he bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession
+instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to resist
+the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact, since they
+were invincible in opinion; and the desertion of Youkinna, his false
+repentance and repeated perfidy, might justify the suspicion of
+the emperor, that he was encompassed by traitors and apostates, who
+conspired to betray his person and their country to the enemies of
+Christ. In the hour of adversity, his superstition was agitated by
+the omens and dreams of a falling crown; and after bidding an eternal
+farewell to Syria, he secretly embarked with a few attendants, and
+absolved the faith of his subjects. [88] Constantine, his eldest son,
+had been stationed with forty thousand men at Caesarea, the civil
+metropolis of the three provinces of Palestine. But his private interest
+recalled him to the Byzantine court; and, after the flight of his
+father, he felt himself an unequal champion to the united force of the
+caliph. His vanguard was boldly attacked by three hundred Arabs and
+a thousand black slaves, who, in the depth of winter, had climbed
+the snowy mountains of Libanus, and who were speedily followed by the
+victorious squadrons of Caled himself. From the north and south the
+troops of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the sea-shore till their
+banners were joined under the walls of the Phoenician cities: Tripoli
+and Tyre were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered
+without distrust the captive harbors, brought a seasonable supply of
+arms and provisions to the camp of the Saracens. Their labors were
+terminated by the unexpected surrender of Caesarea: the Roman prince had
+embarked in the night; [89] and the defenceless citizens solicited their
+pardon with an offering of two hundred thousand pieces of gold.
+The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or
+Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea,
+Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; and
+Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs seven hundred years after
+Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings. [90]
+
+[Footnote 88: See Ockley, (vol. i. p. 308, 312,) who laughs at the
+credulity of his author. When Heraclius bade farewell to Syria, Vale
+Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied that the Romans should never
+reenter the province till the birth of an inauspicious child, the future
+scourge of the empire. Abulfeda, p. 68. I am perfectly ignorant of the
+mystic sense, or nonsense, of this prediction.]
+
+[Footnote 89: In the loose and obscure chronology of the times, I am
+guided by an authentic record, (in the book of ceremonies of Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus,) which certifies that, June 4, A.D. 638, the emperor
+crowned his younger son Heraclius, in the presence of his eldest,
+Constantine, and in the palace of Constantinople; that January 1, A.D.
+639, the royal procession visited the great church, and on the 4th of
+the same month, the hippodrome.]
+
+[Footnote 90: Sixty-five years before Christ, Syria Pontusque monumenta
+sunt Cn. Pompeii virtutis, (Vell. Patercul. ii. 38,) rather of his
+fortune and power: he adjudged Syria to be a Roman province, and the
+last of the Seleucides were incapable of drawing a sword in the defence
+of their patrimony (see the original texts collected by Usher, Annal. p.
+420)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part V.
+
+The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands
+of the Moslems. They died with the reputation and the cheerfulness of
+martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be expressed in the words
+of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for the last time, his sister and
+mother: "It is not," said he, "the delicacies of Syria, or the fading
+delights of this world, that have prompted me to devote my life in the
+cause of religion. But I seek the favor of God and his apostle; and I
+have heard, from one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits
+of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall
+taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers, of paradise. Farewell, we
+shall meet again among the groves and fountains which God has provided
+for his elect." The faithful captives might exercise a passive and more
+arduous resolution; and a cousin of Mahomet is celebrated for refusing,
+after an abstinence of three days, the wine and pork, the only
+nourishment that was allowed by the malice of the infidels. The frailty
+of some weaker brethren exasperated the implacable spirit of fanaticism;
+and the father of Amer deplored, in pathetic strains, the apostasy
+and damnation of a son, who had renounced the promises of God, and the
+intercession of the prophet, to occupy, with the priests and deacons,
+the lowest mansions of hell. The more fortunate Arabs, who survived the
+war and persevered in the faith, were restrained by their abstemious
+leader from the abuse of prosperity. After a refreshment of three days,
+Abu Obeidah withdrew his troops from the pernicious contagion of the
+luxury of Antioch, and assured the caliph that their religion and virtue
+could only be preserved by the hard discipline of poverty and labor. But
+the virtue of Omar, however rigorous to himself, was kind and liberal
+to his brethren. After a just tribute of praise and thanksgiving, he
+dropped a tear of compassion; and sitting down on the ground, wrote
+an answer, in which he mildly censured the severity of his lieutenant:
+"God," said the successor of the prophet, "has not forbidden the use of
+the good things of this worl to faithful men, and such as have performed
+good works. Therefore you ought to have given them leave to rest
+themselves, and partake freely of those good things which the country
+affordeth. If any of the Saracens have no family in Arabia, they may
+marry in Syria; and whosoever of them wants any female slaves, he may
+purchase as many as he hath occasion for." The conquerors prepared
+to use, or to abuse, this gracious permission; but the year of their
+triumph was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five
+thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of Syria.
+The death of Abu Obeidah might be lamented by the Christians; but his
+brethren recollected that he was one of the ten elect whom the prophet
+had named as the heirs of paradise. [91] Caled survived his brethren
+about three years: and the tomb of the Sword of God is shown in the
+neighborhood of Emesa. His valor, which founded in Arabia and Syria
+the empire of the caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special
+providence; and as long as he wore a cap, which had been blessed
+by Mahomet, he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the
+infidels. [9111]
+
+[Footnote 91: Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 73. Mahomet could artfully
+vary the praises of his disciples. Of Omar he was accustomed to say,
+that if a prophet could arise after himself, it would be Omar; and that
+in a general calamity, Omar would be accepted by the divine justice,
+(Ockley, vol. i. p. 221.)]
+
+[Footnote 9111: Khaled, according to the Rouzont Uzzuffa, (Price, p.
+90,) after having been deprived of his ample share of the plunder of
+Syria by the jealousy of Omar, died, possessed only of his horse, his
+arms, and a single slave. Yet Omar was obliged to acknowledge to his
+lamenting parent. that never mother had produced a son like Khaled.--M.]
+
+The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of
+their children and countrymen: Syria became the seat and support of
+the house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that
+powerful kingdom were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of
+the caliphs. But the Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their
+historians scarcely condescend to mention the subordinate conquests
+which are lost in the splendor and rapidity of their victorious career.
+
+To the north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to their
+obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus, the ancient
+monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same
+mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than the light of
+religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine, and the neighborhood of
+Constantinople. To the east they advanced to the banks and sources of
+the Euphrates and Tigris: [92] the long disputed barrier of Rome and
+Persia was forever confounded the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and
+Nisibis, which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan,
+were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly
+produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror.
+To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea: and the ruin of
+Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during
+ten years. But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of
+Phoenicia was populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred
+barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The Imperial
+navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the
+Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had
+been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun. [93] The Saracens
+rode masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the
+Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three
+hundred years before the Christian aera, the memorable though fruitless
+siege of Rhodes [94] by Demetrius had furnished that maritime republic
+with the materials and the subject of a trophy. A gigantic statue
+of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected at the
+entrance of the harbor, a monument of the freedom and the arts of
+Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the colossus of Rhodes was
+overthrown by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments,
+lay scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described
+as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the
+diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who
+is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass
+metal; an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred
+colossal figures, [95] and the three thousand statues, which adorned the
+prosperity of the city of the sun.
+
+[Footnote 92: Al Wakidi had likewise written a history of the conquest
+of Diarbekir, or Mesopotamia, (Ockley, at the end of the iid vol.,)
+which our interpreters do not appear to have seen. The Chronicle of
+Dionysius of Telmar, the Jacobite patriarch, records the taking of
+Edessa A.D. 637, and of Dara A.D. 641, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom.
+ii. p. 103;) and the attentive may glean some doubtful information from
+the Chronography of Theophanes, (p. 285-287.) Most of the towns of
+Mesopotamia yielded by surrender, (Abulpharag. p. 112.) * Note: It has
+been published in Arabic by M. Ewald St. Martin, vol. xi p 248; but its
+authenticity is doubted.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 93: He dreamt that he was at Thessalonica, a harmless and
+unmeaning vision; but his soothsayer, or his cowardice, understood
+the sure omen of a defeat concealed in that inauspicious word, Give to
+another the victory, (Theoph. p. 286. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 88.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: Every passage and every fact that relates to the isle, the
+city, and the colossus of Rhodes, are compiled in the laborious treatise
+of Meursius, who has bestowed the same diligence on the two larger
+islands of the Crete and Cyprus. See, in the iiid vol. of his works, the
+Rhodus of Meursius, (l. i. c. 15, p. 715-719.) The Byzantine writers,
+Theophanes and Constantine, have ignorantly prolonged the term to 1360
+years, and ridiculously divide the weight among 30,000 camels.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Centum colossi alium nobilitaturi locum, says Pliny, with
+his usual spirit. Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 18.]
+
+II. The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the
+victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation, in an age when the
+meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of
+enthusiasm. The birth of Amrou was at once base and illustrious; his
+mother, a notorious prostitute, was unable to decide among five of the
+Koreish; but the proof of resemblance adjudged the child to Aasi,
+the oldest of her lovers. [96] The youth of Amrou was impelled by the
+passions and prejudices of his kindred: his poetic genius was exercised
+in satirical verses against the person and doctrine of Mahomet; his
+dexterity was employed by the reigning faction to pursue the religious
+exiles who had taken refuge in the court of the Aethiopian king. [97]
+Yet he returned from this embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or his
+interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped
+from Mecca with his friend Caled; and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at
+the same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions
+of his cause. The impatience of Amrou to lead the armies of the faithful
+was checked by the reproof of Omar, who advised him not to seek
+power and dominion, since he who is a subject to-day, may be a prince
+to-morrow. Yet his merit was not overlooked by the two first successors
+of Mahomet; they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of
+Palestine; and in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with
+the temper of a chief the valor of an adventurous soldier. In a visit
+to Medina, the caliph expressed a wish to survey the sword which had cut
+down so many Christian warriors; the son of Aasi unsheathed a short and
+ordinary cimeter; and as he perceived the surprise of Omar, "Alas," said
+the modest Saracen, "the sword itself, without the arm of its master, is
+neither sharper nor more weighty than the sword of Pharezdak the poet."
+[98] After the conquest of Egypt, he was recalled by the jealousy of
+the caliph Othman; but in the subsequent troubles, the ambition of a
+soldier, a statesman, and an orator, emerged from a private station.
+His powerful support, both in council and in the field, established the
+throne of the Ommiades; the administration and revenue of Egypt were
+restored by the gratitude of Moawiyah to a faithful friend who had
+raised himself above the rank of a subject; and Amrou ended his days in
+the palace and city which he had founded on the banks of the Nile. His
+dying speech to his children is celebrated by the Arabians as a model
+of eloquence and wisdom: he deplored the errors of his youth but if the
+penitent was still infected by the vanity of a poet, he might exaggerate
+the venom and mischief of his impious compositions. [99]
+
+[Footnote 96: We learn this anecdote from a spirited old woman, who
+reviled to their faces, the caliph and his friend. She was encouraged
+by the silence of Amrou and the liberality of Moawiyah, (Abulfeda, Annal
+Moslem. p. 111.)]
+
+[Footnote 97: Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 46, &c., who quotes
+the Abyssinian history, or romance of Abdel Balcides. Yet the fact of
+the embassy and ambassador may be allowed.]
+
+[Footnote 98: This saying is preserved by Pocock, (Not. ad Carmen
+Tograi, p 184,) and justly applauded by Mr. Harris, (Philosophical
+Arrangements, p. 850.)]
+
+[Footnote 99: For the life and character of Amrou, see Ockley (Hist. of
+the Saracens, vol. i. p. 28, 63, 94, 328, 342, 344, and to the end of
+the volume; vol. ii. p. 51, 55, 57, 74, 110-112, 162) and Otter, (Mem.
+de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi. p. 131, 132.) The readers
+of Tacitus may aptly compare Vespasian and Mucianus with Moawiyah and
+Amrou. Yet the resemblance is still more in the situation, than in the
+characters, of the men.]
+
+From his camp in Palestine, Amrou had surprised or anticipated the
+caliph's leave for the invasion of Egypt. [100] The magnanimous Omar
+trusted in his God and his sword, which had shaken the thrones of
+Chosroes and Caesar: but when he compared the slender force of the
+Moslems with the greatness of the enterprise, he condemned his own
+rashness, and listened to his timid companions. The pride and the
+greatness of Pharaoh were familiar to the readers of the Koran; and a
+tenfold repetition of prodigies had been scarcely sufficient to effect,
+not the victory, but the flight, of six hundred thousand of the
+children of Israel: the cities of Egypt were many and populous; their
+architecture was strong and solid; the Nile, with its numerous branches,
+was alone an insuperable barrier; and the granary of the Imperial city
+would be obstinately defended by the Roman powers. In this perplexity,
+the commander of the faithful resigned himself to the decision of
+chance, or, in his opinion, of Providence. At the head of only four
+thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amrou had marched away from his station of
+Gaza when he was overtaken by the messenger of Omar. "If you are still
+in Syria," said the ambiguous mandate, "retreat without delay; but if,
+at the receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers
+of Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the succor of God and
+of your brethren." The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence,
+of Amrou had taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and he
+continued his march till his tents were unquestionably pitched on
+Egyptian ground. He there assembled his officers, broke the seal,
+perused the epistle, gravely inquired the name and situation of the
+place, and declared his ready obedience to the commands of the caliph.
+After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah or Pelusium;
+and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unlocked the
+entrance of the country as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the
+neighborhood of the modern Cairo.
+
+[Footnote 100: Al Wakidi had likewise composed a separate history of
+the conquest of Egypt, which Mr. Ockley could never procure; and his own
+inquiries (vol. i. 344-362) have added very little to the original text
+of Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 296-323, vers. Pocock,) the Melchite
+patriarch of Alexandria, who lived three hundred years after the
+revolution.]
+
+On the Western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east of the
+Pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the Delta, Memphis, one
+hundred and fifty furlongs in circumference, displayed the magnificence
+of ancient kings. Under the reign of the Ptolemies and Caesars, the
+seat of government was removed to the sea-coast; the ancient capital
+was eclipsed by the arts and opulence of Alexandria; the palaces, and
+at length the temples, were reduced to a desolate and ruinous condition:
+yet, in the age of Augustus, and even in that of Constantine, Memphis
+was still numbered among the greatest and most populous of the
+provincial cities. [101] The banks of the Nile, in this place of the
+breadth of three thousand feet, were united by two bridges of sixty and
+of thirty boats, connected in the middle stream by the small island of
+Rouda, which was covered with gardens and habitations. [102] The eastern
+extremity of the bridge was terminated by the town of Babylon and the
+camp of a Roman legion, which protected the passage of the river and the
+second capital of Egypt. This important fortress, which might fairly be
+described as a part of Memphis or Misrah, was invested by the arms of
+the lieutenant of Omar: a reenforcement of four thousand Saracens soon
+arrived in his camp; and the military engines, which battered the walls,
+may be imputed to the art and labor of his Syrian allies. Yet the siege
+was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were encompassed
+and threatened by the inundation of the Nile. [103] Their last assault
+was bold and successful: they passed the ditch, which had been fortified
+with iron spikes, applied their scaling ladders, entered the fortress
+with the shout of "God is victorious!" and drove the remnant of the
+Greeks to their boats and the Isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards
+recommended to the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and
+the peninsula of Arabia; the remains of Memphis were deserted; the tents
+of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations; and the first
+mosch was blessed by the presence of fourscore companions of Mahomet.
+[104] A new city arose in their camp, on the eastward bank of the Nile;
+and the contiguous quarters of Babylon and Fostat are confounded in
+their present decay by the appellation of old Misrah, or Cairo, of
+which they form an extensive suburb. But the name of Cairo, the town of
+victory, more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded
+in the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs. [105] It has gradually
+receded from the river; but the continuity of buildings may be traced
+by an attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris to those of Saladin.
+[106]
+
+[Footnote 101: Strabo, an accurate and attentive spectator, observes
+of Heliopolis, (Geograph. l. xvii. p. 1158;) but of Memphis he notices,
+however, the mixture of inhabitants, and the ruin of the palaces. In the
+proper Egypt, Ammianus enumerates Memphis among the four cities, maximis
+urbibus quibus provincia nitet, (xxii. 16;) and the name of Memphis
+appears with distinction in the Roman Itinerary and episcopal lists.]
+
+[Footnote 102: These rare and curious facts, the breadth (2946 feet)
+and the bridge of the Nile, are only to be found in the Danish traveller
+and the Nubian geographer, (p. 98.)]
+
+[Footnote 103: From the month of April, the Nile begins imperceptibly to
+rise; the swell becomes strong and visible in the moon after the summer
+solstice, (Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 10,) and is usually proclaimed at Cairo
+on St. Peter's day, (June 29.) A register of thirty successive years
+marks the greatest height of the waters between July 25 and August
+18, (Maillet, Description de l'Egypte, lettre xi. p. 67, &c. Pocock's
+Description of the East, vol. i. p. 200. Shaw's Travels, p. 383.)]
+
+[Footnote 104: Murtadi, Merveilles de l'Egypte, 243, 259. He expatiates
+on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a citizen and a bigot,
+and his local traditions have a strong air of truth and accuracy.]
+
+[Footnote 105: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 233.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The position of New and of Old Cairo is well known, and
+has been often described. Two writers, who were intimately acquainted
+with ancient and modern Egypt, have fixed, after a learned inquiry,
+the city of Memphis at Gizeh, directly opposite the Old Cairo, (Sicard,
+Nouveaux Memoires des Missions du Levant, tom. vi. p. 5, 6. Shaw's
+Observations and Travels, p. 296-304.) Yet we may not disregard the
+authority or the arguments of Pocock, (vol. i. p. 25-41,) Niebuhr,
+(Voyage, tom. i. p. 77-106,) and above all, of D'Anville, (Description
+de l'Egypte, p. 111, 112, 130-149,) who have removed Memphis towards the
+village of Mohannah, some miles farther to the south. In their heat, the
+disputants have forgot that the ample space of a metropolis covers and
+annihilates the far greater part of the controversy.]
+
+Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise, must have
+retreated to the desert, had they not found a powerful alliance in the
+heart of the country. The rapid conquest of Alexander was assisted by
+the superstition and revolt of the natives: they abhorred their Persian
+oppressors, the disciples of the Magi, who had burnt the temples of
+Egypt, and feasted with sacrilegious appetite on the flesh of the god
+Apis. [107] After a period of ten centuries, the same revolution was
+renewed by a similar cause; and in the support of an incomprehensible
+creed, the zeal of the Coptic Christians was equally ardent. I
+have already explained the origin and progress of the Monophysite
+controversy, and the persecution of the emperors, which converted a sect
+into a nation, and alienated Egypt from their religion and government.
+The Saracens were received as the deliverers of the Jacobite church;
+and a secret and effectual treaty was opened during the siege of Memphis
+between a victorious army and a people of slaves. A rich and noble
+Egyptian, of the name of Mokawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain
+the administration of his province: in the disorders of the Persian
+war he aspired to independence: the embassy of Mahomet ranked him among
+princes; but he declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the
+proposal of a new religion. [108] The abuse of his trust exposed him to
+the resentment of Heraclius: his submission was delayed by arrogance and
+fear; and his conscience was prompted by interest to throw himself on
+the favor of the nation and the support of the Saracens. In his first
+conference with Amrou, he heard without indignation the usual option of
+the Koran, the tribute, or the sword. "The Greeks," replied Mokawkas,
+"are determined to abide the determination of the sword; but with the
+Greeks I desire no communion, either in this world or in the next, and
+I abjure forever the Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and his
+Melchite slaves. For myself and my brethren, we are resolved to live
+and die in the profession of the gospel and unity of Christ. It is
+impossible for us to embrace the revelations of your prophet; but we are
+desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit to pay tribute and obedience to
+his temporal successors." The tribute was ascertained at two pieces of
+gold for the head of every Christian; but old men, monks, women, and
+children, of both sexes, under sixteen years of age, were exempted
+from this personal assessment: the Copts above and below Memphis swore
+allegiance to the caliph, and promised a hospitable entertainment of
+three days to every Mussulman who should travel through their country.
+By this charter of security, the ecclesiastical and civil tyranny of the
+Melchites was destroyed: [109] the anathemas of St. Cyril were thundered
+from every pulpit; and the sacred edifices, with the patrimony of the
+church, were restored to the national communion of the Jacobites, who
+enjoyed without moderation the moment of triumph and revenge. At the
+pressing summons of Amrou, their patriarch Benjamin emerged from his
+desert; and after the first interview, the courteous Arab affected to
+declare that he had never conversed with a Christian priest of more
+innocent manners and a more venerable aspect. [110] In the march from
+Memphis to Alexandria, the lieutenant of Omar intrusted his safety to
+the zeal and gratitude of the Egyptians: the roads and bridges were
+diligently repaired; and in every step of his progress, he could depend
+on a constant supply of provisions and intelligence. The Greeks of
+Egypt, whose numbers could scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were
+overwhelmed by the universal defection: they had ever been hated, they
+were no longer feared: the magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop
+from his altar; and the distant garrisons were surprised or starved by
+the surrounding multitudes. Had not the Nile afforded a safe and ready
+conveyance to the sea, not an individual could have escaped, who by
+birth, or language, or office, or religion, was connected with their
+odious name.
+
+[Footnote 107: See Herodotus, l. iii. c. 27, 28, 29. Aelian, Hist. Var.
+l. iv. c. 8. Suidas in, tom. ii. p. 774. Diodor. Sicul. tom. ii. l.
+xvii. p. 197, edit. Wesseling. Says the last of these historians.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Mokawkas sent the prophet two Coptic damsels, with two
+maids and one eunuch, an alabaster vase, an ingot of pure gold, oil,
+honey, and the finest white linen of Egypt, with a horse, a mule, and
+an ass, distinguished by their respective qualifications. The embassy
+of Mahomet was despatched from Medina in the seventh year of the Hegira,
+(A.D. 628.) See Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 255, 256, 303,)
+from Al Jannabi.]
+
+[Footnote 109: The praefecture of Egypt, and the conduct of the war,
+had been trusted by Heraclius to the patriarch Cyrus, (Theophan. p. 280,
+281.) "In Spain," said James II., "do you not consult your priests?"
+"We do," replied the Catholic ambassador, "and our affairs succeed
+accordingly." I know not how to relate the plans of Cyrus, of paying
+tribute without impairing the revenue, and of converting Omar by his
+marriage with the Emperor's daughter, (Nicephor. Breviar. p. 17, 18.)]
+
+[Footnote 110: See the life of Benjamin, in Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch.
+Alexandrin. p. 156-172,) who has enriched the conquest of Egypt with
+some facts from the Arabic text of Severus the Jacobite historian]
+
+By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper Egypt, a
+considerable force was collected in the Island of Delta; the natural
+and artificial channels of the Nile afforded a succession of strong and
+defensible posts; and the road to Alexandria was laboriously cleared by
+the victory of the Saracens in two-and-twenty days of general or partial
+combat. In their annals of conquest, the siege of Alexandria [111] is
+perhaps the most arduous and important enterprise. The first trading
+city in the world was abundantly replenished with the means of
+subsistence and defence. Her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest
+of human rights, religion and property; and the enmity of the natives
+seemed to exclude them from the common benefit of peace and toleration.
+The sea was continually open; and if Heraclius had been awake to the
+public distress, fresh armies of Romans and Barbarians might have been
+poured into the harbor to save the second capital of the empire. A
+circumference of ten miles would have scattered the forces of the
+Greeks, and favored the stratagems of an active enemy; but the two sides
+of an oblong square were covered by the sea and the Lake Maraeotis, and
+each of the narrow ends exposed a front of no more than ten furlongs.
+The efforts of the Arabs were not inadequate to the difficulty of the
+attempt and the value of the prize. From the throne of Medina, the eyes
+of Omar were fixed on the camp and city: his voice excited to arms the
+Arabian tribes and the veterans of Syria; and the merit of a holy war
+was recommended by the peculiar fame and fertility of Egypt. Anxious
+for the ruin or expulsion of their tyrants, the faithful natives devoted
+their labors to the service of Amrou: some sparks of martial spirit were
+perhaps rekindled by the example of their allies; and the sanguine
+hopes of Mokawkas had fixed his sepulchre in the church of St. John of
+Alexandria. Eutychius the patriarch observes, that the Saracens fought
+with the courage of lions: they repulsed the frequent and almost daily
+sallies of the besieged, and soon assaulted in their turn the walls and
+towers of the city. In every attack, the sword, the banner of Amrou,
+glittered in the van of the Moslems. On a memorable day, he was betrayed
+by his imprudent valor: his followers who had entered the citadel
+were driven back; and the general, with a friend and slave, remained a
+prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted before
+the praefect, he remembered his dignity, and forgot his situation: a
+lofty demeanor, and resolute language, revealed the lieutenant of the
+caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was already raised to strike off
+the head of the audacious captive. His life was saved by the readiness
+of his slave, who instantly gave his master a blow on the face, and
+commanded him, with an angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his
+superiors. The credulous Greek was deceived: he listened to the offer
+of a treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more
+respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp announced
+the return of their general, and insulted the folly of the infidels.
+At length, after a siege of fourteen months, [112] and the loss of
+three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens prevailed: the Greeks
+embarked their dispirited and diminished numbers, and the standard
+of Mahomet was planted on the walls of the capital of Egypt. "I have
+taken," said Amrou to the caliph, "the great city of the West. It is
+impossible for me to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty; and
+I shall content myself with observing, that it contains four thousand
+palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of
+amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and
+forty thousand tributary Jews. The town has been subdued by force of
+arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems are impatient to
+seize the fruits of their victory." [113] The commander of the faithful
+rejected with firmness the idea of pillage, and directed his lieutenant
+to reserve the wealth and revenue of Alexandria for the public service
+and the propagation of the faith: the inhabitants were numbered; a
+tribute was imposed, the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were
+curbed, and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were
+indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The
+intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted the
+declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a dropsy about
+seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria. [114] Under the minority
+of his grandson, the clamors of a people, deprived of their daily
+sustenance, compelled the Byzantine court to undertake the recovery
+of the capital of Egypt. In the space of four years, the harbor and
+fortifications of Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet and army of
+Romans. They were twice expelled by the valor of Amrou, who was recalled
+by the domestic peril from the distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But
+the facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the
+obstinacy of the resistance, provoked him to swear, that if a third
+time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as
+accessible on all sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his
+promise, he dismantled several parts of the walls and towers; but the
+people was spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosch of
+Mercy was erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped
+the fury of his troops.
+
+[Footnote 111: The local description of Alexandria is perfectly
+ascertained by the master hand of the first of geographers, (D'Anville,
+Memoire sur l'Egypte, p. 52-63;) but we may borrow the eyes of the
+modern travellers, more especially of Thevenot, (Voyage au Levant, part
+i. p. 381-395,) Pocock, (vol. i. p. 2-13,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en
+Arabie, tom. i. p. 34-43.) Of the two modern rivals, Savary and Volmey,
+the one may amuse, the other will instruct.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Both Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 319) and Elmacin
+(Hist. Saracen. p. 28) concur in fixing the taking of Alexandria to
+Friday of the new moon of Moharram of the twentieth year of the Hegira,
+(December 22, A.D. 640.) In reckoning backwards fourteen months spent
+before Alexandria, seven months before Babylon, &c., Amrou might have
+invaded Egypt about the end of the year 638; but we are assured that he
+entered the country the 12th of Bayni, 6th of June, (Murtadi, Merveilles
+de l'Egypte, p. 164. Severus, apud Renaudot, p. 162.) The Saracen, and
+afterwards Lewis IX. of France, halted at Pelusium, or Damietta, during
+the season of the inundation of the Nile.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 316, 319.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Notwithstanding some inconsistencies of Theophanes and
+Cedrenus, the accuracy of Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 824) has extracted
+from Nicephorus and the Chronicon Orientale the true date of the death
+of Heraclius, February 11th, A.D. 641, fifty days after the loss
+of Alexandria. A fourth of that time was sufficient to convey the
+intelligence.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part VI.
+
+I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence
+the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned
+Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than
+that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was
+pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius,
+and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of
+grammar and philosophy. [115] Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
+Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion,
+contemptible in that of the Barbarians--the royal library, which alone,
+among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit
+and the seal of the conqueror.
+
+Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid
+integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent
+of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the
+ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with
+the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they
+disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence
+was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment
+were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was
+their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient
+for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of
+Abulpharagius [116] have been given to the world in a Latin version,
+the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious
+indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning,
+the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly
+tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. [1161] The fact is
+indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and
+the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred
+years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two
+annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt,
+and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply
+described the conquest of Alexandria. [117] The rigid sentence of Omar
+is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists
+they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and
+Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never
+be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science,
+historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied
+to the use of the faithful. [118] A more destructive zeal may perhaps be
+attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance,
+the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of
+materials. I should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian
+library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Caesar in his own
+defence, [119] or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied
+to destroy the monuments of idolatry. [120] But if we gradually descend
+from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from
+a chain of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple
+of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand
+volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of
+the Ptolemies. [121] Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might
+be enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of
+Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public
+baths, [122] a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was
+ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the
+more valuable libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the
+Roman empire; but when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste
+of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our
+losses, are the objects of my surprise. Many curious and interesting
+facts are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have
+been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived
+of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry
+of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances of
+time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage
+of antiquity [123] had adjudged the first place of genius and glory:
+the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and
+compared the writings of their predecessors; [124] nor can it fairly
+be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or
+nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.
+
+[Footnote 115: Many treatises of this lover of labor are still extant,
+but for readers of the present age, the printed and unpublished are
+nearly in the same predicament. Moses and Aristotle are the chief
+objects of his verbose commentaries, one of which is dated as early as
+May 10th, A.D. 617, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. ix. p. 458-468.) A
+modern, (John Le Clerc,) who sometimes assumed the same name was equal
+to old Philoponus in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real
+knowledge.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 114, vers. Pocock. Audi quid
+factum sit et mirare. It would be endless to enumerate the moderns
+who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish with honor the
+rational scepticism of Renaudot, (Hist. Alex. Patriarch, p. 170: )
+historia... habet aliquid ut Arabibus familiare est.]
+
+[Footnote 1161: Since this period several new Mahometan authorities
+have been adduced to support the authority of Abulpharagius. That of,
+I. Abdollatiph by Professor White: II. Of Makrizi; I have seen a Ms.
+extract from this writer: III. Of Ibn Chaledun: and after them Hadschi
+Chalfa. See Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 17. Reinhard, in a
+German Dissertation, printed at Gottingen, 1792, and St. Croix, (Magasin
+Encyclop. tom. iv. p. 433,) have examined the question. Among Oriental
+scholars, Professor White, M. St. Martin, Von Hammer. and Silv. de Sacy,
+consider the fact of the burning the library, by the command of Omar,
+beyond question. Compare St. Martin's note. vol. xi. p. 296. A Mahometan
+writer brings a similar charge against the Crusaders. The library
+of Tripoli is said to have contained the incredible number of three
+millions of volumes. On the capture of the city, Count Bertram of St.
+Giles, entering the first room, which contained nothing but the Koran,
+ordered the whole to be burnt, as the works of the false prophet of
+Arabia. See Wilken. Gesch der Kreux zuge, vol. ii. p. 211.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 117: This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the annals
+of Eutychius, and the Saracenic history of Elmacin. The silence of
+Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems, is less conclusive from their
+ignorance of Christian literature.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in his iiid
+volume of Dissertations, p. 37. The reason for not burning the religious
+books of the Jews or Christians, is derived from the respect that is due
+to the name of God.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement. Livian,
+c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had styled the
+Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque egregium opus; a liberal
+encomium, for which he is pertly criticized by the narrow stoicism of
+Seneca, (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion,
+deviates into nonsense.]
+
+[Footnote 120: See this History, vol. iii. p. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Aulus Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus
+Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all speak in
+the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt
+Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum monumentorum veterum concinens
+fides, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible, Hexapla,
+Catenoe Patrum, Commentaries, &c., (p. 170.) Our Alexandrian Ms., if it
+came from Egypt, and not from Constantinople or Mount Athos, (Wetstein,
+Prolegom. ad N. T. p. 8, &c.,) might possibly be among them.]
+
+[Footnote 123: I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of
+Quintilian, (Institut. Orator. x. i.,) in which that judicious critic
+enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin classics.]
+
+[Footnote 124: Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this subject
+Wotton (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 85-95) argues,
+with solid sense, against the lively exotic fancies of Sir William
+Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for Barbaric science would scarcely
+admit the Indian or Aethiopic books into the library of Alexandria;
+nor is it proved that philosophy has sustained any real loss from their
+exclusion.]
+
+In the administration of Egypt, [125] Amrou balanced the demands of
+justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who were
+defended by God; and of the people of the alliance, who were protected
+by man. In the recent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the tongue
+of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the
+tranquillity of the province. To the former, Amrou declared, that
+faction and falsehood would be doubly chastised; by the punishment of
+the accusers, whom he should detest as his personal enemies, and by the
+promotion of their innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to
+injure and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion
+and honor to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear
+themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the caliph,
+to spare and protect a people who had trusted to their faith, and to
+content themselves with the legitimate and splendid rewards of their
+victory. In the management of the revenue, he disapproved the simple but
+oppressive mode of a capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion
+of taxes deducted on every branch from the clear profits of agriculture
+and commerce. A third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual
+repairs of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare.
+Under his administration, the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of
+Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered
+almost without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina. [126]
+But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the maritime communication which
+had been attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the
+Caesars; and a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from
+the Nile to the Red Sea. [1261] This inland navigation, which would have
+joined the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as
+useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus,
+and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities
+of Arabia. [127]
+
+[Footnote 125: This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi
+(p. 284-289) has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley, or by the
+self-sufficient compilers of the Modern Universal History.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Eutychius, Annal. tom. ii. p. 320. Elmacin, Hist.
+Saracen. p. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 1261: Many learned men have doubted the existence of a
+communication by water between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by
+the Nile. Yet the fact is positively asserted by the ancients. Diodorus
+Siculus (l. i. p. 33) speaks of it in the most distinct manner as
+existing in his time. So, also, Strabo, (l. xvii. p. 805.) Pliny (vol.
+vi. p. 29) says that the canal which united the two seas was navigable,
+(alveus navigabilis.) The indications furnished by Ptolemy and by the
+Arabic historian, Makrisi, show that works were executed under the
+reign of Hadrian to repair the canal and extend the navigation; it then
+received the name of the River of Trajan Lucian, (in his Pseudomantis,
+p. 44,) says that he went by water from Alexandria to Clysma, on the
+Red Sea. Testimonies of the 6th and of the 8th century show that
+the communication was not interrupted at that time. See the French
+translation of Strabo, vol. v. p. 382. St. Martin vol. xi. p. 299.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 127: On these obscure canals, the reader may try to satisfy
+himself from D'Anville, (Mem. sur l'Egypte, p. 108-110, 124, 132,) and
+a learned thesis, maintained and printed at Strasburg in the year 1770,
+(Jungendorum marium fluviorumque molimina, p. 39-47, 68-70.) Even
+the supine Turks have agitated the old project of joining the two seas.
+(Memoires du Baron de Tott, tom. iv.)]
+
+Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from
+the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his
+lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the
+Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful
+picture of that singular country. [128] "O commander of the faithful,
+Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a
+pulverized mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea
+is a month's journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river,
+on which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and
+morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and
+moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs
+and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and
+sounding waters through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread
+by the salutary flood; and the villages communicate with each other
+in their painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a
+fertilizing mud for the reception of the various seeds: the crowds
+of husbandmen who blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of
+industrious ants; and their native indolence is quickened by the lash
+of the task-master, and the promise of the flowers and fruits of a
+plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom deceived; but the riches which
+they extract from the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes,
+the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those
+who labor and those who possess. According to the vicissitudes of
+the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a
+verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden harvest." [129] Yet
+this beneficial order is sometimes interrupted; and the long delay and
+sudden swell of the river in the first year of the conquest might afford
+some color to an edifying fable. It is said, that the annual sacrifice
+of a virgin [130] had been interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that
+the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the mandate
+of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose in a single
+night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the Arabs for
+their new conquest encouraged the license of their romantic spirit. We
+may read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt was crowded with twenty
+thousand cities or villages: [131] that, exclusive of the Greeks and
+Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the assessment, six millions of
+tributary subjects, [132] or twenty millions of either sex, and of every
+age: that three hundred millions of gold or silver were annually paid to
+the treasury of the caliphs. [133] Our reason must be startled by these
+extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume
+the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from
+the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle
+of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues,
+compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France. [134] A more accurate
+research will justify a more reasonable estimate. The three hundred
+millions, created by the error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent
+revenue of four millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which
+nine hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers. [135]
+Two authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century, are
+circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand seven
+hundred villages and towns. [136] After a long residence at Cairo, a
+French consul has ventured to assign about four millions of Mahometans,
+Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible, scope of the
+population of Egypt. [137]
+
+[Footnote 128: A small volume, des Merveilles, &c., de l'Egypte,
+composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and translated
+from an Arabic Ms. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published by Pierre Vatier,
+Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild and legendary; but the
+writer deserves credit and esteem for his account of the conquest and
+geography of his native country, (see the correspondence of Amrou and
+Omar, p. 279-289.)]
+
+[Footnote 129: In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet
+had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre ii. particularly
+p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre ix.) From a college
+at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a
+keener glance:--
+
+     What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
+
+     Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed,
+
+     From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
+
+     And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings:
+
+     If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
+
+     The dusky people drive before the gale:
+
+     Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
+
+     That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.
+
+     (Mason's Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]
+
+[Footnote 130: Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily credit
+a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a miracle of the
+successors of Mahomet.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Maillet, Description de l'Egypte, p. 22. He mentions this
+number as the common opinion; and adds, that the generality of these
+villages contain two or three thousand persons, and that many of them
+are more populous than our large cities.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 308, 311. The twenty millions
+are computed from the following data: one twelfth of mankind above
+sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of men to women as
+seventeen or sixteen, (Recherches sur la Population de la France, p. 71,
+72.) The president Goguet (Origine des Arts, &c., tom. iii. p. 26, &c.)
+Bestows twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen
+hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 218; and this gross lump is
+swallowed without scruple by D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 1031,) Ar.
+buthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, p. 262,) and De Guignes, (Hist. des
+Huns, tom. iii. p. 135.) They might allege the not less extravagant
+liberality of Appian in favor of the Ptolemies (in praefat.) of seventy
+four myriads, 740,000 talents, an annual income of 185, or near 300
+millions of pounds sterling, according as we reckon by the Egyptian or
+the Alexandrian talent, (Bernard, de Ponderibus Antiq. p. 186.)]
+
+[Footnote 134: See the measurement of D'Anville, (Mem. sur l'Egypte,
+p. 23, &c.) After some peevish cavils, M. Pauw (Recherches sur les
+Egyptiens, tom. i. p. 118-121) can only enlarge his reckoning to 2250
+square leagues.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexand. p. 334, who calls
+the common reading or version of Elmacin, error librarii. His own
+emendation, of 4,300,000 pieces, in the ixth century, maintains a
+probable medium between the 3,000,000 which the Arabs acquired by the
+conquest of Egypt, (idem, p. 168.) and the 2,400,000 which the sultan of
+Constantinople levied in the last century, (Pietro della Valle, tom.
+i. p. 352 Thevenot, part i. p. 824.) Pauw (Recherches, tom. ii. p.
+365-373) gradually raises the revenue of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies,
+and the Caesars, from six to fifteen millions of German crowns.]
+
+[Footnote 136: The list of Schultens (Index Geograph. ad calcem Vit.
+Saladin. p. 5) contains 2396 places; that of D'Anville, (Mem. sur
+l'Egypte, p. 29,) from the divan of Cairo, enumerates 2696.]
+
+[Footnote 137: See Maillet, (Description de l'Egypte, p. 28,) who seems
+to argue with candor and judgment. I am much better satisfied with the
+observations than with the reading of the French consul. He was ignorant
+of Greek and Latin literature, and his fancy is too much delighted
+with the fictions of the Arabs. Their best knowledge is collected by
+Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt. Arab. et Lat. a Joh. David Michaelis,
+Gottingae, in 4to., 1776;) and in two recent voyages into Egypt, we
+are amused by Savary, and instructed by Volney. I wish the latter could
+travel over the globe.]
+
+IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, [138]
+was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman.
+
+The pious design was approved by the companions of Mahomet and the
+chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from Medina,
+with the gifts and the blessing of the commander of the faithful.
+They were joined in the camp of Memphis by twenty thousand of their
+countrymen; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to Abdallah, [139]
+the son of Said and the foster-brother of the caliph, who had lately
+supplanted the conqueror and lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the
+prince, and the merit of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of
+his apostasy. The early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had
+recommended him to the important office of transcribing the sheets of
+the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors
+which he had made, and fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose
+the ignorance, of the apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell
+prostrate at the feet of Mahomet; his tears, and the entreaties of
+Othman, extorted a reluctant pardon; out the prophet declared that he
+had so long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to avenge
+his injury in the blood of the apostate. With apparent fidelity and
+effective merit, he served the religion which it was no longer his
+interest to desert: his birth and talents gave him an honorable rank
+among the Koreish; and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as
+the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty
+thousand Moslems, he advanced from Egypt into the unknown countries of
+the West. The sands of Barca might be impervious to a Roman legion but
+the Arabs were attended by their faithful camels; and the natives of
+the desert beheld without terror the familiar aspect of the soil and
+climate. After a painful march, they pitched their tents before the
+walls of Tripoli, [140] a maritime city in which the name, the wealth,
+and the inhabitants of the province had gradually centred, and which now
+maintains the third rank among the states of Barbary. A reenforcement
+of Greeks was surprised and cut in pieces on the sea-shore; but the
+fortifications of Tripoli resisted the first assaults; and the Saracens
+were tempted by the approach of the praefect Gregory [141] to relinquish
+the labors of the siege for the perils and the hopes of a decisive
+action. If his standard was followed by one hundred and twenty thousand
+men, the regular bands of the empire must have been lost in the naked
+and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who formed the strength, or
+rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected with indignation the option
+of the Koran or the tribute; and during several days the two armies were
+fiercely engaged from the dawn of light to the hour of noon, when
+their fatigue and the excessive heat compelled them to seek shelter and
+refreshment in their respective camps. The daughter of Gregory, a maid
+of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said to have fought by his side:
+from her earliest youth she was trained to mount on horseback, to draw
+the bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the richness of her arms and
+apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks of the battle. Her hand,
+with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was offered for the head of the
+Arabian general, and the youths of Africa were excited by the prospect
+of the glorious prize. At the pressing solicitation of his brethren,
+Abdallah withdrew his person from the field; but the Saracens were
+discouraged by the retreat of their leader, and the repetition of these
+equal or unsuccessful conflicts.
+
+[Footnote 138: My conquest of Africa is drawn from two French
+interpreters of Arabic literature, Cardonne (Hist. de l'Afrique et de
+l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. i. p. 8-55) and Otter,
+(Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi. p. 111-125, and 136.)
+They derive their principal information from Novairi, who composed,
+A.D. 1331 an Encyclopaedia in more than twenty volumes. The five general
+parts successively treat of, 1. Physics; 2. Man; 3. Animals; 4. Plants;
+and, 5. History; and the African affairs are discussed in the vith
+chapter of the vth section of this last part, (Reiske, Prodidagmata ad
+Hagji Chalifae Tabulas, p. 232-234.) Among the older historians who are
+quoted by Navairi we may distinguish the original narrative of a soldier
+who led the van of the Moslems.]
+
+[Footnote 139: See the history of Abdallah, in Abulfeda (Vit. Mohammed.
+p. 108) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. 45-48.)]
+
+[Footnote 140: The province and city of Tripoli are described by Leo
+Africanus (in Navigatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i. Venetia, 1550,
+fol. 76, verso) and Marmol, (Description de l'Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.)
+The first of these writers was a Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who
+composed or translated his African geography in a state of captivity
+at Rome, where he had assumed the name and religion of Pope Leo X. In
+a similar captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier
+of Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by
+D'Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.) Marmol had read
+and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and extensive observation
+which abounds in the original work of Leo the African.]
+
+[Footnote 141: Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than the
+death, of Gregory. He brands the praefect with the name: he had probably
+assumed the purple, (Chronograph. p. 285.)]
+
+A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and the
+father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and Zobeir
+[142] was the first who planted the scaling-ladder against the walls
+of Babylon. In the African war he was detached from the standard of
+Abdallah. On the news of the battle, Zobeir, with twelve companions, cut
+his way through the camp of the Greeks, and pressed forwards, without
+tasting either food or repose, to partake of the dangers of his
+brethren. He cast his eyes round the field: "Where," said he, "is our
+general?" "In his tent." "Is the tent a station for the general of the
+Moslems?" Abdallah represented with a blush the importance of his own
+life, and the temptation that was held forth by the Roman praefect.
+"Retort," said Zobeir, "on the infidels their ungenerous attempt.
+Proclaim through the ranks that the head of Gregory shall be repaid with
+his captive daughter, and the equal sum of one hundred thousand pieces
+of gold." To the courage and discretion of Zobeir the lieutenant of the
+caliph intrusted the execution of his own stratagem, which inclined the
+long-disputed balance in favor of the Saracens. Supplying by activity
+and artifice the deficiency of numbers, a part of their forces lay
+concealed in their tents, while the remainder prolonged an irregular
+skirmish with the enemy till the sun was high in the heavens. On both
+sides they retired with fainting steps: their horses were unbridled,
+their armor was laid aside, and the hostile nations prepared, or seemed
+to prepare, for the refreshment of the evening, and the encounter of the
+ensuing day. On a sudden the charge was sounded; the Arabian camp poured
+forth a swarm of fresh and intrepid warriors; and the long line of
+the Greeks and Africans was surprised, assaulted, overturned, by new
+squadrons of the faithful, who, to the eye of fanaticism, might appear
+as a band of angels descending from the sky. The praefect himself was
+slain by the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and death,
+was surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives involved in their
+disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from the sabres and
+lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred and fifty miles
+to the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is watered by a running
+stream, and shaded by a grove of juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of
+a triumpha arch, a portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order,
+curiosity may yet admire the magnificence of the Romans. [143] After the
+fall of this opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on
+all sides the mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his zeal might be
+flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith: but his losses,
+his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical disease, prevented
+a solid establishment; and the Saracens, after a campaign of fifteen
+months, retreated to the confines of Egypt, with the captives and the
+wealth of their African expedition. The caliph's fifth was granted to
+a favorite, on the nominal payment of five hundred thousand pieces
+of gold; [144] but the state was doubly injured by this fallacious
+transaction, if each foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each
+horseman three thousand, pieces, in the real division of the plunder.
+The author of the death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the most
+precious reward of the victory: from his silence it might be presumed
+that he had fallen in the battle, till the tears and exclamations of
+the praefect's daughter at the sight of Zobeir revealed the valor and
+modesty of that gallant soldier. The unfortunate virgin was offered,
+and almost rejected as a slave, by her father's murderer, who coolly
+declared that his sword was consecrated to the service of religion; and
+that he labored for a recompense far above the charms of mortal beauty,
+or the riches of this transitory life. A reward congenial to his temper
+was the honorable commission of announcing to the caliph Othman the
+success of his arms. The companions the chiefs, and the people, were
+assembled in the mosch of Medina, to hear the interesting narrative of
+Zobeir; and as the orator forgot nothing except the merit of his own
+counsels and actions, the name of Abdallah was joined by the Arabians
+with the heroic names of Caled and Amrou. [145]
+
+[Footnote 142: See in Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 45) the
+death of Zobeir, which was honored with the tears of Ali, against whom
+he had rebelled. His valor at the siege of Babylon, if indeed it be the
+same person, is mentioned by Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 308)]
+
+[Footnote 143: Shaw's Travels, p. 118, 119.]
+
+[Footnote 144: Mimica emptio, says Abulfeda, erat haec, et mira donatio;
+quandoquidem Othman, ejus nomine nummos ex aerario prius ablatos aerario
+praestabat, (Annal. Moslem. p. 78.) Elmacin (in his cloudy version, p.
+39) seems to report the same job. When the Arabs be sieged the palace of
+Othman, it stood high in their catalogue of grievances.`]
+
+[Footnote 145: Theophan. Chronograph. p. 235 edit. Paris. His chronology
+is loose and inaccurate.]
+
+[A. D. 665-689.] The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended
+near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the
+establishment of the house of Ommiyah; and the caliph Moawiyah was
+invited by the cries of the Africans themselves. The successors of
+Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which they had been compelled
+to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead of being moved to pity and
+relieve their distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a
+second tribute of a similar amount. The ears of the zantine ministers
+were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin their
+despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master; and the
+extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and
+military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the
+Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of
+their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a just renown,
+subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks,
+swept away fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils
+the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt.[146] But the title of conqueror
+of Africa is more justly due to his successor Akbah. He marched from
+Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the
+genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and
+conversion of many thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is
+it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The
+interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious
+armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab or
+Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but
+the number of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the
+ignorance or decay of husbandry;[147] and a circumference of three
+leagues will not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the
+ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast,
+the well-known titles of Bugia,[148] and Tangier[149] define the more
+certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still
+adheres to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more prosperous
+age, is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the
+plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have
+supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence. The remote
+position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been
+decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative
+expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and
+that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as
+the emblems of strength and opulence.
+
+[Footnote 146: Theophanes (in Chronograph. p. 293.) inserts the vague
+rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the western conquests of the
+Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon of Aquileia (de Gestis
+Langobard. 1. v. c. 13), that at this time they sent a fleet from
+Alexandria into the Sicilian and African seas.]
+
+[Footnote 147: See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus (fol.
+81, verso), who reckoned only cinque citta e infinite casal, Marmol
+(Description de l'Afrique, tom. iii. p. 33,) and Shaw (Travels, p. 57,
+65-68)]
+
+[Footnote 148: Leo African. fol. 58, verso, 59, recto. Marmol, tom. ii.
+p. 415. Shaw, p. 43]
+
+[Footnote 149: Leo African. fol. 52. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 228.]
+
+The province of Mauritania Tingitana,[150] which assumed the name of the
+capital had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the Romans; the
+five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the more southern
+parts were seldom explored except by the agents of luxury, who searched
+the forests for ivory and the citron wood,[151] and the shores of the
+ocean for the purple shellfish. The fearless Akbah plunged into the
+heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors
+erected the splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco,[152] and at length
+penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert. The river
+Suz descends from the western sides of mount Atlas, fertilizes, like the
+Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance
+from the Canary, or adjacent islands. Its banks were inhabited by the
+last of the Moors, a race of savages, without laws, or discipline, or
+religion: they were astonished by the strange and irresistible terrors
+of the Oriental arms; and as they possessed neither gold nor silver, the
+richest spoil was the beauty of the female captives, some of whom were
+afterward sold for a thousand pieces of gold. The career, though not
+the zeal, of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean.
+He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven,
+exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: "Great God! if my course were not
+stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the
+West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the
+rebellious nations who worship another gods than thee." [153] Yet this
+Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve
+his recent conquests. By the universal defection of the Greeks and
+Africans he was recalled from the shores of the Atlantic, and the
+surrounding multitudes left him only the resource of an honourable
+death. The last scene was dignified by an example of national virtue. An
+ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt,
+was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general. The
+insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their
+offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of danger, the grateful
+Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die
+under the banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they
+unsheathed their scimeters, broke their scabbards, and maintained an
+obstinate combat, till they fell by each other's side on the last of
+their slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa,
+Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He
+vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful
+army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.
+
+[Footnote 150: Regio ignobilis, et vix quicquam illustre sortita, parvis
+oppidis habitatur, parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris meleor et
+segnitie gentis obscura. Pomponius Mela, i. 5, iii. 10. Mela deserves
+the more credit, since his own Phoenician ancestors had migrated from
+Tingitana to Spain (see, in ii. 6, a passage of that geographer so
+cruelly tortured by Salmasius, Isaac Vossius, and the most virulent of
+critics, James Gronovius). He lived at the time of the final reduction
+of that country by the emperor Claudius: yet almost thirty years
+afterward, Pliny (Hist. Nat. v. i.) complains of his authors, to lazy
+to inquire, too proud to confess their ignorance of that wild and remote
+province.]
+
+[Footnote 151: The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed at Rome
+among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the women. A round
+board or table, four or five feet in diameter, sold for the price of
+an estate (latefundii taxatione), eight, ten, or twelve thousand pounds
+sterling (Plin. Hist. Natur. xiii. 29). I conceive that I must not
+confound the tree citrus, with that of the fruit citrum. But I am not
+botanist enough to define the former (it is like the wild cypress) by
+the vulgar or Linnaean name; nor will I decide whether the citrum be the
+orange or the lemon. Salmasius appears to exhaust the subject, but
+he too often involves himself in the web of his disorderly erudition.
+(Flinian. Exercitat. tom. ii. p 666, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 152: Leo African. fol. 16, verso. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 28. This
+province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness of the cherifs
+is often mentioned in the curious history of that dynasty at the end of
+the third volume of Marmol, Description de l'Afrique. The third vol. of
+The Recherches Historiques sur les Maures (lately published at Paris)
+illustrates the history and geography of the kingdoms of Fez and
+Morocco.]
+
+[Footnote 153: Otter (p. 119,) has given the strong tone of fanaticism
+to this exclamation, which Cardonne (p. 37,) has softened to a pious
+wish of preaching the Koran. Yet they had both the same text of Novairi
+before their eyes.]
+
+[A. D. 670-675.] It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes
+to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to
+revolt in their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first
+retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed
+to found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might
+curb the levity of the Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against
+the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With
+this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he
+planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its present
+decay, Cairoan[154] still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis,
+from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south;[155] its inland
+situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from
+the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were
+extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the
+vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable
+food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs
+constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a
+precarious supply of rain water. These obstacles were subdued by the
+industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three thousand and six
+hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space
+of five years, the governor's palace was surrounded with a sufficient
+number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five
+hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan
+became the seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the
+glories of a later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive
+defeats of Akbah and Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again
+interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the
+valiant Zobeir maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months
+against the house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness
+of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the
+courage, he was devoid of the generosity, of his father.[156]
+
+[A. D. 692-698.] The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph
+Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered
+to Hassan governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an
+army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In
+the vicissitudes of war, the interior provinces had been alternately won
+and lost by the Saracens. But the seacoast still remained in the hands
+of the Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name
+and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was
+recruited by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were
+bolder and more fortunate: he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of
+Africa; and the mention of scaling-ladders may justify the suspicion,
+that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of
+a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the
+appearance of the Christian succours. The praefect and patrician John, a
+general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces
+of the Eastern empire;[157] they were joined by the ships and soldiers
+of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths[158] was obtained from
+the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch.
+
+[Footnote 154: The foundation of Cairoan is mentioned by Ockley (Hist.
+of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 129, 130); and the situation, mosque, &c.
+of the city are described by Leo Africanus (fol. 75), Marmol (tom. ii.
+p. 532), and Shaw (p. 115).]
+
+[Footnote 155: A portentous, though frequent mistake, has been the
+confounding, from a slight similitude of name, the Cyrene of the Greeks,
+and the Cairoan of the Arabs, two cities which are separated by an
+interval of a thousand miles along the seacoast. The great Thuanus has
+not escaped this fault, the less excusable as it is connected with a
+formal and elaborate description of Africa (Historiar. l. vii. c. 2, in
+tom. i. p. 240, edit. Buckley).]
+
+[Footnote 156: Besides the Arabic Chronicles of Abulfeda, Elmacin, and
+Abulpharagius, under the lxxiiid year of the Hegira, we may consult
+nd'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 7,) and Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens,
+vol. ii. p. 339-349). The latter has given the last and pathetic
+dialogue between Abdallah and his mother; but he has forgot a physical
+effect of her grief for his death, the return, at the age of ninety, and
+fatal consequences of her menses.]
+
+[Footnote 157: The patriarch of Constantinople, with Theophanes
+(Chronograph. p. 309,) have slightly mentioned this last attempt for
+the relief or Africa. Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 129. 141,) has nicely
+ascertained the chronology by a strict comparison of the Arabic and
+Byzantine historians, who often disagree both in time and fact. See
+likewise a note of Otter (p. 121).]
+
+[Footnote 158: Dove s'erano ridotti i nobili Romani e i Gotti; and
+afterward, i Romani suggirono e i Gotti lasciarono Carthagine. (Leo
+African. for. 72, recto) I know not from what Arabic writer the African
+derived his Goths; but the fact, though new, is so interesting and so
+probable, that I will accept it on the slightest authority.]
+
+The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the
+entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Cairoan, or Tripoli; the
+Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and
+the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But
+Africa was irrecoverably lost: the zeal and resentment of the commander
+of the faithful[159] prepared in the ensuing spring a more numerous
+armament by sea and land; and the patrician in his turn was compelled
+to evacuate the post and fortifications of Carthage. A second battle
+was fought in the neighbourhood of Utica; and the Greeks and Goths were
+again defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword
+of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their
+camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and
+the colony of Dido[160] and Cesar lay desolate above two hundred years,
+till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled
+by the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth
+century, the second capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a
+college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts
+of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the
+arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept away
+by the Spaniards whom Charles the Fifth had stationed in the fortress of
+the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be
+unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps
+of the inquisitive traveller.[161]
+
+[A. D. 698-709.] The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not
+yet masters of the country. In the interior provinces the Moors or
+Berbers,[162] so feeble under the first Cesars, so formidable to the
+Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly resistance to the religion
+and power of the successors of Mahomet. Under the standard of their
+queen Cahina, the independent tribes acquired some degree of union and
+discipline; and as the Moors respected in their females the character of
+a prophetess, they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar to
+their own. The veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the defence
+of Africa: the conquests of an age were lost in a single day; and the
+Arabian chief, overwhelmed by the torrent, retired to the confines of
+Egypt, and expected, five years, the promised succours of the caliph.
+After the retreat of the Saracens, the victorious prophetess assembled
+the Moorish chiefs, and recommended a measure of strange and savage
+policy. "Our cities," said she, "and the gold and silver which they
+contain, perpetually attract the arms of the Arabs. These vile metals
+are not the objects of OUR ambition; we content ourselves with the
+simple productions of the earth. Let us destroy these cities; let us
+bury in their ruins those pernicious treasures; and when the avarice of
+our foes shall be destitute of temptation, perhaps they will cease to
+disturb the tranquillity of a warlike people." The proposal was accepted
+with unanimous applause. From Tangier to Tripoli the buildings, or at
+least the fortifications, were demolished, the fruit-trees were cut
+down, the means of subsistence were extirpated, a fertile and populous
+garden was changed into a desert, and the historians of a more
+recent period could discern the frequent traces of the prosperity and
+devastation of their ancestors.
+
+[Footnote 159: This commander is styled by Nicephorus, -------- a vague
+though not improper definition of the caliph. Theophanes introduces the
+strange appellation of ----------, which his interpreter Goar explains
+by Vizir Azem. They may approach the truth, in assigning the active
+part to the minister, rather than the prince; but they forget that the
+Ommiades had only a kaleb, or secretary, and that the office of
+Vizir was not revived or instituted till the 132d year of the Hegira
+(d'Herbelot, 912).]
+
+[Footnote 160: According to Solinus (1.27, p. 36, edit. Salmas), the
+Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years; a various reading,
+which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions (Salmas, Plinian.
+Exercit tom i. p. 228) The former of these accounts, which gives 823
+years before Christ, is more consistent with the well-weighed testimony
+of Velleius Paterculus: but the latter is preferred by our chronologists
+(Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 398,) as more agreeable to the Hebrew and
+Syrian annals.]
+
+[Footnote 161: Leo African. fo1. 71, verso; 72, recto. Marmol, tom. ii.
+p.445-447. Shaw, p.80.]
+
+[Footnote 162: The history of the word Barbar may be classed under four
+periods, 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and Asiatics might
+probably use a common idiom, the imitative sound of Barbar was applied
+to the ruder tribes, whose pronunciation was most harsh, whose grammar
+was most defective. 2. From the time, at least, of Herodotus, it was
+extended to all the nations who were strangers to the language and
+manners of the Greeks. 3. In the age, of Plautus, the Romans submitted
+to the insult (Pompeius Festus, l. ii. p. 48, edit. Dacier), and freely
+gave themselves the name of Barbarians. They insensibly claimed an
+exemption for Italy, and her subject provinces; and at length removed
+the disgraceful appellation to the savage or hostile nations beyond
+the pale of the empire. 4. In every sense, it was due to the Moors; the
+familiar word was borrowed from the Latin Provincials by the Arabian
+conquerors, and has justly settled as a local denomination (Barbary)
+along the northern coast of Africa.]
+
+Such is the tale of the modern Arabians. Yet I strongly suspect that
+their ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous, and the
+fashion of extolling the philosophy of Barbarians, has induced them to
+describe, as one voluntary act, the calamities of three hundred years
+since the first fury of the Donatists and Vandals. In the progress
+of the revolt, Cahina had most probably contributed her share of
+destruction; and the alarm of universal ruin might terrify and alienate
+the cities that had reluctantly yielded to her unworthy yoke. They
+no longer hoped, perhaps they no longer wished, the return of their
+Byzantine sovereigns: their present servitude was not alleviated by the
+benefits of order and justice; and the most zealous Catholic must prefer
+the imperfect truths of the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the
+Moors. The general of the Saracens was again received as the saviour of
+the province; the friends of civil society conspired against the savages
+of the land; and the royal prophetess was slain in the first battle
+which overturned the baseless fabric of her superstition and empire.
+The same spirit revived under the successor of Hassan; it was finally
+quelled by the activity of Musa and his two sons; but the number of the
+rebels may be presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives;
+sixty thousand of whom, the caliph's fifth, were sold for the profit
+of thee public treasury. Thirty thousand of the Barbarian youth were
+enlisted in the troops; and the pious labours of Musa to inculcate the
+knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to obey the
+apostle of God and the commander of the faithful. In their climate and
+government, their diet and habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the
+Bedoweens of the desert. With the religion, they were proud to adopt
+the language, name, and origin of Arabs: the blood of the strangers and
+natives was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic
+the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains of
+Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents of pure
+Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and scattered through the
+Lybian desert: and I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes
+still retain their barbarous idiom, with the appellation and character
+of white Africans.[163]
+
+[A. D. 709.] V. In the progress of conquest from the north and south,
+the Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the confines of
+Europe and Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the difference of
+religion is a reasonable ground of enmity and warfare.[164] As early as
+the time of Othman[165] their piratical squadrons had ravaged the coast
+of Andalusia;[166] nor had they forgotten the relief of Carthage by the
+Gothic succours. In that age, as well as in the present, the kings of
+Spain were possessed of the fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of
+Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar
+or point of Europe. A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to
+the African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed
+from the walls of Ceuta, by the vigilance and courage of count Julian,
+the general of the Goths. From his disappointment and perplexity,
+Musa was relieved by an unexpected message of the Christian chief,
+who offered his place, his person, and his sword, to the successors of
+Mahomet, and solicited the disgraceful honour of introducing their arms
+into the heart of Spain.[167]
+
+[Footnote 163: The first book of Leo Africanus, and the observations
+of Dr. Shaw (p. 220. 223. 227. 247, &c.) will throw some light on the
+roving tribes of Barbary, of Arabian or Moorish descent. But Shaw
+had seen these savages with distant terror; and Leo, a captive in the
+Vatican, appears to have lost more of his Arabic, than he could acquire
+of Greek or Roman, learning. Many of his gross mistakes might be
+detected in the first period of the Mahometan history.]
+
+[Footnote 164: In a conference with a prince of the Greeks, Amrou
+observed that their religion was different; upon which score it was
+lawful for brothers to quarrel. Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol.
+i. p. 328.]
+
+[Footnote 165: Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p 78, vers. Reiske.]
+
+[Footnote 166: The name of Andalusia is applied by the Arabs not only to
+the modern province, but to the whole peninsula of Spain (Geograph. Nub.
+p. 151, d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 114, 115). The etymology has
+been most improbably deduced from Vandalusia, country of the Vandals.
+(d'Anville Etats de l'Europe, p. 146, 147, &c.) But the Handalusia of
+Casiri, which signifies, in Arabic, the region of the evening, of the
+West, in a word, the Hesperia of the Greeks, is perfectly apposite.
+(Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 327, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 167: The fall and resurrection of the Gothic monarchy are
+related by Mariana (tom. l. p. 238-260, l. vi. c. 19-26, l. vii. c. 1,
+2). That historian has infused into his noble work (Historic de Rebus
+Hispaniae, libri xxx. Hagae Comitum 1733, in four volumes, folio, with
+the continuation of Miniana), the style and spirit of a Roman classic;
+and after the twelfth century, his knowledge and judgment may be safely
+trusted. But the Jesuit is not exempt from the prejudices of his order;
+he adopts and adorns, like his rival Buchanan, the most absurd of the
+national legends; he is too careless of criticism and chronology, and
+supplies, from a lively fancy, the chasms of historical evidence. These
+chasms are large and frequent; Roderic archbishop of Toledo, the father
+of the Spanish history, lived five hundred years after the conquest
+of the Arabs; and the more early accounts are comprised in some meagre
+lines of the blind chronicles of Isidore of Badajoz (Pacensis,) and
+of Alphonso III. king of Leon, which I have seen only in the Annals of
+Pagi.]
+
+If we inquire into the cause of this treachery, the Spaniards will
+repeat the popular story of his daughter Cava;[168] of a virgin who was
+seduced, or ravished, by her sovereign; of a father who sacrificed his
+religion and country to the thirst of revenge. The passions of princes
+have often been licentious and destructive; but this well-known tale,
+romantic in itself, is indifferently supported by external evidence; and
+the history of Spain will suggest some motives of interest and policy
+more congenial to the breast of a veteran statesman.[169] After the
+decease or deposition of Witiza, his two sons were supplanted by the
+ambition of Roderic, a noble Goth, whose father, the duke or governor of
+a province, had fallen a victim to the preceding tyranny. The monarchy
+was still elective; but the sons of Witiza, educated on the steps of the
+throne, were impatient of a private station. Their resentment was the
+more dangerous, as it was varnished with the dissimulation of courts:
+their followers were excited by the remembrance of favours and the
+promise of a revolution: and their uncle Oppas, archbishop of Toledo
+and Seville, was the first person in the church, and the second in the
+state. It is probable that Julian was involved in the disgrace of the
+unsuccessful faction, that he had little to hope and much to fear from
+the new reign; and that the imprudent king could not forget or forgive
+the injuries which Roderic and his family had sustained. The merit and
+influence of the count rendered him a useful or formidable subject:
+his estates were ample, his followers bold and numerous, and it was too
+fatally shown that, by his Andalusian and Mauritanian commands, he held
+in his hands the keys of the Spanish monarchy. Too feeble, however, to
+meet his sovereign in arms, he sought the aid of a foreign power; and
+his rash invitation of the Moors and Arabs produced the calamities of
+eight hundred years. In his epistles, or in a personal interview, he
+revealed the wealth and nakedness of his country; the weakness of an
+unpopular prince; the degeneracy of an effeminate people. The Goths were
+no longer the victorious Barbarians, who had humbled the pride of Rome,
+despoiled the queen of nations, and penetrated from the Danube to the
+Atlantic ocean. Secluded from the world by the Pyrenean mountains, the
+successors of Alaric had slumbered in a long peace: the walls of the
+city were mouldered into dust: the youth had abandoned the exercise of
+arms; and the presumption of their ancient renown would expose them in
+a field of battle to the first assault of the invaders. The ambitious
+Saracen was fired by the ease and importance of the attempt; but
+the execution was delayed till he had consulted the commander of the
+faithful; and his messenger returned with the permission of Walid to
+annex the unknown kingdoms of the West to the religion and throne of the
+caliphs. In his residence of Tangier, Musa, with secrecy and caution,
+continued his correspondence and hastened his preparations. But the
+remorse of the conspirators was soothed by the fallacious assurance that
+he should content himself with the glory and spoil, without aspiring
+to establish the Moslems beyond the sea that separates Africa from
+Europe.[170]
+
+[Footnote 168: Le viol (says Voltaire) est aussi difficile a faire
+qu'a prouver. Des Eveques se seroient ils lignes pour une fille? (Hist.
+Generale, c. xxvi.) His argument is not logically conclusive.]
+
+[Footnote 169: In the story of Cava, Mariana (I. vi. c. 21, p. 241,
+242,) seems to vie with the Lucretia of Livy. Like the ancients, he
+seldom quotes; and the oldest testimony of Baronius (Annal. Eccles.
+A.D. 713, No. 19), that of Lucus Tudensis, a Gallician deacon of the
+thirteenth century, only says, Cava quam pro concubina utebatur.]
+
+[Footnote 170: The Orientals, Elmacin, Abulpharagins, Abolfeda, pass
+over the conquest of Spain in silence, or with a single word. The text
+of Novairi, and the other Arabian writers, is represented, though
+with some foreign alloy, by M. de Cardonne (Hist. de l'Afrique et de
+l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, Paris, 1765, 3 vols. 12mo. tom.
+i. p. 55-114), and more concisely by M. de Guignes (Hist. des Hune.
+tom. i. p. 347-350). The librarian of the Escurial has not satisfied
+my hopes: yet he appears to have searched with diligence his broken
+materials; and the history of the conquest is illustrated by some
+valuable fragments of the genuine Razis (who wrote at. Corduba, A. H.
+300), of Ben Hazil, &c. See Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 32.
+105, 106. 182. 252. 315-332. On this occasion, the industry of Pagi has
+been aided by the Arabic learning of his friend the Abbe de Longuerue,
+and to their joint labours I am deeply indebted.]
+
+[A. D. 710.] Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to the
+traitors and infidels of a foreign land, he made a less dangerous trial
+of their strength and veracity. One hundred Arabs and four hundred
+Africans, passed over, in four vessels, from Tangier or Ceuta; the place
+of their descent on the opposite shore of the strait, is marked by the
+name of Tarif their chief; and the date of this memorable event[171] is
+fixed to the month of Ramandan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira,
+to the month of July, seven hundred and forty-eight years from the
+Spanish era of Cesar,[172] seven hundred and ten after the birth of
+Christ. From their first station, they marched eighteen miles through
+a hilly country to the castle and town of Julian;[173] on which (it is
+still called Algezire) they bestowed the name of the Green Island,
+from a verdant cape that advances into the sea. Their hospitable
+entertainment, the Christians who joined their standard, their inroad
+into a fertile and unguarded province, the richness of their spoil
+and the safety of their return, announced to their brethren the most
+favourable omens of victory. In the ensuing spring, five thousand
+veterans and volunteers were embarked under the command of Tarik, a
+dauntless and skilful soldier, who surpassed the expectation of his
+chief; and the necessary transports were provided by the industry of
+their too faithful ally. The Saracens landed[174] at the pillar or point
+of Europe; the corrupt and familiar appellation of Gibraltar (Gebel el
+Tarik) describes the mountain of Tarik; and the intrenchments of his
+camp were the first outline of those fortifications, which, in the
+hands of our countrymen, have resisted the art and power of the house
+of Bourbon. The adjacent governors informed the court of Toledo of the
+descent and progress of the Arabs; and the defeat of his lieutenant
+Edeco, who had been commanded to seize and bind the presumptuous
+strangers, admonished Roderic of the magnitude of the danger. At the
+royal summons, the dukes and counts, the bishops and nobles of the
+Gothic monarchy assembled at the head of their followers; and the title
+of king of the Romans, which is employed by an Arabic historian, may
+be excused by the close affinity of language, religion, and manners,
+between the nations of Spain. His army consisted of ninety or a hundred
+thousand men: a formidable power, if their fidelity and discipline had
+been adequate to their numbers. The troops of Tarik had been augmented
+to twelve thousand Saracens; but the Christian malecontents were
+attracted by the influence of Julian, and a crowd of Africans
+most greedily tasted the temporal blessings of the Koran. In the
+neighbourhood of Cadiz, the town of Xeres[175] has been illustrated by
+the encounter which determined the fate of the kingdom; the stream of
+the Guadalete, which falls into the bay, divided the two camps, and
+marked the advancing and retreating skirmishes of three successive and
+bloody days.
+
+[Footnote 171: A mistake of Roderic of Toledo, in comparing the lunar
+years of the Hegira with the Julian years of the Era, has determined
+Baronius, Mariana, and the crowd of Spanish historians, to place the
+first invasion in the year 713, and the battle of Xeres in November,
+714. This anachronism of three years has been detected by the more
+correct industry of modern chronologists, above all, of Pagi (Critics,
+tom. iii. p. 164. 171-174), who have restored the genuine state of the
+revolution. At the present time, an Arabian scholar, like Cardonne, who
+adopts the ancient error (tom. i. p. 75), is inexcusably ignorant or
+careless.]
+
+[Footnote 172: The Era of Cesar, which in Spain was in legal and popular
+use till the xivth century, begins thirty-eight years before the birth
+of Christ. I would refer the origin to the general peace by sea and
+land, which confirmed the power and partition of the triumvirs. (Dion.
+Cassius, l. xlviii. p. 547. 553. Appian de Bell. Civil. l. v. p. 1034,
+edit. fol.) Spain was a province of Cesar Octavian; and Tarragona, which
+raised the first temple to Augustus (Tacit Annal. i. 78), might borrow
+from the orientals this mode of flattery.]
+
+[Footnote 173: The road, the country, the old castle of count Julian,
+and the superstitious belief of the Spaniards of hidden treasures, &c.
+are described by Pere Labat (Voyages en Espagne et en Italie, tom i. p.
+207-217), with his usual pleasantry.]
+
+[Footnote 174: The Nubian geographer (p. 154,) explains the topography
+of the war; but it is highly incredible that the lieutenant of Musa
+should execute the desperate and useless measure of burning his ships.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Xeres (the Roman colony of Asta Regia) is only two
+leagues from Cadiz. In the xvith century It was a granary of corn;
+and the wine of Xeres is familiar to the nations of Europe (Lud. Nonii
+Hispania, c. 13, p. 54-56, a work of correct and concise knowledge;
+d'Anville, Etats de l'Europe &c p 154).]
+
+On the fourth day, the two armies joined a more serious and decisive
+issue; but Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his unworthy
+successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls, encumbered with a
+flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and reclining on a litter,
+or car of ivory, drawn by two white mules. Notwithstanding the valour of
+the Saracens, they fainted under the weight of multitudes, and the plain
+of Xeres was overspread with sixteen thousand of their dead bodies. "My
+brethren," said Tarik to his surviving companions, "the enemy is before
+you, the sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general I am
+resolved either to lose my life, or to trample on the prostrate king of
+the Romans." Besides the resource of despair, he confided in the secret
+correspondence and nocturnal interviews of count Julian, with the sons
+and the brother of Witiza. The two princes and the archbishop of Toledo
+occupied the most important post; their well-timed defection broke the
+ranks of the Christians; each warrior was prompted by fear or suspicion
+to consult his personal safety; and the remains of the Gothic army were
+scattered or destroyed to the flight and pursuit of the three following
+days. Amidst the general disorder, Roderic started from his car, and
+mounted Orelia, the fleetest of his Horses; but he escaped from a
+soldier's death to perish more ignobly in the waters of the Boetis or
+Guadalquiver. His diadem, his robes, and his courser, were found on the
+bank; but as the body of the Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the
+pride and ignorance of the caliph must have been gratified with some
+meaner head, which was exposed in triumph before the palace of Damascus.
+"And such," continues a valiant historian of the Arabs, "is the fate of
+those kings who withdraw themselves from a field of battle." [176]
+
+[A. D. 711.] Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and infamy,
+that his only hope was in the ruin of his country. After the battle
+of Xeres he recommended the most effectual measures to the victorious
+Saracens. "The king of the Goths is slain; their princes are fled
+before you, the army is routed, the nation is astonished. Secure with
+sufficient detachments the cities of Boetica; but in person and without
+delay, march to the royal city of Toledo, and allow not the distracted
+Christians either time or tranquillity for the election of a new
+monarch." Tarik listened to his advice. A Roman captive and proselyte,
+who had been enfranchised by the caliph himself, assaulted Cordova with
+seven hundred horse: he swam the river, surprised the town, and drove
+the Christians into the great church, where they defended themselves
+above three months. Another detachment reduced the seacoast of Boetica,
+which in the last period of the Moorish power has comprised in a narrow
+space the populous kingdom of Grenada. The march of Tarik from the
+Boetis to the Tagus,[177] was directed through the Sierra Morena, that
+separates Andalusia and Castille, till he appeared in arms under the
+walls of Toledo.[178] The most zealous of the Catholics had escaped with
+the relics of their saints; and if the gates were shut, it was only
+till the victor had subscribed a fair and reasonable capitulation.
+The voluntary exiles were allowed to depart with their effects; seven
+churches were appropriated to the Christian worship; the archbishop and
+his clergy were at liberty to exercise their functions, the monks to
+practise or neglect their penance; and the Goths and Romans were left in
+all civil or criminal cases to the subordinate jurisdiction of their
+own laws and magistrates. But if the justice of Tarik protected the
+Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the Jews, to whose
+secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important acquisitions.
+Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often pressed the
+alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast nation embraced the
+moment of revenge: the comparison of their past and present state was
+the pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance between the disciples of
+Moses and those of Mahomet, was maintained till the final era of their
+common expulsion.
+
+[Footnote 176: Id sane infortunii regibus pedem ex acie referentibus
+saepe contingit. Den Hazil of Grenada, in Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana.
+tom. ii. p. 337. Some credulous Spaniards believe that king Roderic, or
+Rodrigo, escaped to a hermit's cell; and others, that he was cast alive
+into a tub full of serpents, from whence he exclaimed with a lamentable
+voice, "they devour the part with which I have so grievously sinned."
+(Don Quixote, part ii. l. iii. c. 1.)]
+
+[Footnote 177: The direct road from Corduba to Toledo was measured by
+Mr. Swinburne's mules in 72 1/2 hours: but a larger computation must be
+adopted for the slow and devious marches of an army. The Arabs traversed
+the province of La Mancha, which the pen of Cervantes has transformed
+into classic ground to the reader of every nation.]
+
+[Footnote 178: The antiquities of Toledo, Urbs Parva in the Punic
+wars, Urbs Regia in the sixth century, are briefly described by Nonius
+(Hispania, c. 59, p. 181-136). He borrows from Roderic the fatale
+palatium of Moorish portraits; but modestly insinuates, that it was no
+more than a Roman amphitheatre.]
+
+From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader spread his conquests
+to the north, over the modern realms of Castille and Leon; but it is
+heedless to enumerate the cities that yielded on his approach, or again
+to describe the table of emerald,[179] transported from the East by the
+Romans, acquired by the Goths among the spoils of Rome, and presented by
+the Arabs to the throne of Damascus. Beyond the Asturian mountains, the
+maritime town of Gijon was the term[180] of the lieutenant of Musa, who
+had performed with the speed of a traveller, his victorious march of
+seven hundred miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the bay of Biscay.
+The failure of land compelled him to retreat: and he was recalled to
+Toledo, to excuse his presumption of subduing a kingdom in the absence
+of his general. Spain, which in a more savage and disorderly state, had
+resisted, two hundred years, the arms of the Romans, was overrun in
+a few months by those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness of
+submission and treaty, that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the
+only chief who fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands.
+The cause of the Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of
+Xeres; and in the national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined
+a contest with the antagonist who had vanquished the united strength of
+the whole.[181] That strength had been wasted by two successive seasons
+of famine and pestilence; and the governors, who were impatient to
+surrender, might exaggerate the difficulty of collecting the provisions
+of a siege. To disarm the Christians, superstition likewise contributed
+her terrors: and the subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens,
+and prophecies, and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of
+Spain, that were discovered on the breaking open an apartment of the
+royal palace. Yet a spark of the vital flame was still alive; some
+invincible fugitives preferred a life of poverty and freedom in the
+Asturian valleys; the hardy mountaineers repulsed the slaves of the
+caliph; and the sword of Pelagius has been transformed into the sceptre
+of the Catholic kings.[182]
+
+[Footnote 179: In the Historia Arabum (c. 9, p. 17, ad calcem Elmacin),
+Roderic of Toledo describes the emerald tables, and inserts the name of
+Medinat Ahneyda in Arabic words and letters. He appears to be conversant
+with the Mahometan writers; but I cannot agree with M. de Guignes (Hist.
+des Huns, tom. i. p. 350) that he had read and transcribed Novairi;
+because he was dead a hundred years before Novairi composed his
+history. This mistake is founded on a still grosser error. M. de Guignes
+confounds the governed historian Roderic Ximines, archbishop of Toledo,
+in the xiiith century, with cardinal Ximines, who governed Spain in
+the beginning of the xvith, and was the subject, not the author, of
+historical compositions.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Tarik might have inscribed on the last rock, the boast
+of Regnard and his companions in their Lapland journey, "Hic tandem
+stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis."]
+
+[Footnote 181: Such was the argument of the traitor Oppas, and every
+chief to whom it was addressed did not answer with the spirit of
+Pelagius; Omnis Hispania dudum sub uno regimine Gothorum, omnis
+exercitus Hispaniae in uno congregatus Ismaelitarum non valuit sustinere
+impetum. Chron. Alphonsi Regis, apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 177.]
+
+[Footnote 182: The revival of tire Gothic kingdom in the Asturias is
+distinctly though concisely noticed by d'Anville (Etats de l'Europe, p.
+159)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part VII.
+
+On the intelligence of this rapid success, the applause of Musa
+degenerated into envy; and he began, not to complain, but to fear, that
+Tarik would leave him nothing to subdue. At the head of ten thousand
+Arabs and eight thousand Africans, he passed over in person from
+Mauritania to Spain: the first of his companions were the noblest of
+the Koreish; his eldest son was left in the command of Africa; the
+three younger brethren were of an age and spirit to second the boldest
+enterprises of their father. At his landing in Algezire, he was
+respectfully entertained by Count Julian, who stifled his inward
+remorse, and testified, both in words and actions, that the victory of
+the Arabs had not impaired his attachment to their cause. Some enemies
+yet remained for the sword of Musa. The tardy repentance of the Goths
+had compared their own numbers and those of the invaders; the cities
+from which the march of Tarik had declined considered themselves as
+impregnable; and the bravest patriots defended the fortifications of
+Seville and Merida. They were successively besieged and reduced by the
+labor of Musa, who transported his camp from the Boetis to the Anas,
+from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana. When he beheld the works of Roman
+magnificence, the bridge, the aqueducts, the triumphal arches, and the
+theatre, of the ancient metropolis of Lusitania, "I should imagine,"
+said he to his four companions, "that the human race must have united
+their art and power in the foundation of this city: happy is the man
+who shall become its master!" He aspired to that happiness, but the
+Emeritans sustained on this occasion the honor of their descent from
+the veteran legionaries of Augustus [183] Disdaining the confinement
+of their walls, they gave battle to the Arabs on the plain; but an
+ambuscade rising from the shelter of a quarry, or a ruin, chastised
+their indiscretion, and intercepted their return.
+
+The wooden turrets of assault were rolled forwards to the foot of the
+rampart; but the defence of Merida was obstinate and long; and the
+castle of the martyrs was a perpetual testimony of the losses of the
+Moslems. The constancy of the besieged was at length subdued by famine
+and despair; and the prudent victor disguised his impatience under the
+names of clemency and esteem. The alternative of exile or tribute was
+allowed; the churches were divided between the two religions; and the
+wealth of those who had fallen in the siege, or retired to Gallicia, was
+confiscated as the reward of the faithful. In the midway between Merida
+and Toledo, the lieutenant of Musa saluted the vicegerent of the
+caliph, and conducted him to the palace of the Gothic kings. Their
+first interview was cold and formal: a rigid account was exacted of the
+treasures of Spain: the character of Tarik was exposed to suspicion
+and obloquy; and the hero was imprisoned, reviled, and ignominiously
+scourged by the hand, or the command, of Musa. Yet so strict was the
+discipline, so pure the zeal, or so tame the spirit, of the primitive
+Moslems, that, after this public indignity, Tarik could serve and
+be trusted in the reduction of the Tarragonest province. A mosch was
+erected at Saragossa, by the liberality of the Koreish: the port of
+Barcelona was opened to the vessels of Syria; and the Goths were pursued
+beyond the Pyrenaean mountains into their Gallic province of Septimania
+or Languedoc. [184] In the church of St. Mary at Carcassone, Musa found,
+but it is improbable that he left, seven equestrian statues of massy
+silver; and from his term or column of Narbonne, he returned on his
+footsteps to the Gallician and Lusitanian shores of the ocean. During
+the absence of the father, his son Abdelaziz chastised the insurgents
+of Seville, and reduced, from Malaga to Valentia, the sea-coast of
+the Mediterranean: his original treaty with the discreet and valiant
+Theodemir [185] will represent the manners and policy of the times. "The
+conditions of peace agreed and sworn between Abdelaziz, the son of Musa,
+the son of Nassir, and Theodemir prince of the Goths. In the name of
+the most merciful God, Abdelaziz makes peace on these conditions: that
+Theodemir shall not be disturbed in his principality; nor any injury be
+offered to the life or property, the wives and children, the religion
+and temples, of the Christians: that Theodemir shall freely deliver
+his seven [1851] cities, Orihuela, Valentola, Alicanti Mola, Vacasora,
+Bigerra, (now Bejar,) Ora, (or Opta,) and Lorca: that he shall not
+assist or entertain the enemies of the caliph, but shall faithfully
+communicate his knowledge of their hostile designs: that himself, and
+each of the Gothic nobles, shall annually pay one piece of gold, four
+measures of wheat, as many of barley, with a certain proportion of
+honey, oil, and vinegar; and that each of their vassals shall be taxed
+at one moiety of the said imposition. Given the fourth of Regeb, in the
+year of the Hegira ninety-four, and subscribed with the names of four
+Mussulman witnesses." [186] Theodemir and his subjects were treated with
+uncommon lenity; but the rate of tribute appears to have fluctuated
+from a tenth to a fifth, according to the submission or obstinacy of
+the Christians. [187] In this revolution, many partial calamities were
+inflicted by the carnal or religious passions of the enthusiasts: some
+churches were profaned by the new worship: some relics or images were
+confounded with idols: the rebels were put to the sword; and one
+town (an obscure place between Cordova and Seville) was razed to its
+foundations. Yet if we compare the invasion of Spain by the Goths, or
+its recovery by the kings of Castile and Arragon, we must applaud the
+moderation and discipline of the Arabian conquerors.
+
+[Footnote 183: The honorable relics of the Cantabrian war (Dion Cassius,
+l. liii p. 720) were planted in this metropolis of Lusitania, perhaps of
+Spain, (submittit cui tota suos Hispania fasces.) Nonius (Hispania, c.
+31, p. 106-110) enumerates the ancient structures, but concludes with
+a sigh: Urbs haec olim nobilissima ad magnam incolarum infrequentiam
+delapsa est, et praeter priscae claritatis ruinas nihil ostendit.]
+
+[Footnote 184: Both the interpreters of Novairi, De Guignes (Hist. des
+Huns, tom. i. p. 349) and Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne,
+tom. i. p. 93, 94, 104, 135,) lead Musa into the Narbonnese Gaul. But I
+find no mention of this enterprise, either in Roderic of Toledo, or the
+Mss. of the Escurial, and the invasion of the Saracens is postponed by
+a French chronicle till the ixth year after the conquest of Spain, A.D.
+721, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 177, 195. Historians of France, tom.
+iii.) I much question whether Musa ever passed the Pyrenees.]
+
+[Footnote 185: Four hundred years after Theodemir, his territories of
+Murcia and Carthagena retain in the Nubian geographer Edrisi (p, 154,
+161) the name of Tadmir, (D'Anville, Etats de l'Europe, p. 156. Pagi,
+tom. iii. p. 174.) In the present decay of Spanish agriculture, Mr.
+Swinburne (Travels into Spain, p. 119) surveyed with pleasure the
+delicious valley from Murcia to Orihuela, four leagues and a half of the
+finest corn pulse, lucerne, oranges, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 1851: Gibbon has made eight cities: in Conde's translation
+Bigera does not appear.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 186: See the treaty in Arabic and Latin, in the Bibliotheca
+Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 105, 106. It is signed the 4th of the month
+of Regeb, A. H. 94, the 5th of April, A.D. 713; a date which seems to
+prolong the resistance of Theodemir, and the government of Musa.]
+
+[Footnote 187: From the history of Sandoval, p. 87. Fleury (Hist.
+Eccles. tom. ix. p. 261) has given the substance of another treaty
+concluded A Ae. C. 782, A.D. 734, between an Arabian chief and the Goths
+and Romans, of the territory of Conimbra in Portugal. The tax of the
+churches is fixed at twenty-five pounds of gold; of the monasteries,
+fifty; of the cathedrals, one hundred; the Christians are judged by
+their count, but in capital cases he must consult the alcaide. The
+church doors must be shut, and they must respect the name of Mahomet.
+I have not the original before me; it would confirm or destroy a dark
+suspicion, that the piece has been forged to introduce the immunity of a
+neighboring convent.]
+
+The exploits of Musa were performed in the evening of life, though he
+affected to disguise his age by coloring with a red powder the whiteness
+of his beard. But in the love of action and glory, his breast was
+still fired with the ardor of youth; and the possession of Spain was
+considered only as the first step to the monarchy of Europe. With
+a powerful armament by sea and land, he was preparing to repass the
+Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul and Italy the declining kingdoms of the
+Franks and Lombards, and to preach the unity of God on the altar of the
+Vatican. From thence, subduing the Barbarians of Germany, he proposed
+to follow the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea,
+to overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and returning
+from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with Antioch and
+the provinces of Syria. [188] But his vast enterprise, perhaps of
+easy execution, must have seemed extravagant to vulgar minds; and the
+visionary conqueror was soon reminded of his dependence and servitude.
+The friends of Tarik had effectually stated his services and wrongs:
+at the court of Damascus, the proceedings of Musa were blamed, his
+intentions were suspected, and his delay in complying with the first
+invitation was chastised by a harsher and more peremptory summons. An
+intrepid messenger of the caliph entered his camp at Lugo in Gallicia,
+and in the presence of the Saracens and Christians arrested the bridle
+of his horse. His own loyalty, or that of his troops, inculcated the
+duty of obedience: and his disgrace was alleviated by the recall of his
+rival, and the permission of investing with his two governments his two
+sons, Abdallah and Abdelaziz. His long triumph from Ceuta to Damascus
+displayed the spoils of Africa and the treasures of Spain: four hundred
+Gothic nobles, with gold coronets and girdles, were distinguished in his
+train; and the number of male and female captives, selected for their
+birth or beauty, was computed at eighteen, or even at thirty, thousand
+persons. As soon as he reached Tiberias in Palestine, he was apprised
+of the sickness and danger of the caliph, by a private message from
+Soliman, his brother and presumptive heir; who wished to reserve for his
+own reign the spectacle of victory.
+
+Had Walid recovered, the delay of Musa would have been criminal: he
+pursued his march, and found an enemy on the throne. In his trial before
+a partial judge against a popular antagonist, he was convicted of vanity
+and falsehood; and a fine of two hundred thousand pieces of gold
+either exhausted his poverty or proved his rapaciousness. The unworthy
+treatment of Tarik was revenged by a similar indignity; and the veteran
+commander, after a public whipping, stood a whole day in the sun before
+the palace gate, till he obtained a decent exile, under the pious name
+of a pilgrimage to Mecca. The resentment of the caliph might have been
+satiated with the ruin of Musa; but his fears demanded the extirpation
+of a potent and injured family. A sentence of death was intimated with
+secrecy and speed to the trusty servants of the throne both in Africa
+and Spain; and the forms, if not the substance, of justice were
+superseded in this bloody execution. In the mosch or palace of Cordova,
+Abdelaziz was slain by the swords of the conspirators; they accused
+their governor of claiming the honors of royalty; and his scandalous
+marriage with Egilona, the widow of Roderic, offended the prejudices
+both of the Christians and Moslems. By a refinement of cruelty, the
+head of the son was presented to the father, with an insulting
+question, whether he acknowledged the features of the rebel? "I know his
+features," he exclaimed with indignation: "I assert his innocence; and
+I imprecate the same, a juster fate, against the authors of his death."
+The age and despair of Musa raised him above the power of kings; and he
+expired at Mecca of the anguish of a broken heart. His rival was more
+favorably treated: his services were forgiven; and Tarik was permitted
+to mingle with the crowd of slaves. [189] I am ignorant whether Count
+Julian was rewarded with the death which he deserved indeed, though not
+from the hands of the Saracens; but the tale of their ingratitude to the
+sons of Witiza is disproved by the most unquestionable evidence. The two
+royal youths were reinstated in the private patrimony of their father;
+but on the decease of Eba, the elder, his daughter was unjustly
+despoiled of her portion by the violence of her uncle Sigebut. The
+Gothic maid pleaded her cause before the caliph Hashem, and obtained the
+restitution of her inheritance; but she was given in marriage to a noble
+Arabian, and their two sons, Isaac and Ibrahim, were received in Spain
+with the consideration that was due to their origin and riches.
+
+[Footnote 188: This design, which is attested by several Arabian
+historians, (Cardonne, tom. i. p. 95, 96,) may be compared with that of
+Mithridates, to march from the Crimaea to Rome; or with that of Caesar,
+to conquer the East, and return home by the North; and all three are
+perhaps surpassed by the real and successful enterprise of Hannibal.]
+
+[Footnote 189: I much regret our loss, or my ignorance, of two Arabic
+works of the viiith century, a Life of Musa, and a poem on the exploits
+of Tarik. Of these authentic pieces, the former was composed by a
+grandson of Musa, who had escaped from the massacre of his kindred; the
+latter, by the vizier of the first Abdalrahman, caliph of Spain,
+who might have conversed with some of the veterans of the conqueror,
+(Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 36, 139.)]
+
+A province is assimilated to the victorious state by the introduction of
+strangers and the imitative spirit of the natives; and Spain, which had
+been successively tinctured with Punic, and Roman, and Gothic blood,
+imbibed, in a few generations, the name and manners of the Arabs. The
+first conquerors, and the twenty successive lieutenants of the caliphs,
+were attended by a numerous train of civil and military followers, who
+preferred a distant fortune to a narrow home: the private and public
+interest was promoted by the establishment of faithful colonies; and the
+cities of Spain were proud to commemorate the tribe or country of their
+Eastern progenitors. The victorious though motley bands of Tarik
+and Musa asserted, by the name of Spaniards, their original claim
+of conquest; yet they allowed their brethren of Egypt to share their
+establishments of Murcia and Lisbon. The royal legion of Damascus was
+planted at Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Kinnisrin or
+Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The
+natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered round Toledo and the inland
+country, and the fertile seats of Grenada were bestowed on ten thousand
+horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble of
+the Arabian tribes. [190] A spirit of emulation, sometimes beneficial,
+more frequently dangerous, was nourished by these hereditary factions.
+Ten years after the conquest, a map of the province was presented to
+the caliph: the seas, the rivers, and the harbors, the inhabitants and
+cities, the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of the earth.
+[191] In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were improved
+by the agriculture, [192] the manufactures, and the commerce, of
+an industrious people; and the effects of their diligence have been
+magnified by the idleness of their fancy. The first of the Ommiades who
+reigned in Spain solicited the support of the Christians; and in
+his edict of peace and protection, he contents himself with a modest
+imposition of ten thousand ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds of
+silver, ten thousand horses, as many mules, one thousand cuirasses, with
+an equal number of helmets and lances. [193] The most powerful of his
+successors derived from the same kingdom the annual tribute of twelve
+millions and forty-five thousand dinars or pieces of gold, about six
+millions of sterling money; [194] a sum which, in the tenth century,
+most probably surpassed the united revenues of the Christians monarchs.
+His royal seat of Cordova contained six hundred moschs, nine hundred
+baths, and two hundred thousand houses; he gave laws to eighty cities
+of the first, to three hundred of the second and third order; and the
+fertile banks of the Guadalquivir were adorned with twelve thousand
+villages and hamlets. The Arabs might exaggerate the truth, but they
+created and they describe the most prosperous aera of the riches, the
+cultivation, and the populousness of Spain. [195]
+
+[Footnote 190: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. ii. p. 32, 252. The former
+of these quotations is taken from a Biographia Hispanica, by an Arabian
+of Valentia, (see the copious Extracts of Casiri, tom. ii. p. 30-121;)
+and the latter from a general Chronology of the Caliphs, and of the
+African and Spanish Dynasties, with a particular History of the
+kingdom of Grenada, of which Casiri has given almost an entire version,
+(Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 177-319.) The author, Ebn
+Khateb, a native of Grenada, and a contemporary of Novairi and Abulfeda,
+(born A.D. 1313, died A.D. 1374,) was an historian, geographer,
+physician, poet, &c., (tom. ii. p. 71, 72.)]
+
+[Footnote 191: Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p.
+116, 117.]
+
+[Footnote 192: A copious treatise of husbandry, by an Arabian of
+Seville, in the xiith century, is in the Escurial library, and Casiri
+had some thoughts of translating it. He gives a list of the authors
+quoted, Arabs as well as Greeks, Latins, &c.; but it is much if the
+Andalusian saw these strangers through the medium of his countryman
+Columella, (Casiri, Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 323-338.)]
+
+[Footnote 193: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 104. Casiri
+translates the original testimony of the historian Rasis, as it is
+alleged in the Arabic Biographia Hispanica, pars ix. But I am
+most exceedingly surprised at the address, Principibus caeterisque
+Christianis, Hispanis suis Castellae. The name of Castellae was unknown
+in the viiith century; the kingdom was not erected till the year 1022,
+a hundred years after the time of Rasis, (Bibliot. tom. ii. p. 330,) and
+the appellation was always expressive, not of a tributary province, but
+of a line of castles independent of the Moorish yoke, (D'Anville, Etats
+de l'Europe, p. 166-170.) Had Casiri been a critic, he would have
+cleared a difficulty, perhaps of his own making.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Cardonne, tom. i. p. 337, 338. He computes the revenue at
+130,000,000 of French livres. The entire picture of peace and prosperity
+relieves the bloody uniformity of the Moorish annals.]
+
+[Footnote 195: I am happy enough to possess a splendid and interesting
+work which has only been distributed in presents by the court of Madrid
+Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, opera et studio Michaelis
+Casiri, Syro Maronitoe. Matriti, in folio, tomus prior, 1760, tomus
+posterior, 1770. The execution of this work does honor to the Spanish
+press; the Mss., to the number of MDCCCLI., are judiciously classed by
+the editor, and his copious extracts throw some light on the Mahometan
+literature and history of Spain. These relics are now secure, but the
+task has been supinely delayed, till, in the year 1671, a fire consumed
+the greatest part of the Escurial library, rich in the spoils of Grenada
+and Morocco. * Note: Compare the valuable work of Conde, Historia de la
+Dominacion de las Arabes en Espana. Madrid, 1820.--M.]
+
+The wars of the Moslems were sanctified by the prophet; but among the
+various precepts and examples of his life, the caliphs selected the
+lessons of toleration that might tend to disarm the resistance of the
+unbelievers. Arabia was the temple and patrimony of the God of Mahomet;
+but he beheld with less jealousy and affection the nations of the earth.
+The polytheists and idolaters, who were ignorant of his name, might be
+lawfully extirpated by his votaries; [196] but a wise policy supplied
+the obligation of justice; and after some acts of intolerant zeal, the
+Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagods of that devout
+and populous country. The disciples of Abraham, of Moses, and of Jesus,
+were solemnly invited to accept the more perfect revelation of Mahomet;
+but if they preferred the payment of a moderate tribute, they were
+entitled to the freedom of conscience and religious worship. [197] In a
+field of battle the forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the
+profession of Islam; the females were bound to embrace the religion of
+their masters, and a race of sincere proselytes was gradually multiplied
+by the education of the infant captives. But the millions of African
+and Asiatic converts, who swelled the native band of the faithful Arabs,
+must have been allured, rather than constrained, to declare their belief
+in one God and the apostle of God. By the repetition of a sentence and
+the loss of a foreskin, the subject or the slave, the captive or
+the criminal, arose in a moment the free and equal companion of the
+victorious Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was
+dissolved: the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence of
+nature; the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by
+the trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world, every
+member of a new society ascended to the natural level of his capacity
+and courage. The minds of the multitude were tempted by the invisible as
+well as temporal blessings of the Arabian prophet; and charity will
+hope that many of his proselytes entertained a serious conviction of
+the truth and sanctity of his revelation. In the eyes of an inquisitive
+polytheist, it must appear worthy of the human and the divine nature.
+More pure than the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of
+Moses, the religion of Mahomet might seem less inconsistent with reason
+than the creed of mystery and superstition, which, in the seventh
+century, disgraced the simplicity of the gospel.
+
+[Footnote 196: The Harbii, as they are styled, qui tolerari nequeunt,
+are, 1. Those who, besides God, worship the sun, moon, or idols. 2.
+Atheists, Utrique, quamdiu princeps aliquis inter Mohammedanos superest,
+oppugnari debent donec religionem amplectantur, nec requies iis
+concedenda est, nec pretium acceptandum pro obtinenda conscientiae
+libertate, (Reland, Dissertat. x. de Jure Militari Mohammedan. tom. iii.
+p. 14;) a rigid theory!]
+
+[Footnote 197: The distinction between a proscribed and a tolerated
+sect, between the Harbii and the people of the Book, the believers in
+some divine revelation, is correctly defined in the conversation of the
+caliph Al Mamum with the idolaters or Sabaeans of Charrae, (Hottinger,
+Hist. Orient. p. 107, 108.)]
+
+In the extensive provinces of Persia and Africa, the national religion
+has been eradicated by the Mahometan faith. The ambiguous theology
+of the Magi stood alone among the sects of the East; but the profane
+writings of Zoroaster [198] might, under the reverend name of Abraham,
+be dexterously connected with the chain of divine revelation. Their evil
+principle, the daemon Ahriman, might be represented as the rival, or as
+the creature, of the God of light. The temples of Persia were devoid of
+images; but the worship of the sun and of fire might be stigmatized as a
+gross and criminal idolatry. [199] The milder sentiment was consecrated
+by the practice of Mahomet [200] and the prudence of the caliphs; the
+Magians or Ghebers were ranked with the Jews and Christians among the
+people of the written law; [201] and as late as the third century of the
+Hegira, the city of Herat will afford a lively contrast of private zeal
+and public toleration. [202] Under the payment of an annual tribute, the
+Mahometan law secured to the Ghebers of Herat their civil and religious
+liberties: but the recent and humble mosch was overshadowed by the
+antique splendor of the adjoining temple of fire. A fanatic Iman
+deplored, in his sermons, the scandalous neighborhood, and accused the
+weakness or indifference of the faithful. Excited by his voice, the
+people assembled in tumult; the two houses of prayer were consumed
+by the flames, but the vacant ground was immediately occupied by the
+foundations of a new mosch. The injured Magi appealed to the sovereign
+of Chorasan; he promised justice and relief; when, behold! four thousand
+citizens of Herat, of a grave character and mature age, unanimously
+swore that the idolatrous fane had never existed; the inquisition was
+silenced and their conscience was satisfied (says the historian Mirchond
+[203] with this holy and meritorious perjury. [204] But the greatest
+part of the temples of Persia were ruined by the insensible and general
+desertion of their votaries.
+
+It was insensible, since it is not accompanied with any memorial of time
+or place, of persecution or resistance. It was general, since the whole
+realm, from Shiraz to Samarcand, imbibed the faith of the Koran; and the
+preservation of the native tongue reveals the descent of the Mahometans
+of Persia. [205] In the mountains and deserts, an obstinate race of
+unbelievers adhered to the superstition of their fathers; and a faint
+tradition of the Magian theology is kept alive in the province of
+Kirman, along the banks of the Indus, among the exiles of Surat, and in
+the colony which, in the last century, was planted by Shaw Abbas at
+the gates of Ispahan. The chief pontiff has retired to Mount Elbourz,
+eighteen leagues from the city of Yezd: the perpetual fire (if it
+continues to burn) is inaccessible to the profane; but his residence is
+the school, the oracle, and the pilgrimage of the Ghebers, whose hard
+and uniform features attest the unmingled purity of their blood. Under
+the jurisdiction of their elders, eighty thousand families maintain an
+innocent and industrious life: their subsistence is derived from some
+curious manufactures and mechanic trades; and they cultivate the earth
+with the fervor of a religious duty. Their ignorance withstood the
+despotism of Shaw Abbas, who demanded with threats and tortures the
+prophetic books of Zoroaster; and this obscure remnant of the Magians is
+spared by the moderation or contempt of their present sovereigns. [206]
+
+[Footnote 198: The Zend or Pazend, the bible of the Ghebers, is reckoned
+by themselves, or at least by the Mahometans, among the ten books which
+Abraham received from heaven; and their religion is honorably styled
+the religion of Abraham, (D'Herblot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 701; Hyde, de
+Religione veterum Persarum, c, iii. p. 27, 28, &c.) I much fear that we
+do not possess any pure and free description of the system of Zoroaster.
+[1981] Dr. Prideaux (Connection, vol. i. p. 300, octavo) adopts the
+opinion, that he had been the slave and scholar of some Jewish prophet
+in the captivity of Babylon. Perhaps the Persians, who have been the
+masters of the Jews, would assert the honor, a poor honor, of being
+their masters.]
+
+[Footnote 1981: Whatever the real age of the Zendavesta, published by
+Anquetil du Perron, whether of the time of Ardeschir Babeghan, according
+to Mr. Erskine, or of much higher antiquity, it may be considered, I
+conceive, both a "pure and a free," though imperfect, description of
+Zoroastrianism; particularly with the illustrations of the original
+translator, and of the German Kleuker--M.]
+
+[Footnote 199: The Arabian Nights, a faithful and amusing picture of the
+Oriental world, represent in the most odious colors of the Magians, or
+worshippers of fire, to whom they attribute the annual sacrifice of a
+Mussulman. The religion of Zoroaster has not the least affinity with
+that of the Hindoos, yet they are often confounded by the Mahometans;
+and the sword of Timour was sharpened by this mistake, (Hist. de Timour
+Bec, par Cherefeddin Ali Yezdi, l. v.)]
+
+[Footnote 200: Vie de Mahomet, par Gagnier, (tom. iii. p. 114, 115.)]
+
+[Footnote 201: Hae tres sectae, Judaei, Christiani, et qui inter
+Persas Magorum institutis addicti sunt, populi libri dicuntur, (Reland,
+Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 15.) The caliph Al Mamun confirms this honorable
+distinction in favor of the three sects, with the vague and equivocal
+religion of the Sabaeans, under which the ancient polytheists of Charrae
+were allowed to shelter their idolatrous worship, (Hottinger, Hist.
+Orient p. 167, 168.)]
+
+[Footnote 202: This singular story is related by D'Herbelot, (Bibliot.
+Orient. p 448, 449,) on the faith of Khondemir, and by Mirchond himself,
+(Hist priorum Regum Persarum, &c., p. 9, 10, not. p. 88, 89.)]
+
+[Footnote 203: Mirchond, (Mohammed Emir Khoondah Shah,) a native of
+Herat, composed in the Persian language a general history of the East,
+from the creation to the year of the Hegira 875, (A.D. 1471.) In the
+year 904 (A.D. 1498) the historian obtained the command of a princely
+library, and his applauded work, in seven or twelve parts, was
+abbreviated in three volumes by his son Khondemir, A. H. 927, A.D. 1520.
+The two writers, most accurately distinguished by Petit de la Croix,
+(Hist. de Genghizcan, p.537, 538, 544, 545,) are loosely confounded by
+D'Herbelot, (p. 358, 410, 994, 995: ) but his numerous extracts, under
+the improper name of Khondemir, belong to the father rather than the
+son. The historian of Genghizcan refers to a Ms. of Mirchond, which
+he received from the hands of his friend D'Herbelot himself. A curious
+fragment (the Taherian and Soffarian Dynasties) has been lately
+published in Persic and Latin, (Viennae, 1782, in 4to., cum notis
+Bernard de Jenisch;) and the editor allows us to hope for a continuation
+of Mirchond.]
+
+[Footnote 204: Quo testimonio boni se quidpiam praestitisse opinabantur.
+Yet Mirchond must have condemned their zeal, since he approved the legal
+toleration of the Magi, cui (the fire temple) peracto singulis annis
+censu uti sacra Mohammedis lege cautum, ab omnibus molestiis ac oneribus
+libero esse licuit.]
+
+[Footnote 205: The last Magian of name and power appears to be Mardavige
+the Dilemite, who, in the beginning of the 10th century, reigned in
+the northern provinces of Persia, near the Caspian Sea, (D'Herbelot,
+Bibliot. Orient. p. 355.) But his soldiers and successors, the Bowides
+either professed or embraced the Mahometan faith; and under their
+dynasty (A.D. 933-1020) I should say the fall of the religion of
+Zoroaster.]
+
+[Footnote 206: The present state of the Ghebers in Persia is taken from
+Sir John Chardin, not indeed the most learned, but the most judicious
+and inquisitive of our modern travellers, (Voyages en Perse, tom. ii.
+p. 109, 179-187, in 4to.) His brethren, Pietro della Valle, Olearius,
+Thevenot, Tavernier, &c., whom I have fruitlessly searched, had neither
+eyes nor attention for this interesting people.]
+
+The Northern coast of Africa is the only land in which the light of
+the gospel, after a long and perfect establishment, has been totally
+extinguished. The arts, which had been taught by Carthage and Rome, were
+involved in a cloud of ignorance; the doctrine of Cyprian and Augustin
+was no longer studied. Five hundred episcopal churches were overturned
+by the hostile fury of the Donatists, the Vandals, and the Moors.
+The zeal and numbers of the clergy declined; and the people, without
+discipline, or knowledge, or hope, submissively sunk under the yoke
+of the Arabian prophet Within fifty years after the expulsion of the
+Greeks, a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the tribute of
+the infidels was abolished by their conversion; [207] and, though he
+sought to disguise his fraud and rebellion, his specious pretence was
+drawn from the rapid and extensive progress of the Mahometan faith. In
+the next age, an extraordinary mission of five bishops was detached from
+Alexandria to Cairoan. They were ordained by the Jacobite patriarch
+to cherish and revive the dying embers of Christianity: [208] but the
+interposition of a foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an enemy
+to the Catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the African
+hierarchy. It was no longer the time when the successor of St. Cyprian,
+at the head of a numerous synod, could maintain an equal contest
+with the ambition of the Roman pontiff. In the eleventh century, the
+unfortunate priest who was seated on the ruins of Carthage implored the
+arms and the protection of the Vatican; and he bitterly complains that
+his naked body had been scourged by the Saracens, and that his authority
+was disputed by the four suffragans, the tottering pillars of his
+throne. Two epistles of Gregory the Seventh [209] are destined to soothe
+the distress of the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The
+pope assures the sultan that they both worship the same God, and may
+hope to meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint that three
+bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother, announces the
+speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order. The Christians
+of Africa and Spain had long since submitted to the practice of
+circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine and pork; and the
+name of Mozarabes [210] (adoptive Arabs) was applied to their civil or
+religious conformity. [211] About the middle of the twelfth century, the
+worship of Christ and the succession of pastors were abolished along
+the coast of Barbary, and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of
+Valencia and Grenada. [212] The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians,
+was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary rigor
+might be provoked or justified by the recent victories and intolerant
+zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon and Portugal.
+The faith of the Mozarabes was occasionally revived by the papal
+missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles the Fifth, some families
+of Latin Christians were encouraged to rear their heads at Tunis and
+Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was quickly eradicated, and the
+long province from Tripoli to the Atlantic has lost all memory of the
+language and religion of Rome. [213]
+
+[Footnote 207: The letter of Abdoulrahman, governor or tyrant of Africa,
+to the caliph Aboul Abbas, the first of the Abbassides, is dated A. H.
+132 Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p. 168.)]
+
+[Footnote 208: Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 66. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch.
+Alex. p. 287, 288.]
+
+[Footnote 209: Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX. epist. 3;
+Gregor. VII. l. i. epist. 22, 23, l. iii. epist. 19, 20, 21; and the
+criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iv. A.D. 1053, No. 14, A.D. 1073, No. 13,) who
+investigates the name and family of the Moorish prince, with whom the
+proudest of the Roman pontiffs so politely corresponds.]
+
+[Footnote 210: Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is
+interpreted in Latin, (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 39, 40.
+Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 18.) The Mozarabic liturgy, the
+ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been attacked by the popes,
+and exposed to the doubtful trials of the sword and of fire, (Marian.
+Hist. Hispan. tom. i. l. ix. c. 18, p. 378.) It was, or rather it is, in
+the Latin tongue; yet in the xith century it was found necessary (A. Ae.
+C. 1687, A.D. 1039) to transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the
+councils of Spain, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 547,) for the use of
+the bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.]
+
+[Footnote 211: About the middle of the xth century, the clergy of
+Cordova was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the intrepid
+envoy of the Emperor Otho I., (Vit. Johan. Gorz, in Secul. Benedict. V.
+No. 115, apud Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xii. p. 91.)]
+
+[Footnote 212: Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 1149, No. 8, 9. He justly
+observes, that when Seville, &c., were retaken by Ferdinand of Castille,
+no Christians, except captives, were found in the place; and that the
+Mozarabic churches of Africa and Spain, described by James a Vitriaco,
+A.D. 1218, (Hist. Hierosol. c. 80, p. 1095, in Gest. Dei per Francos,)
+are copied from some older book. I shall add, that the date of the
+Hegira 677 (A.D. 1278) must apply to the copy, not the composition, of
+a treatise of a jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the
+Christians of Cordova, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 471;) and that
+the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of Grenada,
+(A.D. 1313,) could either discountenance or tolerate, (tom. ii. p.
+288.)]
+
+[Footnote 213: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288. Leo Africanus
+would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have discovered any
+latent relics of the Christianity of Africa.]
+
+After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews and Christians of the
+Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience which was granted by the
+Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the conquest, they suspected
+the loyalty of the Catholics, whose name of Melchites betrayed their
+secret attachment to the Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and
+Jacobites, his inveterate enemies, approved themselves the sincere and
+voluntary friends of the Mahometan government. [214] Yet this partial
+jealousy was healed by time and submission; the churches of Egypt
+were shared with the Catholics; [215] and all the Oriental sects were
+included in the common benefits of toleration. The rank, the immunities,
+the domestic jurisdiction of the patriarchs, the bishops, and the
+clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate: the learning of
+individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries and
+physicians: they were enriched by the lucrative collection of the
+revenue; and their merit was sometimes raised to the command of cities
+and provinces. A caliph of the house of Abbas was heard to declare
+that the Christians were most worthy of trust in the administration of
+Persia. "The Moslems," said he, "will abuse their present fortune; the
+Magians regret their fallen greatness; and the Jews are impatient for
+their approaching deliverance." [216] But the slaves of despotism are
+exposed to the alternatives of favor and disgrace. The captive churches
+of the East have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry
+of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal restraints must be offensive
+to the pride, or the zeal, of the Christians. [217] About two hundred
+years after Mahomet, they were separated from their fellow-subjects by a
+turban or girdle of a less honorable color; instead of horses or mules.
+they were condemned to ride on asses, in the attitude of women. Their
+public and private building were measured by a diminutive standard; in
+the streets or the baths it is their duty to give way or bow down before
+the meanest of the people; and their testimony is rejected, if it may
+tend to the prejudice of a true believer. The pomp of processions, the
+sound of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in their worship; a
+decent reverence for the national faith is imposed on their sermons
+and conversations; and the sacrilegious attempt to enter a mosch, or to
+seduce a Mussulman, will not be suffered to escape with impunity. In a
+time, however, of tranquillity and justice, the Christians have never
+been compelled to renounce the Gospel, or to embrace the Koran; but the
+punishment of death is inflicted upon the apostates who have professed
+and deserted the law of Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the
+sentence of the cadhi, by the public confession of their inconstancy,
+or their passionate invectives against the person and religion of the
+prophet. [218]
+
+[Footnote 214: Absit (said the Catholic to the vizier of Bagdad) ut pari
+loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum praeter Arabas nullus alius rex est, et
+Graecos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello non desistunt, &c. See in
+the Collections of Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 94-101) the
+state of the Nestorians under the caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more
+concisely exposed in the Preliminary Dissertation of the second volume
+of Assemannus.]
+
+[Footnote 215: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384, 387, 388. Renaudot,
+Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 205, 206, 257, 332. A taint of the Monothelite
+heresy might render the first of these Greek patriarchs less loyal to
+the emperors and less obnoxious to the Arabs.]
+
+[Footnote 216: Motadhed, who reigned from A.D. 892 to 902. The Magians
+still held their name and rank among the religions of the empire,
+(Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97.)]
+
+[Footnote 217: Reland explains the general restraints of the Mahometan
+policy and jurisprudence, (Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 16-20.) The
+oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel, (A.D. 847-861,) which are
+still in force, are noticed by Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 448,) and
+D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 640.) A persecution of the caliph Omar
+II. is related, and most probably magnified, by the Greek Theophanes
+(Chron p. 334.)]
+
+[Footnote 218: The martyrs of Cordova (A.D. 850, &c.) are commemorated
+and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a victim himself. A
+synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously censured their rashness. The
+moderate Fleury cannot reconcile their conduct with the discipline of
+antiquity, toutefois l'autorite de l'eglise, &c. (Fleury, Hist. Eccles.
+tom. x. p. 415-522, particularly p. 451, 508, 509.) Their authentic
+acts throw a strong, though transient, light on the Spanish church in
+the ixth century.]
+
+At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were the most
+potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their prerogative was not
+circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by the power of the nobles,
+the freedom of the commons, the privileges of the church, the votes of
+a senate, or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the
+companions of Mahomet expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs
+of the Arabian tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality
+and independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in the
+successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their actions,
+they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that divine book. They
+reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the East, to whom
+the name of liberty was unknown, and who were accustomed to applaud in
+their tyrants the acts of violence and severity that were exercised at
+their own expense. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire
+extended two hundred days' journey from east to west, from the confines
+of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we
+retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the
+long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from
+Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to
+the measure of four or five months of the march of a caravan. [219]
+We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that
+pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress
+of the Mahometan religion diffused over this ample space a general
+resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran
+were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor
+and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of
+Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all
+the provinces to the westward of the Tigris. [220]
+
+[Footnote 219: See the article Eslamiah, (as we say Christendom,) in the
+Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 325.) This chart of the Mahometan world is
+suited by the author, Ebn Alwardi, to the year of the Hegira 385 (A.D.
+995.) Since that time, the losses in Spain have been overbalanced by the
+conquests in India, Tartary, and the European Turkey.]
+
+[Footnote 220: The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead language in
+the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is
+compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of Hejaz and Yemen to the
+Italian; and the Arabian dialects of Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the
+Provencal, Spanish, and Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie,
+p. 74, &c.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part I.
+
+     The Two Sieges Of Constantinople By The Arabs.--Their
+     Invasion Of France, And Defeat By Charles Martel.--Civil War
+     Of The Ommiades And Abbassides.--Learning Of The Arabs.--
+     Luxury Of The Caliphs.--Naval Enterprises On Crete, Sicily,
+     And Rome.--Decay And Division Of The Empire Of The Caliphs.
+     --Defeats And Victories Of The Greek Emperors.
+
+When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they must have been
+surprised at the ease and rapidity of their own success. But when they
+advanced in the career of victory to the banks of the Indus and the
+summit of the Pyrenees; when they had repeatedly tried the edge of their
+cimeters and the energy of their faith, they might be equally astonished
+that any nation could resist their invincible arms; that any boundary
+should confine the dominion of the successor of the prophet. The
+confidence of soldiers and fanatics may indeed be excused, since the
+calm historian of the present hour, who strives to follow the rapid
+course of the Saracens, must study to explain by what means the church
+and state were saved from this impending, and, as it should seem, from
+this inevitable, danger. The deserts of Scythia and Sarmatia might be
+guarded by their extent, their climate, their poverty, and the courage
+of the northern shepherds; China was remote and inaccessible; but
+the greatest part of the temperate zone was subject to the Mahometan
+conquerors, the Greeks were exhausted by the calamities of war and the
+loss of their fairest provinces, and the Barbarians of Europe might
+justly tremble at the precipitate fall of the Gothic monarchy. In this
+inquiry I shall unfold the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain,
+and our neighbors of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the
+Koran; that protected the majesty of Rome, and delayed the servitude
+of Constantinople; that invigorated the defence of the Christians, and
+scattered among their enemies the seeds of division and decay.
+
+Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his disciples
+appeared in arms under the walls of Constantinople. [1] They were
+animated by a genuine or fictitious saying of the prophet, that, to
+the first army which besieged the city of the Caesars, their sins were
+forgiven: the long series of Roman triumphs would be meritoriously
+transferred to the conquerors of New Rome; and the wealth of nations was
+deposited in this well-chosen seat of royalty and commerce. No sooner
+had the caliph Moawiyah suppressed his rivals and established his
+throne, than he aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood, by the
+success and glory of this holy expedition; [2] his preparations by sea
+and land were adequate to the importance of the object; his standard was
+intrusted to Sophian, a veteran warrior, but the troops were encouraged
+by the example and presence of Yezid, the son and presumptive heir of
+the commander of the faithful. The Greeks had little to hope, nor had
+their enemies any reason of fear, from the courage and vigilance of the
+reigning emperor, who disgraced the name of Constantine, and imitated
+only the inglorious years of his grandfather Heraclius. Without delay
+or opposition, the naval forces of the Saracens passed through the
+unguarded channel of the Hellespont, which even now, under the feeble
+and disorderly government of the Turks, is maintained as the natural
+bulwark of the capital. [3] The Arabian fleet cast anchor, and the
+troops were disembarked near the palace of Hebdomon, seven miles from
+the city. During many days, from the dawn of light to the evening,
+the line of assault was extended from the golden gate to the eastern
+promontory and the foremost warriors were impelled by the weight and
+effort of the succeeding columns. But the besiegers had formed an
+insufficient estimate of the strength and resources of Constantinople.
+The solid and lofty walls were guarded by numbers and discipline: the
+spirit of the Romans was rekindled by the last danger of their religion
+and empire: the fugitives from the conquered provinces more successfully
+renewed the defence of Damascus and Alexandria; and the Saracens were
+dismayed by the strange and prodigious effects of artificial fire.
+This firm and effectual resistance diverted their arms to the more easy
+attempt of plundering the European and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis;
+and, after keeping the sea from the month of April to that of September,
+on the approach of winter they retreated fourscore miles from the
+capital, to the Isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established their
+magazine of spoil and provisions. So patient was their perseverance,
+or so languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six
+following summers the same attack and retreat, with a gradual abatement
+of hope and vigor, till the mischances of shipwreck and disease, of
+the sword and of fire, compelled them to relinquish the fruitless
+enterprise. They might bewail the loss, or commemorate the martyrdom,
+of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell in the siege of Constantinople;
+and the solemn funeral of Abu Ayub, or Job, excited the curiosity of the
+Christians themselves.
+
+That venerable Arab, one of the last of the companions of Mahomet, was
+numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who sheltered the
+head of the flying prophet. In his youth he fought, at Beder and
+Ohud, under the holy standard: in his mature age he was the friend
+and follower of Ali; and the last remnant of his strength and life
+was consumed in a distant and dangerous war against the enemies of the
+Koran. His memory was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected
+and unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years, till the
+conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second. A seasonable vision
+(for such are the manufacture of every religion) revealed the holy spot
+at the foot of the walls and the bottom of the harbor; and the mosch of
+Ayub has been deservedly chosen for the simple and martial inauguration
+of the Turkish sultans. [4]
+
+[Footnote 1: Theophanes places the seven years of the siege of
+Constantinople in the year of our Christian aera, 673 (of the
+Alexandrian 665, Sept. 1,) and the peace of the Saracens, four years
+afterwards; a glaring inconsistency! which Petavius, Goar, and Pagi,
+(Critica, tom. iv. p. 63, 64,) have struggled to remove. Of the
+Arabians, the Hegira 52 (A.D. 672, January 8) is assigned by Elmacin,
+the year 48 (A.D. 688, Feb. 20) by Abulfeda, whose testimony I esteem
+the most convenient and credible.]
+
+[Footnote 2: For this first siege of Constantinople, see Nicephorus,
+(Breviar. p. 21, 22;) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 294;) Cedrenus,
+(Compend. p. 437;) Zonaras, (Hist. tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 89;) Elmacin,
+(Hist. Saracen. p. 56, 57;) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 107, 108, vers.
+Reiske;) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. Constantinah;) Ockley's History
+of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 127, 128.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The state and defence of the Dardanelles is exposed in the
+Memoirs of the Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 39-97,) who was sent to
+fortify them against the Russians. From a principal actor, I should have
+expected more accurate details; but he seems to write for the amusement,
+rather than the instruction, of his reader. Perhaps, on the approach
+of the enemy, the minister of Constantine was occupied, like that of
+Mustapha, in finding two Canary birds who should sing precisely the same
+note.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Demetrius Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p.
+105, 106. Rycaut's State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 10, 11. Voyages of
+Thevenot, part i. p. 189. The Christians, who suppose that the martyr
+Abu Ayub is vulgarly confounded with the patriarch Job, betray their own
+ignorance rather than that of the Turks.]
+
+The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West, the
+reputation of the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade over the
+glories of the Saracens. The Greek ambassador was favorably received at
+Damascus, a general council of the emirs or Koreish: a peace, or
+truce, of thirty years was ratified between the two empires; and the
+stipulation of an annual tribute, fifty horses of a noble breed, fifty
+slaves, and three thousand pieces of gold, degraded the majesty of
+the commander of the faithful. [5] The aged caliph was desirous of
+possessing his dominions, and ending his days in tranquillity and
+repose: while the Moors and Indians trembled at his name, his palace and
+city of Damascus was insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of Mount
+Libanus, the firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed
+and transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks. [6] After the
+revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah was reduced to the
+kingdoms of Syria and Egypt: their distress and fear enforced their
+compliance with the pressing demands of the Christians; and the tribute
+was increased to a slave, a horse, and a thousand pieces of gold, for
+each of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the solar year. But
+as soon as the empire was again united by the arms and policy of
+Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge of servitude not less injurious to
+his conscience than to his pride; he discontinued the payment of the
+tribute; and the resentment of the Greeks was disabled from action
+by the mad tyranny of the second Justinian, the just rebellion of his
+subjects, and the frequent change of his antagonists and successors.
+Till the reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with the
+free possession of the Persian and Roman treasures, in the coins of
+Chosroes and Caesar. By the command of that caliph, a national mint was
+established, both for silver and gold, and the inscription of the Dinar,
+though it might be censured by some timorous casuists, proclaimed the
+unity of the God of Mahomet. [8] Under the reign of the caliph Walid,
+the Greek language and characters were excluded from the accounts of the
+public revenue. [9] If this change was productive of the invention or
+familiar use of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as
+they are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most
+important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the mathematical
+sciences. [10]
+
+[Footnote 5: Theophanes, though a Greek, deserves credit for these
+tributes, (Chronograph. p. 295, 296, 300, 301,) which are confirmed,
+with some variation, by the Arabic History of Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p.
+128, vers. Pocock.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: The censure of Theophanes is just and pointed,
+(Chronograph. p. 302, 303.) The series of these events may be traced
+in the Annals of Theophanes, and in the Abridgment of the patriarch
+Nicephorus, p. 22, 24.]
+
+[Footnote 7: These domestic revolutions are related in a clear and
+natural style, in the second volume of Ockley's History of the Saracens,
+p. 253-370. Besides our printed authors, he draws his materials from
+the Arabic Mss. of Oxford, which he would have more deeply searched had
+he been confined to the Bodleian library instead of the city jail a fate
+how unworthy of the man and of his country!]
+
+[Footnote 8: Elmacin, who dates the first coinage A. H. 76, A.D. 695,
+five or six years later than the Greek historians, has compared the
+weight of the best or common gold dinar to the drachm or dirhem of
+Egypt, (p. 77,) which may be equal to two pennies (48 grains) of our
+Troy weight, (Hooper's Inquiry into Ancient Measures, p. 24-36,) and
+equivalent to eight shillings of our sterling money. From the same
+Elmacin and the Arabian physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems,
+as low as half a dirhem, may be deduced. The piece of silver was the
+dirhem, both in value and weight; but an old, though fair coin, struck
+at Waset, A. H. 88, and preserved in the Bodleian library, wants four
+grains of the Cairo standard, (see the Modern Universal History, tom. i.
+p. 548 of the French translation.) * Note: Up to this time the Arabs had
+used the Roman or the Persian coins or had minted others which resembled
+them. Nevertheless, it has been admitted of late years, that the
+Arabians, before this epoch, had caused coin to be minted, on which,
+preserving the Roman or the Persian dies, they added Arabian names or
+inscriptions. Some of these exist in different collections. We learn
+from Makrizi, an Arabian author of great learning and judgment, that in
+the year 18 of the Hegira, under the caliphate of Omar, the Arabs had
+coined money of this description. The same author informs us that the
+caliph Abdalmalek caused coins to be struck representing himself with a
+sword by his side. These types, so contrary to the notions of the Arabs,
+were disapproved by the most influential persons of the time, and the
+caliph substituted for them, after the year 76 of the Hegira, the
+Mahometan coins with which we are acquainted. Consult, on the question
+of Arabic numismatics, the works of Adler, of Fraehn, of Castiglione,
+and of Marsden, who have treated at length this interesting point of
+historic antiquities. See, also, in the Journal Asiatique, tom. ii. p.
+257, et seq., a paper of M. Silvestre de Sacy, entitled Des Monnaies des
+Khalifes avant l'An 75 de l'Hegire. See, also the translation of a
+German paper on the Arabic medals of the Chosroes, by M. Fraehn. in the
+same Journal Asiatique tom. iv. p. 331-347. St. Martin, vol. xii. p. 19,
+--M.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Theophan. Chronograph. p. 314. This defect, if it really
+existed, must have stimulated the ingenuity of the Arabs to invent or
+borrow.]
+
+[Footnote 10: According to a new, though probable, notion, maintained by
+M de Villoison, (Anecdota Graeca, tom. ii. p. 152-157,) our ciphers are
+not of Indian or Arabic invention. They were used by the Greek and Latin
+arithmeticians long before the age of Boethius. After the extinction of
+science in the West, they were adopted by the Arabic versions from the
+original Mss., and restored to the Latins about the xith century. *
+Note: Compare, on the Introduction of the Arabic numerals, Hallam's
+Introduction to the Literature of Europe, p. 150, note, and the authors
+quoted therein.--M.]
+
+Whilst the caliph Walid sat idle on the throne of Damascus, whilst his
+lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana and Spain, a third army
+of Saracens overspread the provinces of Asia Minor, and approached the
+borders of the Byzantine capital. But the attempt and disgrace of
+the second siege was reserved for his brother Soliman, whose ambition
+appears to have been quickened by a more active and martial spirit. In
+the revolutions of the Greek empire, after the tyrant Justinian had been
+punished and avenged, an humble secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was
+promoted by chance or merit to the vacant purple. He was alarmed by
+the sound of war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus with the
+tremendous news, that the Saracens were preparing an armament by sea and
+land, such as would transcend the experience of the past, or the belief
+of the present age. The precautions of Anastasius were not unworthy of
+his station, or of the impending danger. He issued a peremptory mandate,
+that all persons who were not provided with the means of subsistence for
+a three years' siege should evacuate the city: the public granaries
+and arsenals were abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and
+strengthened; and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or fire,
+were stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of war, of
+which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is safer,
+as well as more honorable, than to repel, an attack; and a design was
+meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning the naval
+stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that had been hewn in Mount
+Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore of Phoenicia, for the service
+of the Egyptian fleet. This generous enterprise was defeated by the
+cowardice or treachery of the troops, who, in the new language of the
+empire, were styled of the Obsequian Theme. [11] They murdered their
+chief, deserted their standard in the Isle of Rhodes, dispersed
+themselves over the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by
+investing with the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The name of
+Theodosius might recommend him to the senate and people; but, after some
+months, he sunk into a cloister, and resigned, to the firmer hand of
+Leo the Isaurian, the urgent defence of the capital and empire. The most
+formidable of the Saracens, Moslemah, the brother of the caliph, was
+advancing at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand Arabs and
+Persians, the greater part mounted on horses or camels; and the
+successful sieges of Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus, were of sufficient
+duration to exercise their skill and to elevate their hopes. At the
+well-known passage of Abydus, on the Hellespont, the Mahometan arms
+were transported, for the first time, [1111] from Asia to Europe. From
+thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the Propontis, Moslemah
+invested Constantinople on the land side, surrounded his camp with a
+ditch and rampart, prepared and planted his engines of assault, and
+declared, by words and actions, a patient resolution of expecting the
+return of seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged
+prove equal to his own. [1112] The Greeks would gladly have ransomed
+their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment of a piece of gold
+on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the liberal offer was
+rejected with disdain, and the presumption of Moslemah was exalted by
+the speedy approach and invincible force of the natives of Egypt and
+Syria. They are said to have amounted to eighteen hundred ships: the
+number betrays their inconsiderable size; and of the twenty stout and
+capacious vessels, whose magnitude impeded their progress, each was
+manned with no more than one hundred heavy-armed soldiers. This huge
+armada proceeded on a smooth sea, and with a gentle gale, towards the
+mouth of the Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was overshadowed, in
+the language of the Greeks, with a moving forest, and the same fatal
+night had been fixed by the Saracen chief for a general assault by sea
+and land. To allure the confidence of the enemy, the emperor had thrown
+aside the chain that usually guarded the entrance of the harbor; but
+while they hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity, or
+apprehend the snare, the ministers of destruction were at hand. The
+fire-ships of the Greeks were launched against them; the Arabs, their
+arms, and vessels, were involved in the same flames; the disorderly
+fugitives were dashed against each other or overwhelmed in the waves;
+and I no longer find a vestige of the fleet, that had threatened to
+extirpate the Roman name. A still more fatal and irreparable loss was
+that of the caliph Soliman, who died of an indigestion, [12] in his camp
+near Kinnisrin or Chalcis in Syria, as he was preparing to lead against
+Constantinople the remaining forces of the East. The brother of Moslemah
+was succeeded by a kinsman and an enemy; and the throne of an active
+and able prince was degraded by the useless and pernicious virtues of
+a bigot. [1211] While he started and satisfied the scruples of a blind
+conscience, the siege was continued through the winter by the neglect,
+rather than by the resolution of the caliph Omar. [13] The winter proved
+uncommonly rigorous: above a hundred days the ground was covered with
+deep snow, and the natives of the sultry climes of Egypt and Arabia lay
+torpid and almost lifeless in their frozen camp. They revived on the
+return of spring; a second effort had been made in their favor; and
+their distress was relieved by the arrival of two numerous fleets, laden
+with corn, and arms, and soldiers; the first from Alexandria, of four
+hundred transports and galleys; the second of three hundred and sixty
+vessels from the ports of Africa. But the Greek fires were again
+kindled; and if the destruction was less complete, it was owing to the
+experience which had taught the Moslems to remain at a safe distance, or
+to the perfidy of the Egyptian mariners, who deserted with their ships
+to the emperor of the Christians. The trade and navigation of the
+capital were restored; and the produce of the fisheries supplied the
+wants, and even the luxury, of the inhabitants. But the calamities of
+famine and disease were soon felt by the troops of Moslemah, and as the
+former was miserably assuaged, so the latter was dreadfully propagated,
+by the pernicious nutriment which hunger compelled them to extract from
+the most unclean or unnatural food. The spirit of conquest, and even of
+enthusiasm, was extinct: the Saracens could no longer struggle, beyond
+their lines, either single or in small parties, without exposing
+themselves to the merciless retaliation of the Thracian peasants.
+
+An army of Bulgarians was attracted from the Danube by the gifts and
+promises of Leo; and these savage auxiliaries made some atonement for
+the evils which they had inflicted on the empire, by the defeat and
+slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics. A report was dexterously
+scattered, that the Franks, the unknown nations of the Latin world, were
+arming by sea and land in the defence of the Christian cause, and their
+formidable aid was expected with far different sensations in the camp
+and city. At length, after a siege of thirteen months, [14] the hopeless
+Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission of retreat.
+[1411] The march of the Arabian cavalry over the Hellespont and through
+the provinces of Asia, was executed without delay or molestation; but an
+army of their brethren had been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia,
+and the remains of the fleet were so repeatedly damaged by tempest and
+fire, that only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to relate
+the tale of their various and almost incredible disasters. [15]
+
+[Footnote 11: In the division of the Themes, or provinces described
+by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Thematibus, l. i. p. 9, 10,) the
+Obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and palace, was the fourth in
+the public order. Nice was the metropolis, and its jurisdiction extended
+from the Hellespont over the adjacent parts of Bithynia and Phrygia,
+(see the two maps prefixed by Delisle to the Imperium Orientale of
+Banduri.)]
+
+[Footnote 1111: Compare page 274. It is singular that Gibbon should
+thus contradict himself in a few pages. By his own account this was the
+second time.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1112: The account of this siege in the Tarikh Tebry is a very
+unfavorable specimen of Asiatic history, full of absurd fables, and
+written with total ignorance of the circumstances of time and place.
+Price, vol. i. p. 498--M.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of figs,
+which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was concluded with marrow
+and sugar. In one of his pilgrimages to Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single
+meal, seventy pomegranates, a kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of
+the grapes of Tayef. If the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the
+appetite, rather than the luxury, of the sovereign of Asia, (Abulfeda,
+Annal. Moslem. p. 126.) * Note: The Tarikh Tebry ascribes the death
+of Soliman to a pleurisy. The same gross gluttony in which Soliman
+indulged, though not fatal to the life, interfered with the military
+duties, of his brother Moslemah. Price, vol. i. p. 511.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1211: Major Price's estimate of Omar's character is much more
+favorable. Among a race of sanguinary tyrants, Omar was just and humane.
+His virtues as well as his bigotry were active.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See the article of Omar Ben Abdalaziz, in the Bibliotheque
+Orientale, (p. 689, 690,) praeferens, says Elmacin, (p. 91,) religionem
+suam rebus suis mundanis. He was so desirous of being with God, that
+he would not have anointed his ear (his own saying) to obtain a perfect
+cure of his last malady. The caliph had only one shirt, and in an age of
+luxury, his annual expense was no more than two drachms, (Abulpharagius,
+p. 131.) Haud diu gavisus eo principe fuit urbis Muslemus, (Abulfeda, p.
+127.)]
+
+[Footnote 14: Both Nicephorus and Theophanes agree that the siege of
+Constantinople was raised the 15th of August, (A.D. 718;) but as the
+former, our best witness, affirms that it continued thirteen months, the
+latter must be mistaken in supposing that it began on the same day
+of the preceding year. I do not find that Pagi has remarked this
+inconsistency.]
+
+[Footnote 1411: The Tarikh Tebry embellishes the retreat of Moslemah
+with some extraordinary and incredible circumstances. Price, p.
+514.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 15: In the second siege of Constantinople, I have followed
+Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 33-36,) Theophanes, (Chronograph, p. 324-334,)
+Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 449-452,) Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 98-102,)
+Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen, p. 88,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 126,) and
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 130,) the most satisfactory of the Arabs.]
+
+In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constantinople may be chiefly
+ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the
+Greek fire. [16] The important secret of compounding and directing this
+artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis
+in Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the
+emperor. [17] The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the
+succor of fleets and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the
+military art was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when
+the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with the
+warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigor of the Saracens. The historian who
+presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition should suspect
+his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the
+marvellous, so careless, and, in this instance, so jealous of the truth.
+From their obscure, and perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that
+the principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, [18] or
+liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, [19] which
+springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact
+with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what methods or in
+what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from
+evergreen firs. [20] From this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and
+a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only
+rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence
+in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was
+nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand, urine,
+or vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this
+powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks the liquid,
+or the maritime, fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it was employed
+with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was
+either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched in red-hot
+balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted
+round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil;
+sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of
+a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of
+copper which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped
+into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream
+of liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at
+Constantinople, as the palladium of the state: the galleys and artillery
+might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the composition
+of the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and the
+terror of the enemies was increased and prolonged by their ignorance and
+surprise. In the treaties of the administration of the empire, the royal
+author [21] suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the
+indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They
+should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by
+an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred
+injunction, that this gift of Heaven, this peculiar blessing of the
+Romans, should never be communicated to any foreign nation; that the
+prince and the subject were alike bound to religious silence under the
+temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the
+impious attempt would provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance
+of the God of the Christians. By these precautions, the secret was
+confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at
+the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and
+every art were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the
+composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or
+stolen by the Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they
+retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of
+the Christians. A knight, who despised the swords and lances of the
+Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own fears, and those
+of his companions, at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine
+that discharged a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is
+styled by the more early of the French writers. It came flying through
+the air, says Joinville, [22] like a winged long-tailed dragon, about
+the thickness of a hogshead, with the report of thunder and the velocity
+of lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by this deadly
+illumination. The use of the Greek, or, as it might now be called, of
+the Saracen fire, was continued to the middle of the fourteenth century,
+[23] when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and
+charcoal, effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of
+mankind. [24]
+
+[Footnote 16: Our sure and indefatigable guide in the middle ages and
+Byzantine history, Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in several
+places of the Greek fire, and his collections leave few gleanings
+behind. See particularly Glossar. Med. et Infim. Graecitat. p. 1275, sub
+voce. Glossar. Med. et Infim. Latinitat. Ignis Groecus. Observations sur
+Villehardouin, p. 305, 306. Observations sur Joinville, p. 71, 72.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Theophanes styles him, (p. 295.) Cedrenus (p. 437) brings
+this artist from (the ruins of) Heliopolis in Egypt; and chemistry was
+indeed the peculiar science of the Egyptians.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The naphtha, the oleum incendiarium of the history of
+Jerusalem, (Gest. Dei per Francos, p. 1167,) the Oriental fountain of
+James de Vitry, (l. iii. c. 84,) is introduced on slight evidence and
+strong probability. Cinanmus (l. vi. p. 165) calls the Greek fire: and
+the naphtha is known to abound between the Tigris and the Caspian Sea.
+According to Pliny, (Hist. Natur. ii. 109,) it was subservient to the
+revenge of Medea, and in either etymology, (Procop. de Bell. Gothic.
+l. iv. c. 11,) may fairly signify this liquid bitumen. * Note: It is
+remarkable that the Syrian historian Michel gives the name of naphtha
+to the newly-invented Greek fire, which seems to indicate that this
+substance formed the base of the destructive compound. St. Martin, tom.
+xi. p. 420.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: On the different sorts of oils and bitumens, see Dr.
+Watson's (the present bishop of Llandaff's) Chemical Essays, vol. iii.
+essay i., a classic book, the best adapted to infuse the taste and
+knowledge of chemistry. The less perfect ideas of the ancients may be
+found in Strabo (Geograph. l. xvi. p. 1078) and Pliny, (Hist. Natur.
+ii. 108, 109.) Huic (Naphthae) magna cognatio est ignium, transiliuntque
+protinus in eam undecunque visam. Of our travellers I am best pleased
+with Otter, (tom. i. p. 153, 158.)]
+
+[Footnote 20: Anna Comnena has partly drawn aside the curtain. (Alexiad.
+l. xiii. p. 383.) Elsewhere (l. xi. p. 336) she mentions the property of
+burning. Leo, in the xixth chapter of his Tactics, (Opera Meursii, tom.
+vi. p. 843, edit. Lami, Florent. 1745,) speaks of the new invention.
+These are genuine and Imperial testimonies.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii, c.
+xiii. p. 64, 65.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Histoire de St. Louis, p. 39. Paris, 1668, p. 44. Paris,
+de l'Imprimerie Royale, 1761. The former of these editions is precious
+for the observations of Ducange; the latter for the pure and original
+text of Joinville. We must have recourse to that text to discover, that
+the feu Gregeois was shot with a pile or javelin, from an engine that
+acted like a sling.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established property
+of Fame, has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder above the xivth,
+(see Sir William Temple, Dutens, &c.,) and the Greek fire above the
+viith century, (see the Saluste du President des Brosses, tom. ii.
+p. 381.) But their evidence, which precedes the vulgar aera of the
+invention, is seldom clear or satisfactory, and subsequent writers
+may be suspected of fraud or credulity. In the earliest sieges, some
+combustibles of oil and sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has
+some affinities with gunpowder both in its nature and effects: for the
+antiquity of the first, a passage of Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv.
+c. 11,) for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of
+Spain, (A.D. 1249, 1312, 1332. Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. ii. p. 6, 7,
+8,) are the most difficult to elude.]
+
+[Footnote 24: That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the
+ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence
+of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own
+discovery, (Biog. Brit. vol. i. p. 430, new edition.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part II.
+
+Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from the
+eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side of the
+Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded by the
+conquerors of Spain. [25] The decline of the French monarchy invited the
+attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had
+lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their
+misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings
+of the Merovingian race. [26] They ascended the throne without power,
+and sunk into the grave without a name. A country palace, in the
+neighborhood of Compiegne [27] was allotted for their residence or
+prison: but each year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted
+in a wagon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give audience
+to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the mayor of the
+palace. That domestic officer was become the minister of the nation and
+the master of the prince. A public employment was converted into the
+patrimony of a private family: the elder Pepin left a king of mature
+years under the guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these
+feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his
+bastards. A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost
+dissolved; and the tributary dukes, and provincial counts, and the
+territorial lords, were tempted to despise the weakness of the monarch,
+and to imitate the ambition of the mayor. Among these independent
+chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful was Eudes, duke of
+Aquitain, who in the southern provinces of Gaul usurped the authority,
+and even the title of king. The Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks,
+assembled under the standard of this Christian hero: he repelled the
+first invasion of the Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost
+his army and his life under the walls of Thoulouse. The ambition of his
+successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees with
+the means and the resolution of conquest. The advantageous situation
+which had recommended Narbonne [28] as the first Roman colony, was
+again chosen by the Moslems: they claimed the province of Septimania or
+Languedoc as a just dependence of the Spanish monarchy: the vineyards
+of Gascony and the city of Bourdeaux were possessed by the sovereign of
+Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of
+the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of
+Arabia.
+
+[Footnote 25: For the invasion of France and the defeat of the Arabs by
+Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13, 14) of Roderic
+Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him the Christian
+chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan history of Novairi.
+The Moslems are silent or concise in the account of their losses; but M
+Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130, 131) has given a pure and simple account
+of all that he could collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjazi, and an anonymous
+writer. The texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are
+inserted in the Collection of Bouquet, (tom. iii.,) and the Annals
+of Pagi, who (tom. iii. under the proper years) has restored the
+chronology, which is anticipated six years in the Annals of Baronius.
+The Dictionary of Bayle (Abderame and Munuza) has more merit for lively
+reflection than original research.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Eginhart, de Vita Caroli Magni, c. ii. p. 13-78, edit.
+Schmink, Utrecht, 1711. Some modern critics accuse the minister of
+Charlemagne of exaggerating the weakness of the Merovingians; but the
+general outline is just, and the French reader will forever repeat the
+beautiful lines of Boileau's Lutrin.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Mamaccae, on the Oyse, between Compiegne and Noyon, which
+Eginhart calls perparvi reditus villam, (see the notes, and the map of
+ancient France for Dom. Bouquet's Collection.) Compendium, or Compiegne,
+was a palace of more dignity, (Hadrian. Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p.
+152,) and that laughing philosopher, the Abbe Galliani, (Dialogues sur
+le Commerce des Bleds,) may truly affirm, that it was the residence of
+the rois tres Chretiens en tres chevelus.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Even before that colony, A. U. C. 630, (Velleius Patercul.
+i. 15,) In the time of Polybius, (Hist. l. iii. p. 265, edit. Gronov.)
+Narbonne was a Celtic town of the first eminence, and one of the most
+northern places of the known world, (D'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne
+Gaule, p. 473.)]
+
+But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of Abdalraman, or
+Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph Hashem to the wishes of
+the soldiers and people of Spain. That veteran and daring commander
+adjudged to the obedience of the prophet whatever yet remained of France
+or of Europe; and prepared to execute the sentence, at the head of a
+formidable host, in the full confidence of surmounting all opposition
+either of nature or of man. His first care was to suppress a domestic
+rebel, who commanded the most important passes of the Pyrenees: Manuza,
+a Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of Aquitain;
+and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted his
+beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African misbeliever. But the
+strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were invested by a superior force; the
+rebel was overtaken and slain in the mountains; and his widow was sent
+a captive to Damascus, to gratify the desires, or more probably the
+vanity, of the commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees, Abderame
+proceeded without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the siege of
+Arles.
+
+An army of Christians attempted the relief of the city: the tombs of
+their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century; and many
+thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid stream into
+the Mediterranean Sea. The arms of Abderame were not less successful
+on the side of the ocean. He passed without opposition the Garonne and
+Dordogne, which unite their waters in the Gulf of Bourdeaux; but he
+found, beyond those rivers, the camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had
+formed a second army and sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the
+Christians, that, according to their sad confession, God alone could
+reckon the number of the slain. The victorious Saracen overran the
+provinces of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather than
+lost, in the modern appellations of Perigord, Saintonge, and Poitou: his
+standards were planted on the walls, or at least before the gates,
+of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread the kingdom of
+Burgundy as far as the well-known cities of Lyons and Besançon. The
+memory of these devastations (for Abderame did not spare the country or
+the people) was long preserved by tradition; and the invasion of France
+by the Moors or Mahometans affords the groundwork of those fables,
+which have been so wildly disfigured in the romances of chivalry, and
+so elegantly adorned by the Italian muse. In the decline of society and
+art, the deserted cities could supply a slender booty to the Saracens;
+their richest spoil was found in the churches and monasteries, which
+they stripped of their ornaments and delivered to the flames: and the
+tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours, forgot
+their miraculous powers in the defence of their own sepulchres. [29] A
+victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from
+the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an
+equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland
+and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than
+the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a
+naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of
+the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits
+might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the
+revelation of Mahomet. [30]
+
+[Footnote 29: With regard to the sanctuary of St. Martin of Tours,
+Roderic Ximenes accuses the Saracens of the deed. Turonis civitatem,
+ecclesiam et palatia vastatione et incendio simili diruit et consumpsit.
+The continuator of Fredegarius imputes to them no more than the
+intention. Ad domum beatissimi Martini evertendam destinant. At Carolus,
+&c. The French annalist was more jealous of the honor of the saint.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosch would have
+produced a volume of controversy so elegant and ingenious as the sermons
+lately preached by Mr. White, the Arabic professor, at Mr. Bampton's
+lecture. His observations on the character and religion of Mahomet
+are always adapted to his argument, and generally founded in truth and
+reason. He sustains the part of a lively and eloquent advocate; and
+sometimes rises to the merit of an historian and philosopher.]
+
+From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune
+of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was
+content with the titles of mayor or duke of the Franks; but he deserved
+to become the father of a line of kings. In a laborious administration
+of twenty-four years, he restored and supported the dignity of the
+throne, and the rebels of Germany and Gaul were successively crushed by
+the activity of a warrior, who, in the same campaign, could display
+his banner on the Elbe, the Rhone, and the shores of the ocean. In
+the public danger he was summoned by the voice of his country; and his
+rival, the duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the fugitives
+and suppliants. "Alas!" exclaimed the Franks, "what a misfortune! what
+an indignity! We have long heard of the name and conquests of the
+Arabs: we were apprehensive of their attack from the East; they have
+now conquered Spain, and invade our country on the side of the West. Yet
+their numbers, and (since they have no buckler) their arms, are inferior
+to our own." "If you follow my advice," replied the prudent mayor of
+the palace, "you will not interrupt their march, nor precipitate your
+attack. They are like a torrent, which it is dangerous to stem in its
+career. The thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success, redouble
+their valor, and valor is of more avail than arms or numbers. Be patient
+till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrance of wealth. The
+possession of wealth will divide their councils and assure your
+victory." This subtile policy is perhaps a refinement of the Arabian
+writers; and the situation of Charles will suggest a more narrow and
+selfish motive of procrastination--the secret desire of humbling the
+pride and wasting the provinces of the rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet
+more probable, that the delays of Charles were inevitable and reluctant.
+A standing army was unknown under the first and second race; more than
+half the kingdom was now in the hands of the Saracens: according to
+their respective situation, the Franks of Neustria and Austrasia were to
+conscious or too careless of the impending danger; and the voluntary
+aids of the Gepidae and Germans were separated by a long interval from
+the standard of the Christian general. No sooner had he collected his
+forces, than he sought and found the enemy in the centre of France,
+between Tours and Poitiers. His well-conducted march was covered with a
+range of hills, and Abderame appears to have been surprised by his
+unexpected presence. The nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, advanced
+with equal ardor to an encounter which would change the history of the
+world. In the six first days of desultory combat, the horsemen and
+archers of the East maintained their advantage: but in the closer onset
+of the seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by the strength and
+stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts and iron hands, [31]
+asserted the civil and religious freedom of their posterity. The epithet
+of Martel, the Hammer, which has been added to the name of Charles, is
+expressive of his weighty and irresistible strokes: the valor of Eudes
+was excited by resentment and emulation; and their companions, in the
+eye of history, are the true Peers and Paladins of French chivalry.
+After a bloody field, in which Abderame was slain, the Saracens, in the
+close of the evening, retired to their camp. In the disorder and despair
+of the night, the various tribes of Yemen and Damascus, of Africa and
+Spain, were provoked to turn their arms against each other: the remains
+of their host were suddenly dissolved, and each emir consulted his
+safety by a hasty and separate retreat. At the dawn of the day, the
+stillness of a hostile camp was suspected by the victorious Christians:
+on the report of their spies, they ventured to explore the riches of the
+vacant tents; but if we except some celebrated relics, a small portion
+of the spoil was restored to the innocent and lawful owners. The joyful
+tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic world, and the monks of
+Italy could affirm and believe that three hundred and fifty, or three
+hundred and seventy-five, thousand of the Mahometans had been crushed by
+the hammer of Charles, [32] while no more than fifteen hundred
+Christians were slain in the field of Tours. But this incredible tale is
+sufficiently disproved by the caution of the French general, who
+apprehended the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed his
+German allies to their native forests.
+
+The inactivity of a conqueror betrays the loss of strength and blood,
+and the most cruel execution is inflicted, not in the ranks of battle,
+but on the backs of a flying enemy. Yet the victory of the Franks was
+complete and final; Aquitain was recovered by the arms of Eudes; the
+Arabs never resumed the conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven
+beyond the Pyrenees by Charles Martel and his valiant race. [33] It
+might have been expected that the savior of Christendom would have been
+canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy, who
+are indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in the
+public distress, the mayor of the palace had been compelled to apply
+the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops and abbots, to
+the relief of the state and the reward of the soldiers. His merits were
+forgotten, his sacrilege alone was remembered, and, in an epistle to
+a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic synod presumes to declare that his
+ancestor was damned; that on the opening of his tomb, the spectators
+were affrighted by a smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon;
+and that a saint of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the
+soul and body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abyss
+of hell. [34]
+
+[Footnote 31: Gens Austriae membrorum pre-eminentia valida, et gens
+Germana corde et corpore praestantissima, quasi in ictu oculi, manu
+ferrea, et pectore arduo, Arabes extinxerunt, (Roderic. Toletan. c.
+xiv.)]
+
+[Footnote 32: These numbers are stated by Paul Warnefrid, the deacon
+of Aquileia, (de Gestis Langobard. l. vi. p. 921, edit. Grot.,) and
+Anastasius, the librarian of the Roman church, (in Vit. Gregorii
+II.,) who tells a miraculous story of three consecrated sponges, which
+rendered invulnerable the French soldiers, among whom they had been
+shared It should seem, that in his letters to the pope, Eudes usurped
+the honor of the victory, from which he is chastised by the French
+annalists, who, with equal falsehood, accuse him of inviting the
+Saracens.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered by
+Pepin the son of Charles Martel, A.D. 755, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p.
+300.) Thirty-seven years afterwards, it was pillaged by a sudden inroad
+of the Arabs, who employed the captives in the construction of the mosch
+of Cordova, (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 354.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the Germanic, the
+grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed by the pen of the
+artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and signed by the bishops of
+the provinces of Rheims and Rouen, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 741.
+Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p. 514-516.) Yet Baronius himself, and
+the French critics, reject with contempt this episcopal fiction.]
+
+The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world, was less
+painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and progress of a
+domestic competitor. Except among the Syrians, the caliphs of the house
+of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the public favor. The life of
+Mahomet recorded their perseverance in idolatry and rebellion: their
+conversion had been reluctant, their elevation irregular and factious,
+and their throne was cemented with the most holy and noble blood of
+Arabia. The best of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with
+his own title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a
+departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes of the
+faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the kindred of
+the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either rash or
+pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas cherished, with courage
+and discretion, the hopes of their rising fortunes. From an obscure
+residence in Syria, they secretly despatched their agents and
+missionaries, who preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary
+indefeasible right; and Mohammed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah,
+the son of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, gave audience to the
+deputies of Chorasan, and accepted their free gift of four hundred
+thousand pieces of gold. After the death of Mohammed, the oath of
+allegiance was administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a numerous
+band of votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader; and the
+governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his fruitless admonitions and
+the deadly slumber of the caliphs of Damascus, till he himself, with
+all his adherents, was driven from the city and palace of Meru, by the
+rebellious arms of Abu Moslem. [35] That maker of kings, the author, as
+he is named, of the call of the Abbassides, was at length rewarded for
+his presumption of merit with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean,
+perhaps a foreign, extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of
+Abu Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of
+his own blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and
+possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand of his
+enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance,
+that he was never seen to smile except on a day of battle. In the
+visible separation of parties, the green was consecrated to the
+Fatimites; the Ommiades were distinguished by the white; and the black,
+as the most adverse, was naturally adopted by the Abbassides. Their
+turbans and garments were stained with that gloomy color: two black
+standards, on pike staves nine cubits long, were borne aloft in the van
+of Abu Moslem; and their allegorical names of the night and the shadow
+obscurely represented the indissoluble union and perpetual succession
+of the line of Hashem. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East was
+convulsed by the quarrel of the white and the black factions: the
+Abbassides were most frequently victorious; but their public success
+was clouded by the personal misfortune of their chief. The court
+of Damascus, awakening from a long slumber, resolved to prevent the
+pilgrimage of Mecca, which Ibrahim had undertaken with a splendid
+retinue, to recommend himself at once to the favor of the prophet and of
+the people. A detachment of cavalry intercepted his march and arrested
+his person; and the unhappy Ibrahim, snatched away from the promise of
+untasted royalty, expired in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His
+two younger brothers, Saffah [3511] and Almansor, eluded the search of
+the tyrant, and lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the people and
+the approach of his Eastern friends allowed them to expose their persons
+to the impatient public. On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the
+colors of the sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and military pomp
+to the mosch: ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful
+successor of Mahomet; and after his departure, his kinsmen bound a
+willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks of the
+Zab, and not in the mosch of Cufa, that this important controversy was
+determined. Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the white
+faction: the authority of established government; an army of a hundred
+and twenty thousand soldiers, against a sixth part of that number; and
+the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last
+of the house of Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had
+deserved, by his Georgian warfare, the honorable epithet of the ass of
+Mesopotamia; [36] and he might have been ranked amongst the greatest
+princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that moment
+for the ruin of his family; a decree against which all human fortitude
+and prudence must struggle in vain. The orders of Mervan were mistaken,
+or disobeyed: the return of his horse, from which he had dismounted on
+a necessary occasion, impressed the belief of his death; and the
+enthusiasm of the black squadrons was ably conducted by Abdallah, the
+uncle of his competitor. After an irretrievab defeat, the caliph escaped
+to Mosul; but the colors of the Abbassides were displayed from the
+rampart; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his
+palace of Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of
+Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and fatal
+camp at Busir, on the banks of the Nile. [37] His speed was urged by
+the incessant diligence of Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit
+acquired strength and reputation: the remains of the white faction were
+finally vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life
+and anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the unfortunate
+than to the victorious chief. The merciless inquisition of the conqueror
+eradicated the most distant branches of the hostile race: their bones
+were scattered, their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein
+was abundantly revenged on the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of
+the Ommiades, who had yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes,
+were invited to a banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were
+violated by a promiscuous massacre: the board was spread over their
+fallen bodies; and the festivity of the guests was enlivened by the
+music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war, the dynasty
+of the Abbassides was firmly established; but the Christians only
+could triumph in the mutual hatred and common loss of the disciples of
+Mahomet. [38]
+
+[Footnote 35: The steed and the saddle which had carried any of his
+wives were instantly killed or burnt, lest they should afterwards be
+mounted by a male. Twelve hundred mules or camels were required for his
+kitchen furniture; and the daily consumption amounted to three thousand
+cakes, a hundred sheep, besides oxen, poultry, &c., (Abul pharagius,
+Hist. Dynast. p. 140.)]
+
+[Footnote 3511: He is called Abdullah or Abul Abbas in the Tarikh Tebry.
+Price vol. i. p. 600. Saffah or Saffauh (the Sanguinary) was a name
+which be required after his bloody reign, (vol. ii. p. 1.)--M.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Al Hemar. He had been governor of Mesopotamia, and the
+Arabic proverb praises the courage of that warlike breed of asses
+who never fly from an enemy. The surname of Mervan may justify the
+comparison of Homer, (Iliad, A. 557, &c.,) and both will silence
+the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and ignoble emblem,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 558.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of Busir,
+or Busiris, so famous in Greek fable. The first, where Mervan was slain
+was to the west of the Nile, in the province of Fium, or Arsinoe;
+the second in the Delta, in the Sebennytic nome; the third near the
+pyramids; the fourth, which was destroyed by Dioclesian, (see above,
+vol. ii. p. 130,) in the Thebais. I shall here transcribe a note of the
+learned and orthodox Michaelis: Videntur in pluribus Aegypti superioris
+urbibus Busiri Coptoque arma sumpsisse Christiani, libertatemque de
+religione sentiendi defendisse, sed succubuisse quo in bello Coptus et
+Busiris diruta, et circa Esnam magna strages edita. Bellum narrant sed
+causam belli ignorant scriptores Byzantini, alioqui Coptum et Busirim
+non rebellasse dicturi, sed causam Christianorum suscepturi, (Not. 211,
+p. 100.) For the geography of the four Busirs, see Abulfeda, (Descript.
+Aegypt. p. 9, vers. Michaelis, Gottingae, 1776, in 4to.,) Michaelis,
+(Not. 122-127, p. 58-63,) and D'Anville, (Memoire sua l'Egypte, p. 85,
+147, 205.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 136-145,) Eutychius,
+(Annal. tom. ii. p. 392, vers. Pocock,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p.
+109-121,) Abulpharagius, (Hist. Dynast. p. 134-140,) Roderic of
+Toledo, (Hist. Arabum, c. xviii. p. 33,) Theophanes, (Chronograph.
+p. 356, 357, who speaks of the Abbassides) and the Bibliotheque of
+D'Herbelot, in the articles Ommiades, Abbassides, Moervan, Ibrahim,
+Saffah, Abou Moslem.]
+
+Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war might
+have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, if the
+consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve the power
+and unity of the empire of the Saracens. In the proscription of the
+Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of Abdalrahman alone escaped the
+rage of his enemies, who hunted the wandering exile from the banks
+of the Euphrates to the valleys of Mount Atlas. His presence in the
+neighborhood of Spain revived the zeal of the white faction. The name
+and cause of the Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians:
+the West had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the
+abdicated family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance
+of their lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by
+gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of the
+caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in his
+desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence were almost
+the same. The acclamations of the people saluted his landing on the
+coast of Andalusia: and, after a successful struggle, Abdalrahman
+established the throne of Cordova, and was the father of the Ommiades of
+Spain, who reigned above two hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic
+to the Pyrenees. [39] He slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides,
+who had invaded his dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in
+salt and camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the palace
+of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he was
+removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary. Their mutual
+designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated without effect;
+but instead of opening a door to the conquest of Europe, Spain was
+dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy, engaged in perpetual
+hostility with the East, and inclined to peace and friendship with the
+Christian sovereigns of Constantinople and France. The example of the
+Ommiades was imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the
+Edrissites of Mauritania, and the more powerful fatimites of Africa and
+Egypt. In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed by three
+caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who reigned at Bagdad, Cairoan,
+and Cordova, excommunicating each other, and agreed only in a principle
+of discord, that a sectary is more odious and criminal than an
+unbeliever. [40]
+
+[Footnote 39: For the revolution of Spain, consult Roderic of Toledo,
+(c. xviii. p. 34, &c.,) the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p.
+30, 198,) and Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i. p.
+180-197, 205, 272, 323, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: I shall not stop to refute the strange errors and fancies
+of Sir William Temple (his Works, vol. iii. p. 371-374, octavo edition)
+and Voltaire (Histoire Generale, c. xxviii. tom. ii. p. 124, 125,
+edition de Lausanne) concerning the division of the Saracen empire. The
+mistakes of Voltaire proceeded from the want of knowledge or reflection;
+but Sir William was deceived by a Spanish impostor, who has framed an
+apocryphal history of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs.]
+
+Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the Abbassides were
+never tempted to reside either in the birthplace or the city of the
+prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and polluted with the
+blood, of the Ommiades; and, after some hesitation, Almansor, the
+brother and successor of Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad, [41]
+the Imperial seat of his posterity during a reign of five hundred years.
+[42] The chosen spot is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen
+miles above the ruins of Modain: the double wall was of a circular
+form; and such was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a
+provincial town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended
+by eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and the
+adjacent villages. In this city of peace, [43] amidst the riches of the
+East, the Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence and frugality of the
+first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian
+kings. After his wars and buildings, Almansor left behind him in gold
+and silver about thirty millions sterling: [44] and this treasure was
+exhausted in a few years by the vices or virtues of his children. His
+son Mahadi, in a single pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions
+of dinars of gold. A pious and charitable motive may sanctify the
+foundation of cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed along a
+measured road of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels, laden
+with snow, could serve only to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to
+refresh the fruits and liquors of the royal banquet. [45] The courtiers
+would surely praise the liberality of his grandson Almamon, who gave
+away four fifths of the income of a province, a sum of two millions four
+hundred thousand gold dinars, before he drew his foot from the stirrup.
+At the nuptials of the same prince, a thousand pearls of the largest
+size were showered on the head of the bride, [46] and a lottery of lands
+and houses displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of
+the court were brightened, rather than impaired, in the decline of the
+empire, and a Greek ambassador might admire, or pity, the magnificence
+of the feeble Moctader. "The caliph's whole army," says the historian
+Abulfeda, "both horse and foot, was under arms, which together made
+a body of one hundred and sixty thousand men. His state officers,
+the favorite slaves, stood near him in splendid apparel, their belts
+glittering with gold and gems. Near them were seven thousand eunuchs,
+four thousand of them white, the remainder black. The porters or
+door-keepers were in number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the
+most superb decorations, were seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the
+palace itself less splendid, in which were hung up thirty-eight thousand
+pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of which were of
+silk embroidered with gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two
+thousand. A hundred lions were brought out, with a keeper to each lion.
+[47] Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree
+of gold and silver spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and
+on the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious
+metals, as well as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected
+spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural harmony.
+Through this scene of magnificence, the Greek ambassador was led by
+the vizier to the foot of the caliph's throne." [48] In the West, the
+Ommiades of Spain supported, with equal pomp, the title of commander
+of the faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in honor of his favorite
+sultana, the third and greatest of the Abdalrahmans constructed the
+city, palace, and gardens of Zehra. Twenty-five years, and above three
+millions sterling, were employed by the founder: his liberal taste
+invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and
+architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by
+twelve hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian
+marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls, and
+a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly
+figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the gardens, one
+of these basins and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate,
+was replenished not with water, but with the purest quicksilver. The
+seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs,
+amounted to six thousand three hundred persons: and he was attended to
+the field by a guard of twelve thousand horse, whose belts and cimeters
+were studded with gold. [49]
+
+[Footnote 41: The geographer D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p.
+121-123,) and the Orientalist D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque, p. 167, 168,)
+may suffice for the knowledge of Bagdad. Our travellers, Pietro
+della Valle, (tom. i. p. 688-698,) Tavernier, (tom. i. p. 230-238,)
+Thevenot, (part ii. p. 209-212,) Otter, (tom. i. p. 162-168,) and
+Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. ii. p. 239-271,) have seen only its
+decay; and the Nubian geographer, (p. 204,) and the travelling Jew,
+Benjamin of Tuleda (Itinerarium, p. 112-123, a Const. l'Empereur, apud
+Elzevir, 1633,) are the only writers of my acquaintance, who have known
+Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The foundations of Bagdad were laid A. H. 145, A.D. 762.
+Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to death by the
+Tartars, A. H. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of February.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem. Urbs pacis, or, as it is
+more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers, (Irenopolis.) There is
+some dispute concerning the etymology of Bagdad, but the first syllable
+is allowed to signify a garden in the Persian tongue; the garden of
+Dad, a Christian hermit, whose cell had been the only habitation on the
+spot.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Reliquit in aerario sexcenties millies mille stateres. et
+quater et vicies millies mille aureos aureos. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen.
+p. 126. I have reckoned the gold pieces at eight shillings, and the
+proportion to the silver as twelve to one. But I will never answer for
+the numbers of Erpenius; and the Latins are scarcely above the savages
+in the language of arithmetic.]
+
+[Footnote 45: D'Herbelot, p. 530. Abulfeda, p. 154. Nivem Meccam
+apportavit, rem ibi aut nunquam aut rarissime visam.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Abulfeda (p. 184, 189) describes the splendor and
+liberality of Almamon. Milton has alluded to this Oriental custom:--
+
+     Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
+
+     Showers on her kings Barbaric pearls and gold.
+
+I have used the modern word lottery to express the word of the Roman
+emperors, which entitled to some prize the person who caught them, as
+they were thrown among the crowd.]
+
+[Footnote 47: When Bell of Antermony (Travels, vol. i. p. 99)
+accompanied the Russian ambassador to the audience of the unfortunate
+Shah Hussein of Persia, two lions were introduced, to denote the power
+of the king over the fiercest animals.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Abulfeda, p. 237. D'Herbelot, p. 590. This embassy was
+received at Bagdad, A. H. 305, A.D. 917. In the passage of Abulfeda, I
+have used, with some variations, the English translation of the learned
+and amiable Mr. Harris of Salisbury, (Philological Enquiries p. 363,
+364.)]
+
+[Footnote 49: Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, tom. i.
+p. 330-336. A just idea of the taste and architecture of the Arabians
+of Spain may be conceived from the description and plates of the
+Alhambra of Grenada, (Swinburne's Travels, p. 171-188.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part III.
+
+In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by poverty
+and subordination; but the lives and labors of millions are devoted to
+the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and
+whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the
+splendid picture; and whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there
+are few among us who would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts
+and the cares of royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow
+the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps
+excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial
+which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. "I have now
+reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects,
+dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors,
+power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly
+blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation,
+I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which
+have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen:--O man! place not thy
+confidence in this present world!" [50] The luxury of the caliphs, so
+useless to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated
+the progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest had
+been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet; and after
+supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue
+was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides were
+impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and their contempt of
+oeconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their
+leisure, their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by
+pomp and pleasure: the rewards of valor were embezzled by women and
+eunuchs, and the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the palace.
+A similar temper was diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their
+stern enthusiasm was softened by time and prosperity. they sought riches
+in the occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and
+happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer the
+passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the repetition of
+donatives, were insufficient to allure the posterity of those voluntary
+champions who had crowded to the standard of Abubeker and Omar for the
+hopes of spoil and of paradise.
+
+[Footnote 50: Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330. This confession, the
+complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world, (read Prior's verbose
+but eloquent poem,) and the happy ten days of the emperor Seghed,
+(Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly quoted by the detractors
+of human life. Their expectations are commonly immoderate, their
+estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak of myself, (the only
+person of whom I can speak with certainty,) my happy hours have far
+exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and
+I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing
+labor of the present composition.]
+
+Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were
+confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence and
+poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed to the
+dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of medicine, or
+rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of Arabia murmured a
+complaint that exercise and temperance deprived them of the greatest
+part of their practice. [51] After their civil and domestic wars, the
+subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found
+leisure and felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane science. This
+spirit was first encouraged by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his
+knowledge of the Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to
+the study of astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the
+seventh of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather,
+and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors at
+Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the
+volumes of Grecian science at his command they were translated by the
+most skilful interpreters into the Arabic language: his subjects were
+exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings; and
+the successor of Mahomet assisted with pleasure and modesty at the
+assemblies and disputations of the learned. "He was not ignorant," says
+Abulpharagius, "that they are the elect of God, his best and most useful
+servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational
+faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in
+the industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal appetites.
+Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless emulation, the
+hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive: [52] these
+fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions
+and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments they are much inferior to
+the vigor of the grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers of
+wisdom are the true luminaries and legislators of a world, which,
+without their aid, would again sink in ignorance and barbarism." [53]
+The zeal and curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of
+the line of Abbas: their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the
+Ommiades of Spain, were the patrons of the learned, as well as the
+commanders of the faithful; the same royal prerogative was claimed by
+their independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused
+the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez
+and Cordova. The vizier of a sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred
+thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which
+he endowed with an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits
+of instruction were communicated, perhaps at different times, to six
+thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of
+the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for the indigent
+scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors was repaid with
+adequate stipends. In every city the productions of Arabic literature
+were copied and collected by the curiosity of the studious and the
+vanity of the rich. A private doctor refused the invitation of the
+sultan of Bochara, because the carriage of his books would have required
+four hundred camels. The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one
+hundred thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly
+bound, which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of
+Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that
+the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand
+volumes, forty-four of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their
+capital, Cordova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and
+Murcia, had given birth to more than three hundred writers, and above
+seventy public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian
+kingdom. The age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years,
+till the great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest
+and most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of
+science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental studies
+have languished and declined. [54]
+
+[Footnote 51: The Guliston (p. 29) relates the conversation of Mahomet
+and a physician, (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom.
+i. p. 814.) The prophet himself was skilled in the art of medicine; and
+Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 394-405) has given an extract of
+the aphorisms which are extant under his name.]
+
+[Footnote 52: See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist. des
+Insectes, tom. v. Memoire viii.) These hexagons are closed by a pyramid;
+the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid, such as would
+accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity possible of
+materials, were determined by a mathematician, at 109] degrees 26
+minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for the smaller. The
+actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70 degrees 32 minutes. Yet
+this perfect harmony raises the work at the expense of the artist he
+bees are not masters of transcendent geometry.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died A. H. 462, A.D.
+069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with this curious
+passage, as well as with the text of Pocock's Specimen Historiae Arabum.
+A number of literary anecdotes of philosophers, physicians, &c., who
+have flourished under each caliph, form the principal merit of the
+Dynasties of Abulpharagius.]
+
+[Footnote 54: These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the Bibliotheca
+Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p. 38, 71, 201, 202,) Leo Africanus, (de
+Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. xiii. p.
+259-293, particularly p. 274,) and Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex.
+p. 274, 275, 536, 537,) besides the chronological remarks of
+Abulpharagius.]
+
+In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far greater
+part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of local value or
+imaginary merit. [55] The shelves were crowded with orators and poets,
+whose style was adapted to the taste and manners of their countrymen;
+with general and partial histories, which each revolving generation
+supplied with a new harvest of persons and events; with codes and
+commentaries of jurisprudence, which derived their authority from the
+law of the prophet; with the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox
+tradition; and with the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics,
+scholastics, and moralists, the first or the last of writers, according
+to the different estimates of sceptics or believers. The works of
+speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of philosophy,
+mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of Greece were translated
+and illustrated in the Arabic language, and some treatises, now lost
+in the original, have been recovered in the versions of the East, [56]
+which possessed and studied the writings of Aristotle and Plato, of
+Euclid and Apollonius, of Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. [57] Among
+the ideal systems which have varied with the fashion of the times, the
+Arabians adopted the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible
+or alike obscure for the readers of every age. Plato wrote for the
+Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely blended with the
+language and religion of Greece. After the fall of that religion,
+the Peripatetics, emerging from their obscurity, prevailed in the
+controversies of the Oriental sects, and their founder was long
+afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain to the Latin schools.
+[58] The physics, both of the Academy and the Lycaeum, as they are
+built, not on observation, but on argument, have retarded the progress
+of real knowledge. The metaphysics of infinite, or finite, spirit, have
+too often been enlisted in the service of superstition. But the human
+faculties are fortified by the art and practice of dialectics; the ten
+predicaments of Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas, [59] and his
+syllogism is the keenest weapon of dispute. It was dexterously wielded
+in the schools of the Saracens, but as it is more effectual for the
+detection of error than for the investigation of truth, it is not
+surprising that new generations of masters and disciples should still
+revolve in the same circle of logical argument. The mathematics are
+distinguished by a peculiar privilege, that, in the course of ages, they
+may always advance, and can never recede. But the ancient geometry, if I
+am not misinformed, was resumed in the same state by the Italians of
+the fifteenth century; and whatever may be the origin of the name, the
+science of algebra is ascribed to the Grecian Diophantus by the modest
+testimony of the Arabs themselves. [60] They cultivated with more
+success the sublime science of astronomy, which elevates the mind of
+man to disdain his diminutive planet and momentary existence. The costly
+instruments of observation were supplied by the caliph Almamon, and the
+land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same spacious level, the same
+unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and a second time in those
+of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately measured a degree of the great
+circle of the earth, and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the
+entire circumference of our globe. [61] From the reign of the Abbassides
+to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the aid
+of glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical tables of
+Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, [62] correct some minute errors, without
+daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy, without advancing a step
+towards the discovery of the solar system. In the Eastern courts, the
+truths of science could be recommended only by ignorance and folly,
+and the astronomer would have been disregarded, had he not debased his
+wisdom or honesty by the vain predictions of astrology. [63] But in the
+science of medicine, the Arabians have been deservedly applauded. The
+names of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked with
+the Grecian masters; in the city of Bagdad, eight hundred and sixty
+physicians were licensed to exercise their lucrative profession: [64]
+in Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was intrusted to the skill
+of the Saracens, [65] and the school of Salerno, their legitimate
+offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of the healing art.
+[66] The success of each professor must have been influenced by personal
+and accidental causes; but we may form a less fanciful estimate of their
+general knowledge of anatomy, [67] botany, [68] and chemistry, [69] the
+threefold basis of their theory and practice. A superstitious reverence
+for the dead confined both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection
+of apes and quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known
+in the time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was
+reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern artists. Botany
+is an active science, and the discoveries of the torrid zone might
+enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand plants. Some
+traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples and monasteries
+of Egypt; much useful experience had been acquired in the practice of
+arts and manufactures; but the science of chemistry owes its origin and
+improvement to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented
+and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the
+substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and
+affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals
+into soft and salutary medicines. But the most eager search of Arabian
+chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal
+health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were evaporated in
+the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation of the great work was
+promoted by the worthy aid of mystery, fable, and superstition.
+
+[Footnote 55: The Arabic catalogue of the Escurial will give a just idea
+of the proportion of the classes. In the library of Cairo, the Mss of
+astronomy and medicine amounted to 6500, with two fair globes, the one
+of brass, the other of silver, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 417.)]
+
+[Footnote 56: As, for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh books (the
+eighth is still wanting) of the Conic Sections of Apollonius Pergaeus,
+which were printed from the Florence Ms. 1661, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec.
+tom. ii. p. 559.) Yet the fifth book had been previously restored by the
+mathematical divination of Viviani, (see his Eloge in Fontenelle, tom.
+v. p. 59, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 57: The merit of these Arabic versions is freely discussed
+by Renaudot, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p. 812-816,) and piously
+defended by Casiri, (Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238-240.)
+Most of the versions of Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are
+ascribed to Honain, a physician of the Nestorian sect, who flourished
+at Bagdad in the court of the caliphs, and died A.D. 876. He was at the
+head of a school or manufacture of translations, and the works of his
+sons and disciples were published under his name. See Abulpharagius,
+(Dynast. p. 88, 115, 171-174, and apud Asseman. Bibliot. Orient.
+tom. ii. p. 438,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 456,) Asseman.
+(Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 164,) and Casiri, (Bibliot. Arab.
+Hispana, tom. i. p. 238, &c. 251, 286-290, 302, 304, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 58: See Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 181, 214, 236,
+257, 315, 388, 396, 438, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The most elegant commentary on the Categories or
+Predicaments of Aristotle may be found in the Philosophical Arrangements
+of Mr. James Harris, (London, 1775, in octavo,) who labored to revive
+the studies of Grecian literature and philosophy.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 81, 222. Bibliot. Arab. Hisp.
+tom. i. p. 370, 371. In quem (says the primate of the Jacobites) si
+immiserit selector, oceanum hoc in genere (algebrae) inveniet. The time
+of Diophantus of Alexandria is unknown; but his six books are still
+extant, and have been illustrated by the Greek Planudes and the
+Frenchman Meziriac, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. iv. p. 12-15.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 210, 211, vers. Reiske)
+describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan, and the best
+historians. This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal or
+Hashemite cubits which Arabia had derived from the sacred and legal
+practice both of Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is repeated
+400 times in each basis of the great pyramid, and seems to indicate the
+primitive and universal measures of the East. See the Metrologie of the
+laborions. M. Paucton, p. 101-195.]
+
+[Footnote 62: See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the
+preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma Dissertationum,
+Oxon. 1767.]
+
+[Footnote 63: The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar, and
+the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most certain
+predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter and the sun,
+(Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161-163.) For the state and science of the
+Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en Perse, tom. iii. p.
+162-203.)]
+
+[Footnote 64: Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The original
+relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless, practitioner.]
+
+[Footnote 65: In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was cured
+by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom. i. p. 318.)]
+
+[Footnote 66: The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the
+Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and judgment
+by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii. p. 932-940) and
+Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p. 119-127.)]
+
+[Footnote 67: See a good view of the progress of anatomy in Wotton,
+(Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208-256.) His reputation
+has been unworthily depreciated by the wits in the controversy of Boyle
+and Bentley.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al Beithar, of
+Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into Africa, Persia, and
+India.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17, &c.)
+allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes the modest
+confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century, (D'Herbelot, p.
+387,) that he had drawn most of his science, perhaps the transmutation
+of metals, from the ancient sages. Whatever might be the origin or
+extent of their knowledge, the arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to
+have been known in Egypt at least three hundred years before Mahomet,
+(Wotton's Reflections, p. 121-133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens
+et les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376-429.) * Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of
+Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 336) rejects the claim of the Arabians as
+inventors of the science of chemistry. "The formation and realization
+of the notions of analysis and affinity were important steps in chemical
+science; which, as I shall hereafter endeavor to show it remained for
+the chemists of Europe to make at a much later period."--M.]
+
+But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of a
+familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity,
+the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought. Confident in the riches
+of their native tongue, the Arabians disdained the study of any
+foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters were chosen among their Christian
+subjects; they formed their translations, sometimes on the original
+text, more frequently perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of
+astronomers and physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or
+even an historian, being taught to speak the language of the Saracens.
+[70] The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those
+stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the
+Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and Rome: the heroes of
+Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion; and the history of the world
+before Mahomet was reduced to a short legend of the patriarchs, the
+prophets, and the Persian kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin
+schools may have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and
+I am not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of
+whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have much
+to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to learn; the
+temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms
+of visible and intellectual beauty, the just delineation of character
+and passion, the rhetoric of narrative and argument, the regular fabric
+of epic and dramatic poetry. [71] The influence of truth and reason
+is of a less ambiguous complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome
+enjoyed the blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious
+freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually
+unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal spirit of
+inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect
+that their caliph was a tyrant, and their prophet an impostor. [72] The
+instinct of superstition was alarmed by the introduction even of the
+abstract sciences; and the more rigid doctors of the law condemned
+the rash and pernicious curiosity of Almamon. [73] To the thirst of
+martyrdom, the vision of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we
+must ascribe the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the
+sword of the Saracens became less formidable when their youth was drawn
+away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the faithful
+presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity of the Greeks
+was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly imparted the sacred fire
+to the Barbarians of the East. [74]
+
+[Footnote 70: Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 26, 148) mentions a Syriac
+version of Homer's two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian Maronite of
+Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or Edessa towards the end
+of the viiith century. His work would be a literary curiosity. I
+have read somewhere, but I do not believe, that Plutarch's Lives were
+translated into Turkish for the use of Mahomet the Second.]
+
+[Footnote 71: I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William Jones's
+Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in octavo,) which
+was composed in the youth of that wonderful linguist. At present, in
+the maturity of his taste and judgment, he would perhaps abate of
+the fervent, and even partial, praise which he has bestowed on the
+Orientals.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been
+accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians, and the
+Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle's Dictionary.) Each of these
+sects would agree, that in two instances out of three, his contempt was
+reasonable.]
+
+[Footnote 73: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque, Orientale, p. 546.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the emperor
+refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of the caliph
+Almamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in the same words by
+the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 118.)]
+
+In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks had
+stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging their
+limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the third caliph
+of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the favorable opportunity,
+while a woman and a child, Irene and Constantine, were seated on the
+Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs
+was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of
+Harun, [75] or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful.
+His encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
+informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her
+troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their sovereign,
+her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the exchange of some
+royal gifts could not disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand
+dinars of gold, which was imposed on the Roman empire. The Saracens had
+too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and hostile land: their
+retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful
+markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces
+might be surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between
+a slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this
+expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder
+brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious
+in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most
+childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title
+to the name of Al Rashid (the Just) is sullied by the extirpation of the
+generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen to the
+complaint of a poor widow who had been pillaged by his troops, and who
+dared, in a passage of the Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot
+with the judgment of God and posterity. His court was adorned with
+luxury and science; but, in a reign of three-and-twenty years, Harun
+repeatedly visited his provinces from Chorasan to Egypt; nine times
+he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight times he invaded the
+territories of the Romans; and as often as they declined the payment of
+the tribute, they were taught to feel that a month of depredation was
+more costly than a year of submission. But when the unnatural mother
+of Constantine was deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus,
+resolved to obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle
+of the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the game
+of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece. "The queen (he
+spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and herself as a pawn. That
+pusillanimous female submitted to pay a tribute, the double of which she
+ought to have exacted from the Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits
+of your injustice, or abide the determination of the sword." At these
+words the ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
+throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his cimeter,
+samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder the
+feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or endangering the
+temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle of tremendous brevity:
+"In the name of the most merciful God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the
+faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou
+son of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my
+reply." It was written in characters of blood and fire on the plains of
+Phrygia; and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could only be checked by
+the arts of deceit and the show of repentance.
+
+The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the campaign, to
+his favorite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: [76] but the distance
+of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the season, encouraged his
+adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus was astonished by the bold
+and rapid march of the commander of the faithful, who repassed, in the
+depth of winter, the snows of Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and
+war were exhausted; and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds
+from a field of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects.
+Yet the emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved
+on victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers
+received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above three
+hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched under the black
+standard of the Abbassides. They swept the surface of Asia Minor far
+beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested the Pontic Heraclea, [77] once
+a flourishing state, now a paltry town; at that time capable of
+sustaining, in her antique walls, a month's siege against the forces of
+the East. The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had
+been conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue
+of Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and the
+lion's hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of desolation
+by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of Cyprus, compelled the
+emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty defiance. In the new treaty,
+the ruins of Heraclea were left forever as a lesson and a trophy; and
+the coin of the tribute was marked with the image and superscription
+of Harun and his three sons. [78] Yet this plurality of lords might
+contribute to remove the dishonor of the Roman name. After the death of
+their father, the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord,
+and the conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the
+restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign science.
+
+[Footnote 75: See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in the
+Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431-433, under his proper title; and in the
+relative articles to which M. D'Herbelot refers. That learned collector
+has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental chronicles of their
+instructive and amusing anecdotes.]
+
+[Footnote 76: For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium, consult
+D'Anville, (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24-27.) The Arabian Nights
+represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in Bagdad. He respected
+the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the vices of the inhabitants had
+driven him from the city, (Abulfed. Annal. p. 167.)]
+
+[Footnote 77: M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from
+Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or Eregri. His
+eye surveyed the present state, his reading collected the antiquities,
+of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xvi. p. 23-35.) We have
+a separate history of Heraclea in the fragments of Memnon, which are
+preserved by Photius.]
+
+[Footnote 78: The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman empire are
+related by Theophanes, (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407, 408.) Zonaras, (tom.
+iii. l. xv. p. 115, 124,) Cedrenus, (p. 477, 478,) Eutycaius,
+(Annal. tom. ii. p. 407,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152,)
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 147, 151,) and Abulfeda, (p. 156, 166-168.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part IV.
+
+Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at
+Constantinople, the islands of Crete [79] and Sicily were subdued by the
+Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their own writers,
+who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos, but it has not been
+overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who now begin to cast a clearer
+light on the affairs of their own times. [80] A band of Andalusian
+volunteers, discontented with the climate or government of Spain,
+explored the adventures of the sea; but as they sailed in no more than
+ten or twenty galleys, their warfare must be branded with the name of
+piracy. As the subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might
+lawfully invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction
+introduced them into Alexandria; [81] they cut in pieces both friends
+and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold above six thousand
+Christian captives, and maintained their station in the capital of
+Egypt, till they were oppressed by the forces and the presence of
+Almamon himself. From the mouth of the Nile to the Hellespont, the
+islands and sea-coasts both of the Greeks and Moslems were exposed to
+their depredations; they saw, they envied, they tasted the fertility of
+Crete, and soon returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack.
+The Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but when
+they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their vessels were
+in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of
+the mischief. Their clamors accused his madness or treachery. "Of what
+do you complain?" replied the crafty emir. "I have brought you to a land
+flowing with milk and honey. Here is your true country; repose from your
+toils, and forget the barren place of your nativity." "And our wives and
+children?" "Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your
+wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of a new
+progeny." The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart,
+in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable
+position in the eastern parts; and the name of Candax, their fortress
+and colony, has been extended to the whole island, under the corrupt
+and modern appellation of Candia. The hundred cities of the age of
+Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only one, most probably
+Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance of freedom and the
+profession of Christianity. The Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss
+of their navy; and the timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the
+main. During a hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years,
+the princes of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with
+fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.
+
+[Footnote 79: The authors from whom I have learned the most of the
+ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations, &c., c.
+3-20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom. i. lettre ii.
+et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom. iii. p. 343-544.)
+Although Crete is styled by Homer, by Dionysius, I cannot conceive
+that mountainous island to surpass, or even to equal, in fertility the
+greater part of Spain.]
+
+[Footnote 80: The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence is
+obtained from the four books of the Continuation of Theophanes, compiled
+by the pen or the command of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, with the Life
+of his father Basil, the Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p.
+1-162, a Francisc. Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily
+is related, l. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence
+of Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,
+(Compend. p. 506-508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud Baron.
+Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern Greeks are such
+notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a plurality of names.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256, 268-270) had
+described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in Egypt, but has forgot
+to connect them with the conquest of Crete.]
+
+The loss of Sicily [82] was occasioned by an act of superstitious rigor.
+An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister, was sentenced
+by the emperor to the amputation of his tongue. Euphemius appealed to
+the reason and policy of the Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with
+the Imperial purple, a fleet of one hundred ships, and an army of seven
+hundred horse and ten thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the
+ruins of the ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse
+[83] was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her
+walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of feeding
+on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were relieved by a
+powerful reenforcement of their brethren of Andalusia; the largest and
+western part of the island was gradually reduced, and the commodious
+harbor of Palermo was chosen for the seat of the naval and military
+power of the Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith
+which she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal
+siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which had
+formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They stood above
+twenty days against the battering-rams and catapultoe, the mines and
+tortoises of the besiegers; and the place might have been relieved,
+if the mariners of the Imperial fleet had not been detained at
+Constantinople in building a church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon
+Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy, was dragged in chains from the
+altar to Palermo, cast into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to
+the hourly peril of death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant,
+complaint may be read as the epitaph of his country. [84] From the Roman
+conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive
+Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were still
+precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of
+silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of pieces of gold,
+(about four hundred thousand pounds sterling,) and the captives must
+outnumber the seventeen thousand Christians, who were transported from
+the sack of Tauromenium into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion
+and language of the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of
+the rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised and
+clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph. The Arabian
+squadrons issued from the harbors of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a
+hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania were attacked and
+pillaged; nor could the suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the
+Caesars and apostles. Had the Mahometans been united, Italy must have
+fallen an easy and glorious accession to the empire of the prophet.
+But the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the
+Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of
+Sicily aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion
+was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. [85]
+
+[Footnote 82: Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51. This history of the loss of
+Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom. vii.
+p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the Italian
+chronicles.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede would
+adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date (A.D. 1005)
+which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently reproach the poet
+for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit of modern knights and
+ancient republicans.]
+
+[Footnote 84: The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is transcribed
+and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719, &c.) Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p. 190-192) mentions the
+loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the demons.]
+
+[Footnote 85: The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily are given
+in Abulfeda, (Annal' Moslem. p. 271-273,) and in the first volume of
+Muratori's Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns,
+tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some important facts.]
+
+In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a solemn
+and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the African coast
+presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber, and to approach a city which
+even yet, in her fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the
+Christian world. The gates and ramparts were guarded by a trembling
+people; but the tombs and temples of St. Peter and St. Paul were left
+exposed in the suburbs of the Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their
+invisible sanctity had protected them against the Goths, the Vandals,
+and the Lombards; but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the
+legend; and their rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the
+precepts of the Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of their costly
+offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the shrine of St. Peter;
+and if the bodies or the buildings were left entire, their deliverance
+must be imputed to the haste, rather than the scruples, of the Saracens.
+In their course along the Appian way, they pillaged Fundi and besieged
+Gayeta; but they had turned aside from the walls of Rome, and by their
+divisions, the Capitol was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca.
+The same danger still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and
+their domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African emir. They
+claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but the Carlovingian
+standard was overthrown by a detachment of the Barbarians: they
+meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors; but the attempt was
+treasonable, and the succor remote and precarious. [86] Their distress
+appeared to receive some aggravation from the death of their spiritual
+and temporal chief; but the pressing emergency superseded the forms
+and intrigues of an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo the
+Fourth [87] was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born
+a Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in his
+breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect, like one
+of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments
+of the Roman forum. The first days of his reign were consecrated to the
+purification and removal of relics, to prayers and processions, and to
+all the solemn offices of religion, which served at least to heal the
+imagination, and restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence
+had been long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the
+distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of his means
+and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the ancient walls were
+repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen towers, in the most accessible
+stations, were built or renewed; two of these commanded on either side
+of the Tyber; and an iron chain was drawn across the stream to impede
+the ascent of a hostile navy. The Romans were assured of a short respite
+by the welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that
+a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had perished in
+the waves.
+
+[Footnote 86: One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister
+militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring, Quia
+Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent, sed magis
+quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt. Quare non advocamus Graecos, et cum
+eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum regem et gentem de nostro regno
+et dominatione expellimus? Anastasius in Leone IV. p. 199.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124) appears
+to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo IV. I have
+borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the forum has
+furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]
+
+But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with
+redoubled violence. The Aglabite, [88] who reigned in Africa, had
+inherited from his father a treasure and an army: a fleet of Arabs and
+Moors, after a short refreshment in the harbors of Sardinia, cast anchor
+before the mouth of the Tyber, sixteen miles from the city: and their
+discipline and numbers appeared to threaten, not a transient inroad, but
+a serious design of conquest and dominion. But the vigilance of Leo had
+formed an alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free
+and maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of
+danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under the command
+of Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and valiant
+youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the Saracens. With his
+principal companions, Caesarius was invited to the Lateran palace, and
+the dexterous pontiff affected to inquire their errand, and to accept
+with joy and surprise their providential succor. The city bands, in
+arms, attended their father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his
+generous deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with
+martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the same God
+who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of the sea, would
+strengthen the hands of his champions against the adversaries of his
+holy name. After a similar prayer, and with equal resolution, the
+Moslems advanced to the attack of the Christian galleys, which preserved
+their advantageous station along the coast. The victory inclined to the
+side of the allies, when it was less gloriously decided in their favor
+by a sudden tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the
+stoutest mariners. The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,
+while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the rocks
+and islands of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from shipwreck
+and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the hands of their
+implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet reduced the dangerous
+multitude of captives; and the remainder was more usefully employed,
+to restore the sacred edifices which they had attempted to subvert.
+The pontiff, at the head of the citizens and allies, paid his grateful
+devotion at the shrines of the apostles; and, among the spoils of this
+naval victory, thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were
+suspended round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo
+the Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman state.
+The churches were renewed and embellished: near four thousand pounds
+of silver were consecrated to repair the losses of St. Peter; and
+his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of gold of the weight of two
+hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed with the portraits of the pope
+and emperor, and encircled with a string of pearls. Yet this vain
+magnificence reflects less glory on the character of Leo than the
+paternal care with which he rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria;
+and transported the wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his new
+foundation of Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore. [89] By his
+liberality, a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children, was
+planted in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling
+city was restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were divided
+among the new settlers: their first efforts were assisted by a gift of
+horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against
+the Saracens, swore to live and die under the standard of St. Peter. The
+nations of the West and North who visited the threshold of the apostles
+had gradually formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican, and
+their various habitations were distinguished, in the language of the
+times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards and
+Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to sacrilegious insult:
+the design of enclosing it with walls and towers exhausted all that
+authority could command, or charity would supply: and the pious labor
+of four years was animated in every season, and at every hour, by the
+presence of the indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but
+worldly passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which
+he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was tempered
+with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was trod by the bishop
+and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes; the songs of triumph
+were modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls were besprinkled with
+holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under
+the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and
+the new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable.
+[90]
+
+[Footnote 88: De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364.
+Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne, sous la Domination
+des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot reconcile, the
+difference of these writers in the succession of the Aglabites.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106, 108)
+has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and the other
+places of the Roman duchy.]
+
+[Footnote 90: The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent concerning the
+invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin chronicles do not afford
+much instruction, (see the Annals of Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic
+and contemporary guide for the popes of the ixth century is Anastasius,
+librarian of the Roman church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four
+pages, (p. 175-199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of
+superstitious trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was much
+oftener in a church than in a camp.]
+
+The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of the
+most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at Constantinople
+during the middle age. In offensive or defensive war, he marched in
+person five times against the Saracens, formidable in his attack,
+esteemed by the enemy in his losses and defeats. In the last of these
+expeditions he penetrated into Syria, and besieged the obscure town of
+Sozopetra; the casual birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father
+Harun was attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and
+concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that moment the
+arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in favor of a place for
+which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial affection. These
+solicitations determined the emperor to wound his pride in so sensible a
+part. Sozopetra was levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were
+marked or mutilated with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female
+captives were forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a
+matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name
+of Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her
+kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under the
+reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the youngest
+had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and Circassia; this
+frontier station had exercised his military talents; and among his
+accidental claims to the name of Octonary, [91] the most meritorious are
+the eight battles which he gained or fought against the enemies of the
+Koran. In this personal quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt,
+were recruited from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his
+cavalry might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the
+hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the expense
+of the armament was computed at four millions sterling, or one hundred
+thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of assembly,
+the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high road of
+Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre, and the vanguard
+was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of the first adventures,
+might succeed with the more glory, or fail with the least reproach. In
+the revenge of his injury, the caliph prepared to retaliate a similar
+affront. The father of Theophilus was a native of Amorium [92] in
+Phrygia: the original seat of the Imperial house had been adorned with
+privileges and monuments; and, whatever might be the indifference of the
+people, Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of
+the sovereign and his court. The name of Amorium was inscribed on the
+shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again united
+under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed by the wisest
+counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the inhabitants, and to
+abandon the empty structures to the vain resentment of the Barbarians.
+The emperor embraced the more generous resolution of defending, in a
+siege and battle, the country of his ancestors. When the armies drew
+near, the front of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more
+closely planted with spears and javelins; but the event of the action
+was not glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were
+broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who had
+obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The Greeks
+were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of the Turkish
+cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped and relaxed by the
+evening rain, very few of the Christians could have escaped with the
+emperor from the field of battle. They breathed at Dorylaeum, at
+the distance of three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling
+squadrons, forgave the common flight both of the prince and people.
+After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate
+the fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his
+prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the
+witnesses of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of
+his shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by
+a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate people; and
+the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a domestic traitor had not
+pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place which was decorated
+with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was
+accomplished with unrelenting rigor: tired, rather than satiated,
+with destruction, he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the
+neighborhood of Bagdad, while the unfortunate [93] Theophilus implored
+the tardy and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of the
+Franks. Yet in the siege of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems
+had perished: their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty
+thousand Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives,
+who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual necessity could
+sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prisoners: [94] but in the
+national and religious conflict of the two empires, peace was without
+confidence, and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the
+field; those who escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to
+hopeless servitude, or exquisite torture; and a Catholic emperor
+relates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of
+Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil.
+[95] To a point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
+hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same caliph
+descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve the distress
+of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had tumbled into a
+ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect with the most pleasure,
+when he was summoned by the angel of death? [96]
+
+[Footnote 91: The same number was applied to the following circumstance
+in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the Abbassides; he reigned
+eight years, eight months, and eight days; left eight sons, eight
+daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight millions of gold.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers, and
+to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith century,
+it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis of the new
+Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p. 234.) The city rose
+again from its ruins, if we should read Ammeria, not Anguria, in the
+text of the Nubian geographer. (p. 236.)]
+
+[Footnote 93: In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan. l. iii.
+p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his ambassadors,
+in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de victoriis, quas adversus
+exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian.
+apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of these
+singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in Cilicia, the
+limit of the two empires, and one day's journey westward of Tarsus,
+(D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 91.) Four thousand four
+hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred women and children, one hundred
+confederates, were exchanged for an equal number of Greeks. They passed
+each other in the middle of the bridge, and when they reached their
+respective friends, they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of
+the prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same year,
+(A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two martyrs, were
+beheaded by the caliph's order.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61, p. 186.
+These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity as pirates and
+renegadoes.]
+
+[Footnote 96: For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see the
+Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77-84,) Genesius (l. iii. p.
+24-34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528-532,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen, p. 180,)
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 191,)
+D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640.)]
+
+With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of his family and
+nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had spread themselves over
+the East, and were mingled with the servile crowds of Persia, Syria,
+and Egypt, they insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the
+desert. The courage of the South is the artificial fruit of discipline
+and prejudice; the active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the
+mercenary forces of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the
+North, of which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the
+Turks [97] who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths,
+either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the
+exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan faith. The
+Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their benefactor,
+and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace and the provinces.
+Motassem, the first author of this dangerous example, introduced
+into the capital above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct
+provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and
+people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his
+own residence and the camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on
+the Tigris, about twelve leagues above the city of Peace. [98] His son
+Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he
+cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers,
+ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a
+revolution. At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son,
+they burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph
+was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had recently
+distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet
+streaming with a father's blood, Montasser was triumphantly led; but in
+a reign of six months, he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience.
+If he wept at the sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime
+and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if his days were abridged by
+grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed,
+in the bitterness of death, that he had lost both this world and the
+world to come. After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the
+garment and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the
+foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and murdered,
+three commanders of the faithful. As often as the Turks were inflamed
+by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were dragged by the
+feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and
+compelled to purchase, by the abdication of their dignity, a short
+reprieve of inevitable fate. [99] At length, however, the fury of the
+tempest was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to the less
+turbulent residence of Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks was curbed
+with a firmer and more skilful hand, and their numbers were divided
+and destroyed in foreign warfare. But the nations of the East had been
+taught to trample on the successors of the prophet; and the blessings
+of domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength and
+discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism, that I
+seem to repeat the story of the praetorians of Rome. [100]
+
+[Footnote 97: M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes
+stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks he
+can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche, or
+high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from China and
+Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides, &c., (Hist. des
+Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131.)]
+
+[Footnote 98: He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into the
+fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at first sight,
+(D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808. D'Anville, l'Euphrate et le
+Tigre p. 97, 98.)]
+
+[Footnote 99: Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz: Correptum
+pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et spoliatum laceris
+vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo aestu pedes alternos
+attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium aliquis misero colaphos continuo
+ingerebat, quos ille objectis manibus avertere studebat..... Quo facto
+traditus tortori fuit, totoque triduo cibo potuque prohibitus.....
+Suffocatus, &c. (Abulfeda, p. 206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says,
+services ipsi perpetuis ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus
+conculcabant, (p. 208.)]
+
+[Footnote 100: See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel, Montasser,
+Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the Bibliotheque of D'Herbelot,
+and the now familiar Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]
+
+While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the pleasure,
+and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with concentrated heat in the
+breasts of the chosen few, the congenial spirits, who were ambitious of
+reigning either in this world or in the next. How carefully soever the
+book of prophecy had been sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes,
+and (if we may profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might
+believe that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
+Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time, would
+reveal a still more perfect and permanent law. In the two hundred and
+seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the neighborhood of Cufa,
+an Arabian preacher, of the name of Carmath, assumed the lofty and
+incomprehensible style of the Guide, the Director, the Demonstration,
+the Word, the Holy Ghost, the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had
+conversed with him in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed
+the son of Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In
+his mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more
+spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and
+pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden food;
+and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily repetition of
+fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the rustic crowd awakened the
+attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a timid persecution assisted
+the progress of the new sect; and the name of the prophet became more
+revered after his person had been withdrawn from the world. His twelve
+apostles dispersed themselves among the Bedoweens, "a race of men," says
+Abulfeda, "equally devoid of reason and of religion;" and the success
+of their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution. The
+Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed the title
+of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of the caliphs of
+Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since they vowed a blind
+and absolute submission to their Imam, who was called to the prophetic
+office by the voice of God and the people. Instead of the legal tithes,
+he claimed the fifth of their substance and spoil; the most flagitious
+sins were no more than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were
+united and concealed by an oath of secrecy. After a bloody conflict,
+they prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf:
+far and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,
+or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and these
+rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and seven thousand
+fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were dismayed at the approach
+of an enemy who neither asked nor accepted quarter; and the difference
+between, them in fortitude and patience, is expressive of the change
+which three centuries of prosperity had effected in the character of the
+Arabians. Such troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of
+Racca and Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad
+was filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the veils
+of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu Taher advanced
+to the gates of the capital with no more than five hundred horse. By
+the special order of Moctader, the bridges had been broken down, and the
+person or head of the rebel was expected every hour by the commander of
+the faithful. His lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised
+Abu Taher of his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. "Your master,"
+said the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, "is at the head of thirty
+thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in his host:" at
+the same instant, turning to three of his companions, he commanded the
+first to plunge a dagger into his breast, the second to leap into the
+Tigris, and the third to cast himself headlong down a precipice. They
+obeyed without a murmur.
+
+"Relate," continued the imam, "what you have seen: before the evening
+your general shall be chained among my dogs." Before the evening, the
+camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The rapine of the
+Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the worship of Mecca:
+they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty thousand devout Moslems
+were abandoned on the burning sands to a death of hunger and thirst.
+Another year they suffered the pilgrims to proceed without interruption;
+but, in the festival of devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and
+trampled on the most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty
+thousand citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred
+precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead bodies; the
+well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden spout was forced
+from its place; the veil of the Caaba was divided among these impious
+sectaries; and the black stone, the first monument of the nation, was
+borne away in triumph to their capital. After this deed of sacrilege
+and cruelty, they continued to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and
+Egypt: but the vital principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root.
+Their scruples, or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca,
+and restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to inquire
+into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords they were
+finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be considered as
+the second visible cause of the decline and fall of the empire of the
+caliphs. [101]
+
+[Footnote 101: For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin, (Hist.
+Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast.
+p. 179-182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 218, 219, &c., 245, 265,
+274.) and D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 256-258, 635.) I find
+some inconsistencies of theology and chronology, which it would not be
+easy nor of much importance to reconcile. * Note: Compare Von Hammer,
+Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 44, &c.--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part V.
+
+The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of the
+empire itself. The caliph Almamon might proudly assert, that it
+was easier for him to rule the East and the West, than to manage a
+chess-board of two feet square: [102] yet I suspect that in both those
+games he was guilty of many fatal mistakes; and I perceive, that in the
+distant provinces the authority of the first and most powerful of the
+Abbassides was already impaired. The analogy of despotism invests the
+representative with the full majesty of the prince; the division and
+balance of powers might relax the habits of obedience, might encourage
+the passive subject to inquire into the origin and administration of
+civil government. He who is born in the purple is seldom worthy to
+reign; but the elevation of a private man, of a peasant, perhaps, or
+a slave, affords a strong presumption of his courage and capacity.
+The viceroy of a remote kingdom aspires to secure the property and
+inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations must rejoice in the
+presence of their sovereign; and the command of armies and treasures
+are at once the object and the instrument of his ambition. A change was
+scarcely visible as long as the lieutenants of the caliph were content
+with their vicarious title; while they solicited for themselves or their
+sons a renewal of the Imperial grant, and still maintained on the coin
+and in the public prayers the name and prerogative of the commander of
+the faithful. But in the long and hereditary exercise of power, they
+assumed the pride and attributes of royalty; the alternative of peace
+or war, of reward or punishment, depended solely on their will; and the
+revenues of their government were reserved for local services or
+private magnificence. Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the
+successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious gift of
+an elephant, or a cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings, or some pounds
+of musk and amber. [103]
+
+[Footnote 102: Hyde, Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 57, in Hist.
+Shahiludii.]
+
+[Footnote 103: The dynasties of the Arabian empire may be studied in the
+Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, under the proper years,
+in the dictionary of D'Herbelot, under the proper names. The tables of
+M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.) exhibit a general chronology
+of the East, interspersed with some historical anecdotes; but his
+attachment to national blood has sometimes confounded the order of time
+and place.]
+
+After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual supremacy of
+the Abbassides, the first symptoms of disobedience broke forth in the
+province of Africa. Ibrahim, the son of Aglab, the lieutenant of the
+vigilant and rigid Harun, bequeathed to the dynasty of the Aglabites
+the inheritance of his name and power. The indolence or policy of the
+caliphs dissembled the injury and loss, and pursued only with poison the
+founder of the Edrisites, [104] who erected the kingdom and city of Fez
+on the shores of the Western ocean. [105] In the East, the first dynasty
+was that of the Taherites; [106] the posterity of the valiant Taher,
+who, in the civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served with too much
+zeal and success the cause of Almamon, the younger brother. He was
+sent into honorable exile, to command on the banks of the Oxus; and the
+independence of his successors, who reigned in Chorasan till the fourth
+generation, was palliated by their modest and respectful demeanor, the
+happiness of their subjects and the security of their frontier. They
+were supplanted by one of those adventures so frequent in the annals
+of the East, who left his trade of a brazier (from whence the name of
+Soffarides) for the profession of a robber. In a nocturnal visit to the
+treasure of the prince of Sistan, Jacob, the son of Leith, stumbled over
+a lump of salt, which he unwarily tasted with his tongue. Salt, among
+the Orientals, is the symbol of hospitality, and the pious robber
+immediately retired without spoil or damage. The discovery of this
+honorable behavior recommended Jacob to pardon and trust; he led an army
+at first for his benefactor, at last for himself, subdued Persia, and
+threatened the residence of the Abbassides. On his march towards Bagdad,
+the conqueror was arrested by a fever. He gave audience in bed to the
+ambassador of the caliph; and beside him on a table were exposed a naked
+cimeter, a crust of brown bread, and a bunch of onions. "If I die,"
+said he, "your master is delivered from his fears. If I live, this
+must determine between us. If I am vanquished, I can return without
+reluctance to the homely fare of my youth." From the height where he
+stood, the descent would not have been so soft or harmless: a timely
+death secured his own repose and that of the caliph, who paid with the
+most lavish concessions the retreat of his brother Amrou to the palaces
+of Shiraz and Ispahan. The Abbassides were too feeble to contend, too
+proud to forgive: they invited the powerful dynasty of the Samanides,
+who passed the Oxus with ten thousand horse so poor, that their stirrups
+were of wood: so brave, that they vanquished the Soffarian army, eight
+times more numerous than their own. The captive Amrou was sent in
+chains, a grateful offering to the court of Bagdad; and as the victor
+was content with the inheritance of Transoxiana and Chorasan, the realms
+of Persia returned for a while to the allegiance of the caliphs. The
+provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered by their Turkish
+slaves of the race of Toulon and Ilkshid. [107] These Barbarians, in
+religion and manners the countrymen of Mahomet, emerged from the bloody
+factions of the palace to a provincial command and an independent
+throne: their names became famous and formidable in their time; but the
+founders of these two potent dynasties confessed, either in words or
+actions, the vanity of ambition. The first on his death-bed implored the
+mercy of God to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of his own power:
+the second, in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and eight
+thousand slaves, concealed from every human eye the chamber where he
+attempted to sleep. Their sons were educated in the vices of kings;
+and both Egypt and Syria were recovered and possessed by the Abbassides
+during an interval of thirty years. In the decline of their empire,
+Mesopotamia, with the important cities of Mosul and Aleppo, was occupied
+by the Arabian princes of the tribe of Hamadan. The poets of their court
+could repeat without a blush, that nature had formed their countenances
+for beauty, their tongues for eloquence, and their hands for liberality
+and valor: but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of the
+Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide.
+
+At the same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped by
+the dynasty of the Bowides, by the sword of three brothers, who, under
+various names, were styled the support and columns of the state, and
+who, from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, would suffer no tyrants but
+themselves. Under their reign, the language and genius of Persia
+revived, and the Arabs, three hundred and four years after the death of
+Mahomet, were deprived of the sceptre of the East.
+
+[Footnote 104: The Aglabites and Edrisites are the professed subject of
+M. de Cardonne, (Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous la Domination
+des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 1-63.)]
+
+[Footnote 105: To escape the reproach of error, I must criticize the
+inaccuracies of M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 359) concerning the Edrisites.
+1. The dynasty and city of Fez could not be founded in the year of the
+Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous child of a descendant of
+Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year 168. 2. This founder, Edris, the
+son of Edris, instead of living to the improbable age of 120 years, A.
+H. 313, died A. H. 214, in the prime of manhood. 3. The dynasty ended A.
+H. 307, twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of
+the Huns. See the accurate Annals of Abulfeda p. 158, 159, 185, 238.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The dynasties of the Taherites and Soffarides, with the
+rise of that of the Samanines, are described in the original history and
+Latin version of Mirchond: yet the most interesting facts had already
+been drained by the diligence of M. D'Herbelot.]
+
+[Footnote 107: M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 124-154) has
+exhausted the Toulunides and Ikshidites of Egypt, and thrown some light
+on the Carmathians and Hamadanites.]
+
+Rahadi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the thirty-ninth of the
+successors of Mahomet, was the last who deserved the title of commander
+of the faithful; [108] the last (says Abulfeda) who spoke to the people,
+or conversed with the learned; the last who, in the expense of his
+household, represented the wealth and magnificence of the ancient
+caliphs. After him, the lords of the Eastern world were reduced to the
+most abject misery, and exposed to the blows and insults of a servile
+condition. The revolt of the provinces circumscribed their dominions
+within the walls of Bagdad: but that capital still contained an
+innumerable multitude, vain of their past fortune, discontented with
+their present state, and oppressed by the demands of a treasury which
+had formerly been replenished by the spoil and tribute of nations. Their
+idleness was exercised by faction and controversy. Under the mask of
+piety, the rigid followers of Hanbal [109] invaded the pleasures of
+domestic life, burst into the houses of plebeians and princes, the wine,
+broke the instruments, beat the musicians, and dishonored, with infamous
+suspicions, the associates of every handsome youth. In each profession,
+which allowed room for two persons, the one was a votary, the other an
+antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides were awakened by the clamorous
+grief of the sectaries, who denied their title, and cursed their
+progenitors. A turbulent people could only be repressed by a military
+force; but who could satisfy the avarice or assert the discipline of the
+mercenaries themselves? The African and the Turkish guards drew their
+swords against each other, and the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra,
+[110] imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the sanctuary
+of the mosch and harem. If the caliphs escaped to the camp or court of
+any neighboring prince, their deliverance was a change of servitude,
+till they were prompted by despair to invite the Bowides, the sultans of
+Persia, who silenced the factions of Bagdad by their irresistible arms.
+The civil and military powers were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second
+of the three brothers, and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling
+was assigned by his generosity for the private expense of the commander
+of the faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of the
+ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling multitude,
+the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon, by the command
+of the stranger, and the rude hands of his Dilamites. His palace was
+pillaged, his eyes were put out, and the mean ambition of the Abbassides
+aspired to the vacant station of danger and disgrace. In the school
+of adversity, the luxurious caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious
+virtues of the primitive times. Despoiled of their armor and silken
+robes, they fasted, they prayed, they studied the Koran and the
+tradition of the Sonnites: they performed, with zeal and knowledge,
+the functions of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of nations
+still waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law
+and conscience of the faithful; and the weakness or division of their
+tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the sovereignty of
+Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been imbittered by the triumph of
+the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of Ali. Arising from the
+extremity of Africa, these successful rivals extinguished, in Egypt and
+Syria, both the spiritual and temporal authority of the Abbassides; and
+the monarch of the Nile insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of the
+Tigris.
+
+[Footnote 108: Hic est ultimus chalifah qui multum atque saepius pro
+concione peroraret.... Fuit etiam ultimus qui otium cum eruditis et
+facetis hominibus fallere hilariterque agere soleret. Ultimus tandem
+chalifarum cui sumtus, stipendia, reditus, et thesauri, culinae,
+caeteraque omnis aulica pompa priorum chalifarum ad instar comparata
+fuerint. Videbimus enim paullo post quam indignis et servilibius
+ludibriis exagitati, quam ad humilem fortunam altimumque contemptum
+abjecti fuerint hi quondam potentissimi totius terrarum Orientalium
+orbis domini. Abulfed. Annal. Moslem. p. 261. I have given this passage
+as the manner and tone of Abulfeda, but the cast of Latin eloquence
+belongs more properly to Reiske. The Arabian historian (p. 255, 257,
+261-269, 283, &c.) has supplied me with the most interesting facts of
+this paragraph.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Their master, on a similar occasion, showed himself of a
+more indulgent and tolerating spirit. Ahmed Ebn Hanbal, the head of one
+of the four orthodox sects, was born at Bagdad A. H. 164, and died there
+A. H. 241. He fought and suffered in the dispute concerning the creation
+of the Koran.]
+
+[Footnote 110: The office of vizier was superseded by the emir al Omra,
+Imperator Imperatorum, a title first instituted by Radhi, and which
+merged at length in the Bowides and Seljukides: vectigalibus, et
+tributis, et curiis per omnes regiones praefecit, jussitque in omnibus
+suggestis nominis ejus in concionibus mentionem fieri, (Abulpharagius,
+Dynart. p 199.) It is likewise mentioned by Elmacin, (p. 254, 255.)]
+
+In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed after
+the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile transactions of the two
+nations were confined to some inroads by sea and land, the fruits of
+their close vicinity and indelible hatred. But when the Eastern world
+was convulsed and broken, the Greeks were roused from their lethargy
+by the hopes of conquest and revenge. The Byzantine empire, since the
+accession of the Basilian race, had reposed in peace and dignity; and
+they might encounter with their entire strength the front of some petty
+emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his national foes of
+the Mahometan faith. The lofty titles of the morning star, and the
+death of the Saracens, [111] were applied in the public acclamations to
+Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in the camp, as he was unpopular
+in the city. In the subordinate station of great domestic, or general
+of the East, he reduced the Island of Crete, and extirpated the nest
+of pirates who had so long defied, with impunity, the majesty of the
+empire. [112] His military genius was displayed in the conduct and
+success of the enterprise, which had so often failed with loss and
+dishonor. The Saracens were confounded by the landing of his troops on
+safe and level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to the shore.
+Seven months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of the
+native Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their brethren of
+Africa and Spain; and after the massy wall and double ditch had been
+stormed by the Greeks a hopeless conflict was still maintained in the
+streets and houses of the city. [1121] The whole island was subdued in
+the capital, and a submissive people accepted, without resistance,
+the baptism of the conqueror. [113] Constantinople applauded the
+long-forgotten pomp of a triumph; but the Imperial diadem was the
+sole reward that could repay the services, or satisfy the ambition, of
+Nicephorus.
+
+[Footnote 111: Liutprand, whose choleric temper was imbittered by his
+uneasy situation, suggests the names of reproach and contempt more
+applicable to Nicephorus than the vain titles of the Greeks, Ecce venit
+stella matutina, surgit Eous, reverberat obtutu solis radios, pallida
+Saracenorum mors, Nicephorus.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Notwithstanding the insinuation of Zonaras, &c., (tom.
+ii. l. xvi. p. 197,) it is an undoubted fact, that Crete was completely
+and finally subdued by Nicephorus Phocas, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p.
+873-875. Meursius, Creta, l. iii. c. 7, tom. iii. p. 464, 465.)]
+
+[Footnote 1121: The Acroases of Theodorus, de expugnatione Cretae,
+miserable iambics, relate the whole campaign. Whoever would fairly
+estimate the merit of the poetic deacon, may read the description of the
+slinging a jackass into the famishing city. The poet is in a transport
+at the wit of the general, and revels in the luxury of antithesis.
+Theodori Acroases, lib. iii. 172, in Niebuhr's Byzant. Hist.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 113: A Greek Life of St. Nicon the Armenian was found in the
+Sforza library, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit Sirmond, for the
+use of Cardinal Baronius. This contemporary legend casts a ray of
+light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the 10th century. He found the
+newly-recovered island, foedis detestandae Agarenorum superstitionis
+vestigiis adhuc plenam ac refertam.... but the victorious missionary,
+perhaps with some carnal aid, ad baptismum omnes veraeque fidei
+disciplinam pepulit. Ecclesiis per totam insulam aedificatis, &c.,
+(Annal. Eccles. A.D. 961.)]
+
+After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal descent of
+the Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively married Nicephorus
+Phocas and his assassin John Zimisces, the two heroes of the age. They
+reigned as the guardians and colleagues of her infant sons; and the
+twelve years of their military command form the most splendid period of
+the Byzantine annals. The subjects and confederates, whom they led to
+war, appeared, at least in the eyes of an enemy, two hundred thousand
+strong; and of these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses:
+[114] a train of four thousand mules attended their march; and their
+evening camp was regularly fortified with an enclosure of iron spikes.
+A series of bloody and undecisive combats is nothing more than an
+anticipation of what would have been effected in a few years by the
+course of nature; but I shall briefly prosecute the conquests of the
+two emperors from the hills of Cappadocia to the desert of Bagdad. The
+sieges of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, in Cilicia, first exercised the skill
+and perseverance of their troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not
+hesitate to bestow the name of Romans. In the double city of Mopsuestia,
+which is divided by the River Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems
+were predestined to death or slavery, [115] a surprising degree of
+population, which must at least include the inhabitants of the dependent
+districts. They were surrounded and taken by assault; but Tarsus was
+reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no sooner had the Saracens
+yielded on honorable terms than they were mortified by the distant and
+unprofitable view of the naval succors of Egypt. They were dismissed
+with a safe-conduct to the confines of Syria: a part of the old
+Christians had quietly lived under their dominion; and the vacant
+habitations were replenished by a new colony. But the mosch was
+converted into a stable; the pulpit was delivered to the flames; many
+rich crosses of gold and gems, the spoils of Asiatic churches, were
+made a grateful offering to the piety or avarice of the emperor; and he
+transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were fixed in the
+walls of Constantinople, an eternal monument of his victory. After they
+had forced and secured the narrow passes of Mount Amanus, the two Roman
+princes repeatedly carried their arms into the heart of Syria. Yet,
+instead of assaulting the walls of Antioch, the humanity or superstition
+of Nicephorus appeared to respect the ancient metropolis of the East: he
+contented himself with drawing round the city a line of circumvallation;
+left a stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without
+impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth of winter, in a dark
+and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three hundred soldiers,
+approached the rampart, applied his scaling-ladders, occupied two
+adjacent towers, stood firm against the pressure of multitudes, and
+bravely maintained his post till he was relieved by the tardy, though
+effectual, support of his reluctant chief. The first tumult of slaughter
+and rapine subsided; the reign of Caesar and of Christ was restored; and
+the efforts of a hundred thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria and
+the fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before the walls of
+Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to Seifeddowlat, of
+the dynasty of Hamadan, who clouded his past glory by the precipitate
+retreat which abandoned his kingdom and capital to the Roman invaders.
+In his stately palace, that stood without the walls of Aleppo, they
+joyfully seized a well-furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen
+hundred mules, and three hundred bags of silver and gold. But the walls
+of the city withstood the strokes of their battering-rams: and the
+besiegers pitched their tents on the neighboring mountain of Jaushan.
+Their retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen and mercenaries;
+the guard of the gates and ramparts was deserted; and while they
+furiously charged each other in the market-place, they were surprised
+and destroyed by the sword of a common enemy. The male sex was
+exterminated by the sword; ten thousand youths were led into captivity;
+the weight of the precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of
+the beasts of burden; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after
+a licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from the
+naked and bleeding city. In their Syrian inroads they commanded the
+husbandmen to cultivate their lands, that they themselves, in the
+ensuing season, might reap the benefit; more than a hundred cities were
+reduced to obedience; and eighteen pulpits of the principal moschs were
+committed to the flames to expiate the sacrilege of the disciples of
+Mahomet. The classic names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for
+a moment in the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the
+paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive people;
+and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable fortress of
+Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phoenicia. Since the days of Heraclius, the
+Euphrates, below the passage of Mount Taurus, had been impervious, and
+almost invisible, to the Greeks.
+
+The river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and the
+historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the once famous
+cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, [116] and Nisibis, the
+ancient limit of the empire in the neighborhood of the Tigris. His
+ardor was quickened by the desire of grasping the virgin treasures of
+Ecbatana, [117] a well-known name, under which the Byzantine writer
+has concealed the capital of the Abbassides. The consternation of the
+fugitives had already diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied
+riches of Bagdad had already been dissipated by the avarice and
+prodigality of domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the
+stern demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to
+provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied, that
+his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn from his hands,
+and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which he was unable to
+support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture of the palace was sold;
+and the paltry price of forty thousand pieces of gold was instantly
+consumed in private luxury. But the apprehensions of Bagdad were
+relieved by the retreat of the Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the
+desert of Mesopotamia; and the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden
+with Oriental spoils, returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his
+triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and
+silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this
+transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive
+princes returned to their capitals; the subjects disclaimed their
+involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems again purified their
+temples, and overturned the idols of the saints and martyrs; the
+Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a Saracen to an orthodox master; and
+the numbers and spirit of the Melchites were inadequate to the support
+of the church and state.
+
+Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia and
+the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and useful accession
+to the Roman empire. [118]
+
+[Footnote 114: Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 278, 279. Liutprand was
+disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that Nicephorus led
+against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.]
+
+[Footnote 115: Ducenta fere millia hominum numerabat urbs (Abulfeda,
+Annal. Moslem. p. 231) of Mopsuestia, or Masifa, Mampsysta, Mansista,
+Mamista, as it is corruptly, or perhaps more correctly, styled in the
+middle ages, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 580.) Yet I cannot credit this
+extreme populousness a few years after the testimony of the emperor Leo,
+(Tactica, c. xviii. in Meursii Oper. tom. vi. p. 817.)]
+
+[Footnote 116: The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names of
+Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and Martyropolis, (Mia
+farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers. Reiske.) Of the former,
+Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris; of the latter, clara atque
+conspicua opibusque et pecore, reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque
+oppidis longe praestans.]
+
+[Footnote 117: Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam
+everteret.... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe existunt
+felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud Pagium, tom.
+iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only with Bagdad, and cannot
+possibly apply either to Hamadan, the true Ecbatana, (D'Anville, Geog.
+Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken
+for that city. The name of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is
+transferred by a more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4)
+to the royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]
+
+[Footnote 118: See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda,
+from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of Nicephorus Phocas and
+John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199--l.
+xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 649-684.) Their manifold defects
+are partly supplied by the Ms. history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi
+obtained from the Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a
+Latin version, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.) * Note: The
+whole original work of Leo the Deacon has been published by Hase, and
+is inserted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians. M Lassen
+has added to the Arabian authorities of this period some extracts from
+Kemaleddin's account of the treaty for the surrender of Aleppo.--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part I.
+
+     Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century.--Extent And
+     Division.--Wealth And Revenue.--Palace Of Constantinople.--
+     Titles And Offices.--Pride And Power Of The Emperors.--
+     Tactics Of The Greeks, Arabs, And Franks.--Loss Of The Latin
+     Tongue.--Studies And Solitude Of The Greeks.
+
+A ray of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the tenth
+century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal volumes of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus, [1] which he composed at a mature age for
+the instruction of his son, and which promise to unfold the state of the
+eastern empire, both in peace and war, both at home and abroad. In the
+first of these works he minutely describes the pompous ceremonies of the
+church and palace of Constantinople, according to his own practice, and
+that of his predecessors. [2] In the second, he attempts an accurate
+survey of the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both
+of Europe and Asia. [3] The system of Roman tactics, the discipline and
+order of the troops, and the military operations by land and sea, are
+explained in the third of these didactic collections, which may be
+ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. [4] In the fourth, of the
+administration of the empire, he reveals the secrets of the Byzantine
+policy, in friendly or hostile intercourse with the nations of the
+earth. The literary labors of the age, the practical systems of law,
+agriculture, and history, might redound to the benefit of the subject
+and the honor of the Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the
+Basilics, [5] the code and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were
+gradually framed in the three first reigns of that prosperous dynasty.
+The art of agriculture had amused the leisure, and exercised the pens,
+of the best and wisest of the ancients; and their chosen precepts are
+comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics [6] of Constantine. At
+his command, the historical examples of vice and virtue were methodized
+in fifty-three books, [7] and every citizen might apply, to his
+contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the warning of past times. From
+the august character of a legislator, the sovereign of the East
+descends to the more humble office of a teacher and a scribe; and if his
+successors and subjects were regardless of his paternal cares, we may
+inherit and enjoy the everlasting legacy.
+
+[Footnote 1: The epithet of Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple, is
+elegantly defined by Claudian:--
+
+     Ardua privatos nescit fortuna Penates;
+     Et regnum cum luce dedit.
+     Cognata potestas
+     Excepit Tyrio venerabile pignus in ostro.
+
+And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many passages
+expressive of the same idea.]
+
+[Footnote 2: A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae et
+Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda, Frankfort,
+and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid edition by Leich and
+Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such lavish praise as editors never
+fail to bestow on the worthy or worthless object of their toil.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See, in the first volume of Banduri's Imperium Orientale,
+Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1-24, de Administrando Imperio, p.
+45-127, edit. Venet. The text of the old edition of Meursius is
+corrected from a Ms. of the royal library of Paris, which Isaac Casaubon
+had formerly seen, (Epist. ad Polybium, p. 10,) and the sense is
+illustrated by two maps of William Deslisle, the prince of geographers
+till the appearance of the greater D'Anville.]
+
+[Footnote 4: The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published with the
+aid of some new Mss. in the great edition of the works of Meursius,
+by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531-920, 1211-1417, Florent.
+1745,) yet the text is still corrupt and mutilated, the version is still
+obscure and faulty. The Imperial library of Vienna would afford some
+valuable materials to a new editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p.
+369, 370.)]
+
+[Footnote 5: On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot.
+Graec. tom. xii. p. 425-514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris Romani,
+p. 396-399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i. p.
+450-458,) as historical civilians, may be usefully consulted: xli.
+books of this Greek code have been published, with a Latin version, by
+Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris, 1647,) in seven tomes in folio;
+iv. other books have been since discovered, and are inserted in Gerard
+Meerman's Novus Thesaurus Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole
+work, the sixty books, John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,)
+an eclogue or synopsis. The cxiii. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be
+found in the Corpus Juris Civilis.]
+
+[Footnote 6: I have used the last and best edition of the Geoponics,
+(by Nicolas Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.) I read in the
+preface, that the same emperor restored the long-forgotten systems
+of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two books of Hippiatrica, or
+Horse-physic, were published at Paris, 1530, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot.
+Graec. tom. vi. p. 493-500.)]
+
+[Footnote 7: Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been
+preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus, Antwerp,
+1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and de Virtutibus et
+Vitiis, (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris, 1634.)]
+
+A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift, and the
+gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these Imperial treasures we
+may still deplore our poverty and ignorance; and the fading glories
+of their authors will be obliterated by indifference or contempt. The
+Basilics will sink to a broken copy, a partial and mutilated version, in
+the Greek language, of the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the
+old civilians is often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and the
+absolute prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest for money,
+enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life. In the
+historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the inimitable
+virtues of Greece and Rome: he might learn to what a pitch of energy
+and elevation the human character had formerly aspired. But a contrary
+effect must have been produced by a new edition of the lives of the
+saints, which the great logothete, or chancellor of the empire, was
+directed to prepare; and the dark fund of superstition was enriched by
+the fabulous and florid legends of Simon the Metaphrast. [8] The merits
+and miracles of the whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a
+sage, than the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts
+of the Creator, and supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal
+authors of the Geoponics were more seriously employed in expounding the
+precepts of the destroying art, which had been taught since the days of
+Xenophon, [9] as the art of heroes and kings. But the Tactics of Leo and
+Constantine are mingled with the baser alloy of the age in which they
+lived. It was destitute of original genius; they implicitly transcribe
+the rules and maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It was
+unskilled in the propriety of style and method; they blindly confound
+the most distant and discordant institutions, the phalanx of Sparta
+and that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of Augustus and
+Theodosius. Even the use, or at least the importance, of these military
+rudiments may be fairly questioned: their general theory is dictated
+by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty, consists in the
+application. The discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather
+than by study: the talents of a commander are appropriated to those
+calm, though rapid, minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of
+armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter the
+glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be
+numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism.
+The book of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the
+despicable pageantry which had infected the church and state since the
+gradual decay of the purity of the one and the power of the other.
+A review of the themes or provinces might promise such authentic and
+useful information, as the curiosity of government only can obtain,
+instead of traditionary fables on the origin of the cities, and
+malicious epigrams on the vices of their inhabitants. [10] Such
+information the historian would have been pleased to record; nor should
+his silence be condemned if the most interesting objects, the population
+of the capital and provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues,
+the numbers of subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial
+standard, have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son
+Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained with
+the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar merit; the
+antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or fabulous; but the
+geography and manners of the Barbaric world are delineated with curious
+accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks alone were qualified to observe
+in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The
+ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state
+of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century: his style
+is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the
+prejudices and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original
+character of freedom and genius. [11] From this scanty fund of foreign
+and domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of
+the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil government and
+military force, the character and literature, of the Greeks in a period
+of six hundred years, from the reign of Heraclius to his successful
+invasion of the Franks or Latins.
+
+[Footnote 8: The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are described
+by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418-460.) This biographer
+of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase of the sense or
+nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric is again paraphrased
+in the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely a thread can be now visible
+of the original texture.]
+
+[Footnote 9: According to the first book of the Cyropaedia, professors
+of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were already instituted
+in Persia, by which Greece must be understood. A good edition of all the
+Scriptores Tactici would be a task not unworthy of a scholar. His
+industry might discover some new Mss., and his learning might illustrate
+the military history of the ancients. But this scholar should be
+likewise a soldier; and alas! Quintus Icilius is no more. * Note: M.
+Guichardt, author of Memoires Militaires sur les Grecs et sur les
+Romains. See Gibbon's Extraits Raisonnees de mes Lectures, Misc. Works
+vol. v. p. 219.--M]
+
+[Footnote 10: After observing that the demerit of the Cappadocians
+rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he inserts a more pointed
+epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus. The sting is precisely the same
+with the French epigram against Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean
+Freron--Eh bien? Le serpent en mourut. But as the Paris wits are seldom
+read in the Anthology, I should be curious to learn, through what
+channel it was conveyed for their imitation, (Constantin. Porphyrogen.
+de Themat. c. ii. Brunck Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodaei
+Anthologia, l. ii. p. 244.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: The Legatio Liutprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad Nicephorum
+Phocam is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii.
+pars i.]
+
+After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the swarms
+of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany over-spread the provinces and
+extinguished the empire of ancient Rome. The weakness of Constantinople
+was concealed by extent of dominion: her limits were inviolate, or at
+least entire; and the kingdom of Justinian was enlarged by the splendid
+acquisition of Africa and Italy. But the possession of these new
+conquests was transient and precarious; and almost a moiety of the
+Eastern empire was torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and
+Egypt were oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of
+Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province which
+had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The islands of the
+Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval powers; and it was
+from their extreme stations, the harbors of Crete and the fortresses of
+Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel emirs insulted the majesty of the
+throne and capital. The remaining provinces, under the obedience of
+the emperors, were cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of
+the presidents, the consulars, and the counts were superseded by the
+institution of the themes, [12] or military governments, which prevailed
+under the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the
+royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and seventeen
+in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful or capricious:
+the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but some particular names,
+that sound the most strangely to our ear, were derived from the
+character and attributes of the troops that were maintained at the
+expense, and for the guard, of the respective divisions. The vanity of
+the Greek princes most eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and the
+memory of lost dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the western
+side of the Euphrates: the appellation and praetor of Sicily were
+transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the duchy of
+Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the theme of Lombardy.
+In the decline of the Arabian empire, the successors of Constantine
+might indulge their pride in more solid advantages. The victories of
+Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil the Second, revived the fame, and
+enlarged the boundaries, of the Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the
+metropolis of Antioch, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to
+the allegiance of Christ and Caesar: one third of Italy was annexed to
+the throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was destroyed; and
+the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty extended their sway from
+the sources of the Tigris to the neighborhood of Rome. In the eleventh
+century, the prospect was again clouded by new enemies and new
+misfortunes: the relics of Italy were swept away by the Norman
+adventures; and almost all the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the
+Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors. After these losses, the
+emperors of the Comnenian family continued to reign from the Danube
+to Peloponnesus, and from Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding
+stream of the Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia,
+and Greece, were obedient to their sceptre; the possession of Cyprus,
+Rhodes, and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the Aegean or
+Holy Sea; [13] and the remnant of their empire transcends the measure of
+the largest of the European kingdoms.
+
+[Footnote 12: See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i. p.
+1-30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a legion,
+from whence the name was easily transferred to its post or province,
+(Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some etymologies are
+attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian, Thracesian, themes.]
+
+[Footnote 13: It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the corrupt
+names of Archipelago, l'Archipel, and the Arches, have been transformed
+by geographers and seamen, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p.
+281. Analyse de la Carte de la Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks
+or caloyers in all the islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos,
+(Observations de Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the
+epithet of holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the
+Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of goats, to
+the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph. Antiq. tom. i.
+p. 829.)]
+
+The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that of all the
+monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city, [14] the most
+ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous state. With the decline
+and fall of the empire, the cities of the West had decayed and fallen;
+nor could the ruins of Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow
+precincts of Paris and London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate
+the situation and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces
+and churches, and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her
+treasures might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still
+promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and Bulgarian,
+the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less fortunate and
+impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could be discovered which
+had not been violated by some fierce Barbarian, impatient to despoil,
+because he was hopeless to possess. From the age of Justinian the
+Eastern empire was sinking below its former level; the powers of
+destruction were more active than those of improvement; and the
+calamities of war were imbittered by the more permanent evils of
+civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the
+Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of his
+sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer, and
+emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents and
+festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal service
+of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were still the most
+dexterous and diligent of nations; their country was blessed by nature
+with every advantage of soil, climate, and situation; and, in the
+support and restoration of the arts, their patient and peaceful temper
+was more useful than the warlike spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe.
+The provinces that still adhered to the empire were repeopled and
+enriched by the misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost.
+From the yoke of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa
+retired to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their
+brethren: the movable wealth, which eludes the search of oppression,
+accompanied and alleviated their exile, and Constantinople received
+into her bosom the fugitive trade of Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs
+of Armenia and Scythia, who fled from hostile or religious persecution,
+were hospitably entertained: their followers were encouraged to build
+new cities and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe
+and Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of
+these national colonies. Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had seated
+themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were gradually
+reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as long as they were
+separated from the Greeks, their posterity supplied a race of faithful
+and obedient soldiers. Did we possess sufficient materials to survey
+the twenty-nine themes of the Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might
+be satisfied with a chosen example: it is fortunate enough that the
+clearest light should be thrown on the most interesting province,
+and the name of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic
+reader.
+
+[Footnote 14: According to the Jewish traveller who had visited Europe
+and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the great city of
+the Ismaelites, (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, par Baratier, tom. l. c.
+v. p. 46.)]
+
+As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the
+Iconoclasts, Greece, and even Peloponnesus, [15] were overrun by some
+Sclavonian bands who outstripped the royal standard of Bulgaria. The
+strangers of old, Cadmus, and Danaus, and Pelops, had planted in that
+fruitful soil the seeds of policy and learning; but the savages of the
+north eradicated what yet remained of their sickly and withered roots.
+In this irruption, the country and the inhabitants were transformed; the
+Grecian blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus
+were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the diligence
+of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure purified from the
+Barbarians; and the humble remnant was bound by an oath of obedience,
+tribute, and military service, which they often renewed and often
+violated. The siege of Patras was formed by a singular concurrence of
+the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and the Saracens of Africa. In their
+last distress, a pious fiction of the approach of the praetor of
+Corinth revived the courage of the citizens. Their sally was bold and
+successful; the strangers embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory
+of the day was ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the
+foremost ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine
+which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of victory,
+and the captive race was forever devoted to the service and vassalage
+of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt of two Sclavonian
+tribes, in the neighborhood of Helos and Lacedaemon, the peace of the
+peninsula was often disturbed. They sometimes insulted the weakness, and
+sometimes resisted the oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at
+length the approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull
+to define the rites and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi, whose
+annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of gold. From
+these strangers the Imperial geographer has accurately distinguished a
+domestic, and perhaps original, race, who, in some degree, might derive
+their blood from the much-injured Helots. The liberality of the Romans,
+and especially of Augustus, had enfranchised the maritime cities from
+the dominion of Sparta; and the continuance of the same benefit ennobled
+them with the title of Eleuthero, or Free-Laconians. [16] In the time
+of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the name of Mainotes,
+under which they dishonor the claim of liberty by the inhuman pillage of
+all that is shipwrecked on their rocky shores. Their territory, barren
+of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended to the Cape of Malea: they
+accepted a chief or prince from the Byzantine praetor, and a light
+tribute of four hundred pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity,
+rather than of their dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the
+character of Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks.
+By the zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of
+Christ: but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by these
+rustic votaries five hundred years after they were proscribed in the
+Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesus, [17] forty cities were still
+numbered, and the declining state of Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be
+suspended in the tenth century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between
+their antique splendor and their present desolation. The duty of
+military service, either in person or by substitute, was imposed on the
+lands or benefices of the province; a sum of five pieces of gold was
+assessed on each of the substantial tenants; and the same capitation was
+shared among several heads of inferior value. On the proclamation of
+an Italian war, the Peloponnesians excused themselves by a voluntary
+oblation of one hundred pounds of gold, (four thousand pounds sterling,)
+and a thousand horses with their arms and trappings. The churches
+and monasteries furnished their contingent; a sacrilegious profit was
+extorted from the sale of ecclesiastical honors; and the indigent bishop
+of Leucadia [18] was made responsible for a pension of one hundred
+pieces of gold. [19]
+
+[Footnote 15: Says Constantine, (Thematibus, l. ii. c. vi. p. 25,) in
+a style as barbarous as the idea, which he confirms, as usual, by a
+foolish epigram. The epitomizer of Strabo likewise observes, (l. vii. p.
+98, edit. Hudson. edit. Casaub. 1251;) a passage which leads Dodwell
+a weary dance (Geograph, Minor. tom. ii. dissert. vi. p. 170-191) to
+enumerate the inroads of the Sclavi, and to fix the date (A.D. 980) of
+this petty geographer.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Strabon. Geograph. l. viii. p. 562. Pausanius, Graec.
+Descriptio, l. c 21, p. 264, 265. Pliny, Hist. Natur. l. iv. c. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Constantin. de Administrando Imperio, l. ii. c. 50, 51,
+52.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The rock of Leucate was the southern promontory of his
+island and diocese. Had he been the exclusive guardian of the Lover's
+Leap so well known to the readers of Ovid (Epist. Sappho) and the
+Spectator, he might have been the richest prelate of the Greek church.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Leucatensis mihi juravit episcopus, quotannis ecclesiam
+suam debere Nicephoro aureos centum persolvere, similiter et ceteras
+plus minusve secundum vires suos, (Liutprand in Legat. p. 489.)]
+
+But the wealth of the province, and the trust of the revenue, were
+founded on the fair and plentiful produce of trade and manufacturers;
+and some symptoms of liberal policy may be traced in a law which exempts
+from all personal taxes the mariners of Peloponnesus, and the workmen
+in parchment and purple. This denomination may be fairly applied or
+extended to the manufacturers of linen, woollen, and more especially of
+silk: the two former of which had flourished in Greece since the days
+of Homer; and the last was introduced perhaps as early as the reign
+of Justinian. These arts, which were exercised at Corinth, Thebes,
+and Argos, afforded food and occupation to a numerous people: the
+men, women, and children were distributed according to their age and
+strength; and, if many of these were domestic slaves, their masters, who
+directed the work and enjoyed the profit, were of a free and honorable
+condition. The gifts which a rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus
+presented to the emperor Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless
+fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine
+wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock's tail, of a
+magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple
+name of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the prophet Elijah.
+She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and
+denomination: the silk was painted with the Tyrian dye, and adorned by
+the labors of the needle; and the linen was so exquisitely fine, that
+an entire piece might be rolled in the hollow of a cane. [20] In
+his description of the Greek manufactures, an historian of Sicily
+discriminates their price, according to the weight and quality of the
+silk, the closeness of the texture, the beauty of the colors, and the
+taste and materials of the embroidery. A single, or even a double or
+treble thread was thought sufficient for ordinary sale; but the union
+of six threads composed a piece of stronger and more costly workmanship.
+Among the colors, he celebrates, with affectation of eloquence, the
+fiery blaze of the scarlet, and the softer lustre of the green. The
+embroidery was raised either in silk or gold: the more simple ornament
+of stripes or circles was surpassed by the nicer imitation of flowers:
+the vestments that were fabricated for the palace or the altar often
+glittered with precious stones; and the figures were delineated in
+strings of Oriental pearls. [21] Till the twelfth century, Greece alone,
+of all the countries of Christendom, was possessed of the insect who
+is taught by nature, and of the workmen who are instructed by art,
+to prepare this elegant luxury. But the secret had been stolen by the
+dexterity and diligence of the Arabs: the caliphs of the East and West
+scorned to borrow from the unbelievers their furniture and apparel;
+and two cities of Spain, Almeria and Lisbon, were famous for the
+manufacture, the use, and, perhaps, the exportation, of silk. It was
+first introduced into Sicily by the Normans; and this emigration of
+trade distinguishes the victory of Roger from the uniform and fruitless
+hostilities of every age. After the sack of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes,
+his lieutenant embarked with a captive train of weavers and artificers
+of both sexes, a trophy glorious to their master, and disgraceful to the
+Greek emperor. [22] The king of Sicily was not insensible of the value
+of the present; and, in the restitution of the prisoners, he excepted
+only the male and female manufacturers of Thebes and Corinth, who labor,
+says the Byzantine historian, under a barbarous lord, like the old
+Eretrians in the service of Darius. [23] A stately edifice, in the
+palace of Palermo, was erected for the use of this industrious colony;
+[24] and the art was propagated by their children and disciples to
+satisfy the increasing demand of the western world. The decay of the
+looms of Sicily may be ascribed to the troubles of the island, and the
+competition of the Italian cities. In the year thirteen hundred and
+fourteen, Lucca alone, among her sister republics, enjoyed the lucrative
+monopoly. [25] A domestic revolution dispersed the manufacturers to
+Florence, Bologna, Venice, Milan, and even the countries beyond the
+Alps; and thirteen years after this event the statutes of Modena enjoin
+the planting of mulberry-trees, and regulate the duties on raw silk.
+[26] The northern climates are less propitious to the education of the
+silkworm; but the industry of France and England [27] is supplied and
+enriched by the productions of Italy and China.
+
+[Footnote 20: See Constantine, (in Vit. Basil. c. 74, 75, 76, p.
+195, 197, in Script. post Theophanem,) who allows himself to use many
+technical or barbarous words: barbarous, says he. Ducange labors on
+some: but he was not a weaver.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The manufactures of Palermo, as they are described by Hugo
+Falcandus, (Hist. Sicula in proem. in Muratori Script. Rerum Italicarum,
+tom. v. p. 256,) is a copy of those of Greece. Without transcribing
+his declamatory sentences, which I have softened in the text, I shall
+observe, that in this passage the strange word exarentasmata is very
+properly changed for exanthemata by Carisius, the first editor Falcandus
+lived about the year 1190.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Inde ad interiora Graeciae progressi, Corinthum, Thebas,
+Athenas, antiqua nobilitate celebres, expugnant; et, maxima ibidem
+praeda direpta, opifices etiam, qui sericos pannos texere solent,
+ob ignominiam Imperatoris illius, suique principis gloriam, captivos
+deducunt. Quos Rogerius, in Palermo Siciliae, metropoli collocans, artem
+texendi suos edocere praecepit; et exhinc praedicta ars illa, prius a
+Graecis tantum inter Christianos habita, Romanis patere coepit ingeniis,
+(Otho Frisingen. de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in Muratori Script.
+Ital. tom. vi. p. 668.) This exception allows the bishop to celebrate
+Lisbon and Almeria in sericorum pannorum opificio praenobilissimae, (in
+Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 415.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: Nicetas in Manuel, l. ii. c. 8. p. 65. He describes these
+Greeks as skilled.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Hugo Falcandus styles them nobiles officinas. The Arabs
+had not introduced silk, though they had planted canes and made sugar in
+the plain of Palermo.]
+
+[Footnote 25: See the Life of Castruccio Casticani, not by Machiavel,
+but by his more authentic biographer Nicholas Tegrimi. Muratori, who has
+inserted it in the xith volume of his Scriptores, quotes this curious
+passage in his Italian Antiquities, (tom. i. dissert. xxv. p. 378.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: From the Ms. statutes, as they are quoted by Muratori in
+his Italian Antiquities, (tom. ii. dissert. xxv. p. 46-48.)]
+
+[Footnote 27: The broad silk manufacture was established in England in
+the year 1620, (Anderson's Chronological Deduction, vol. ii. p. 4: )
+but it is to the revocation of the edict of Nantes that we owe the
+Spitalfields colony.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part II.
+
+I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty memorials of the
+times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the revenue, and
+the resources of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and
+Asia the rivulets of gold and silver discharged into the Imperial
+reservoir a copious and perennial stream. The separation of the branches
+from the trunk increased the relative magnitude of Constantinople; and
+the maxims of despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital
+to the palace, and the palace to the royal person. A Jewish traveller,
+who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his admiration
+of the Byzantine riches. "It is here," says Benjamin of Tudela, "in
+the queen of cities, that the tributes of the Greek empire are annually
+deposited and the lofty towers are filled with precious magazines of
+silk, purple, and gold. It is said, that Constantinople pays each day
+to her sovereign twenty thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the
+shops, taverns, and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of
+Russia and Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by
+sea and land." [28] In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew
+is doubtless respectable; but as the three hundred and sixty-five days
+would produce a yearly income exceeding seven millions sterling, I
+am tempted to retrench at least the numerous festivals of the Greek
+calendar. The mass of treasure that was saved by Theodora and Basil
+the Second will suggest a splendid, though indefinite, idea of their
+supplies and resources. The mother of Michael, before she retired to a
+cloister, attempted to check or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful
+son, by a free and faithful account of the wealth which he inherited;
+one hundred and nine thousand pounds of gold, and three hundred thousand
+of silver, the fruits of her own economy and that of her deceased
+husband. [29] The avarice of Basil is not less renowned than his valor
+and fortune: his victorious armies were paid and rewarded without
+breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand pounds of gold, (about
+eight millions sterling,) which he had buried in the subterraneous
+vaults of the palace. [30] Such accumulation of treasure is rejected by
+the theory and practice of modern policy; and we are more apt to compute
+the national riches by the use and abuse of the public credit. Yet the
+maxims of antiquity are still embraced by a monarch formidable to his
+enemies; by a republic respectable to her allies; and both have attained
+their respective ends of military power and domestic tranquillity.
+
+[Footnote 28: Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, tom. i. c. 5, p. 44-52. The
+Hebrew text has been translated into French by that marvellous child
+Baratier, who has added a volume of crude learning. The errors and
+fictions of the Jewish rabbi are not a sufficient ground to deny the
+reality of his travels. * Note: I am inclined, with Buegnot (Les
+Juifs d'Occident, part iii. p. 101 et seqq.) and Jost (Geschichte
+der Israeliter, vol. vi. anhang. p. 376) to consider this work a mere
+compilation, and to doubt the reality of the travels.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 29: See the continuator of Theophanes, (l. iv. p. 107,)
+Cedremis, (p. 544,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 157.)]
+
+[Footnote 30: Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 225,) instead of pounds,
+uses the more classic appellation of talents, which, in a literal
+sense and strict computation, would multiply sixty fold the treasure of
+Basil.]
+
+Whatever might be consumed for the present wants, or reserved for the
+future use, of the state, the first and most sacred demand was for the
+pomp and pleasure of the emperor, and his discretion only could define
+the measure of his private expense. The princes of Constantinople were
+far removed from the simplicity of nature; yet, with the revolving
+seasons, they were led by taste or fashion to withdraw to a purer air,
+from the smoke and tumult of the capital. They enjoyed, or affected to
+enjoy, the rustic festival of the vintage: their leisure was amused by
+the exercise of the chase and the calmer occupation of fishing, and in
+the summer heats, they were shaded from the sun, and refreshed by the
+cooling breezes from the sea. The coasts and islands of Asia and Europe
+were covered with their magnificent villas; but, instead of the modest
+art which secretly strives to hide itself and to decorate the scenery of
+nature, the marble structure of their gardens served only to expose
+the riches of the lord, and the labors of the architect. The successive
+casualties of inheritance and forfeiture had rendered the sovereign
+proprietor of many stately houses in the city and suburbs, of which
+twelve were appropriated to the ministers of state; but the great
+palace, [31] the centre of the Imperial residence, was fixed during
+eleven centuries to the same position, between the hippodrome, the
+cathedral of St. Sophia, and the gardens, which descended by many a
+terrace to the shores of the Propontis. The primitive edifice of the
+first Constantine was a copy, or rival, of ancient Rome; the gradual
+improvements of his successors aspired to emulate the wonders of the old
+world, [32] and in the tenth century, the Byzantine palace excited the
+admiration, at least of the Latins, by an unquestionable preeminence of
+strength, size, and magnificence. [33] But the toil and treasure of so
+many ages had produced a vast and irregular pile: each separate building
+was marked with the character of the times and of the founder; and the
+want of space might excuse the reigning monarch, who demolished, perhaps
+with secret satisfaction, the works of his predecessors. The economy
+of the emperor Theophilus allowed a more free and ample scope for his
+domestic luxury and splendor. A favorite ambassador, who had astonished
+the Abbassides themselves by his pride and liberality, presented on his
+return the model of a palace, which the caliph of Bagdad had recently
+constructed on the banks of the Tigris. The model was instantly copied
+and surpassed: the new buildings of Theophilus [34] were accompanied
+with gardens, and with five churches, one of which was conspicuous for
+size and beauty: it was crowned with three domes, the roof of gilt brass
+reposed on columns of Italian marble, and the walls were incrusted with
+marbles of various colors. In the face of the church, a semicircular
+portico, of the figure and name of the Greek sigma, was supported by
+fifteen columns of Phrygian marble, and the subterraneous vaults were of
+a similar construction. The square before the sigma was decorated with
+a fountain, and the margin of the basin was lined and encompassed with
+plates of silver. In the beginning of each season, the basin, instead
+of water, was replenished with the most exquisite fruits, which were
+abandoned to the populace for the entertainment of the prince. He
+enjoyed this tumultuous spectacle from a throne resplendent with gold
+and gems, which was raised by a marble staircase to the height of a
+lofty terrace. Below the throne were seated the officers of his guards,
+the magistrates, the chiefs of the factions of the circus; the inferior
+steps were occupied by the people, and the place below was covered with
+troops of dancers, singers, and pantomimes. The square was surrounded
+by the hall of justice, the arsenal, and the various offices of
+business and pleasure; and the purple chamber was named from the annual
+distribution of robes of scarlet and purple by the hand of the empress
+herself. The long series of the apartments was adapted to the seasons,
+and decorated with marble and porphyry, with painting, sculpture, and
+mosaics, with a profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones. His
+fanciful magnificence employed the skill and patience of such artists
+as the times could afford: but the taste of Athens would have despised
+their frivolous and costly labors; a golden tree, with its leaves and
+branches, which sheltered a multitude of birds warbling their artificial
+notes, and two lions of massy gold, and of natural size, who looked and
+roared like their brethren of the forest. The successors of Theophilus,
+of the Basilian and Comnenian dynasties, were not less ambitious of
+leaving some memorial of their residence; and the portion of the palace
+most splendid and august was dignified with the title of the golden
+triclinium. [35] With becoming modesty, the rich and noble Greeks
+aspired to imitate their sovereign, and when they passed through the
+streets on horseback, in their robes of silk and embroidery, they were
+mistaken by the children for kings. [36] A matron of Peloponnesus,
+[37] who had cherished the infant fortunes of Basil the Macedonian, was
+excited by tenderness or vanity to visit the greatness of her adopted
+son. In a journey of five hundred miles from Patras to Constantinople,
+her age or indolence declined the fatigue of a horse or carriage: the
+soft litter or bed of Danielis was transported on the shoulders of ten
+robust slaves; and as they were relieved at easy distances, a band of
+three hundred were selected for the performance of this service. She
+was entertained in the Byzantine palace with filial reverence, and the
+honors of a queen; and whatever might be the origin of her wealth, her
+gifts were not unworthy of the regal dignity. I have already described
+the fine and curious manufactures of Peloponnesus, of linen, silk, and
+woollen; but the most acceptable of her presents consisted in three
+hundred beautiful youths, of whom one hundred were eunuchs; [38] "for
+she was not ignorant," says the historian, "that the air of the palace
+is more congenial to such insects, than a shepherd's dairy to the flies
+of the summer." During her lifetime, she bestowed the greater part of
+her estates in Peloponnesus, and her testament instituted Leo, the
+son of Basil, her universal heir. After the payment of the legacies,
+fourscore villas or farms were added to the Imperial domain; and three
+thousand slaves of Danielis were enfranchised by their new lord, and
+transplanted as a colony to the Italian coast. From this example of
+a private matron, we may estimate the wealth and magnificence of the
+emperors. Yet our enjoyments are confined by a narrow circle; and,
+whatsoever may be its value, the luxury of life is possessed with more
+innocence and safety by the master of his own, than by the steward of
+the public, fortune.
+
+[Footnote 31: For a copious and minute description of the Imperial
+palace, see the Constantinop. Christiana (l. ii. c. 4, p. 113-123) of
+Ducange, the Tillemont of the middle ages. Never has laborious Germany
+produced two antiquarians more laborious and accurate than these two
+natives of lively France.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The Byzantine palace surpasses the Capitol, the palace
+of Pergamus, the Rufinian wood, the temple of Adrian at Cyzicus, the
+pyramids, the Pharus, &c., according to an epigram (Antholog. Graec. l.
+iv. p. 488, 489. Brodaei, apud Wechel) ascribed to Julian, ex-praefect
+of Egypt. Seventy-one of his epigrams, some lively, are collected in
+Brunck, (Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 493-510; but this is wanting.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Constantinopolitanum Palatium non pulchritudine solum,
+verum stiam fortitudine, omnibus quas unquam videram munitionibus
+praestat, (Liutprand, Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 465.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: See the anonymous continuator of Theophanes, (p. 59, 61,
+86,) whom I have followed in the neat and concise abstract of Le Beau,
+(Hint. du Bas Empire, tom. xiv. p. 436, 438.)]
+
+[Footnote 35: In aureo triclinio quae praestantior est pars
+potentissimus (the usurper Romanus) degens caeteras partes (filiis)
+distribuerat, (Liutprand. Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 469.) For this last
+signification of Triclinium see Ducange (Gloss. Graec. et Observations
+sur Joinville, p. 240) and Reiske, (ad Constantinum de Ceremoniis, p.
+7.)]
+
+[Footnote 36: In equis vecti (says Benjamin of Tudela) regum filiis
+videntur persimiles. I prefer the Latin version of Constantine
+l'Empereur (p. 46) to the French of Baratier, (tom. i. p. 49.)]
+
+[Footnote 37: See the account of her journey, munificence, and
+testament, in the life of Basil, by his grandson Constantine, (p. 74,
+75, 76, p. 195-197.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: Carsamatium. Graeci vocant, amputatis virilibus et virga,
+puerum eunuchum quos Verdunenses mercatores obinmensum lucrum facere
+solent et in Hispaniam ducere, (Liutprand, l. vi. c. 3, p. 470.)--The
+last abomination of the abominable slave-trade! Yet I am surprised
+to find, in the xth century, such active speculations of commerce in
+Lorraine.]
+
+In an absolute government, which levels the distinctions of noble and
+plebeian birth, the sovereign is the sole fountain of honor; and the
+rank, both in the palace and the empire, depends on the titles and
+offices which are bestowed and resumed by his arbitrary will. Above a
+thousand years, from Vespasian to Alexius Comnenus, [39] the Caesar
+was the second person, or at least the second degree, after the supreme
+title of Augustus was more freely communicated to the sons and brothers
+of the reigning monarch. To elude without violating his promise to
+a powerful associate, the husband of his sister, and, without giving
+himself an equal, to reward the piety of his brother Isaac, the crafty
+Alexius interposed a new and supereminent dignity. The happy flexibility
+of the Greek tongue allowed him to compound the names of Augustus and
+Emperor (Sebastos and Autocrator,) and the union produces the sonorous
+title of Sebastocrator. He was exalted above the Caesar on the first
+step of the throne: the public acclamations repeated his name; and he
+was only distinguished from the sovereign by some peculiar ornaments
+of the head and feet. The emperor alone could assume the purple or red
+buskins, and the close diadem or tiara, which imitated the fashion of
+the Persian kings. [40] It was a high pyramidal cap of cloth or silk,
+almost concealed by a profusion of pearls and jewels: the crown was
+formed by a horizontal circle and two arches of gold: at the summit,
+the point of their intersection, was placed a globe or cross, and two
+strings or lappets of pearl depended on either cheek. Instead of red,
+the buskins of the Sebastocrator and Caesar were green; and on
+their open coronets or crowns, the precious gems were more sparingly
+distributed. Beside and below the Caesar the fancy of Alexius
+created the Panhypersebastos and the Protosebastos, whose sound and
+signification will satisfy a Grecian ear. They imply a superiority and
+a priority above the simple name of Augustus; and this sacred and
+primitive title of the Roman prince was degraded to the kinsmen and
+servants of the Byzantine court. The daughter of Alexius applauds, with
+fond complacency, this artful gradation of hopes and honors; but the
+science of words is accessible to the meanest capacity; and this vain
+dictionary was easily enriched by the pride of his successors. To their
+favorite sons or brothers, they imparted the more lofty appellation
+of Lord or Despot, which was illustrated with new ornaments, and
+prerogatives, and placed immediately after the person of the emperor
+himself. The five titles of, 1. Despot; 2. Sebastocrator; 3. Caesar; 4.
+Panhypersebastos; and, 5. Protosebastos; were usually confined to the
+princes of his blood: they were the emanations of his majesty; but as
+they exercised no regular functions, their existence was useless, and
+their authority precarious.
+
+[Footnote 39: See the Alexiad (l. iii. p. 78, 79) of Anna Comnena, who,
+except in filial piety, may be compared to Mademoiselle de Montpensier.
+In her awful reverence for titles and forms, she styles her father, the
+inventor of this royal art.]
+
+[Footnote 40: See Reiske, and Ceremoniale, p. 14, 15. Ducange has given
+a learned dissertation on the crowns of Constantinople, Rome, France,
+&c., (sur Joinville, xxv. p. 289-303;) but of his thirty-four models,
+none exactly tally with Anne's description.]
+
+But in every monarchy the substantial powers of government must be
+divided and exercised by the ministers of the palace and treasury, the
+fleet and army. The titles alone can differ; and in the revolution of
+ages, the counts and praefects, the praetor and quaestor, insensibly
+descended, while their servants rose above their heads to the first
+honors of the state. 1. In a monarchy, which refers every object to the
+person of the prince, the care and ceremonies of the palace form the
+most respectable department. The Curopalata, [41] so illustrious in the
+age of Justinian, was supplanted by the Protovestiare, whose primitive
+functions were limited to the custody of the wardrobe. From thence his
+jurisdiction was extended over the numerous menials of pomp and luxury;
+and he presided with his silver wand at the public and private audience.
+2. In the ancient system of Constantine, the name of Logothete, or
+accountant, was applied to the receivers of the finances: the principal
+officers were distinguished as the Logothetes of the domain, of
+the posts, the army, the private and public treasure; and the great
+Logothete, the supreme guardian of the laws and revenues, is compared
+with the chancellor of the Latin monarchies. [42] His discerning
+eye pervaded the civil administration; and he was assisted, in due
+subordination, by the eparch or praefect of the city, the first
+secretary, and the keepers of the privy seal, the archives, and the red
+or purple ink which was reserved for the sacred signature of the emperor
+alone. [43] The introductor and interpreter of foreign ambassadors
+were the great Chiauss [44] and the Dragoman, [45] two names of Turkish
+origin, and which are still familiar to the Sublime Porte. 3. From the
+humble style and service of guards, the Domestics insensibly rose to
+the station of generals; the military themes of the East and West, the
+legions of Europe and Asia, were often divided, till the great Domestic
+was finally invested with the universal and absolute command of the land
+forces. The Protostrator, in his original functions, was the assistant
+of the emperor when he mounted on horseback: he gradually became the
+lieutenant of the great Domestic in the field; and his jurisdiction
+extended over the stables, the cavalry, and the royal train of hunting
+and hawking. The Stratopedarch was the great judge of the camp: the
+Protospathaire commanded the guards; the Constable, [46] the great
+Aeteriarch, and the Acolyth, were the separate chiefs of the Franks, the
+Barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the mercenary strangers, who,
+a the decay of the national spirit, formed the nerve of the Byzantine
+armies. 4. The naval powers were under the command of the great Duke;
+in his absence they obeyed the great Drungaire of the fleet; and, in
+his place, the Emir, or Admiral, a name of Saracen extraction, [47] but
+which has been naturalized in all the modern languages of Europe. Of
+these officers, and of many more whom it would be useless to enumerate,
+the civil and military hierarchy was framed. Their honors and
+emoluments, their dress and titles, their mutual salutations and
+respective preeminence, were balanced with more exquisite labor than
+would have fixed the constitution of a free people; and the code was
+almost perfect when this baseless fabric, the monument of pride and
+servitude, was forever buried in the ruins of the empire. [48]
+
+[Footnote 41: Par exstans curis, solo diademate dispar, Ordine pro rerum
+vocitatus Cura-Palati, says the African Corippus, (de Laudibus Justini,
+l. i. 136,) and in the same century (the vith) Cassiodorus represents
+him, who, virga aurea decoratus, inter numerosa obsequia primus
+ante pedes regis incederet (Variar. vii. 5.) But this great officer,
+(unknown,) exercising no function, was cast down by the modern Greeks to
+the xvth rank, (Codin. c. 5, p. 65.)]
+
+[Footnote 42: Nicetas (in Manuel, l. vii. c. 1) defines him. Yet the
+epithet was added by the elder Andronicus, (Ducange, tom. i. p. 822,
+823.)]
+
+[Footnote 43: From Leo I. (A.D. 470) the Imperial ink, which is still
+visible on some original acts, was a mixture of vermilion and cinnabar,
+or purple. The emperor's guardians, who shared in this prerogative,
+always marked in green ink the indiction and the month. See the
+Dictionnaire Diplomatique, (tom. i. p. 511-513) a valuable abridgment.]
+
+[Footnote 44: The sultan sent to Alexius, (Anna Comnena, l. vi. p. 170.
+Ducange ad loc.;) and Pachymer often speaks, (l. vii. c. 1, l. xii.
+c. 30, l. xiii. c. 22.) The Chiaoush basha is now at the head of 700
+officers, (Rycaut's Ottoman Empire, p. 349, octavo edition.)]
+
+[Footnote 45: Tagerman is the Arabic name of an interpreter,
+(D'Herbelot, p. 854, 855;), says Codinus, (c. v. No. 70, p. 67.)
+See Villehardouin, (No. 96,) Bus, (Epist. iv. p. 338,) and Ducange,
+(Observations sur Villehardouin, and Gloss. Graec. et Latin)]
+
+[Footnote 46: A corruption from the Latin Comes stabuli, or the French
+Connetable. In a military sense, it was used by the Greeks in the
+eleventh century, at least as early as in France.]
+
+[Footnote 47: It was directly borrowed from the Normans. In the
+xiith century, Giannone reckons the admiral of Sicily among the great
+officers.]
+
+[Footnote 48: This sketch of honors and offices is drawn from George
+Cordinus Curopalata, who survived the taking of Constantinople by the
+Turks: his elaborate, though trifling, work (de Officiis Ecclesiae et
+Aulae C. P.) has been illustrated by the notes of Goar, and the three
+books of Gretser, a learned Jesuit.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part III.
+
+The most lofty titles, and the most humble postures, which devotion has
+applied to the Supreme Being, have been prostituted by flattery and fear
+to creatures of the same nature with ourselves. The mode of adoration,
+[49] of falling prostrate on the ground, and kissing the feet of the
+emperor, was borrowed by Diocletian from Persian servitude; but it
+was continued and aggravated till the last age of the Greek monarchy.
+Excepting only on Sundays, when it was waived, from a motive of
+religious pride, this humiliating reverence was exacted from all who
+entered the royal presence, from the princes invested with the diadem
+and purple, and from the ambassadors who represented their independent
+sovereigns, the caliphs of Asia, Egypt, or Spain, the kings of France
+and Italy, and the Latin emperors of ancient Rome. In his transactions
+of business, Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, [50] asserted the free spirit
+of a Frank and the dignity of his master Otho. Yet his sincerity cannot
+disguise the abasement of his first audience. When he approached the
+throne, the birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which
+were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold. With his two
+companions Liutprand was compelled to bow and to fall prostrate; and
+thrice to touch the ground with his forehead. He arose, but in the short
+interval, the throne had been hoisted from the floor to the ceiling,
+the Imperial figure appeared in new and more gorgeous apparel, and the
+interview was concluded in haughty and majestic silence. In this honest
+and curious narrative, the Bishop of Cremona represents the ceremonies
+of the Byzantine court, which are still practised in the Sublime Porte,
+and which were preserved in the last age by the dukes of Muscovy
+or Russia. After a long journey by sea and land, from Venice to
+Constantinople, the ambassador halted at the golden gate, till he was
+conducted by the formal officers to the hospitable palace prepared for
+his reception; but this palace was a prison, and his jealous keepers
+prohibited all social intercourse either with strangers or natives.
+At his first audience, he offered the gifts of his master, slaves, and
+golden vases, and costly armor. The ostentatious payment of the officers
+and troops displayed before his eyes the riches of the empire: he was
+entertained at a royal banquet, [51] in which the ambassadors of the
+nations were marshalled by the esteem or contempt of the Greeks: from
+his own table, the emperor, as the most signal favor, sent the plates
+which he had tasted; and his favorites were dismissed with a robe
+of honor. [52] In the morning and evening of each day, his civil and
+military servants attended their duty in the palace; their labors were
+repaid by the sight, perhaps by the smile, of their lord; his commands
+were signified by a nod or a sign: but all earthly greatness stood
+silent and submissive in his presence. In his regular or extraordinary
+processions through the capital, he unveiled his person to the public
+view: the rites of policy were connected with those of religion, and his
+visits to the principal churches were regulated by the festivals of the
+Greek calendar. On the eve of these processions, the gracious or devout
+intention of the monarch was proclaimed by the heralds. The streets were
+cleared and purified; the pavement was strewed with flowers; the most
+precious furniture, the gold and silver plate, and silken hangings,
+were displayed from the windows and balconies, and a severe discipline
+restrained and silenced the tumult of the populace. The march was opened
+by the military officers at the head of their troops: they were followed
+in long order by the magistrates and ministers of the civil government:
+the person of the emperor was guarded by his eunuchs and domestics, and
+at the church door he was solemnly received by the patriarch and
+his clergy. The task of applause was not abandoned to the rude and
+spontaneous voices of the crowd. The most convenient stations were
+occupied by the bands of the blue and green factions of the circus; and
+their furious conflicts, which had shaken the capital, were insensibly
+sunk to an emulation of servitude. From either side they echoed in
+responsive melody the praises of the emperor; their poets and musicians
+directed the choir, and long life [53] and victory were the burden of
+every song. The same acclamations were performed at the audience, the
+banquet, and the church; and as an evidence of boundless sway, they were
+repeated in the Latin, [54] Gothic, Persian, French, and even English
+language, [55] by the mercenaries who sustained the real or fictitious
+character of those nations. By the pen of Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
+this science of form and flattery has been reduced into a pompous and
+trifling volume, [56] which the vanity of succeeding times might enrich
+with an ample supplement. Yet the calmer reflection of a prince
+would surely suggest that the same acclamations were applied to every
+character and every reign: and if he had risen from a private rank, he
+might remember, that his own voice had been the loudest and most eager
+in applause, at the very moment when he envied the fortune, or conspired
+against the life, of his predecessor. [57]
+
+[Footnote 49: The respectful salutation of carrying the hand to the
+mouth, ad os, is the root of the Latin word adoro, adorare. See our
+learned Selden, (vol. iii. p. 143-145, 942,) in his Titles of Honor. It
+seems, from the 1st book of Herodotus, to be of Persian origin.]
+
+[Footnote 50: The two embassies of Liutprand to Constantinople, all that
+he saw or suffered in the Greek capital, are pleasantly described
+by himself (Hist. l. vi. c. 1-4, p. 469-471. Legatio ad Nicephorum
+Phocam, p. 479-489.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: Among the amusements of the feast, a boy balanced, on his
+forehead, a pike, or pole, twenty-four feet long, with a cross bar of
+two cubits a little below the top. Two boys, naked, though cinctured,
+(campestrati,) together, and singly, climbed, stood, played, descended,
+&c., ita me stupidum reddidit: utrum mirabilius nescio, (p. 470.) At
+another repast a homily of Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles was
+read elata voce non Latine, (p. 483.)]
+
+[Footnote 52: Gala is not improbably derived from Cala, or Caloat, in
+Arabic a robe of honor, (Reiske, Not. in Ceremon. p. 84.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: It is explained, (Codin, c. 7. Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom.
+i. p. 1199.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: (Ceremon. c. 75, p. 215.) The want of the Latin 'V'
+obliged the Greeks to employ their 'beta'; nor do they regard quantity.
+Till he recollected the true language, these strange sentences might
+puzzle a professor.]
+
+[Footnote 55: (Codin.p. 90.) I wish he had preserved the words, however
+corrupt, of their English acclamation.]
+
+[Footnote 56: For all these ceremonies, see the professed work of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus with the notes, or rather dissertations,
+of his German editors, Leich and Reiske. For the rank of standing
+courtiers, p. 80, not. 23, 62; for the adoration, except on Sundays,
+p. 95, 240, not. 131; the processions, p. 2, &c., not. p. 3, &c.;
+the acclamations passim not. 25 &c.; the factions and Hippodrome, p.
+177-214, not. 9, 93, &c.; the Gothic games, p. 221, not. 111; vintage,
+p. 217, not 109: much more information is scattered over the work.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Et privato Othoni et nuper eadem dicenti nota adulatio,
+(Tacit. Hist. 1,85.)]
+
+The princes of the North, of the nations, says Constantine, without
+faith or fame, were ambitious of mingling their blood with the blood of
+the Caesars, by their marriage with a royal virgin, or by the nuptials
+of their daughters with a Roman prince. [58] The aged monarch, in his
+instructions to his son, reveals the secret maxims of policy and pride;
+and suggests the most decent reasons for refusing these insolent and
+unreasonable demands. Every animal, says the discreet emperor, is
+prompted by the distinction of language, religion, and manners. A just
+regard to the purity of descent preserves the harmony of public and
+private life; but the mixture of foreign blood is the fruitful source of
+disorder and discord. Such had ever been the opinion and practice of the
+sage Romans: their jurisprudence proscribed the marriage of a citizen
+and a stranger: in the days of freedom and virtue, a senator would have
+scorned to match his daughter with a king: the glory of Mark Antony was
+sullied by an Egyptian wife: [59] and the emperor Titus was compelled,
+by popular censure, to dismiss with reluctance the reluctant Berenice.
+[60] This perpetual interdict was ratified by the fabulous sanction of
+the great Constantine. The ambassadors of the nations, more especially
+of the unbelieving nations, were solemnly admonished, that such strange
+alliances had been condemned by the founder of the church and city.
+The irrevocable law was inscribed on the altar of St. Sophia; and the
+impious prince who should stain the majesty of the purple was excluded
+from the civil and ecclesiastical communion of the Romans. If the
+ambassadors were instructed by any false brethren in the Byzantine
+history, they might produce three memorable examples of the violation
+of this imaginary law: the marriage of Leo, or rather of his father
+Constantine the Fourth, with the daughter of the king of the Chozars,
+the nuptials of the granddaughter of Romanus with a Bulgarian prince,
+and the union of Bertha of France or Italy with young Romanus, the
+son of Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself. To these objections three
+answers were prepared, which solved the difficulty and established the
+law. I.
+
+The deed and the guilt of Constantine Copronymus were acknowledged.
+The Isaurian heretic, who sullied the baptismal font, and declared war
+against the holy images, had indeed embraced a Barbarian wife. By this
+impious alliance he accomplished the measure of his crimes, and was
+devoted to the just censure of the church and of posterity. II. Romanus
+could not be alleged as a legitimate emperor; he was a plebeian usurper,
+ignorant of the laws, and regardless of the honor, of the monarchy. His
+son Christopher, the father of the bride, was the third in rank in
+the college of princes, at once the subject and the accomplice of a
+rebellious parent. The Bulgarians were sincere and devout Christians;
+and the safety of the empire, with the redemption of many thousand
+captives, depended on this preposterous alliance. Yet no consideration
+could dispense from the law of Constantine: the clergy, the senate, and
+the people, disapproved the conduct of Romanus; and he was reproached,
+both in his life and death, as the author of the public disgrace. III.
+For the marriage of his own son with the daughter of Hugo, king
+of Italy, a more honorable defence is contrived by the wise
+Porphyrogenitus. Constantine, the great and holy, esteemed the fidelity
+and valor of the Franks; [61] and his prophetic spirit beheld the vision
+of their future greatness. They alone were excepted from the general
+prohibition: Hugo, king of France, was the lineal descendant of
+Charlemagne; [62] and his daughter Bertha inherited the prerogatives of
+her family and nation. The voice of truth and malice insensibly betrayed
+the fraud or error of the Imperial court. The patrimonial estate of Hugo
+was reduced from the monarchy of France to the simple county of Arles;
+though it was not denied, that, in the confusion of the times, he had
+usurped the sovereignty of Provence, and invaded the kingdom of Italy.
+His father was a private noble; and if Bertha derived her female descent
+from the Carlovingian line, every step was polluted with illegitimacy
+or vice. The grandmother of Hugo was the famous Valdrada, the concubine,
+rather than the wife, of the second Lothair; whose adultery, divorce,
+and second nuptials, had provoked against him the thunders of
+the Vatican. His mother, as she was styled, the great Bertha, was
+successively the wife of the count of Arles and of the marquis of
+Tuscany: France and Italy were scandalized by her gallantries; and, till
+the age of threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous
+servants of her ambition. The example of maternal incontinence was
+copied by the king of Italy; and the three favorite concubines of Hugo
+were decorated with the classic names of Venus, Juno, and Semele. [63]
+The daughter of Venus was granted to the solicitations of the Byzantine
+court: her name of Bertha was changed to that of Eudoxia; and she was
+wedded, or rather betrothed, to young Romanus, the future heir of
+the empire of the East. The consummation of this foreign alliance was
+suspended by the tender age of the two parties; and, at the end of five
+years, the union was dissolved by the death of the virgin spouse. The
+second wife of the emperor Romanus was a maiden of plebeian, but of
+Roman, birth; and their two daughters, Theophano and Anne, were given
+in marriage to the princes of the earth. The eldest was bestowed, as the
+pledge of peace, on the eldest son of the great Otho, who had solicited
+this alliance with arms and embassies. It might legally be questioned
+how far a Saxon was entitled to the privilege of the French nation;
+but every scruple was silenced by the fame and piety of a hero who had
+restored the empire of the West. After the death of her father-in-law
+and husband, Theophano governed Rome, Italy, and Germany, during the
+minority of her son, the third Otho; and the Latins have praised the
+virtues of an empress, who sacrificed to a superior duty the remembrance
+of her country. [64] In the nuptials of her sister Anne, every prejudice
+was lost, and every consideration of dignity was superseded, by
+the stronger argument of necessity and fear. A Pagan of the North,
+Wolodomir, great prince of Russia, aspired to a daughter of the Roman
+purple; and his claim was enforced by the threats of war, the promise of
+conversion, and the offer of a powerful succor against a domestic rebel.
+A victim of her religion and country, the Grecian princess was torn
+from the palace of her fathers, and condemned to a savage reign, and a
+hopeless exile on the banks of the Borysthenes, or in the neighborhood
+of the Polar circle. [65] Yet the marriage of Anne was fortunate and
+fruitful: the daughter of her grandson Joroslaus was recommended by her
+Imperial descent; and the king of France, Henry I., sought a wife on the
+last borders of Europe and Christendom. [66]
+
+[Footnote 58: The xiiith chapter, de Administratione Imperii, may be
+explained and rectified by the Familiae Byzantinae of Ducange.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Sequiturque nefas Aegyptia conjux, (Virgil, Aeneid, viii.
+688.) Yet this Egyptian wife was the daughter of a long line of kings.
+Quid te mutavit (says Antony in a private letter to Augustus) an quod
+reginam ineo? Uxor mea est, (Sueton. in August. c. 69.) Yet I much
+question (for I cannot stay to inquire) whether the triumvir ever dared
+to celebrate his marriage either with Roman or Egyptian rites.]
+
+[Footnote 60: Berenicem invitus invitam dimisit, (Suetonius in Tito, c.
+7.) Have I observed elsewhere, that this Jewish beauty was at this
+time above fifty years of age? The judicious Racine has most discreetly
+suppressed both her age and her country.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Constantine was made to praise the the Franks, with whom
+he claimed a private and public alliance. The French writers (Isaac
+Casaubon in Dedicat. Polybii) are highly delighted with these
+compliments.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Administrat. Imp. c.
+36) exhibits a pedigree and life of the illustrious King Hugo. A more
+correct idea may be formed from the Criticism of Pagi, the Annals of
+Muratori, and the Abridgment of St. Marc, A.D. 925-946.]
+
+[Footnote 63: After the mention of the three goddesses, Luitprand very
+naturally adds, et quoniam non rex solus iis abutebatur, earum nati
+ex incertis patribus originera ducunt, (Hist. l. iv. c. 6: ) for
+the marriage of the younger Bertha, see Hist. l. v. c. 5; for the
+incontinence of the elder, dulcis exercipio Hymenaei, l. ii. c. 15; for
+the virtues and vices of Hugo, l. iii. c. 5. Yet it must not be forgot,
+that the bishop of Cremona was a lover of scandal.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Licet illa Imperatrix Graeca sibi et aliis fuisset satis
+utilis, et optima, &c., is the preamble of an inimical writer, apud
+Pagi, tom. iv. A.D. 989, No. 3. Her marriage and principal actions may
+be found in Muratori, Pagi, and St. Marc, under the proper years.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 699. Zonaras, tom. i. p. 221.
+Elmacin, Hist. Saracenica, l. iii. c. 6. Nestor apud Levesque, tom. ii.
+p. 112 Pagi, Critica, A.D. 987, No. 6: a singular concourse! Wolodomir
+and Anne are ranked among the saints of the Russian church. Yet we know
+his vices, and are ignorant of her virtues.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Henricus primus duxit uxorem Scythicam, Russam, filiam
+regis Jeroslai. An embassy of bishops was sent into Russia, and the
+father gratanter filiam cum multis donis misit. This event happened in
+the year 1051. See the passages of the original chronicles in Bouquet's
+Historians of France, (tom. xi. p. 29, 159, 161, 319, 384, 481.)
+Voltaire might wonder at this alliance; but he should not have owned
+his ignorance of the country, religion, &c., of Jeroslaus--a name so
+conspicuous in the Russian annals.]
+
+In the Byzantine palace, the emperor was the first slave of the
+ceremonies which he imposed, of the rigid forms which regulated each
+word and gesture, besieged him in the palace, and violated the leisure
+of his rural solitude. But the lives and fortunes of millions hung on
+his arbitrary will; and the firmest minds, superior to the allurements
+of pomp and luxury, may be seduced by the more active pleasure of
+commanding their equals. The legislative and executive powers were
+centred in the person of the monarch, and the last remains of the
+authority of the senate were finally eradicated by Leo the philosopher.
+[67] A lethargy of servitude had benumbed the minds of the Greeks: in
+the wildest tumults of rebellion they never aspired to the idea of a
+free constitution; and the private character of the prince was the only
+source and measure of their public happiness. Superstition rivetted
+their chains; in the church of St. Sophia he was solemnly crowned by
+the patriarch; at the foot of the altar, they pledged their passive and
+unconditional obedience to his government and family. On his side he
+engaged to abstain as much as possible from the capital punishments of
+death and mutilation; his orthodox creed was subscribed with his own
+hand, and he promised to obey the decrees of the seven synods, and the
+canons of the holy church. [68] But the assurance of mercy was loose and
+indefinite: he swore, not to his people, but to an invisible judge; and
+except in the inexpiable guilt of heresy, the ministers of heaven were
+always prepared to preach the indefeasible right, and to absolve the
+venial transgressions, of their sovereign. The Greek ecclesiastics were
+themselves the subjects of the civil magistrate: at the nod of a tyrant,
+the bishops were created, or transferred, or deposed, or punished with
+an ignominious death: whatever might be their wealth or influence, they
+could never succeed like the Latin clergy in the establishment of an
+independent republic; and the patriarch of Constantinople condemned,
+what he secretly envied, the temporal greatness of his Roman brother.
+Yet the exercise of boundless despotism is happily checked by the laws
+of nature and necessity. In proportion to his wisdom and virtue, the
+master of an empire is confined to the path of his sacred and laborious
+duty. In proportion to his vice and folly, he drops the sceptre too
+weighty for his hands; and the motions of the royal image are ruled by
+the imperceptible thread of some minister or favorite, who undertakes
+for his private interest to exercise the task of the public oppression.
+In some fatal moment, the most absolute monarch may dread the reason
+or the caprice of a nation of slaves; and experience has proved, that
+whatever is gained in the extent, is lost in the safety and solidity, of
+regal power.
+
+[Footnote 67: A constitution of Leo the Philosopher (lxxviii.) ne
+senatus consulta amplius fiant, speaks the language of naked despotism.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Codinus (de Officiis, c. xvii. p. 120, 121) gives an idea
+of this oath so strong to the church, so weak to the people.]
+
+Whatever titles a despot may assume, whatever claims he may assert, it
+is on the sword that he must ultimately depend to guard him against his
+foreign and domestic enemies. From the age of Charlemagne to that of the
+Crusades, the world (for I overlook the remote monarchy of China) was
+occupied and disputed by the three great empires or nations of the
+Greeks, the Saracens, and the Franks. Their military strength may be
+ascertained by a comparison of their courage, their arts and riches, and
+their obedience to a supreme head, who might call into action all the
+energies of the state. The Greeks, far inferior to their rivals in the
+first, were superior to the Franks, and at least equal to the Saracens,
+in the second and third of these warlike qualifications.
+
+The wealth of the Greeks enabled them to purchase the service of the
+poorer nations, and to maintain a naval power for the protection of
+their coasts and the annoyance of their enemies. [69] A commerce of
+mutual benefit exchanged the gold of Constantinople for the blood
+of Sclavonians and Turks, the Bulgarians and Russians: their valor
+contributed to the victories of Nicephorus and Zimisces; and if a
+hostile people pressed too closely on the frontier, they were recalled
+to the defence of their country, and the desire of peace, by the
+well-managed attack of a more distant tribe. [70] The command of the
+Mediterranean, from the mouth of the Tanais to the columns of
+Hercules, was always claimed, and often possessed, by the successors of
+Constantine. Their capital was filled with naval stores and dexterous
+artificers: the situation of Greece and Asia, the long coasts, deep
+gulfs, and numerous islands, accustomed their subjects to the exercise
+of navigation; and the trade of Venice and Amalfi supplied a nursery of
+seamen to the Imperial fleet. [71] Since the time of the Peloponnesian
+and Punic wars, the sphere of action had not been enlarged; and the
+science of naval architecture appears to have declined. The art of
+constructing those stupendous machines which displayed three, or six,
+or ten, ranges of oars, rising above, or falling behind, each other,
+was unknown to the ship-builders of Constantinople, as well as to the
+mechanicians of modern days. [72] The Dromones, [73] or light galleys of
+the Byzantine empire, were content with two tier of oars; each tier was
+composed of five-and-twenty benches; and two rowers were seated on each
+bench, who plied their oars on either side of the vessel. To these we
+must add the captain or centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect
+with his armor-bearer on the poop, two steersmen at the helm, and two
+officers at the prow, the one to manage the anchor, the other to point
+and play against the enemy the tube of liquid fire. The whole crew, as
+in the infancy of the art, performed the double service of mariners and
+soldiers; they were provided with defensive and offensive arms, with
+bows and arrows, which they used from the upper deck, with long pikes,
+which they pushed through the portholes of the lower tier. Sometimes,
+indeed, the ships of war were of a larger and more solid construction;
+and the labors of combat and navigation were more regularly divided
+between seventy soldiers and two hundred and thirty mariners. But for
+the most part they were of the light and manageable size; and as
+the Cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed with its ancient
+terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles over land across
+the Isthmus of Corinth. [74] The principles of maritime tactics had not
+undergone any change since the time of Thucydides: a squadron of galleys
+still advanced in a crescent, charged to the front, and strove to impel
+their sharp beaks against the feeble sides of their antagonists. A
+machine for casting stones and darts was built of strong timbers, in the
+midst of the deck; and the operation of boarding was effected by a crane
+that hoisted baskets of armed men. The language of signals, so clear and
+copious in the naval grammar of the moderns, was imperfectly expressed
+by the various positions and colors of a commanding flag. In the
+darkness of the night, the same orders to chase, to attack, to halt, to
+retreat, to break, to form, were conveyed by the lights of the leading
+galley. By land, the fire-signals were repeated from one mountain to
+another; a chain of eight stations commanded a space of five hundred
+miles; and Constantinople in a few hours was apprised of the hostile
+motions of the Saracens of Tarsus. [75] Some estimate may be formed of
+the power of the Greek emperors, by the curious and minute detail of the
+armament which was prepared for the reduction of Crete. A fleet of one
+hundred and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian
+style, was equipped in the capital, the islands of the Aegean Sea, and
+the seaports of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four
+thousand mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers,
+seven hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites,
+whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of Libanus. Their
+pay, most probably of a month, was computed at thirty-four centenaries
+of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds sterling. Our
+fancy is bewildered by the endless recapitulation of arms and engines,
+of clothes and linen, of bread for the men and forage for the horses,
+and of stores and utensils of every description, inadequate to the
+conquest of a petty island, but amply sufficient for the establishment
+of a flourishing colony. [76]
+
+[Footnote 69: If we listen to the threats of Nicephorus to the
+ambassador of Otho, Nec est in mari domino tuo classium numerus.
+Navigantium fortitudo mihi soli inest, qui eum classibus aggrediar,
+bello maritimas ejus civitates demoliar; et quae fluminibus sunt vicina
+redigam in favillam. (Liutprand in Legat. ad Nicephorum Phocam, in
+Muratori Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i. p. 481.) He
+observes in another place, qui caeteris praestant Venetici sunt et
+Amalphitani.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Nec ipsa capiet eum (the emperor Otho) in qua ortus est
+pauper et pellicea Saxonia: pecunia qua pollemus omnes nationes super
+eum invitabimus: et quasi Keramicum confringemus, (Liutprand in Legat.
+p. 487.) The two books, de Administrando Imperio, perpetually inculcate
+the same policy.]
+
+[Footnote 71: The xixth chapter of the Tactics of Leo, (Meurs. Opera,
+tom. vi. p. 825-848,) which is given more correct from a manuscript
+of Gudius, by the laborious Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p.
+372-379,) relates to the Naumachia, or naval war.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Even of fifteen and sixteen rows of oars, in the navy
+of Demetrius Poliorcetes. These were for real use: the forty rows of
+Ptolemy Philadelphus were applied to a floating palace, whose tonnage,
+according to Dr. Arbuthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, &c., p. 231-236,)
+is compared as 4 1/2 to 1 with an English 100 gun ship.]
+
+[Footnote 73: The Dromones of Leo, &c., are so clearly described with
+two tier of oars, that I must censure the version of Meursius and
+Fabricius, who pervert the sense by a blind attachment to the classic
+appellation of Triremes. The Byzantine historians are sometimes guilty
+of the same inaccuracy.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Constantin. Porphyrogen. in Vit. Basil. c. lxi. p. 185.
+He calmly praises the stratagem; but the sailing round Peloponnesus is
+described by his terrified fancy as a circumnavigation of a thousand
+miles.]
+
+[Footnote 75: The continuator of Theophanes (l. iv. p. 122, 123) names
+the successive stations, the castle of Lulum near Tarsus, Mount Argaeus
+Isamus, Aegilus, the hill of Mamas, Cyrisus, Mocilus, the hill of
+Auxentius, the sun-dial of the Pharus of the great palace. He affirms
+that the news were transmitted in an indivisible moment of time.
+Miserable amplification, which, by saying too much, says nothing. How
+much more forcible and instructive would have been the definition of
+three, or six, or twelve hours!]
+
+[Footnote 76: See the Ceremoniale of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, l. ii.
+c. 44, p. 176-192. A critical reader will discern some inconsistencies
+in different parts of this account; but they are not more obscure or
+more stubborn than the establishment and effectives, the present and fit
+for duty, the rank and file and the private, of a modern return, which
+retain in proper hands the knowledge of these profitable mysteries.]
+
+The invention of the Greek fire did not, like that of gun powder,
+produce a total revolution in the art of war. To these liquid
+combustibles the city and empire of Constantine owed their deliverance;
+and they were employed in sieges and sea-fights with terrible effect.
+But they were either less improved, or less susceptible of improvement:
+the engines of antiquity, the catapultae, balistae, and battering-rams,
+were still of most frequent and powerful use in the attack and defence
+of fortifications; nor was the decision of battles reduced to the quick
+and heavy fire of a line of infantry, whom it were fruitless to protect
+with armor against a similar fire of their enemies. Steel and iron were
+still the common instruments of destruction and safety; and the helmets,
+cuirasses, and shields, of the tenth century did not, either in form
+or substance, essentially differ from those which had covered the
+companions of Alexander or Achilles. [77] But instead of accustoming the
+modern Greeks, like the legionaries of old, to the constant and easy use
+of this salutary weight, their armor was laid aside in light chariots,
+which followed the march, till, on the approach of an enemy, they
+resumed with haste and reluctance the unusual encumbrance. Their
+offensive weapons consisted of swords, battle-axes, and spears; but the
+Macedonian pike was shortened a fourth of its length, and reduced to the
+more convenient measure of twelve cubits or feet. The sharpness of the
+Scythian and Arabian arrows had been severely felt; and the emperors
+lament the decay of archery as a cause of the public misfortunes, and
+recommend, as an advice and a command, that the military youth, till the
+age of forty, should assiduously practise the exercise of the bow. [78]
+The bands, or regiments, were usually three hundred strong; and, as a
+medium between the extremes of four and sixteen, the foot soldiers of
+Leo and Constantine were formed eight deep; but the cavalry charged in
+four ranks, from the reasonable consideration, that the weight of the
+front could not be increased by any pressure of the hindmost horses.
+If the ranks of the infantry or cavalry were sometimes doubled, this
+cautious array betrayed a secret distrust of the courage of the troops,
+whose numbers might swell the appearance of the line, but of whom only
+a chosen band would dare to encounter the spears and swords of the
+Barbarians. The order of battle must have varied according to the
+ground, the object, and the adversary; but their ordinary disposition,
+in two lines and a reserve, presented a succession of hopes and
+resources most agreeable to the temper as well as the judgment of the
+Greeks. [79] In case of a repulse, the first line fell back into the
+intervals of the second; and the reserve, breaking into two divisions,
+wheeled round the flanks to improve the victory or cover the retreat.
+Whatever authority could enact was accomplished, at least in theory,
+by the camps and marches, the exercises and evolutions, the edicts and
+books, of the Byzantine monarch. [80] Whatever art could produce from
+the forge, the loom, or the laboratory, was abundantly supplied by the
+riches of the prince, and the industry of his numerous workmen. But
+neither authority nor art could frame the most important machine, the
+soldier himself; and if the ceremonies of Constantine always suppose the
+safe and triumphal return of the emperor, [81] his tactics seldom soar
+above the means of escaping a defeat, and procrastinating the war. [82]
+Notwithstanding some transient success, the Greeks were sunk in their
+own esteem and that of their neighbors. A cold hand and a loquacious
+tongue was the vulgar description of the nation: the author of the
+tactics was besieged in his capital; and the last of the Barbarians, who
+trembled at the name of the Saracens, or Franks, could proudly exhibit
+the medals of gold and silver which they had extorted from the feeble
+sovereign of Constantinople. What spirit their government and character
+denied, might have been inspired in some degree by the influence of
+religion; but the religion of the Greeks could only teach them to suffer
+and to yield. The emperor Nicephorus, who restored for a moment the
+discipline and glory of the Roman name, was desirous of bestowing the
+honors of martyrdom on the Christians who lost their lives in a holy
+war against the infidels. But this political law was defeated by the
+opposition of the patriarch, the bishops, and the principal senators;
+and they strenuously urged the canons of St. Basil, that all who were
+polluted by the bloody trade of a soldier should be separated, during
+three years, from the communion of the faithful. [83]
+
+[Footnote 77: See the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters, and, in
+the Tactics of Leo, with the corresponding passages in those of
+Constantine.]
+
+[Footnote 78: (Leo, Tactic. p. 581 Constantin. p 1216.) Yet such were
+not the maxims of the Greeks and Romans, who despised the loose and
+distant practice of archery.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Compare the passages of the Tactics, p. 669 and 721, and
+the xiith with the xviiith chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 80: In the preface to his Tactics, Leo very freely deplores
+the loss of discipline and the calamities of the times, and repeats,
+without scruple, (Proem. p. 537,) the reproaches, nor does it appear
+that the same censures were less deserved in the next generation by the
+disciples of Constantine.]
+
+[Footnote 81: See in the Ceremonial (l. ii. c. 19, p. 353) the form of
+the emperor's trampling on the necks of the captive Saracens, while
+the singers chanted, "Thou hast made my enemies my footstool!" and the
+people shouted forty times the kyrie eleison.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Leo observes (Tactic. p. 668) that a fair open battle
+against any nation whatsoever: the words are strong, and the remark is
+true: yet if such had been the opinion of the old Romans, Leo had never
+reigned on the shores of the Thracian Bosphorus.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 202, 203) and Cedrenus,
+(Compend p. 668,) who relate the design of Nicephorus, most
+unfortunately apply the epithet to the opposition of the patriarch.]
+
+These scruples of the Greeks have been compared with the tears of
+the primitive Moslems when they were held back from battle; and this
+contrast of base superstition and high-spirited enthusiasm, unfolds to
+a philosophic eye the history of the rival nations. The subjects of the
+last caliphs [84] had undoubtedly degenerated from the zeal and faith of
+the companions of the prophet. Yet their martial creed still represented
+the Deity as the author of war: [85] the vital though latent spark of
+fanaticism still glowed in the heart of their religion, and among
+the Saracens, who dwelt on the Christian borders, it was frequently
+rekindled to a lively and active flame. Their regular force was formed
+of the valiant slaves who had been educated to guard the person and
+accompany the standard of their lord: but the Mussulman people of Syria
+and Cilicia, of Africa and Spain, was awakened by the trumpet which
+proclaimed a holy war against the infidels. The rich were ambitious of
+death or victory in the cause of God; the poor were allured by the hopes
+of plunder; and the old, the infirm, and the women, assumed their share
+of meritorious service by sending their substitutes, with arms and
+horses, into the field. These offensive and defensive arms were similar
+in strength and temper to those of the Romans, whom they far excelled
+in the management of the horse and the bow: the massy silver of their
+belts, their bridles, and their swords, displayed the magnificence of a
+prosperous nation; and except some black archers of the South, the Arabs
+disdained the naked bravery of their ancestors. Instead of wagons, they
+were attended by a long train of camels, mules, and asses: the multitude
+of these animals, whom they bedecked with flags and streamers, appeared
+to swell the pomp and magnitude of their host; and the horses of the
+enemy were often disordered by the uncouth figure and odious smell of
+the camels of the East. Invincible by their patience of thirst and heat,
+their spirits were frozen by a winter's cold, and the consciousness of
+their propensity to sleep exacted the most rigorous precautions against
+the surprises of the night. Their order of battle was a long square of
+two deep and solid lines; the first of archers, the second of cavalry.
+In their engagements by sea and land, they sustained with patient
+firmness the fury of the attack, and seldom advanced to the charge till
+they could discern and oppress the lassitude of their foes. But if
+they were repulsed and broken, they knew not how to rally or renew the
+combat; and their dismay was heightened by the superstitious prejudice,
+that God had declared himself on the side of their enemies. The decline
+and fall of the caliphs countenanced this fearful opinion; nor were
+there wanting, among the Mahometans and Christians, some obscure
+prophecies [86] which prognosticated their alternate defeats. The unity
+of the Arabian empire was dissolved, but the independent fragments were
+equal to populous and powerful kingdoms; and in their naval and military
+armaments, an emir of Aleppo or Tunis might command no despicable fund
+of skill, and industry, and treasure. In their transactions of peace and
+war with the Saracens, the princes of Constantinople too often felt that
+these Barbarians had nothing barbarous in their discipline; and that
+if they were destitute of original genius, they had been endowed with
+a quick spirit of curiosity and imitation. The model was indeed more
+perfect than the copy; their ships, and engines, and fortifications,
+were of a less skilful construction; and they confess, without shame,
+that the same God who has given a tongue to the Arabians, had more
+nicely fashioned the hands of the Chinese, and the heads of the Greeks.
+[87]
+
+[Footnote 84: The xviith chapter of the tactics of the different nations
+is the most historical and useful of the whole collection of Leo. The
+manners and arms of the Saracens (Tactic. p. 809-817, and a fragment
+from the Medicean Ms. in the preface of the vith volume of Meursius) the
+Roman emperor was too frequently called upon to study.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Leon. Tactic. p. 809.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Liutprand (p. 484, 485) relates and interprets the oracles
+of the Greeks and Saracens, in which, after the fashion of prophecy,
+the past is clear and historical, the future is dark, enigmatical, and
+erroneous. From this boundary of light and shade an impartial critic may
+commonly determine the date of the composition.]
+
+[Footnote 87: The sense of this distinction is expressed by
+Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 2, 62, 101;) but I cannot recollect the
+passage in which it is conveyed by this lively apothegm.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part IV.
+
+A name of some German tribes between the Rhine and the Weser had spread
+its victorious influence over the greatest part of Gaul, Germany, and
+Italy; and the common appellation of Franks [88] was applied by the
+Greeks and Arabians to the Christians of the Latin church, the nations
+of the West, who stretched beyond their knowledge to the shores of the
+Atlantic Ocean. The vast body had been inspired and united by the
+soul of Charlemagne; but the division and degeneracy of his race soon
+annihilated the Imperial power, which would have rivalled the Caesars
+of Byzantium, and revenged the indignities of the Christian name. The
+enemies no longer feared, nor could the subjects any longer trust, the
+application of a public revenue, the labors of trade and manufactures
+in the military service, the mutual aid of provinces and armies, and
+the naval squadrons which were regularly stationed from the mouth of the
+Elbe to that of the Tyber. In the beginning of the tenth century, the
+family of Charlemagne had almost disappeared; his monarchy was broken
+into many hostile and independent states; the regal title was assumed
+by the most ambitious chiefs; their revolt was imitated in a long
+subordination of anarchy and discord, and the nobles of every province
+disobeyed their sovereign, oppressed their vassals, and exercised
+perpetual hostilities against their equals and neighbors. Their private
+wars, which overturned the fabric of government, fomented the martial
+spirit of the nation. In the system of modern Europe, the power of the
+sword is possessed, at least in fact, by five or six mighty potentates;
+their operations are conducted on a distant frontier, by an order of men
+who devote their lives to the study and practice of the military art:
+the rest of the country and community enjoys in the midst of war the
+tranquillity of peace, and is only made sensible of the change by the
+aggravation or decrease of the public taxes. In the disorders of the
+tenth and eleventh centuries, every peasant was a soldier, and every
+village a fortification; each wood or valley was a scene of murder
+and rapine; and the lords of each castle were compelled to assume the
+character of princes and warriors. To their own courage and policy they
+boldly trusted for the safety of their family, the protection of their
+lands, and the revenge of their injuries; and, like the conquerors of a
+larger size, they were too apt to transgress the privilege of defensive
+war. The powers of the mind and body were hardened by the presence of
+danger and necessity of resolution: the same spirit refused to desert
+a friend and to forgive an enemy; and, instead of sleeping under the
+guardian care of a magistrate, they proudly disdained the authority of
+the laws. In the days of feudal anarchy, the instruments of agriculture
+and art were converted into the weapons of bloodshed: the peaceful
+occupations of civil and ecclesiastical society were abolished or
+corrupted; and the bishop who exchanged his mitre for a helmet, was more
+forcibly urged by the manners of the times than by the obligation of his
+tenure. [89]
+
+[Footnote 88: Ex Francis, quo nomine tam Latinos quam Teutones
+comprehendit, ludum habuit, (Liutprand in Legat ad Imp. Nicephorum, p.
+483, 484.) This extension of the name may be confirmed from Constantine
+(de Administrando Imperio, l. 2, c. 27, 28) and Eutychius, (Annal. tom.
+i. p. 55, 56,) who both lived before the Crusades. The testimonies of
+Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 69) and Abulfeda (Praefat. ad Geograph.) are
+more recent]
+
+[Footnote 89: On this subject of ecclesiastical and beneficiary
+discipline, Father Thomassin, (tom. iii. l. i. c. 40, 45, 46, 47) may
+be usefully consulted. A general law of Charlemagne exempted the bishops
+from personal service; but the opposite practice, which prevailed from
+the ixth to the xvth century, is countenanced by the example or silence
+of saints and doctors.... You justify your cowardice by the holy canons,
+says Ratherius of Verona; the canons likewise forbid you to whore, and
+yet--]
+
+The love of freedom and of arms was felt, with conscious pride, by the
+Franks themselves, and is observed by the Greeks with some degree of
+amazement and terror. "The Franks," says the emperor Constantine, "are
+bold and valiant to the verge of temerity; and their dauntless spirit is
+supported by the contempt of danger and death. In the field and in close
+onset, they press to the front, and rush headlong against the enemy,
+without deigning to compute either his numbers or their own. Their ranks
+are formed by the firm connections of consanguinity and friendship; and
+their martial deeds are prompted by the desire of saving or revenging
+their dearest companions. In their eyes, a retreat is a shameful flight;
+and flight is indelible infamy." [90] A nation endowed with such
+high and intrepid spirit, must have been secure of victory if these
+advantages had not been counter-balanced by many weighty defects. The
+decay of their naval power left the Greeks and Saracens in possession
+of the sea, for every purpose of annoyance and supply. In the age
+which preceded the institution of knighthood, the Franks were rude
+and unskilful in the service of cavalry; [91] and in all perilous
+emergencies, their warriors were so conscious of their ignorance, that
+they chose to dismount from their horses and fight on foot. Unpractised
+in the use of pikes, or of missile weapons, they were encumbered by
+the length of their swords, the weight of their armor, the magnitude of
+their shields, and, if I may repeat the satire of the meagre Greeks, by
+their unwieldy intemperance. Their independent spirit disdained the
+yoke of subordination, and abandoned the standard of their chief, if
+he attempted to keep the field beyond the term of their stipulation
+or service. On all sides they were open to the snares of an enemy less
+brave but more artful than themselves. They might be bribed, for the
+Barbarians were venal; or surprised in the night, for they neglected the
+precautions of a close encampment or vigilant sentinels. The fatigues of
+a summer's campaign exhausted their strength and patience, and they sunk
+in despair if their voracious appetite was disappointed of a plentiful
+supply of wine and of food. This general character of the Franks was
+marked with some national and local shades, which I should ascribe to
+accident rather than to climate, but which were visible both to natives
+and to foreigners. An ambassador of the great Otho declared, in the
+palace of Constantinople, that the Saxons could dispute with swords
+better than with pens, and that they preferred inevitable death to the
+dishonor of turning their backs to an enemy. [92] It was the glory of
+the nobles of France, that, in their humble dwellings, war and rapine
+were the only pleasure, the sole occupation, of their lives. They
+affected to deride the palaces, the banquets, the polished manner of the
+Italians, who in the estimate of the Greeks themselves had degenerated
+from the liberty and valor of the ancient Lombards. [93]
+
+[Footnote 90: In the xviiith chapter of his Tactics, the emperor Leo
+has fairly stated the military vices and virtues of the Franks
+(whom Meursius ridiculously translates by Galli) and the Lombards
+or Langobards. See likewise the xxvith Dissertation of Muratori de
+Antiquitatibus Italiae Medii Aevi.]
+
+[Footnote 91: Domini tui milites (says the proud Nicephorus) equitandi
+ignari pedestris pugnae sunt inscii: scutorum magnitudo, loricarum
+gravitudo, ensium longitudo galearumque pondus neutra parte pugnare
+cossinit; ac subridens, impedit, inquit, et eos gastrimargia, hoc est
+ventris ingluvies, &c. Liutprand in Legat. p. 480 481]
+
+[Footnote 92: In Saxonia certe scio.... decentius ensibus pugnare quam
+calanis, et prius mortem obire quam hostibus terga dare, (Liutprand, p
+482.)]
+
+[Footnote 93: Leonis Tactica, c. 18, p. 805. The emperor Leo died A.D.
+911: an historical poem, which ends in 916, and appears to have been
+composed in 910, by a native of Venetia, discriminates in these verses
+the manners of Italy and France:
+
+     --Quid inertia bello
+
+     Pectora (Ubertus ait) duris praetenditis armis,
+
+     O Itali?  Potius vobis sacra pocula cordi;
+
+     Saepius et stomachum nitidis laxare saginis
+
+     Elatasque domos rutilo fulcire metallo.
+
+     Non eadem Gallos similis vel cura remordet:
+
+     Vicinas quibus est studium devincere terras,
+
+     Depressumque larem spoliis hinc inde coactis
+
+     Sustentare--
+
+(Anonym. Carmen Panegyricum de Laudibus Berengarii Augusti, l. n. in
+Muratori Script. Rerum Italic. tom. ii. pars i. p. 393.)]
+
+By the well-known edict of Caracalla, his subjects, from Britain to
+Egypt, were entitled to the name and privileges of Romans, and their
+national sovereign might fix his occasional or permanent residence in
+any province of their common country. In the division of the East and
+West, an ideal unity was scrupulously observed, and in their titles,
+laws, and statutes, the successors of Arcadius and Honorius announced
+themselves as the inseparable colleagues of the same office, as the
+joint sovereigns of the Roman world and city, which were bounded by the
+same limits. After the fall of the Western monarchy, the majesty of the
+purple resided solely in the princes of Constantinople; and of these,
+Justinian was the first who, after a divorce of sixty years, regained
+the dominion of ancient Rome, and asserted, by the right of conquest,
+the august title of Emperor of the Romans. [94] A motive of vanity or
+discontent solicited one of his successors, Constans the Second, to
+abandon the Thracian Bosphorus, and to restore the pristine honors of
+the Tyber: an extravagant project, (exclaims the malicious Byzantine,)
+as if he had despoiled a beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or
+rather to expose, the deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit matron.
+[95] But the sword of the Lombards opposed his settlement in Italy: he
+entered Rome not as a conqueror, but as a fugitive, and, after a visit
+of twelve days, he pillaged, and forever deserted, the ancient capital
+of the world. [96] The final revolt and separation of Italy was
+accomplished about two centuries after the conquests of Justinian, and
+from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue.
+That legislator had composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects,
+in a language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of
+the Roman government, the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of
+Constantinople, of the campus and tribunals of the East. [97] But this
+foreign dialect was unknown to the people and soldiers of the Asiatic
+provinces, it was imperfectly understood by the greater part of the
+interpreters of the laws and the ministers of the state. After a short
+conflict, nature and habit prevailed over the obsolete institutions
+of human power: for the general benefit of his subjects, Justinian
+promulgated his novels in the two languages: the several parts of his
+voluminous jurisprudence were successively translated; [98] the original
+was forgotten, the version was studied, and the Greek, whose intrinsic
+merit deserved indeed the preference, obtained a legal, as well as
+popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and residence
+of succeeding princes estranged them from the Roman idiom: Tiberius by
+the Arabs, [99] and Maurice by the Italians, [100] are distinguished
+as the first of the Greek Caesars, as the founders of a new dynasty
+and empire: the silent revolution was accomplished before the death of
+Heraclius; and the ruins of the Latin speech were darkly preserved in
+the terms of jurisprudence and the acclamations of the palace. After
+the restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne and the Othos, the
+names of Franks and Latins acquired an equal signification and extent;
+and these haughty Barbarians asserted, with some justice, their superior
+claim to the language and dominion of Rome. They insulted the alien
+of the East who had renounced the dress and idiom of Romans; and their
+reasonable practice will justify the frequent appellation of Greeks.
+[101] But this contemptuous appellation was indignantly rejected by the
+prince and people to whom it was applied. Whatsoever changes had been
+introduced by the lapse of ages, they alleged a lineal and unbroken
+succession from Augustus and Constantine; and, in the lowest period of
+degeneracy and decay, the name of Romans adhered to the last fragments
+of the empire of Constantinople. [102]
+
+[Footnote 94: Justinian, says the historian Agathias, (l. v. p.
+157,). Yet the specific title of Emperor of the Romans was not used
+at Constantinople, till it had been claimed by the French and German
+emperors of old Rome.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Constantine Manasses reprobates this design in his
+barbarous verse, and it is confirmed by Theophanes, Zonaras, Cedrenus,
+and the Historia Miscella: voluit in urbem Romam Imperium transferre,
+(l. xix. p. 157 in tom. i. pars i. of the Scriptores Rer. Ital. of
+Muratori.)]
+
+[Footnote 96: Paul. Diacon. l. v. c. 11, p. 480. Anastasius in Vitis
+Pontificum, in Muratori's Collection, tom. iii. pars i. p. 141.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Consult the preface of Ducange, (ad Gloss, Graec. Medii
+Aevi) and the Novels of Justinian, (vii. lxvi.)]
+
+[Footnote 98: (Matth. Blastares, Hist. Juris, apud Fabric. Bibliot.
+Graec. tom. xii. p. 369.) The Code and Pandects (the latter by
+Thalelaeus) were translated in the time of Justinian, (p. 358, 366.)
+Theophilus one of the original triumvirs, has left an elegant, though
+diffuse, paraphrase of the Institutes. On the other hand, Julian,
+antecessor of Constantinople, (A.D. 570,) cxx. Novellas Graecas eleganti
+Latinitate donavit (Heineccius, Hist. J. R. p. 396) for the use of Italy
+and Africa.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Abulpharagius assigns the viith Dynasty to the Franks
+or Romans, the viiith to the Greeks, the ixth to the Arabs. A tempore
+Augusti Caesaris donec imperaret Tiberius Caesar spatio circiter annorum
+600 fuerunt Imperatores C. P. Patricii, et praecipua pars exercitus
+Romani: extra quod, conciliarii, scribae et populus, omnes Graeci
+fuerunt: deinde regnum etiam Graecanicum factum est, (p. 96, vers.
+Pocock.) The Christian and ecclesiastical studies of Abulpharagius gave
+him some advantage over the more ignorant Moslems.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Primus ex Graecorum genere in Imperio confirmatus est; or
+according to another Ms. of Paulus Diaconus, (l. iii. c. 15, p. 443,) in
+Orasorum Imperio.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Quia linguam, mores, vestesque mutastis, putavit
+Sanctissimus Papa. (an audacious irony,) ita vos (vobis) displicere
+Romanorum nomen. His nuncios, rogabant Nicephorum Imperatorem Graecorum,
+ut cum Othone Imperatore Romanorum amicitiam faceret, (Liutprand in
+Legatione, p. 486.) * Note: Sicut et vestem. These words follow in the
+text of Liutprand, (apud Murat. Script. Ital. tom. ii. p. 486, to which
+Gibbon refers.) But with some inaccuracy or confusion, which rarely
+occurs in Gibbon's references, the rest of the quotation, which as it
+stands is unintelligible, does not appear--M.]
+
+[Footnote 102: By Laonicus Chalcocondyles, who survived the last siege
+of Constantinople, the account is thus stated, (l. i. p. 3.) Constantine
+transplanted his Latins of Italy to a Greek city of Thrace: they adopted
+the language and manners of the natives, who were confounded with
+them under the name of Romans. The kings of Constantinople, says the
+historian.]
+
+While the government of the East was transacted in Latin, the Greek was
+the language of literature and philosophy; nor could the masters of
+this rich and perfect idiom be tempted to envy the borrowed learning and
+imitative taste of their Roman disciples. After the fall of Paganism,
+the loss of Syria and Egypt, and the extinction of the schools of
+Alexandria and Athens, the studies of the Greeks insensibly retired
+to some regular monasteries, and above all, to the royal college of
+Constantinople, which was burnt in the reign of Leo the Isaurian. [103]
+In the pompous style of the age, the president of that foundation was
+named the Sun of Science: his twelve associates, the professors in the
+different arts and faculties, were the twelve signs of the zodiac; a
+library of thirty-six thousand five hundred volumes was open to their
+inquiries; and they could show an ancient manuscript of Homer, on a roll
+of parchment one hundred and twenty feet in length, the intestines, as
+it was fabled, of a prodigious serpent. [104] But the seventh and eight
+centuries were a period of discord and darkness: the library was burnt,
+the college was abolished, the Iconoclasts are represented as the
+foes of antiquity; and a savage ignorance and contempt of letters has
+disgraced the princes of the Heraclean and Isaurian dynasties. [105]
+
+[Footnote 103: See Ducange, (C. P. Christiana, l. ii. p. 150, 151,) who
+collects the testimonies, not of Theophanes, but at least of Zonaras,
+(tom. ii. l. xv. p. 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 454,) Michael Glycas, (p. 281,)
+Constantine Manasses, (p. 87.) After refuting the absurd charge against
+the emperor, Spanheim, (Hist. Imaginum, p. 99-111,) like a true
+advocate, proceeds to doubt or deny the reality of the fire, and almost
+of the library.]
+
+[Footnote 104: According to Malchus, (apud Zonar. l. xiv. p. 53,) this
+Homer was burnt in the time of Basiliscus. The Ms. might be renewed--But
+on a serpent's skin? Most strange and incredible!]
+
+[Footnote 105: The words of Zonaras, and of Cedrenus, are strong words,
+perhaps not ill suited to those reigns.]
+
+In the ninth century we trace the first dawnings of the restoration
+of science. [106] After the fanaticism of the Arabs had subsided, the
+caliphs aspired to conquer the arts, rather than the provinces, of the
+empire: their liberal curiosity rekindled the emulation of the Greeks,
+brushed away the dust from their ancient libraries, and taught them to
+know and reward the philosophers, whose labors had been hitherto repaid
+by the pleasure of study and the pursuit of truth. The Caesar Bardas,
+the uncle of Michael the Third, was the generous protector of letters,
+a title which alone has preserved his memory and excused his ambition. A
+particle of the treasures of his nephew was sometimes diverted from
+the indulgence of vice and folly; a school was opened in the palace
+of Magnaura; and the presence of Bardas excited the emulation of the
+masters and students. At their head was the philosopher Leo, archbishop
+of Thessalonica: his profound skill in astronomy and the mathematics
+was admired by the strangers of the East; and this occult science
+was magnified by vulgar credulity, which modestly supposes that all
+knowledge superior to its own must be the effect of inspiration
+or magic. At the pressing entreaty of the Caesar, his friend, the
+celebrated Photius, [107] renounced the freedom of a secular and
+studious life, ascended the patriarchal throne, and was alternately
+excommunicated and absolved by the synods of the East and West. By the
+confession even of priestly hatred, no art or science, except poetry,
+was foreign to this universal scholar, who was deep in thought,
+indefatigable in reading, and eloquent in diction. Whilst he exercised
+the office of protospathaire or captain of the guards, Photius was sent
+ambassador to the caliph of Bagdad. [108] The tedious hours of exile,
+perhaps of confinement, were beguiled by the hasty composition of his
+Library, a living monument of erudition and criticism. Two hundred and
+fourscore writers, historians, orators, philosophers, theologians, are
+reviewed without any regular method: he abridges their narrative or
+doctrine, appreciates their style and character, and judges even the
+fathers of the church with a discreet freedom, which often breaks
+through the superstition of the times. The emperor Basil, who lamented
+the defects of his own education, intrusted to the care of Photius his
+son and successor, Leo the philosopher; and the reign of that prince and
+of his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus forms one of the most prosperous
+aeras of the Byzantine literature. By their munificence the treasures
+of antiquity were deposited in the Imperial library; by their pens,
+or those of their associates, they were imparted in such extracts
+and abridgments as might amuse the curiosity, without oppressing the
+indolence, of the public. Besides the Basilics, or code of laws, the
+arts of husbandry and war, of feeding or destroying the human species,
+were propagated with equal diligence; and the history of Greece and Rome
+was digested into fifty-three heads or titles, of which two only (of
+embassies, and of virtues and vices) have escaped the injuries of time.
+In every station, the reader might contemplate the image of the past
+world, apply the lesson or warning of each page, and learn to admire,
+perhaps to imitate, the examples of a brighter period. I shall not
+expatiate on the works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by the assiduous
+study of the ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance
+and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may still
+enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of Stobaeus, the
+grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads of Tzetzes,
+which comprise six hundred narratives in twelve thousand verses, and the
+commentaries on Homer of Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who,
+from his horn of plenty, has poured the names and authorities of four
+hundred writers. From these originals, and from the numerous tribe
+of scholiasts and critics, [109] some estimate may be formed of the
+literary wealth of the twelfth century: Constantinople was enlightened
+by the genius of Homer and Demosthenes, of Aristotle and Plato: and
+in the enjoyment or neglect of our present riches, we must envy the
+generation that could still peruse the history of Theopompus, the
+orations of Hyperides, the comedies of Menander, [110] and the odes of
+Alcaeus and Sappho. The frequent labor of illustration attests not only
+the existence, but the popularity, of the Grecian classics: the general
+knowledge of the age may be deduced from the example of two learned
+females, the empress Eudocia, and the princess Anna Comnena, who
+cultivated, in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. [111]
+The vulgar dialect of the city was gross and barbarous: a more correct
+and elaborate style distinguished the discourse, or at least the
+compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes affected to copy
+the purity of the Attic models.
+
+[Footnote 106: See Zonaras (l. xvi. p. 160, 161) and Cedrenus, (p. 549,
+550.) Like Friar Bacon, the philosopher Leo has been transformed by
+ignorance into a conjurer; yet not so undeservedly, if he be the author
+of the oracles more commonly ascribed to the emperor of the same name.
+The physics of Leo in Ms. are in the library of Vienna, (Fabricius,
+Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p 366, tom. xii. p. 781.) Qui serant!]
+
+[Footnote 107: The ecclesiastical and literary character of Photius is
+copiously discussed by Hanckius (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 269, 396)
+and Fabricius.]
+
+[Footnote 108: It can only mean Bagdad, the seat of the caliphs and the
+relation of his embassy might have been curious and instructive. But how
+did he procure his books? A library so numerous could neither be found
+at Bagdad, nor transported with his baggage, nor preserved in his
+memory. Yet the last, however incredible, seems to be affirmed by
+Photius himself. Camusat (Hist. Critique des Journaux, p. 87-94) gives
+a good account of the Myriobiblon.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Of these modern Greeks, see the respective articles in
+the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius--a laborious work, yet susceptible
+of a better method and many improvements; of Eustathius, (tom. i. p.
+289-292, 306-329,) of the Pselli, (a diatribe of Leo Allatius, ad
+calcem tom. v., of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, tom. vi. p. 486-509)
+of John Stobaeus, (tom. viii., 665-728,) of Suidas, (tom. ix. p.
+620-827,) John Tzetzes, (tom. xii. p. 245-273.) Mr. Harris, in his
+Philological Arrangements, opus senile, has given a sketch of this
+Byzantine learning, (p. 287-300.)]
+
+[Footnote 110: From the obscure and hearsay evidence, Gerard Vossius (de
+Poetis Graecis, c. 6) and Le Clerc (Bibliotheque Choisie, tom. xix. p.
+285) mention a commentary of Michael Psellus on twenty-four plays
+of Menander, still extant in Ms. at Constantinople. Yet such classic
+studies seem incompatible with the gravity or dulness of a schoolman,
+who pored over the categories, (de Psellis, p. 42;) and Michael has
+probably been confounded with Homerus Sellius, who wrote arguments to
+the comedies of Menander. In the xth century, Suidas quotes fifty plays,
+but he often transcribes the old scholiast of Aristophanes.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Anna Comnena may boast of her Greek style, and Zonaras
+her contemporary, but not her flatterer, may add with truth. The
+princess was conversant with the artful dialogues of Plato; and had
+studied quadrivium of astrology, geometry, arithmetic, and music, (see
+he preface to the Alexiad, with Ducange's notes)]
+
+In our modern education, the painful though necessary attainment of two
+languages, which are no longer living, may consume the time and damp
+the ardor of the youthful student. The poets and orators were long
+imprisoned in the barbarous dialects of our Western ancestors, devoid
+of harmony or grace; and their genius, without precept or example, was
+abandoned to the rule and native powers of their judgment and fancy. But
+the Greeks of Constantinople, after purging away the impurities of their
+vulgar speech, acquired the free use of their ancient language, the most
+happy composition of human art, and a familiar knowledge of the sublime
+masters who had pleased or instructed the first of nations. But these
+advantages only tend to aggravate the reproach and shame of a degenerate
+people. They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers,
+without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred
+patrimony: they read, they praised, they compiled, but their languid
+souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of
+ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or
+promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added
+to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient
+disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next
+servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy, or
+literature, has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of
+style or sentiment, of original fancy, or even of successful imitation.
+In prose, the least offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from
+censure by their naked and unpresuming simplicity: but the orators, most
+eloquent [112] in their own conceit, are the farthest removed from the
+models whom they affect to emulate. In every page our taste and reason
+are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff and
+intricate phraseology, the discord of images, the childish play of false
+or unseasonable ornament, and the painful attempt to elevate themselves,
+to astonish the reader, and to involve a trivial meaning in the smoke
+of obscurity and exaggeration. Their prose is soaring to the vicious
+affectation of poetry: their poetry is sinking below the flatness and
+insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric muses, were silent and
+inglorious: the bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or
+epigram, a panegyric or tale; they forgot even the rules of prosody; and
+with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they confound
+all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have
+received the name of political or city verses. [113] The minds of the
+Greek were bound in the fetters of a base and imperious superstition
+which extends her dominion round the circle of profane science. Their
+understandings were bewildered in metaphysical controversy: in the
+belief of visions and miracles, they had lost all principles of moral
+evidence, and their taste was vitiates by the homilies of the monks,
+an absurd medley of declamation and Scripture. Even these contemptible
+studies were no longer dignified by the abuse of superior talents: the
+leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to admire and copy the
+oracles of antiquity, nor did the schools of pulpit produce any rivals
+of the fame of Athanasius and Chrysostom. [114]
+
+[Footnote 112: To censure the Byzantine taste. Ducange (Praefat. Gloss.
+Graec. p. 17) strings the authorities of Aulus Gellius, Jerom, Petronius
+George Hamartolus, Longinus; who give at once the precept and the
+example.]
+
+[Footnote 113: The versus politici, those common prostitutes, as, from
+their easiness, they are styled by Leo Allatius, usually consist of
+fifteen syllables. They are used by Constantine Manasses, John Tzetzes,
+&c. (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iii. p. i. p. 345, 346, edit. Basil,
+1762.)]
+
+[Footnote 114: As St. Bernard of the Latin, so St. John Damascenus in
+the viiith century is revered as the last father of the Greek, church.]
+
+In all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the emulation of
+states and individuals is the most powerful spring of the efforts and
+improvements of mankind. The cities of ancient Greece were cast in the
+happy mixture of union and independence, which is repeated on a larger
+scale, but in a looser form, by the nations of modern Europe; the union
+of language, religion, and manners, which renders them the spectators
+and judges of each other's merit; [115] the independence of government
+and interest, which asserts their separate freedom, and excites them
+to strive for preeminence in the career of glory. The situation of the
+Romans was less favorable; yet in the early ages of the republic, which
+fixed the national character, a similar emulation was kindled among the
+states of Latium and Italy; and in the arts and sciences, they aspired
+to equal or surpass their Grecian masters. The empire of the Caesars
+undoubtedly checked the activity and progress of the human mind; its
+magnitude might indeed allow some scope for domestic competition; but
+when it was gradually reduced, at first to the East and at last to
+Greece and Constantinople, the Byzantine subjects were degraded to an
+abject and languid temper, the natural effect of their solitary and
+insulated state. From the North they were oppressed by nameless tribes
+of Barbarians, to whom they scarcely imparted the appellation of
+men. The language and religion of the more polished Arabs were an
+insurmountable bar to all social intercourse. The conquerors of Europe
+were their brethren in the Christian faith; but the speech of the Franks
+or Latins was unknown, their manners were rude, and they were rarely
+connected, in peace or war, with the successors of Heraclius. Alone in
+the universe, the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not disturbed
+by the comparison of foreign merit; and it is no wonder if they fainted
+in the race, since they had neither competitors to urge their speed,
+nor judges to crown their victory. The nations of Europe and Asia
+were mingled by the expeditions to the Holy Land; and it is under the
+Comnenian dynasty that a faint emulation of knowledge and military
+virtue was rekindled in the Byzantine empire. [Footnote 115: Hume's
+Essays, vol. i. p. 125]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.--Part I.
+
+     Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.--Their Persecution By
+     The Greek Emperors.--Revolt In Armenia &c.--Transplantation
+     Into Thrace.--Propagation In The West.--The Seeds,
+     Character, And Consequences Of The Reformation.
+
+In the profession of Christianity, the variety of national characters
+may be clearly distinguished. The natives of Syria and Egypt abandoned
+their lives to lazy and contemplative devotion: Rome again aspired to
+the dominion of the world; and the wit of the lively and loquacious
+Greeks was consumed in the disputes of metaphysical theology. The
+incomprehensible mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, instead
+of commanding their silent submission, were agitated in vehement and
+subtile controversies, which enlarged their faith at the expense,
+perhaps, of their charity and reason. From the council of Nice to
+the end of the seventh century, the peace and unity of the church was
+invaded by these spiritual wars; and so deeply did they affect the
+decline and fall of the empire, that the historian has too often been
+compelled to attend the synods, to explore the creeds, and to enumerate
+the sects, of this busy period of ecclesiastical annals. From the
+beginning of the eighth century to the last ages of the Byzantine
+empire, the sound of controversy was seldom heard: curiosity was
+exhausted, zeal was fatigued, and, in the decrees of six councils, the
+articles of the Catholic faith had been irrevocably defined. The spirit
+of dispute, however vain and pernicious, requires some energy and
+exercise of the mental faculties; and the prostrate Greeks were content
+to fast, to pray, and to believe in blind obedience to the patriarch
+and his clergy. During a long dream of superstition, the Virgin and
+the Saints, their visions and miracles, their relics and images, were
+preached by the monks, and worshipped by the people; and the appellation
+of people might be extended, without injustice, to the first ranks
+of civil society. At an unseasonable moment, the Isaurian emperors
+attempted somewhat rudely to awaken their subjects: under their
+influence reason might obtain some proselytes, a far greater number was
+swayed by interest or fear; but the Eastern world embraced or deplored
+their visible deities, and the restoration of images was celebrated
+as the feast of orthodoxy. In this passive and unanimous state the
+ecclesiastical rulers were relieved from the toil, or deprived of the
+pleasure, of persecution. The Pagans had disappeared; the Jews were
+silent and obscure; the disputes with the Latins were rare and remote
+hostilities against a national enemy; and the sects of Egypt and Syria
+enjoyed a free toleration under the shadow of the Arabian caliphs. About
+the middle of the seventh century, a branch of Manichaeans was selected
+as the victims of spiritual tyranny; their patience was at length
+exasperated to despair and rebellion; and their exile has scattered over
+the West the seeds of reformation. These important events will justify
+some inquiry into the doctrine and story of the Paulicians; [1] and, as
+they cannot plead for themselves, our candid criticism will magnify
+the good, and abate or suspect the evil, that is reported by their
+adversaries.
+
+[Footnote 1: The errors and virtues of the Paulicians are weighed,
+with his usual judgment and candor, by the learned Mosheim, (Hist.
+Ecclesiast. seculum ix. p. 311, &c.) He draws his original intelligence
+from Photius (contra Manichaeos, l. i.) and Peter Siculus, (Hist.
+Manichaeorum.) The first of these accounts has not fallen into my
+hands; the second, which Mosheim prefers, I have read in a Latin version
+inserted in the Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, (tom. xvi. p. 754-764,) from
+the edition of the Jesuit Raderus, (Ingolstadii, 1604, in 4to.) * Note:
+Compare Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 461-471. Mr. Hallam justly observes
+that this chapter "appears to be accurate as well as luminous, and is at
+least far superior to any modern work on the subject."--M.]
+
+The Gnostics, who had distracted the infancy, were oppressed by
+the greatness and authority, of the church. Instead of emulating or
+surpassing the wealth, learning, and numbers of the Catholics, their
+obscure remnant was driven from the capitals of the East and West,
+and confined to the villages and mountains along the borders of the
+Euphrates. Some vestige of the Marcionites may be detected in the fifth
+century; [2] but the numerous sects were finally lost in the odious name
+of the Manichaeans; and these heretics, who presumed to reconcile the
+doctrines of Zoroaster and Christ, were pursued by the two religions
+with equal and unrelenting hatred. Under the grandson of Heraclius, in
+the neighborhood of Samosata, more famous for the birth of Lucian than
+for the title of a Syrian kingdom, a reformer arose, esteemed by the
+Paulicians as the chosen messenger of truth. In his humble dwelling of
+Mananalis, Constantine entertained a deacon, who returned from Syrian
+captivity, and received the inestimable gift of the New Testament, which
+was already concealed from the vulgar by the prudence of the Greek, and
+perhaps of the Gnostic, clergy. [3] These books became the measure of
+his studies and the rule of his faith; and the Catholics, who dispute
+his interpretation, acknowledge that his text was genuine and sincere.
+But he attached himself with peculiar devotion to the writings and
+character of St. Paul: the name of the Paulicians is derived by their
+enemies from some unknown and domestic teacher; but I am confident
+that they gloried in their affinity to the apostle of the Gentiles.
+His disciples, Titus, Timothy, Sylvanus, Tychicus, were represented by
+Constantine and his fellow-laborers: the names of the apostolic churches
+were applied to the congregations which they assembled in Armenia and
+Cappadocia; and this innocent allegory revived the example and memory
+of the first ages. In the Gospel, and the Epistles of St. Paul, his
+faithful follower investigated the Creed of primitive Christianity;
+and, whatever might be the success, a Protestant reader will applaud
+the spirit, of the inquiry. But if the Scriptures of the Paulicians were
+pure, they were not perfect. Their founders rejected the two Epistles of
+St. Peter, [4] the apostle of the circumcision, whose dispute with their
+favorite for the observance of the law could not easily be forgiven. [5]
+They agreed with their Gnostic brethren in the universal contempt for
+the Old Testament, the books of Moses and the prophets, which have been
+consecrated by the decrees of the Catholic church. With equal boldness,
+and doubtless with more reason, Constantine, the new Sylvanus,
+disclaimed the visions, which, in so many bulky and splendid volumes,
+had been published by the Oriental sects; [6] the fabulous productions
+of the Hebrew patriarchs and the sages of the East; the spurious
+gospels, epistles, and acts, which in the first age had overwhelmed the
+orthodox code; the theology of Manes, and the authors of the kindred
+heresies; and the thirty generations, or aeons, which had been created
+by the fruitful fancy of Valentine. The Paulicians sincerely condemned
+the memory and opinions of the Manichaean sect, and complained of the
+injustice which impressed that invidious name on the simple votaries of
+St. Paul and of Christ.
+
+[Footnote 2: In the time of Theodoret, the diocese of Cyrrhus, in Syria,
+contained eight hundred villages. Of these, two were inhabited by Arians
+and Eunomians, and eight by Marcionites, whom the laborious bishop
+reconciled to the Catholic church, (Dupin, Bibliot. Ecclesiastique, tom.
+iv. p. 81, 82.)]
+
+[Footnote 3: Nobis profanis ista (sacra Evangelia) legere non licet sed
+sacerdotibus duntaxat, was the first scruple of a Catholic when he was
+advised to read the Bible, (Petr. Sicul. p. 761.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: In rejecting the second Epistle of St. Peter, the
+Paulicians are justified by some of the most respectable of the ancients
+and moderns, (see Wetstein ad loc., Simon, Hist. Critique du Nouveau
+Testament, c. 17.) They likewise overlooked the Apocalypse, (Petr.
+Sicul. p. 756;) but as such neglect is not imputed as a crime, the
+Greeks of the ixth century must have been careless of the credit and
+honor of the Revelations.]
+
+[Footnote 5: This contention, which has not escaped the malice of
+Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the
+apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented as a
+sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles and the
+correction of the Jews, (Middleton's Works, vol. ii. p. 1-20.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: Those who are curious of this heterodox library, may
+consult the researches of Beausobre, (Hist. Critique du Manicheisme,
+tom. i. p. 305-437.) Even in Africa, St. Austin could describe the
+Manichaean books, tam multi, tam grandes, tam pretiosi codices, (contra
+Faust. xiii. 14;) but he adds, without pity, Incendite omnes illas
+membranas: and his advice had been rigorously followed.]
+
+Of the ecclesiastical chain, many links had been broken by the Paulician
+reformers; and their liberty was enlarged, as they reduced the number of
+masters, at whose voice profane reason must bow to mystery and miracle.
+The early separation of the Gnostics had preceded the establishment of
+the Catholic worship; and against the gradual innovations of discipline
+and doctrine they were as strongly guarded by habit and aversion, as by
+the silence of St. Paul and the evangelists. The objects which had been
+transformed by the magic of superstition, appeared to the eyes of the
+Paulicians in their genuine and naked colors. An image made without
+hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to whose skill
+alone the wood and canvas must be indebted for their merit or value. The
+miraculous relics were a heap of bones and ashes, destitute of life or
+virtue, or of any relation, perhaps, with the person to whom they were
+ascribed. The true and vivifying cross was a piece of sound or rotten
+timber, the body and blood of Christ, a loaf of bread and a cup of wine,
+the gifts of nature and the symbols of grace. The mother of God was
+degraded from her celestial honors and immaculate virginity; and the
+saints and angels were no longer solicited to exercise the laborious
+office of meditation in heaven, and ministry upon earth. In the
+practice, or at least in the theory, of the sacraments, the Paulicians
+were inclined to abolish all visible objects of worship, and the words
+of the gospel were, in their judgment, the baptism and communion of the
+faithful. They indulged a convenient latitude for the interpretation of
+Scripture: and as often as they were pressed by the literal sense, they
+could escape to the intricate mazes of figure and allegory. Their utmost
+diligence must have been employed to dissolve the connection between the
+Old and the New Testament; since they adored the latter as the oracles
+of God, and abhorred the former as the fabulous and absurd invention of
+men or daemons. We cannot be surprised, that they should have found
+in the Gospel the orthodox mystery of the Trinity: but, instead of
+confessing the human nature and substantial sufferings of Christ, they
+amused their fancy with a celestial body that passed through the virgin
+like water through a pipe; with a fantastic crucifixion, that eluded the
+vain and important malice of the Jews. A creed thus simple and spiritual
+was not adapted to the genius of the times; [7] and the rational
+Christian, who might have been contented with the light yoke and
+easy burden of Jesus and his apostles, was justly offended, that the
+Paulicians should dare to violate the unity of God, the first article of
+natural and revealed religion. Their belief and their trust was in the
+Father, of Christ, of the human soul, and of the invisible world.
+
+But they likewise held the eternity of matter; a stubborn and rebellious
+substance, the origin of a second principle of an active being, who has
+created this visible world, and exercises his temporal reign till the
+final consummation of death and sin. [8] The appearances of moral
+and physical evil had established the two principles in the ancient
+philosophy and religion of the East; from whence this doctrine was
+transfused to the various swarms of the Gnostics. A thousand shades may
+be devised in the nature and character of Ahriman, from a rival god to
+a subordinate daemon, from passion and frailty to pure and perfect
+malevolence: but, in spite of our efforts, the goodness, and the power,
+of Ormusd are placed at the opposite extremities of the line; and every
+step that approaches the one must recede in equal proportion from the
+other. [9]
+
+[Footnote 7: The six capital errors of the Paulicians are defined by
+Peter (p. 756,) with much prejudice and passion.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Primum illorum axioma est, duo rerum esse principia; Deum
+malum et Deum bonum, aliumque hujus mundi conditorem et princi pem, et
+alium futuri aevi, (Petr. Sicul. 765.)]
+
+[Footnote 9: Two learned critics, Beausobre (Hist. Critique du
+Manicheisme, l. i. iv. v. vi.) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. and
+de Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum, sec. i. ii. iii.,) have labored
+to explore and discriminate the various systems of the Gnostics on the
+subject of the two principles.]
+
+The apostolic labors of Constantine Sylvanus soon multiplied the number
+of his disciples, the secret recompense of spiritual ambition. The
+remnant of the Gnostic sects, and especially the Manichaeans of Armenia,
+were united under his standard; many Catholics were converted or seduced
+by his arguments; and he preached with success in the regions of Pontus
+[10] and Cappadocia, which had long since imbibed the religion of
+Zoroaster. The Paulician teachers were distinguished only by their
+Scriptural names, by the modest title of Fellow-pilgrims, by the
+austerity of their lives, their zeal or knowledge, and the credit of
+some extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. But they were incapable
+of desiring, or at least of obtaining, the wealth and honors of the
+Catholic prelacy; such anti-Christian pride they bitterly censured; and
+even the rank of elders or presbyters was condemned as an institution of
+the Jewish synagogue. The new sect was loosely spread over the provinces
+of Asia Minor to the westward of the Euphrates; six of their principal
+congregations represented the churches to which St. Paul had addressed
+his epistles; and their founder chose his residence in the neighborhood
+of Colonia, [11] in the same district of Pontus which had been
+celebrated by the altars of Bellona [12] and the miracles of Gregory.
+[13] After a mission of twenty-seven years, Sylvanus, who had retired
+from the tolerating government of the Arabs, fell a sacrifice to Roman
+persecution. The laws of the pious emperors, which seldom touched the
+lives of less odious heretics, proscribed without mercy or disguise the
+tenets, the books, and the persons of the Montanists and Manichaeans:
+the books were delivered to the flames; and all who should presume to
+secrete such writings, or to profess such opinions, were devoted to an
+ignominious death. [14] A Greek minister, armed with legal and military
+powers, appeared at Colonia to strike the shepherd, and to reclaim, if
+possible, the lost sheep. By a refinement of cruelty, Simeon placed the
+unfortunate Sylvanus before a line of his disciples, who were commanded,
+as the price of their pardon and the proof of their repentance, to
+massacre their spiritual father. They turned aside from the impious
+office; the stones dropped from their filial hands, and of the whole
+number, only one executioner could be found, a new David, as he is
+styled by the Catholics, who boldly overthrew the giant of heresy.
+This apostate (Justin was his name) again deceived and betrayed his
+unsuspecting brethren, and a new conformity to the acts of St. Paul may
+be found in the conversion of Simeon: like the apostle, he embraced the
+doctrine which he had been sent to persecute, renounced his honors and
+fortunes, and required among the Paulicians the fame of a missionary and
+a martyr. They were not ambitious of martyrdom, [15] but in a calamitous
+period of one hundred and fifty years, their patience sustained
+whatever zeal could inflict; and power was insufficient to eradicate the
+obstinate vegetation of fanaticism and reason. From the blood and
+ashes of the first victims, a succession of teachers and congregations
+repeatedly arose: amidst their foreign hostilities, they found leisure
+for domestic quarrels: they preached, they disputed, they suffered;
+and the virtues, the apparent virtues, of Sergius, in a pilgrimage
+of thirty-three years, are reluctantly confessed by the orthodox
+historians. [16] The native cruelty of Justinian the Second was
+stimulated by a pious cause; and he vainly hoped to extinguish, in a
+single conflagration, the name and memory of the Paulicians. By their
+primitive simplicity, their abhorrence of popular superstition,
+the Iconoclast princes might have been reconciled to some erroneous
+doctrines; but they themselves were exposed to the calumnies of the
+monks, and they chose to be the tyrants, lest they should be accused
+as the accomplices, of the Manichaeans. Such a reproach has sullied the
+clemency of Nicephorus, who relaxed in their favor the severity of
+the penal statutes, nor will his character sustain the honor of a
+more liberal motive. The feeble Michael the First, the rigid Leo the
+Armenian, were foremost in the race of persecution; but the prize
+must doubtless be adjudged to the sanguinary devotion of Theodora, who
+restored the images to the Oriental church. Her inquisitors explored
+the cities and mountains of the Lesser Asia, and the flatterers of
+the empress have affirmed that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand
+Paulicians were extirpated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames. Her
+guilt or merit has perhaps been stretched beyond the measure of truth:
+but if the account be allowed, it must be presumed that many simple
+Iconoclasts were punished under a more odious name; and that some who
+were driven from the church, unwillingly took refuge in the bosom of
+heresy.
+
+[Footnote 10: The countries between the Euphrates and the Halys were
+possessed above 350 years by the Medes (Herodot. l. i. c. 103) and
+Persians; and the kings of Pontus were of the royal race of the
+Achaemenides, (Sallust. Fragment. l. iii. with the French supplement and
+notes of the president de Brosses.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: Most probably founded by Pompey after the conquest of
+Pontus. This Colonia, on the Lycus, above Neo-Caesarea, is named by
+the Turks Coulei-hisar, or Chonac, a populous town in a strong country,
+(D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 34. Tournefort, Voyage du
+Levant, tom. iii. lettre xxi. p. 293.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: The temple of Bellona, at Comana in Pontus was a powerful
+and wealthy foundation, and the high priest was respected as the second
+person in the kingdom. As the sacerdotal office had been occupied by
+his mother's family, Strabo (l. xii. p. 809, 835, 836, 837) dwells with
+peculiar complacency on the temple, the worship, and festival, which was
+twice celebrated every year. But the Bellona of Pontus had the features
+and character of the goddess, not of war, but of love.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Gregory, bishop of Neo-Caesarea, (A.D. 240-265,) surnamed
+Thaumaturgus, or the Wonder-worker. An hundred years afterwards, the
+history or romance of his life was composed by Gregory of Nyssa, his
+namesake and countryman, the brother of the great St. Basil.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Hoc caeterum ad sua egregia facinora, divini atque
+orthodoxi Imperatores addiderunt, ut Manichaeos Montanosque capitali
+puniri sententia juberent, eorumque libros, quocunque in loco
+inventi essent, flammis tradi; quod siquis uspiam eosdem occultasse
+deprehenderetur, hunc eundem mortis poenae addici, ejusque bona in
+fiscum inferri, (Petr. Sicul. p. 759.) What more could bigotry and
+persecution desire?]
+
+[Footnote 15: It should seem, that the Paulicians allowed themselves
+some latitude of equivocation and mental reservation; till the Catholics
+discovered the pressing questions, which reduced them to the alternative
+of apostasy or martyrdom, (Petr. Sicul. p. 760.)]
+
+[Footnote 16: The persecution is told by Petrus Siculus (p. 579-763)
+with satisfaction and pleasantry. Justus justa persolvit. See likewise
+Cedrenus, (p. 432-435.)]
+
+The most furious and desperate of rebels are the sectaries of a religion
+long persecuted, and at length provoked. In a holy cause they are no
+longer susceptible of fear or remorse: the justice of their arms hardens
+them against the feelings of humanity; and they revenge their fathers'
+wrongs on the children of their tyrants. Such have been the Hussites of
+Bohemia and the Calvinists of France, and such, in the ninth century,
+were the Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces. [17] They
+were first awakened to the massacre of a governor and bishop, who
+exercised the Imperial mandate of converting or destroying the heretics;
+and the deepest recesses of Mount Argaeus protected their independence
+and revenge. A more dangerous and consuming flame was kindled by the
+persecution of Theodora, and the revolt of Carbeas, a valiant Paulician,
+who commanded the guards of the general of the East. His father had been
+impaled by the Catholic inquisitors; and religion, or at least nature,
+might justify his desertion and revenge. Five thousand of his brethren
+were united by the same motives; they renounced the allegiance of
+anti-Christian Rome; a Saracen emir introduced Carbeas to the caliph;
+and the commander of the faithful extended his sceptre to the implacable
+enemy of the Greeks. In the mountains between Siwas and Trebizond he
+founded or fortified the city of Tephrice, [18] which is still occupied
+by a fierce or licentious people, and the neighboring hills were covered
+with the Paulician fugitives, who now reconciled the use of the Bible
+and the sword. During more than thirty years, Asia was afflicted by the
+calamities of foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads,
+the disciples of St. Paul were joined with those of Mahomet; and
+the peaceful Christians, the aged parent and tender virgin, who were
+delivered into barbarous servitude, might justly accuse the intolerant
+spirit of their sovereign. So urgent was the mischief, so intolerable
+the shame, that even the dissolute Michael, the son of Theodora, was
+compelled to march in person against the Paulicians: he was defeated
+under the walls of Samosata; and the Roman emperor fled before the
+heretics whom his mother had condemned to the flames. The Saracens
+fought under the same banners, but the victory was ascribed to Carbeas;
+and the captive generals, with more than a hundred tribunes, were either
+released by his avarice, or tortured by his fanaticism. The valor and
+ambition of Chrysocheir, [19] his successor, embraced a wider circle
+of rapine and revenge. In alliance with his faithful Moslems, he boldly
+penetrated into the heart of Asia; the troops of the frontier and
+the palace were repeatedly overthrown; the edicts of persecution were
+answered by the pillage of Nice and Nicomedia, of Ancyra and Ephesus;
+nor could the apostle St. John protect from violation his city and
+sepulchre. The cathedral of Ephesus was turned into a stable for mules
+and horses; and the Paulicians vied with the Saracens in their contempt
+and abhorrence of images and relics. It is not unpleasing to observe
+the triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which had disdained
+the prayers of an injured people. The emperor Basil, the Macedonian,
+was reduced to sue for peace, to offer a ransom for the captives, and
+to request, in the language of moderation and charity, that Chrysocheir
+would spare his fellow-Christians, and content himself with a royal
+donative of gold and silver and silk garments. "If the emperor," replied
+the insolent fanatic, "be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East,
+and reign without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants
+of the Lord will precipitate him from the throne." The reluctant Basil
+suspended the treaty, accepted the defiance, and led his army into the
+land of heresy, which he wasted with fire and sword. The open country
+of the Paulicians was exposed to the same calamities which they had
+inflicted; but when he had explored the strength of Tephrice, the
+multitude of the Barbarians, and the ample magazines of arms and
+provisions, he desisted with a sigh from the hopeless siege. On his
+return to Constantinople, he labored, by the foundation of convents and
+churches, to secure the aid of his celestial patrons, of Michael the
+archangel and the prophet Elijah; and it was his daily prayer that he
+might live to transpierce, with three arrows, the head of his impious
+adversary. Beyond his expectations, the wish was accomplished: after a
+successful inroad, Chrysocheir was surprised and slain in his retreat;
+and the rebel's head was triumphantly presented at the foot of the
+throne. On the reception of this welcome trophy, Basil instantly called
+for his bow, discharged three arrows with unerring aim, and accepted the
+applause of the court, who hailed the victory of the royal archer. With
+Chrysocheir, the glory of the Paulicians faded and withered: [20] on the
+second expedition of the emperor, the impregnable Tephrice, was deserted
+by the heretics, who sued for mercy or escaped to the borders. The city
+was ruined, but the spirit of independence survived in the mountains:
+the Paulicians defended, above a century, their religion and liberty,
+infested the Roman limits, and maintained their perpetual alliance with
+the enemies of the empire and the gospel.
+
+[Footnote 17: Petrus Siculus, (p. 763, 764,) the continuator of
+Theophanes, (l. iv. c. 4, p. 103, 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 541, 542, 545,)
+and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 156,) describe the revolt and exploits
+of Carbeas and his Paulicians.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Otter (Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, tom. ii.) is
+probably the only Frank who has visited the independent Barbarians of
+Tephrice now Divrigni, from whom he fortunately escaped in the train of
+a Turkish officer.]
+
+[Footnote 19: In the history of Chrysocheir, Genesius (Chron. p. 67-70,
+edit. Venet.) has exposed the nakedness of the empire. Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 37-43, p. 166-171) has displayed
+the glory of his grandfather. Cedrenus (p. 570-573) is without their
+passions or their knowledge.]
+
+[Footnote 20: How elegant is the Greek tongue, even in the mouth of
+Cedrenus!]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.--Part II.
+
+About the middle of the eight century, Constantine, surnamed Copronymus
+by the worshippers of images, had made an expedition into Armenia, and
+found, in the cities of Melitene and Theodosiopolis, a great number
+of Paulicians, his kindred heretics. As a favor, or punishment, he
+transplanted them from the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople
+and Thrace; and by this emigration their doctrine was introduced and
+diffused in Europe. [21] If the sectaries of the metropolis were soon
+mingled with the promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep
+root in a foreign soil. The Paulicians of Thrace resisted the storms
+of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with their Armenian
+brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their preachers, who solicited,
+not without success, the infant faith of the Bulgarians. [22] In the
+tenth century, they were restored and multiplied by a more powerful
+colony, which John Zimisces [23] transported from the Chalybian hills
+to the valleys of Mount Haemus. The Oriental clergy who would have
+preferred the destruction, impatiently sighed for the absence, of the
+Manichaeans: the warlike emperor had felt and esteemed their valor:
+their attachment to the Saracens was pregnant with mischief; but, on
+the side of the Danube, against the Barbarians of Scythia, their service
+might be useful, and their loss would be desirable. Their exile in a
+distant land was softened by a free toleration: the Paulicians held the
+city of Philippopolis and the keys of Thrace; the Catholics were their
+subjects; the Jacobite emigrants their associates: they occupied a
+line of villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; and many native
+Bulgarians were associated to the communion of arms and heresy. As long
+as they were awed by power and treated with moderation, their voluntary
+bands were distinguished in the armies of the empire; and the courage of
+these dogs, ever greedy of war, ever thirsty of human blood, is noticed
+with astonishment, and almost with reproach, by the pusillanimous
+Greeks. The same spirit rendered them arrogant and contumacious: they
+were easily provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were
+often violated by the faithless bigotry of the government and clergy.
+In the midst of the Norman war, two thousand five hundred Manichaeans
+deserted the standard of Alexius Comnenus, [24] and retired to their
+native homes. He dissembled till the moment of revenge; invited the
+chiefs to a friendly conference; and punished the innocent and guilty
+by imprisonment, confiscation, and baptism. In an interval of peace, the
+emperor undertook the pious office of reconciling them to the church
+and state: his winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis; and the
+thirteenth apostle, as he is styled by his pious daughter, consumed
+whole days and nights in theological controversy. His arguments were
+fortified, their obstinacy was melted, by the honors and rewards which
+he bestowed on the most eminent proselytes; and a new city, surrounded
+with gardens, enriched with immunities, and dignified with his own name,
+was founded by Alexius for the residence of his vulgar converts. The
+important station of Philippopolis was wrested from their hands; the
+contumacious leaders were secured in a dungeon, or banished from their
+country; and their lives were spared by the prudence, rather than the
+mercy, of an emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was
+burnt alive before the church of St. Sophia. [25] But the proud hope of
+eradicating the prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned by the
+invincible zeal of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or refused to
+obey. After the departure and death of Alexius, they soon resumed their
+civil and religious laws. In the beginning of the thirteenth century,
+their pope or primate (a manifest corruption) resided on the confines of
+Bulgaria, Croatia, and Dalmatia, and governed, by his vicars, the
+filial congregations of Italy and France. [26] From that aera, a minute
+scrutiny might prolong and perpetuate the chain of tradition. At the end
+of the last age, the sect or colony still inhabited the valleys of Mount
+Haemus, where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently
+tormented by the Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The modern
+Paulicians have lost all memory of their origin; and their religion
+is disgraced by the worship of the cross, and the practice of bloody
+sacrifice, which some captives have imported from the wilds of Tartary.
+[27]
+
+[Footnote 21: Copronymus transported his heretics; and thus says
+Cedrenus, (p. 463,) who has copied the annals of Theophanes.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Petrus Siculus, who resided nine months at Tephrice
+(A.D. 870) for the ransom of captives, (p. 764,) was informed of
+their intended mission, and addressed his preservative, the Historia
+Manichaeorum to the new archbishop of the Bulgarians, (p. 754.)]
+
+[Footnote 23: The colony of Paulicians and Jacobites transplanted by
+John Zimisces (A.D. 970) from Armenia to Thrace, is mentioned by Zonaras
+(tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 209) and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. xiv. p. 450,
+&c.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (l. v. p. 131, l. vi. p. 154,
+155, l. xiv. p. 450-457, with the Annotations of Ducange) records
+the transactions of her apostolic father with the Manichaeans, whose
+abominable heresy she was desirous of refuting.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Basil, a monk, and the author of the Bogomiles, a sect of
+Gnostics, who soon vanished, (Anna Comnena, Alexiad, l. xv. p. 486-494
+Mosheim, Hist. Ecclesiastica, p. 420.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: Matt. Paris, Hist. Major, p. 267. This passage of
+our English historian is alleged by Ducange in an excellent note on
+Villehardouin (No. 208,) who found the Paulicians at Philippopolis the
+friends of the Bulgarians.]
+
+[Footnote 27: See Marsigli, Stato Militare dell' Imperio Ottomano, p.
+24.]
+
+In the West, the first teachers of the Manichaean theology had been
+repulsed by the people, or suppressed by the prince. The favor and
+success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be
+imputed to the strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most
+pious Christians against the church of Rome. Her avarice was oppressive,
+her despotism odious; less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the
+worship of saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and
+scandalous: she had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of
+transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and
+the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if
+they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns
+the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword. Three different roads might
+introduce the Paulicians into the heart of Europe. After the conversion
+of Hungary, the pilgrims who visited Jerusalem might safely follow the
+course of the Danube: in their journey and return they passed through
+Philippopolis; and the sectaries, disguising their name and heresy,
+might accompany the French or German caravans to their respective
+countries. The trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the
+Adriatic, and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of
+every climate and religion. Under the Byzantine standard, the Paulicians
+were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily: in
+peace and war, they freely conversed with strangers and natives, and
+their opinions were silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the kingdoms
+beyond the Alps. [28] It was soon discovered, that many thousand
+Catholics of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichaean
+heresy; and the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was the
+first act and signal of persecution. The Bulgarians, [29] a name so
+innocent in its origin, so odious in its application, spread their
+branches over the face of Europe. United in common hatred of idolatry
+and Rome, they were connected by a form of episcopal and presbyterian
+government; their various sects were discriminated by some fainter
+or darker shades of theology; but they generally agreed in the two
+principles, the contempt of the Old Testament and the denial of the
+body of Christ, either on the cross or in the eucharist. A confession of
+simple worship and blameless manners is extorted from their enemies;
+and so high was their standard of perfection, that the increasing
+congregations were divided into two classes of disciples, of those
+who practised, and of those who aspired. It was in the country of the
+Albigeois, [30] in the southern provinces of France, that the Paulicians
+were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes of martyrdom and
+revenge which had been displayed in the neighborhood of the Euphrates,
+were repeated in the thirteenth century on the banks of the Rhone. The
+laws of the Eastern emperors were revived by Frederic the Second. The
+insurgents of Tephrice were represented by the barons and cities of
+Languedoc: Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary fame of Theodora.
+It was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the heroes of
+the Crusades, and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by the
+founders of the Inquisition; [31] an office more adapted to confirm,
+than to refute, the belief of an evil principle. The visible assemblies
+of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were extirpated by fire and sword;
+and the bleeding remnant escaped by flight, concealment, or Catholic
+conformity. But the invincible spirit which they had kindled still lived
+and breathed in the Western world. In the state, in the church, and even
+in the cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of
+St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the Bible
+as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the visions of
+the Gnostic theology. [3111] The struggles of Wickliff in England,
+of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but the names of
+Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced with gratitude as the
+deliverers of nations.
+
+[Footnote 28: The introduction of the Paulicians into Italy and France
+is amply discussed by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. v.
+dissert. lx. p. 81-152) and Mosheim, (p. 379-382, 419-422.) Yet both
+have overlooked a curious passage of William the Apulian, who clearly
+describes them in a battle between the Greeks and Normans, A.D. 1040,
+(in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 256:)
+
+     Cum Graecis aderant quidam, quos pessimus error
+
+     Fecerat amentes, et ab ipso nomen habebant.
+
+But he is so ignorant of their doctrine as to make them a kind of
+Sabellians or Patripassians.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Bulgari, Boulgres, Bougres, a national appellation,
+has been applied by the French as a term of reproach to usurers and
+unnatural sinners. The Paterini, or Patelini, has been made to signify
+a smooth and flattering hypocrite, such as l'Avocat Patelin of that
+original and pleasant farce, (Ducange, Gloss. Latinitat. Medii et Infimi
+Aevi.) The Manichaeans were likewise named Cathari or the pure, by
+corruption. Gazari, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Of the laws, crusade, and persecution against the
+Albigeois, a just, though general, idea is expressed by Mosheim, (p.
+477-481.) The detail may be found in the ecclesiastical historians,
+ancient and modern, Catholics and Protestants; and amongst these Fleury
+is the most impartial and moderate.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The Acts (Liber Sententiarum) of the Inquisition
+of Tholouse (A.D. 1307-1323) have been published by Limborch,
+(Amstelodami, 1692,) with a previous History of the Inquisition in
+general. They deserved a more learned and critical editor. As we must
+not calumniate even Satan, or the Holy Office, I will observe, that of a
+list of criminals which fills nineteen folio pages, only fifteen men and
+four women were delivered to the secular arm.]
+
+[Footnote 3111: The popularity of "Milner's History of the Church"
+with some readers, may make it proper to observe, that his attempt to
+exculpate the Paulicians from the charge of Gnosticism or Manicheism
+is in direct defiance, if not in ignorance, of all the original
+authorities. Gibbon himself, it appears, was not acquainted with the
+work of Photius, "Contra Manicheos Repullulantes," the first book of
+which was edited by Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliniana, pars ii. p.
+349, 375, the whole by Wolf, in his Anecdota Graeca. Hamburg 1722.
+Compare a very sensible tract. Letter to Rev. S. R. Maitland, by J G.
+Dowling, M. A. London, 1835.--M.]
+
+A philosopher, who calculates the degree of their merit and the value of
+their reformation, will prudently ask from what articles of faith, above
+or against our reason, they have enfranchised the Christians; for such
+enfranchisement is doubtless a benefit so far as it may be compatible
+with truth and piety. After a fair discussion, we shall rather be
+surprised by the timidity, than scandalized by the freedom, of our first
+reformers. [32] With the Jews, they adopted the belief and defence of
+all the Hebrew Scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the garden of
+Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they were bound, like the
+Catholics, to justify against the Jews the abolition of a divine law.
+In the great mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation the reformers were
+severely orthodox: they freely adopted the theology of the four, or the
+six first councils; and with the Athanasian creed, they pronounced
+the eternal damnation of all who did not believe the Catholic faith.
+Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine into the
+body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument
+and pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their senses,
+of their sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first Protestants
+were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the words of Jesus
+in the institution of the sacrament. Luther maintained a corporeal, and
+Calvin a real, presence of Christ in the eucharist; and the opinion
+of Zuinglius, that it is no more than a spiritual communion, a simple
+memorial, has slowly prevailed in the reformed churches. [33] But the
+loss of one mystery was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of
+original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which have
+been strained from the epistles of St. Paul. These subtile questions had
+most assuredly been prepared by the fathers and schoolmen; but the final
+improvement and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers,
+who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation.
+Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the
+Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer
+is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
+
+[Footnote 32: The opinions and proceedings of the reformers are exposed
+in the second part of the general history of Mosheim; but the balance,
+which he has held with so clear an eye, and so steady a hand, begins to
+incline in favor of his Lutheran brethren.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Under Edward VI. our reformation was more bold and
+perfect, but in the fundamental articles of the church of England,
+a strong and explicit declaration against the real presence was
+obliterated in the original copy, to please the people or the Lutherans,
+or Queen Elizabeth, (Burnet's History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p.
+82, 128, 302.)]
+
+Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and important; and
+the philosopher must own his obligations to these fearless enthusiasts.
+[34] I. By their hands the lofty fabric of superstition, from the abuse
+of indulgences to the intercesson of the Virgin, has been levelled
+with the ground. Myriads of both sexes of the monastic profession were
+restored to the liberty and labors of social life. A hierarchy of saints
+and angels, of imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their
+temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial happiness;
+their images and relics were banished from the church; and the credulity
+of the people was no longer nourished with the daily repetition of
+miracles and visions. The imitation of Paganism was supplied by a pure
+and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the most worthy
+of man, the least unworthy of the Deity. It only remains to observe,
+whether such sublime simplicity be consistent with popular devotion;
+whether the vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not
+be inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in languor and
+indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which restrains
+the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he
+thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils, were no longer the supreme
+and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught
+to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own
+conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than
+the design, of the Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of
+succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal
+rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the
+magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal
+animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus [35] the guilt of his own
+rebellion; [36] and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterwards
+consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer.
+[37] The nature of the tiger wa s the same, but he was gradually
+deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom was
+possessed by the Roman pontiff; the Protestant doctors were subjects
+of an humble rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were
+consecrated by the antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments
+and disputes were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private
+judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and enthusiasm.
+Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been
+silently working in the bosom of the reformed churches; many weeds of
+prejudice were eradicated; and the disciples of Erasmus [38] diffused
+a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has
+been claimed as a common benefit, an inalienable right: [39] the free
+governments of Holland [40] and England [41] introduced the practice of
+toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by
+the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind has
+understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows that
+might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly reason. The
+volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs: the doctrine of a
+Protestant church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its
+private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith,
+are subscribed with a sigh, or a smile, by the modern clergy. Yet the
+friends of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry
+and scepticism. The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the
+web of mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians,
+whose number must not be computed from their separate congregations; and
+the pillars of Revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name
+without the substance of religion, who indulge the license without the
+temper of philosophy. [42] [4211]
+
+[Footnote 34: "Had it not been for such men as Luther and myself,"
+said the fanatic Whiston to Halley the philosopher, "you would now be
+kneeling before an image of St. Winifred."]
+
+[Footnote 35: The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique of
+Chauffepie is the best account which I have seen of this shameful
+transaction. See likewise the Abbe d'Artigny, Nouveaux Memoires
+d'Histoire, &c., tom. ii. p. 55-154.]
+
+[Footnote 36: I am more deeply scandalized at the single execution of
+Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto de Fes of
+Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed
+by personal malice, and perhaps envy. He accused his adversary before
+their common enemies, the judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his
+destruction, the sacred trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed
+of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or
+state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger,
+who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic
+inquisition yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin
+violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by; a rule which I
+read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicocle, tom. i. p. 93, edit.
+Battie) four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel. * Note:
+Gibbon has not accurately rendered the sense of this passage, which does
+not contain the maxim of charity Do unto others as you would they should
+do unto you, but simply the maxim of justice, Do not to others the which
+would offend you if they should do it to you.--G.]
+
+[Footnote 37: See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and humanity of
+the young king were oppressed by the authority of the primate.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational
+theology. After a slumber of a hundred years, it was revived by the
+Arminians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc; in England by
+Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of Cambridge, (Burnet, Hist. of Own
+Times, vol. i. p. 261-268, octavo edition.) Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley,
+&c.]
+
+[Footnote 39: I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of the
+last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly defended,
+Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and philosophers.]
+
+[Footnote 40: See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on the
+Religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with Grotius, (de
+Rebus Belgicis, Annal. l. i. p. 13, 14, edit. in 12mo.,) who approves
+the Imperial laws of persecution, and only condemns the bloody tribunal
+of the inquisition.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 53,
+54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the Revolution. The
+exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the Trinity, would still
+have a tolerable scope for persecution if the national spirit were not
+more effectual than a hundred statutes.]
+
+[Footnote 42: I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in
+Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At
+the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i.
+p. 275, 276) the priest, at the second (vol. ii. p. 484) the magistrate,
+may tremble!]
+
+[Footnote 4211: There is something ludicrous, if it were not offensive,
+in Gibbon holding up to "public animadversion" the opinions of any
+believer in Christianity, however imperfect his creed. The observations
+which the whole of this passage on the effects of the reformation,
+in which much truth and justice is mingled with much prejudice, would
+suggest, could not possibly be compressed into a note; and would indeed
+embrace the whole religious and irreligious history of the time which
+has elapsed since Gibbon wrote.--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.--Part I.
+
+     The Bulgarians.--Origin, Migrations, And Settlement Of The
+     Hungarians.--Their Inroads In The East And West.--The
+     Monarchy Of Russia.--Geography And Trade.--Wars Of The
+     Russians Against The Greek Empire.--Conversion Of The
+     Barbarians.
+
+Under the reign of Constantine the grandson of Heraclius, the ancient
+barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was
+irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of Barbarians. Their progress
+was favored by the caliphs, their unknown and accidental auxiliaries:
+the Roman legions were occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria,
+Egypt, and Africa, the Caesars were twice reduced to the danger and
+disgrace of defending their capital against the Saracens. If, in the
+account of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and
+original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my
+transgression, or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war,
+in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the
+Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the
+church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the
+disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the
+Oriental world. But the same labor would be unworthily bestowed on the
+swarms of savages, who, between the seventh and the twelfth century,
+descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual
+emigration. [1] Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their
+actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valor brutal, and
+the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened
+by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne
+repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of
+these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their
+existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue,
+to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities
+of, I. Bulgarians, II. Hungarians, and, III. Russians, I shall content
+myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be remembered. The
+conquests of the, IV. Normans, and the monarchy of the, V. Turks, will
+naturally terminate in the memorable Crusades to the Holy Land, and the
+double fall of the city and empire of Constantine.
+
+[Footnote 1: All the passages of the Byzantine history which relate to
+the Barbarians are compiled, methodized, and transcribed, in a Latin
+version, by the laborious John Gotthelf Stritter, in his "Memoriae
+Populorum, ad Danubium, Pontum Euxinum, Paludem Maeotidem, Caucasum,
+Mare Caspium, et inde Magis ad Septemtriones incolentium." Petropoli,
+1771-1779; in four tomes, or six volumes, in 4to. But the fashion has
+not enhanced the price of these raw materials.]
+
+I. In his march to Italy, Theodoric [2] the Ostrogoth had trampled on
+the arms of the Bulgarians. After this defeat, the name and the nation
+are lost during a century and a half; and it may be suspected that the
+same or a similar appellation was revived by strange colonies from the
+Borysthenes, the Tanais, or the Volga. A king of the ancient Bulgaria,
+bequeathed to his five sons a last lesson of moderation and concord.
+It was received as youth has ever received the counsels of age and
+experience: the five princes buried their father; divided his subjects
+and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each other; and wandered
+in quest of fortune till we find the most adventurous in the heart of
+Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna. [4] But the stream
+of emigration was directed or impelled towards the capital. The modern
+Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with
+the name and image which it has retained to the present hour: the new
+conquerors successively acquired, by war or treaty, the Roman provinces
+of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epirus; [5] the ecclesiastical
+supremacy was translated from the native city of Justinian; and, in
+their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida,
+was honored with the throne of a king and a patriarch. [6] The
+unquestionable evidence of language attests the descent of the
+Bulgarians from the original stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly
+Slavonian, race; [7] and the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians,
+Rascians, Croatians, Walachians, [8] &c., followed either the standard
+or the example of the leading tribe. From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in
+the state of captives, or subjects, or allies, or enemies, of the Greek
+empire, they overspread the land; and the national appellation of the
+slaves [9] has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification
+of glory to that of servitude. [10] Among these colonies, the
+Chrobatians, [11] or Croats, who now attend the motions of an Austrian
+army, are the descendants of a mighty people, the conquerors and
+sovereigns of Dalmatia. The maritime cities, and of these the infant
+republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and instructions of the Byzantine
+court: they were advised by the magnanimous Basil to reserve a small
+acknowledgment of their fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease,
+by an annual tribute, the wrath of these irresistible Barbarians. The
+kingdom of Crotia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords;
+and their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and
+one hundred thousand foot. A long sea-coast, indented with capacious
+harbors, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of the
+Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to the practice
+of navigation. The boats or brigantines of the Croats were constructed
+after the fashion of the old Liburnians: one hundred and eighty vessels
+may excite the idea of a respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at
+the allowance of ten, or twenty, or forty, men for each of these ships
+of war. They were gradually converted to the more honorable service of
+commerce; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and dangerous;
+and it was not before the close of the tenth century that the freedom
+and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually vindicated by the Venetian
+republic. [12] The ancestors of these Dalmatian kings were equally
+removed from the use and abuse of navigation: they dwelt in the White
+Croatia, in the inland regions of Silesia and Little Poland, thirty
+days' journey, according to the Greek computation, from the sea of
+darkness.
+
+[Footnote 2: Hist. vol. iv. p. 11.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Theophanes, p. 296-299. Anastasius, p. 113. Nicephorus,
+C. P. p. 22, 23. Theophanes places the old Bulgaria on the banks of the
+Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of all geographical credit by
+discharging that river into the Euxine Sea.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Paul. Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 29, p. 881,
+882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian and the
+above-mentioned Greeks, is easily reconciled by Camillo Pellegrino (de
+Ducatu Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the Scriptores Rerum Ital. (tom. v.
+p. 186, 187) and Beretti, (Chorograph. Italiae Medii Aevi, p. 273, &c.
+This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and
+learned the Latin, without forgetting their native language.]
+
+[Footnote 5: These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are assigned
+to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction
+between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, (Baronius, Annal.
+Eccles. A.D. 869, No. 75.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida, are
+clearly expressed in Cedrenus, (p. 713.) The removal of an archbishop or
+patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnidus, and at length to Ternovo,
+has produced some perplexity in the ideas or language of the Greeks,
+(Nicephorus Gregoras, l. ii. c. 2, p. 14, 15. Thomassin, Discipline de
+l'Eglise, tom. i. l. i. c. 19, 23;) and a Frenchman (D'Anville) is more
+accurately skilled in the geography of their own country, (Hist. de
+l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxi.)]
+
+[Footnote 7: Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the identity of
+the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Poles,
+(de Rebus Turcicis, l. x. p. 283,) and elsewhere of the Bohemians,
+(l. ii. p. 38.) The same author has marked the separate idiom of the
+Hungarians. * Note: The Slavonian languages are no doubt Indo-European,
+though an original branch of that great family, comprehending the
+various dialects named by Gibbon and others. Shafarik, t. 33.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 8: See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de Originibus
+Sclavicis, Vindobonae, 1745, in four parts, or two volumes in folio. His
+collections and researches are useful to elucidate the antiquities of
+Bohemia and the adjacent countries; but his plan is narrow, his style
+barbarous, his criticism shallow, and the Aulic counsellor is not free
+from the prejudices of a Bohemian. * Note: We have at length a profound
+and satisfactory work on the Slavonian races. Shafarik, Slawische
+Alterthumer. B. 2, Leipzig, 1843.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable derivation
+from Slava, laus, gloria, a word of familiar use in the different
+dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the termination of the
+most illustrious names, (de Originibus Sclavicis, pars. i. p. 40, pars.
+iv. p. 101, 102)]
+
+[Footnote 10: This conversion of a national into an appellative name
+appears to have arisen in the viiith century, in the Oriental France,
+where the princes and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of
+the Bohemian, (exclaims Jordan,) but of Sorabian race. From thence the
+word was extended to the general use, to the modern languages, and even
+to the style of the last Byzantines, (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries
+and Ducange.) The confusion of the Servians with the Latin Servi, was
+still more fortunate and familiar, (Constant. Porphyr. de Administrando,
+Imperio, c. 32, p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 11: The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate
+for his own times, most fabulous for preceding ages, describes the
+Sclavonians of Dalmatia, (c. 29-36.)]
+
+[Footnote 12: See the anonymous Chronicle of the xith century, ascribed
+to John Sagorninus, (p. 94-102,) and that composed in the xivth by the
+Doge Andrew Dandolo, (Script. Rerum. Ital. tom. xii. p. 227-230,) the
+two oldest monuments of the history of Venice.]
+
+The glory of the Bulgarians [13] was confined to a narrow scope both of
+time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuries, they reigned to the
+south of the Danube; but the more powerful nations that had followed
+their emigration repelled all return to the north and all progress to
+the west. Yet in the obscure catalogue of their exploits, they might
+boast an honor which had hitherto been appropriated to the Goths: that
+of slaying in battle one of the successors of Augustus and Constantine.
+The emperor Nicephorus had lost his fame in the Arabian, he lost his
+life in the Sclavonian, war. In his first operations he advanced with
+boldness and success into the centre of Bulgaria, and burnt the royal
+court, which was probably no more than an edifice and village of timber.
+But while he searched the spoil and refused all offers of treaty, his
+enemies collected their spirits and their forces: the passes of retreat
+were insuperably barred; and the trembling Nicephorus was heard to
+exclaim, "Alas, alas! unless we could assume the wings of birds, we
+cannot hope to escape." Two days he waited his fate in the inactivity of
+despair; but, on the morning of the third, the Bulgarians surprised the
+camp, and the Roman prince, with the great officers of the empire,
+were slaughtered in their tents. The body of Valens had been saved
+from insult; but the head of Nicephorus was exposed on a spear, and
+his skull, enchased with gold, was often replenished in the feasts
+of victory. The Greeks bewailed the dishonor of the throne; but they
+acknowledged the just punishment of avarice and cruelty. This savage cup
+was deeply tinctured with the manners of the Scythian wilderness; but
+they were softened before the end of the same century by a peaceful
+intercourse with the Greeks, the possession of a cultivated region, and
+the introduction of the Christian worship. The nobles of Bulgaria were
+educated in the schools and palace of Constantinople; and Simeon, [14]
+a youth of the royal line, was instructed in the rhetoric of Demosthenes
+and the logic of Aristotle. He relinquished the profession of a monk for
+that of a king and warrior; and in his reign of more than forty years,
+Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth. The
+Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked, derived a faint consolation from
+indulging themselves in the reproaches of perfidy and sacrilege. They
+purchased the aid of the Pagan Turks; but Simeon, in a second battle,
+redeemed the loss of the first, at a time when it was esteemed a
+victory to elude the arms of that formidable nation. The Servians
+were overthrown, made captive and dispersed; and those who visited
+the country before their restoration could discover no more than
+fifty vagrants, without women or children, who extorted a precarious
+subsistence from the chase. On classic ground, on the banks of Achelous,
+the greeks were defeated; their horn was broken by the strength of the
+Barbaric Hercules. [15] He formed the siege of Constantinople; and, in
+a personal conference with the emperor, Simeon imposed the conditions of
+peace. They met with the most jealous precautions: the royal gallery
+was drawn close to an artificial and well-fortified platform; and the
+majesty of the purple was emulated by the pomp of the Bulgarian. "Are
+you a Christian?" said the humble Romanus: "it is your duty to abstain
+from the blood of your fellow-Christians. Has the thirst of riches
+seduced you from the blessings of peace? Sheathe your sword, open
+your hand, and I will satiate the utmost measure of your desires." The
+reconciliation was sealed by a domestic alliance; the freedom of trade
+was granted or restored; the first honors of the court were secured to
+the friends of Bulgaria, above the ambassadors of enemies or strangers;
+[16] and her princes were dignified with the high and invidious title of
+Basileus, or emperor. But this friendship was soon disturbed: after the
+death of Simeon, the nations were again in arms; his feeble successors
+were divided and extinguished; and, in the beginning of the eleventh
+century, the second Basil, who was born in the purple, deserved the
+appellation of conqueror of the Bulgarians. His avarice was in some
+measure gratified by a treasure of four hundred thousand pounds
+sterling, (ten thousand pounds' weight of gold,) which he found in
+the palace of Lychnidus. His cruelty inflicted a cool and exquisite
+vengeance on fifteen thousand captives who had been guilty of the
+defence of their country. They were deprived of sight; but to one of
+each hundred a single eye was left, that he might conduct his blind
+century to the presence of their king. Their king is said to have
+expired of grief and horror; the nation was awed by this terrible
+example; the Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and
+circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs bequeathed
+to their children the advice of patience and the duty of revenge.
+
+[Footnote 13: The first kingdom of the Bulgarians may be found, under
+the proper dates, in the Annals of Cedrenus and Zonaras. The Byzantine
+materials are collected by Stritter, (Memoriae Populorum, tom. ii. pars
+ii. p. 441-647;) and the series of their kings is disposed and settled
+by Ducange, (Fam. Byzant. p. 305-318.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Simeonem semi-Graecum esse aiebant, eo quod a pueritia
+Byzantii Demosthenis rhetoricam et Aristotelis syllogismos didicerat,
+(Liutprand, l. iii. c. 8.) He says in another place, Simeon, fortis
+bella tor, Bulgariae praeerat; Christianus, sed vicinis Graecis valde
+inimicus, (l. i. c. 2.)]
+
+[Footnote 15:--Rigidum fera dextera cornu Dum tenet, infregit, truncaque
+a fronte revellit. Ovid (Metamorph. ix. 1-100) has boldly painted the
+combat of the river god and the hero; the native and the stranger.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The ambassador of Otho was provoked by the Greek excuses,
+cum Christophori filiam Petrus Bulgarorum Vasileus conjugem duceret,
+Symphona, id est consonantia scripto juramento firmata sunt, ut omnium
+gentium Apostolis, id est nunciis, penes nos Bulgarorum Apostoli
+praeponantur, honorentur, diligantur, (Liutprand in Legatione, p. 482.)
+See the Ceremoniale of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, tom. i. p. 82, tom.
+ii. p. 429, 430, 434, 435, 443, 444, 446, 447, with the annotations of
+Reiske.]
+
+II. When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, above
+nine hundred years after the Christian aera, they were mistaken by fear
+and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs
+and forerunners of the end of the world. [17] Since the introduction
+of letters, they have explored their own antiquities with a strong and
+laudable impulse of patriotic curiosity. [18] Their rational criticism
+can no longer be amused with a vain pedigree of Attila and the Huns; but
+they complain that their primitive records have perished in the Tartar
+war; that the truth or fiction of their rustic songs is long since
+forgotten; and that the fragments of a rude chronicle [19] must be
+painfully reconciled with the contemporary though foreign intelligence
+of the imperial geographer. [20] Magiar is the national and oriental
+denomination of the Hungarians; but, among the tribes of Scythia, they
+are distinguished by the Greeks under the proper and peculiar name of
+Turks, as the descendants of that mighty people who had conquered
+and reigned from China to the Volga. The Pannonian colony preserved a
+correspondence of trade and amity with the eastern Turks on the confines
+of Persia and after a separation of three hundred and fifty years, the
+missionaries of the king of Hungary discovered and visited their ancient
+country near the banks of the Volga. They were hospitably entertained
+by a people of Pagans and Savages who still bore the name of Hungarians;
+conversed in their native tongue, recollected a tradition of their
+long-lost brethren, and listened with amazement to the marvellous tale
+of their new kingdom and religion. The zeal of conversion was animated
+by the interest of consanguinity; and one of the greatest of
+their princes had formed the generous, though fruitless, design of
+replenishing the solitude of Pannonia by this domestic colony from the
+heart of Tartary. [21] From this primitive country they were driven to
+the West by the tide of war and emigration, by the weight of the more
+distant tribes, who at the same time were fugitives and conquerors.
+[2111] Reason or fortune directed their course towards the frontiers of
+the Roman empire: they halted in the usual stations along the banks of
+the great rivers; and in the territories of Moscow, Kiow, and Moldavia,
+some vestiges have been discovered of their temporary residence. In
+this long and various peregrination, they could not always escape the
+dominion of the stronger; and the purity of their blood was improved or
+sullied by the mixture of a foreign race: from a motive of compulsion,
+or choice, several tribes of the Chazars were associated to the standard
+of their ancient vassals; introduced the use of a second language; and
+obtained by their superior renown the most honorable place in the front
+of battle. The military force of the Turks and their allies marched in
+seven equal and artificial divisions; each division was formed of thirty
+thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven warriors, and the proportion of
+women, children, and servants, supposes and requires at least a million
+of emigrants. Their public counsels were directed by seven vayvods,
+or hereditary chiefs; but the experience of discord and weakness
+recommended the more simple and vigorous administration of a single
+person. The sceptre, which had been declined by the modest Lebedias,
+was granted to the birth or merit of Almus and his son Arpad, and the
+authority of the supreme khan of the Chazars confirmed the engagement of
+the prince and people; of the people to obey his commands, of the prince
+to consult their happiness and glory.
+
+[Footnote 17: A bishop of Wurtzburgh submitted his opinion to a
+reverend abbot; but he more gravely decided, that Gog and Magog were the
+spiritual persecutors of the church; since Gog signifies the root,
+the pride of the Heresiarchs, and Magog what comes from the root, the
+propagation of their sects. Yet these men once commanded the respect of
+mankind, (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 594, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 18: The two national authors, from whom I have derived the
+mos assistance, are George Pray (Dissertationes and Annales veterum Hun
+garorum, &c., Vindobonae, 1775, in folio) and Stephen Katona, (Hist.
+Critica Ducum et Regum Hungariae Stirpis Arpadianae, Paestini,
+1778-1781, 5 vols. in octavo.) The first embraces a large and
+often conjectural space; the latter, by his learning, judgment, and
+perspicuity, deserves the name of a critical historian. * Note: Compare
+Engel Geschichte des Ungrischen Reichs und seiner Neben lander, Halle,
+1797, and Mailath, Geschichte der Magyaren, Wien, 1828. In an appendix
+to the latter work will be found a brief abstract of the speculations
+(for it is difficult to consider them more) which have been advanced by
+the learned, on the origin of the Magyar and Hungarian names. Compare
+vol. vi. p. 35, note.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The author of this Chronicle is styled the notary of King
+Bela. Katona has assigned him to the xiith century, and defends his
+character against the hypercriticism of Pray. This rude annalist must
+have transcribed some historical records, since he could affirm
+with dignity, rejectis falsis fabulis rusticorum, et garrulo cantu
+joculatorum. In the xvth century, these fables were collected
+by Thurotzius, and embellished by the Italian Bonfinius. See the
+Preliminary Discourse in the Hist. Critica Ducum, p. 7-33.]
+
+[Footnote 20: See Constantine de Administrando Imperio, c. 3, 4, 13,
+38-42, Katona has nicely fixed the composition of this work to the
+years 949, 950, 951, (p. 4-7.) The critical historian (p. 34-107)
+endeavors to prove the existence, and to relate the actions, of a first
+duke Almus the father of Arpad, who is tacitly rejected by Constantine.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Pray (Dissert. p. 37-39, &c.) produces and illustrates
+the original passages of the Hungarian missionaries, Bonfinius and
+Aeneas Sylvius.]
+
+[Footnote 2111: In the deserts to the south-east of Astrakhan have been
+found the ruins of a city named Madchar, which proves the residence of
+the Hungarians or Magiar in those regions. Precis de la Geog. Univ. par
+Malte Brun, vol. i. p. 353.--G.----This is contested by Klaproth in
+his Travels, c. xxi. Madschar, (he states) in old Tartar, means
+"stone building." This was a Tartar city mentioned by the Mahometan
+writers.--M.]
+
+With this narrative we might be reasonably content, if the penetration
+of modern learning had not opened a new and larger prospect of the
+antiquities of nations. The Hungarian language stands alone, and as it
+were insulated, among the Sclavonian dialects; but it bears a close and
+clear affinity to the idioms of the Fennic race, [22] of an obsolete and
+savage race, which formerly occupied the northern regions of Asia and
+Europe. [2211] The genuine appellation of Ugri or Igours is found on
+the western confines of China; [23] their migration to the banks of the
+Irtish is attested by Tartar evidence; [24] a similar name and language
+are detected in the southern parts of Siberia; [25] and the remains of
+the Fennic tribes are widely, though thinly scattered from the sources
+of the Oby to the shores of Lapland. [26] The consanguinity of the
+Hungarians and Laplanders would display the powerful energy of climate
+on the children of a common parent; the lively contrast between the bold
+adventurers who are intoxicated with the wines of the Danube, and the
+wretched fugitives who are immersed beneath the snows of the polar
+circle.
+
+Arms and freedom have ever been the ruling, though too often the
+unsuccessful, passion of the Hungarians, who are endowed by nature
+with a vigorous constitution of soul and body. [27] Extreme cold has
+diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of the Laplanders;
+and the arctic tribes, alone among the sons of men, are ignorant of war,
+and unconscious of human blood; a happy ignorance, if reason and virtue
+were the guardians of their peace! [28]
+
+[Footnote 22: Fischer in the Quaestiones Petropolitanae, de Origine
+Ungrorum, and Pray, Dissertat. i. ii. iii. &c., have drawn up several
+comparative tables of the Hungarian with the Fennic dialects. The
+affinity is indeed striking, but the lists are short; the words are
+purposely chosen; and I read in the learned Bayer, (Comment. Academ.
+Petropol. tom. x. p. 374,) that although the Hungarian has adopted many
+Fennic words, (innumeras voces,) it essentially differs toto genio et
+natura.]
+
+[Footnote 2211: The connection between the Magyar language and that of
+the Finns is now almost generally admitted. Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta,
+p. 188, &c. Malte Bran, tom. vi. p. 723, &c.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 23: In the religion of Turfan, which is clearly and minutely
+described by the Chinese Geographers, (Gaubil, Hist. du Grand Gengiscan,
+13; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 31, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: Hist. Genealogique des Tartars, par Abulghazi Bahadur Khan
+partie ii. p. 90-98.]
+
+[Footnote 25: In their journey to Pekin, both Isbrand Ives (Harris's
+Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. ii. p. 920, 921) and Bell
+(Travels, vol. i p. 174) found the Vogulitz in the neighborhood of
+Tobolsky. By the tortures of the etymological art, Ugur and Vogul are
+reduced to the same name; the circumjacent mountains really bear the
+appellation of Ugrian; and of all the Fennic dialects, the Vogulian is
+the nearest to the Hungarian, (Fischer, Dissert. i. p. 20-30. Pray.
+Dissert. ii. p. 31-34.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: The eight tribes of the Fennic race are described in the
+curious work of M. Leveque, (Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination de
+la Russie, tom. ii. p. 361-561.)]
+
+[Footnote 27: This picture of the Hungarians and Bulgarians is chiefly
+drawn from the Tactics of Leo, p. 796-801, and the Latin Annals, which
+are alleged by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori, A.D. 889, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 6, in 12mo. Gustavus
+Adolphus attempted, without success, to form a regiment of Laplanders.
+Grotius says of these arctic tribes, arma arcus et pharetra, sed
+adversus feras, (Annal. l. iv. p. 236;) and attempts, after the manner
+of Tacitus, to varnish with philosophy their brutal ignorance.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.--Part II.
+
+It is the observation of the Imperial author of the Tactics, [29] that
+all the Scythian hordes resembled each other in their pastoral and
+military life, that they all practised the same means of subsistence,
+and employed the same instruments of destruction. But he adds, that
+the two nations of Bulgarians and Hungarians were superior to their
+brethren, and similar to each other in the improvements, however rude,
+of their discipline and government: their visible likeness determines
+Leo to confound his friends and enemies in one common description; and
+the picture may be heightened by some strokes from their contemporaries
+of the tenth century. Except the merit and fame of military prowess,
+all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these
+Barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness
+of numbers and freedom. The tents of the Hungarians were of leather,
+their garments of fur; they shaved their hair, and scarified their
+faces: in speech they were slow, in action prompt, in treaty perfidious;
+and they shared the common reproach of Barbarians, too ignorant to
+conceive the importance of truth, too proud to deny or palliate the
+breach of their most solemn engagements. Their simplicity has been
+praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known;
+whatever they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and their
+sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine. By the definition of
+a pastoral nation, I have recalled a long description of the economy,
+the warfare, and the government that prevail in that state of society;
+I may add, that to fishing, as well as to the chase, the Hungarians
+were indebted for a part of their subsistence; and since they seldom
+cultivated the ground, they must, at least in their new settlements,
+have sometimes practised a slight and unskilful husbandry. In their
+emigrations, perhaps in their expeditions, the host was accompanied
+by thousands of sheep and oxen which increased the cloud of formidable
+dust, and afforded a constant and wholesale supply of milk and animal
+food. A plentiful command of forage was the first care of the general,
+and if the flocks and herds were secure of their pastures, the hardy
+warrior was alike insensible of danger and fatigue. The confusion of men
+and cattle that overspread the country exposed their camp to a nocturnal
+surprise, had not a still wider circuit been occupied by their light
+cavalry, perpetually in motion to discover and delay the approach of the
+enemy. After some experience of the Roman tactics, they adopted the
+use of the sword and spear, the helmet of the soldier, and the iron
+breastplate of his steed: but their native and deadly weapon was the
+Tartar bow: from the earliest infancy their children and servants were
+exercised in the double science of archery and horsemanship; their arm
+was strong; their aim was sure; and in the most rapid career, they were
+taught to throw themselves backwards, and to shoot a volley of arrows
+into the air. In open combat, in secret ambush, in flight, or pursuit,
+they were equally formidable; an appearance of order was maintained
+in the foremost ranks, but their charge was driven forwards by the
+impatient pressure of succeeding crowds. They pursued, headlong and
+rash, with loosened reins and horrific outcries; but, if they fled, with
+real or dissembled fear, the ardor of a pursuing foe was checked and
+chastised by the same habits of irregular speed and sudden evolution.
+In the abuse of victory, they astonished Europe, yet smarting from the
+wounds of the Saracen and the Dane: mercy they rarely asked, and more
+rarely bestowed: both sexes were accused is equally inaccessible to
+pity, and their appetite for raw flesh might countenance the popular
+tale, that they drank the blood, and feasted on the hearts of the slain.
+Yet the Hungarians were not devoid of those principles of justice and
+humanity, which nature has implanted in every bosom. The license of
+public and private injuries was restrained by laws and punishments; and
+in the security of an open camp, theft is the most tempting and
+most dangerous offence. Among the Barbarians there were many, whose
+spontaneous virtue supplied their laws and corrected their manners, who
+performed the duties, and sympathized with the affections, of social
+life.
+
+[Footnote 29: Leo has observed, that the government of the Turks was
+monarchical, and that their punishments were rigorous, (Tactic. p. 896)
+Rhegino (in Chron. A.D. 889) mentions theft as a capital crime, and his
+jurisprudence is confirmed by the original code of St. Stephen, (A.D.
+1016.) If a slave were guilty, he was chastised, for the first time,
+with the loss of his nose, or a fine of five heifers; for the second,
+with the loss of his ears, or a similar fine; for the third, with death;
+which the freeman did not incur till the fourth offence, as his first
+penalty was the loss of liberty, (Katona, Hist. Regum Hungar tom. i. p.
+231, 232.)]
+
+After a long pilgrimage of flight or victory, the Turkish hordes
+approached the common limits of the French and Byzantine empires. Their
+first conquests and final settlements extended on either side of the
+Danube above Vienna, below Belgrade, and beyond the measure of the Roman
+province of Pannonia, or the modern kingdom of Hungary. [30] That ample
+and fertile land was loosely occupied by the Moravians, a Sclavonian
+name and tribe, which were driven by the invaders into the compass of a
+narrow province. Charlemagne had stretched a vague and nominal empire
+as far as the edge of Transylvania; but, after the failure of his
+legitimate line, the dukes of Moravia forgot their obedience and tribute
+to the monarchs of Oriental France. The bastard Arnulph was provoked to
+invite the arms of the Turks: they rushed through the real or figurative
+wall, which his indiscretion had thrown open; and the king of Germany
+has been justly reproached as a traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical
+society of the Christians. During the life of Arnulph, the Hungarians
+were checked by gratitude or fear; but in the infancy of his son Lewis
+they discovered and invaded Bavaria; and such was their Scythian speed,
+that in a single day a circuit of fifty miles was stripped and consumed.
+In the battle of Augsburgh the Christians maintained their advantage
+till the seventh hour of the day, they were deceived and vanquished by
+the flying stratagems of the Turkish cavalry. The conflagration spread
+over the provinces of Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia; and the Hungarians
+[31] promoted the reign of anarchy, by forcing the stoutest barons to
+discipline their vassals and fortify their castles. The origin of walled
+towns is ascribed to this calamitous period; nor could any distance be
+secure against an enemy, who, almost at the same instant, laid in ashes
+the Helvetian monastery of St. Gall, and the city of Bremen, on the
+shores of the northern ocean. Above thirty years the Germanic empire,
+or kingdom, was subject to the ignominy of tribute; and resistance was
+disarmed by the menace, the serious and effectual menace of dragging the
+women and children into captivity, and of slaughtering the males above
+the age of ten years. I have neither power nor inclination to follow the
+Hungarians beyond the Rhine; but I must observe with surprise, that
+the southern provinces of France were blasted by the tempest, and that
+Spain, behind her Pyrenees, was astonished at the approach of these
+formidable strangers. [32] The vicinity of Italy had tempted their early
+inroads; but from their camp on the Brenta, they beheld with some terror
+the apparent strength and populousness of the new discovered country.
+They requested leave to retire; their request was proudly rejected by
+the Italian king; and the lives of twenty thousand Christians paid the
+forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of the West, the
+royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendor; and the preeminence
+of Rome itself was only derived from the relics of the apostles. The
+Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames; forty-three churches were
+consumed; and, after the massacre of the people, they spared about two
+hundred wretches who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a
+vague exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country. In these
+annual excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome and Capua,
+the churches, that yet escaped, resounded with a fearful litany: "O,
+save and deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians!" But the saints
+were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent rolled forwards, till it was
+stopped by the extreme land of Calabria. [33] A composition was offered
+and accepted for the head of each Italian subject; and ten bushels
+of silver were poured forth in the Turkish camp. But falsehood is the
+natural antagonist of violence; and the robbers were defrauded both in
+the numbers of the assessment and the standard of the metal. On the side
+of the East, the Hungarians were opposed in doubtful conflict by the
+equal arms of the Bulgarians, whose faith forbade an alliance with the
+Pagans, and whose situation formed the barrier of the Byzantine empire.
+The barrier was overturned; the emperor of Constantinople beheld the
+waving banners of the Turks; and one of their boldest warriors presumed
+to strike a battle-axe into the golden gate. The arts and treasures
+of the Greeks diverted the assault; but the Hungarians might boast, in
+their retreat, that they had imposed a tribute on the spirit of Bulgaria
+and the majesty of the Caesars. [34] The remote and rapid operations of
+the same campaign appear to magnify the power and numbers of the Turks;
+but their courage is most deserving of praise, since a light troop of
+three or four hundred horse would often attempt and execute the most
+daring inroads to the gates of Thessalonica and Constantinople. At this
+disastrous aera of the ninth and tenth centuries, Europe was afflicted
+by a triple scourge from the North, the East, and the South: the Norman,
+the Hungarian, and the Saracen, sometimes trod the same ground of
+desolation; and these savage foes might have been compared by Homer
+to the two lions growling over the carcass of a mangled stag. [35]
+[Footnote 30: See Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungar. p. 321-352.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Hungarorum gens, cujus omnes fere nationes expertae
+saevitium &c., is the preface of Liutprand, (l. i. c. 2,) who frequently
+expatiated on the calamities of his own times. See l. i. c. 5, l. ii. c.
+1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7; l. iii. c. 1, &c., l. v. c. 8, 15, in Legat. p. 485.
+His colors are glaring but his chronology must be rectified by Pagi and
+Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The three bloody reigns of Arpad, Zoltan, and Toxus, are
+critically illustrated by Katona, (Hist. Ducum, &c. p. 107-499.) His
+diligence has searched both natives and foreigners; yet to the deeds of
+mischief, or glory, I have been able to add the destruction of Bremen,
+(Adam Bremensis, i. 43.)]
+
+[Footnote 33: Muratori has considered with patriotic care the danger and
+resources of Modena. The citizens besought St. Geminianus, their patron,
+to avert, by his intercession, the rabies, flagellum, &c. Nunc te
+rogamus, licet servi pessimi, Ab Ungerorum nos defendas jaculis.The
+bishop erected walls for the public defence, not contra dominos serenos,
+(Antiquitat. Ital. Med. Aevi, tom. i. dissertat. i. p. 21, 22,) and the
+song of the nightly watch is not without elegance or use, (tom. iii.
+dis. xl. p. 709.) The Italian annalist has accurately traced the series
+of their inroads, (Annali d' Italia, tom. vii. p. 365, 367, 398, 401,
+437, 440, tom. viii. p. 19, 41, 52, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 34: Both the Hungarian and Russian annals suppose, that they
+besieged, or attacked, or insulted Constantinople, (Pray, dissertat.
+x. p. 239. Katona, Hist. Ducum, p. 354-360;) and the fact is almost
+confessed by the Byzantine historians, (Leo Grammaticus, p. 506.
+Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 629: ) yet, however glorious to the nation, it is
+denied or doubted by the critical historian, and even by the notary of
+Bela. Their scepticism is meritorious; they could not safely transcribe
+or believe the rusticorum fabulas: but Katona might have given due
+attention to the evidence of Liutprand, Bulgarorum gentem atque daecorum
+tributariam fecerant, (Hist. l. ii. c. 4, p. 435.)]
+
+[Footnote 35:--Iliad, xvi. 756.]
+
+The deliverance of Germany and Christendom was achieved by the Saxon
+princes, Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, who, in two memorable
+battles, forever broke the power of the Hungarians. [36] The valiant
+Henry was roused from a bed of sickness by the invasion of his country;
+but his mind was vigorous and his prudence successful. "My companions,"
+said he, on the morning of the combat, "maintain your ranks, receive on
+your bucklers the first arrows of the Pagans, and prevent their second
+discharge by the equal and rapid career of your lances." They obeyed
+and conquered: and the historical picture of the castle of Merseburgh
+expressed the features, or at least the character, of Henry, who, in
+an age of ignorance, intrusted to the finer arts the perpetuity of his
+name. [37] At the end of twenty years, the children of the Turks who had
+fallen by his sword invaded the empire of his son; and their force is
+defined, in the lowest estimate, at one hundred thousand horse.
+They were invited by domestic faction; the gates of Germany were
+treacherously unlocked; and they spread, far beyond the Rhine and the
+Meuse, into the heart of Flanders. But the vigor and prudence of Otho
+dispelled the conspiracy; the princes were made sensible that
+unless they were true to each other, their religion and country were
+irrecoverably lost; and the national powers were reviewed in the plains
+of Augsburgh. They marched and fought in eight legions, according to
+the division of provinces and tribes; the first, second, and third, were
+composed of Bavarians; the fourth, of Franconians; the fifth, of Saxons,
+under the immediate command of the monarch; the sixth and seventh
+consisted of Swabians; and the eighth legion, of a thousand Bohemians,
+closed the rear of the host. The resources of discipline and valor were
+fortified by the arts of superstition, which, on this occasion, may
+deserve the epithets of generous and salutary. The soldiers were
+purified with a fast; the camp was blessed with the relics of saints
+and martyrs; and the Christian hero girded on his side the sword of
+Constantine, grasped the invincible spear of Charlemagne, and waved
+the banner of St. Maurice, the praefect of the Thebaean legion. But his
+firmest confidence was placed in the holy lance, [38] whose point was
+fashioned of the nails of the cross, and which his father had extorted
+from the king of Burgundy, by the threats of war, and the gift of a
+province. The Hungarians were expected in the front; they secretly
+passed the Lech, a river of Bavaria that falls into the Danube; turned
+the rear of the Christian army; plundered the baggage, and disordered
+the legion of Bohemia and Swabia. The battle was restored by the
+Franconians, whose duke, the valiant Conrad, was pierced with an arrow
+as he rested from his fatigues: the Saxons fought under the eyes of
+their king; and his victory surpassed, in merit and importance, the
+triumphs of the last two hundred years. The loss of the Hungarians was
+still greater in the flight than in the action; they were encompassed by
+the rivers of Bavaria; and their past cruelties excluded them from
+the hope of mercy. Three captive princes were hanged at Ratisbon, the
+multitude of prisoners was slain or mutilated, and the fugitives, who
+presumed to appear in the face of their country, were condemned to
+everlasting poverty and disgrace. [39] Yet the spirit of the nation was
+humbled, and the most accessible passes of Hungary were fortified with
+a ditch and rampart. Adversity suggested the counsels of moderation and
+peace: the robbers of the West acquiesced in a sedentary life; and the
+next generation was taught, by a discerning prince, that far more might
+be gained by multiplying and exchanging the produce of a fruitful soil.
+The native race, the Turkish or Fennic blood, was mingled with new
+colonies of Scythian or Sclavonian origin; [40] many thousands of robust
+and industrious captives had been imported from all the countries of
+Europe; [41] and after the marriage of Geisa with a Bavarian princess,
+he bestowed honors and estates on the nobles of Germany. [42] The son of
+Geisa was invested with the regal title, and the house of Arpad
+reigned three hundred years in the kingdom of Hungary. But the freeborn
+Barbarians were not dazzled by the lustre of the diadem, and the people
+asserted their indefeasible right of choosing, deposing, and punishing
+the hereditary servant of the state.
+
+[Footnote 36: They are amply and critically discussed by Katona, (Hist.
+Dacum, p. 360-368, 427-470.) Liutprand (l. ii. c. 8, 9) is the best
+evidence for the former, and Witichind (Annal. Saxon. l. iii.) of the
+latter; but the critical historian will not even overlook the horn of a
+warrior, which is said to be preserved at Jaz-berid.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Hunc vero triumphum, tam laude quam memoria dignum, ad
+Meresburgum rex in superiori coenaculo domus per Zeus, id est, picturam,
+notari praecepit, adeo ut rem veram potius quam verisimilem videas: a
+high encomium, (Liutprand, l. ii. c. 9.) Another palace in Germany
+had been painted with holy subjects by the order of Charlemagne; and
+Muratori may justly affirm, nulla saecula fuere in quibus pictores
+desiderati fuerint, (Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. ii. dissert.
+xxiv. p. 360, 361.) Our domestic claims to antiquity of ignorance and
+original imperfection (Mr. Walpole's lively words) are of a much more
+recent date, (Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. p. 2, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 38: See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 929, No. 2-5. The lance
+of Christ is taken from the best evidence, Liutprand, (l. iv. c. 12,)
+Sigebert, and the Acts of St. Gerard: but the other military relics
+depend on the faith of the Gesta Anglorum post Bedam, l. ii. c. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungariae, p. 500, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Among these colonies we may distinguish, 1. The Chazars,
+or Cabari, who joined the Hungarians on their march, (Constant. de
+Admin. Imp. c. 39, 40, p. 108, 109.) 2. The Jazyges, Moravians, and
+Siculi, whom they found in the land; the last were perhaps a remnant of
+the Huns of Attila, and were intrusted with the guard of the borders. 3.
+The Russians, who, like the Swiss in France, imparted a general name
+to the royal porters. 4. The Bulgarians, whose chiefs (A.D. 956)
+were invited, cum magna multitudine Hismahelitarum. Had any of those
+Sclavonians embraced the Mahometan religion? 5. The Bisseni and Cumans,
+a mixed multitude of Patzinacites, Uzi, Chazars, &c., who had spread
+to the Lower Danube. The last colony of 40,000 Cumans, A.D. 1239, was
+received and converted by the kings of Hungary, who derived from that
+tribe a new regal appellation, (Pray, Dissert. vi. vii. p. 109-173.
+Katona, Hist. Ducum, p. 95-99, 259-264, 476, 479-483, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 41: Christiani autem, quorum pars major populi est, qui ex
+omni parte mundi illuc tracti sunt captivi, &c. Such was the language
+of Piligrinus, the first missionary who entered Hungary, A.D. 973. Pars
+major is strong. Hist. Ducum, p. 517.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The fideles Teutonici of Geisa are authenticated in old
+charters: and Katona, with his usual industry, has made a fair estimate
+of these colonies, which had been so loosely magnified by the Italian
+Ranzanus, (Hist. Critic. Ducum. p, 667-681.)]
+
+III. The name of Russians [43] was first divulged, in the ninth century,
+by an embassy of Theophilus, emperor of the East, to the emperor of the
+West, Lewis, the son of Charlemagne. The Greeks were accompanied by the
+envoys of the great duke, or chagan, or czar, of the Russians. In their
+journey to Constantinople, they had traversed many hostile nations;
+and they hoped to escape the dangers of their return, by requesting
+the French monarch to transport them by sea to their native country. A
+closer examination detected their origin: they were the brethren of
+the Swedes and Normans, whose name was already odious and formidable in
+France; and it might justly be apprehended, that these Russian strangers
+were not the messengers of peace, but the emissaries of war. They were
+detained, while the Greeks were dismissed; and Lewis expected a more
+satisfactory account, that he might obey the laws of hospitality
+or prudence, according to the interest of both empires. [44] This
+Scandinavian origin of the people, or at least the princes, of Russia,
+may be confirmed and illustrated by the national annals [45] and
+the general history of the North. The Normans, who had so long been
+concealed by a veil of impenetrable darkness, suddenly burst forth in
+the spirit of naval and military enterprise. The vast, and, as it is
+said, the populous regions of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, were crowded
+with independent chieftains and desperate adventurers, who sighed in the
+laziness of peace, and smiled in the agonies of death. Piracy was the
+exercise, the trade, the glory, and the virtue, of the Scandinavian
+youth. Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow limits, they started
+from the banquet, grasped their arms, sounded their horn, ascended
+their vessels, and explored every coast that promised either spoil or
+settlement. The Baltic was the first scene of their naval achievements
+they visited the eastern shores, the silent residence of Fennic and
+Sclavonic tribes, and the primitive Russians of the Lake Ladoga paid
+a tribute, the skins of white squirrels, to these strangers, whom they
+saluted with the title of Varangians [46] or Corsairs. Their superiority
+in arms, discipline, and renown, commanded the fear and reverence of the
+natives. In their wars against the more inland savages, the Varangians
+condescended to serve as friends and auxiliaries, and gradually, by
+choice or conquest, obtained the dominion of a people whom they were
+qualified to protect. Their tyranny was expelled, their valor was again
+recalled, till at length Ruric, a Scandinavian chief, became the father
+of a dynasty which reigned above seven hundred years. His brothers
+extended his influence: the example of service and usurpation was
+imitated by his companions in the southern provinces of Russia; and
+their establishments, by the usual methods of war and assassination,
+were cemented into the fabric of a powerful monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 43: Among the Greeks, this national appellation has a singular
+form, as an undeclinable word, of which many fanciful etymologies have
+been suggested. I have perused, with pleasure and profit, a dissertation
+de Origine Russorum (Comment. Academ. Petropolitanae, tom. viii. p.
+388-436) by Theophilus Sigefrid Bayer, a learned German, who spent
+his life and labors in the service of Russia. A geographical tract of
+D'Anville, de l'Empire de Russie, son Origine, et ses Accroissemens,
+(Paris, 1772, in 12mo.,) has likewise been of use. * Note: The later
+antiquarians of Russia and Germany appear to aquiesce in the authority
+of the monk Nestor, the earliest annalist of Russia, who derives the
+Russians, or Vareques, from Scandinavia. The names of the first founders
+of the Russian monarchy are Scandinavian or Norman. Their language
+(according to Const. Porphyrog. de Administrat. Imper. c. 9) differed
+essentially from the Sclavonian. The author of the Annals of St. Bertin,
+who first names the Russians (Rhos) in the year 839 of his Annals,
+assigns them Sweden for their country. So Liutprand calls the Russians
+the same people as the Normans. The Fins, Laplanders, and Esthonians,
+call the Swedes, to the present day, Roots, Rootsi, Ruotzi, Rootslaue.
+See Thunman, Untersuchungen uber der Geschichte des Estlichen
+Europaischen Volker, p. 374. Gatterer, Comm. Societ. Regbcient. Gotting.
+xiii. p. 126. Schlozer, in his Nestor. Koch. Revolut. de 'Europe, vol.
+i. p. 60. Malte-Brun, Geograph. vol. vi. p. 378.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 44: See the entire passage (dignum, says Bayer, ut aureis in
+tabulis rigatur) in the Annales Bertiniani Francorum, (in Script. Ital.
+Muratori, tom. ii. pars i. p. 525,) A.D. 839, twenty-two years before
+the aera of Ruric. In the xth century, Liutprand (Hist. l. v. c. 6)
+speaks of the Russians and Normans as the same Aquilonares homines of a
+red complexion.]
+
+[Footnote 45: My knowledge of these annals is drawn from M. Leveque,
+Histoire de Russie. Nestor, the first and best of these ancient
+annalists, was a monk of Kiow, who died in the beginning of the xiith
+century; but his Chronicle was obscure, till it was published at
+Petersburgh, 1767, in 4to. Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. xvi.
+Coxe's Travels, vol. ii. p. 184. * Note: The late M. Schlozer has
+translated and added a commentary to the Annals of Nestor;  and his
+work is the mine from which henceforth the history of the North must be
+drawn.--G.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Theophil. Sig. Bayer de Varagis, (for the name is
+differently spelt,) in Comment. Academ. Petropolitanae, tom. iv. p.
+275-311.]
+
+As long as the descendants of Ruric were considered as aliens and
+conquerors, they ruled by the sword of the Varangians, distributed
+estates and subjects to their faithful captains, and supplied their
+numbers with fresh streams of adventurers from the Baltic coast. [47]
+But when the Scandinavian chiefs had struck a deep and permanent root
+into the soil, they mingled with the Russians in blood, religion,
+and language, and the first Waladimir had the merit of delivering his
+country from these foreign mercenaries. They had seated him on the
+throne; his riches were insufficient to satisfy their demands; but
+they listened to his pleasing advice, that they should seek, not a
+more grateful, but a more wealthy, master; that they should embark for
+Greece, where, instead of the skins of squirrels, silk and gold would
+be the recompense of their service. At the same time, the Russian prince
+admonished his Byzantine ally to disperse and employ, to recompense and
+restrain, these impetuous children of the North. Contemporary writers
+have recorded the introduction, name, and character, of the Varangians:
+each day they rose in confidence and esteem; the whole body was
+assembled at Constantinople to perform the duty of guards; and their
+strength was recruited by a numerous band of their countrymen from the
+Island of Thule. On this occasion, the vague appellation of Thule is
+applied to England; and the new Varangians were a colony of English
+and Danes who fled from the yoke of the Norman conqueror. The habits of
+pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of the earth; these
+exiles were entertained in the Byzantine court; and they preserved, till
+the last age of the empire, the inheritance of spotless loyalty, and the
+use of the Danish or English tongue. With their broad and double-edged
+battle-axes on their shoulders, they attended the Greek emperor to the
+temple, the senate, and the hippodrome; he slept and feasted under their
+trusty guard; and the keys of the palace, the treasury, and the capital,
+were held by the firm and faithful hands of the Varangians. [48]
+
+[Footnote 47: Yet, as late as the year 1018, Kiow and Russia were still
+guarded ex fugitivorum servorum robore, confluentium et maxime Danorum.
+Bayer, who quotes (p. 292) the Chronicle of Dithmar of Merseburgh,
+observes, that it was unusual for the Germans to enlist in a foreign
+service.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Ducange has collected from the original authors the state
+and history of the Varangi at Constantinople, (Glossar. Med. et Infimae
+Graecitatis, sub voce. Med. et Infimae Latinitatis, sub voce Vagri. Not.
+ad Alexiad. Annae Comnenae, p. 256, 257, 258. Notes sur Villehardouin,
+p. 296-299.) See likewise the annotations of Reiske to the Ceremoniale
+Aulae Byzant. of Constantine, tom. ii. p. 149, 150. Saxo Grammaticus
+affirms that they spoke Danish; but Codinus maintains them till the
+fifteenth century in the use of their native English.]
+
+In the tenth century, the geography of Scythia was extended far beyond
+the limits of ancient knowledge; and the monarchy of the Russians
+obtains a vast and conspicuous place in the map of Constantine. [49]
+The sons of Ruric were masters of the spacious province of Wolodomir,
+or Moscow; and, if they were confined on that side by the hordes of the
+East, their western frontier in those early days was enlarged to the
+Baltic Sea and the country of the Prussians. Their northern reign
+ascended above the sixtieth degree of latitude over the Hyperborean
+regions, which fancy had peopled with monsters, or clouded with eternal
+darkness. To the south they followed the course of the Borysthenes,
+and approached with that river the neighborhood of the Euxine Sea. The
+tribes that dwelt, or wandered, in this ample circuit were obedient to
+the same conqueror, and insensibly blended into the same nation. The
+language of Russia is a dialect of the Sclavonian; but in the tenth
+century, these two modes of speech were different from each other; and,
+as the Sclavonian prevailed in the South, it may be presumed that the
+original Russians of the North, the primitive subjects of the Varangian
+chief, were a portion of the Fennic race. With the emigration, union, or
+dissolution, of the wandering tribes, the loose and indefinite picture
+of the Scythian desert has continually shifted. But the most ancient
+map of Russia affords some places which still retain their name and
+position; and the two capitals, Novogorod [50] and Kiow, [51] are coeval
+with the first age of the monarchy. Novogorod had not yet deserved
+the epithet of great, nor the alliance of the Hanseatic League, which
+diffused the streams of opulence and the principles of freedom. Kiow
+could not yet boast of three hundred churches, an innumerable people,
+and a degree of greatness and splendor which was compared with
+Constantinople by those who had never seen the residence of the Caesars.
+In their origin, the two cities were no more than camps or fairs, the
+most convenient stations in which the Barbarians might assemble for the
+occasional business of war or trade. Yet even these assemblies announce
+some progress in the arts of society; a new breed of cattle was imported
+from the southern provinces; and the spirit of commercial enterprise
+pervaded the sea and land, from the Baltic to the Euxine, from the mouth
+of the Oder to the port of Constantinople. In the days of idolatry and
+barbarism, the Sclavonic city of Julin was frequented and enriched
+by the Normans, who had prudently secured a free mart of purchase
+and exchange. [52] From this harbor, at the entrance of the Oder, the
+corsair, or merchant, sailed in forty-three days to the eastern shores
+of the Baltic, the most distant nations were intermingled, and the
+holy groves of Curland are said to have been decorated with Grecian and
+Spanish gold. [53] Between the sea and Novogorod an easy intercourse
+was discovered; in the summer, through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable
+river; in the winter season, over the hard and level surface of
+boundless snows. From the neighborhood of that city, the Russians
+descended the streams that fall into the Borysthenes; their canoes, of a
+single tree, were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every species,
+the spoil of their beehives, and the hides of their cattle; and the
+whole produce of the North was collected and discharged in the magazines
+of Kiow. The month of June was the ordinary season of the departure of
+the fleet: the timber of the canoes was framed into the oars and benches
+of more solid and capacious boats; and they proceeded without obstacle
+down the Borysthenes, as far as the seven or thirteen ridges of rocks,
+which traverse the bed, and precipitate the waters, of the river. At
+the more shallow falls it was sufficient to lighten the vessels; but the
+deeper cataracts were impassable; and the mariners, who dragged their
+vessels and their slaves six miles over land, were exposed in this
+toilsome journey to the robbers of the desert. [54] At the first island
+below the falls, the Russians celebrated the festival of their escape:
+at a second, near the mouth of the river, they repaired their shattered
+vessels for the longer and more perilous voyage of the Black Sea. If
+they steered along the coast, the Danube was accessible; with a fair
+wind they could reach in thirty-six or forty hours the opposite shores
+of Anatolia; and Constantinople admitted the annual visit of the
+strangers of the North. They returned at the stated season with a rich
+cargo of corn, wine, and oil, the manufactures of Greece, and the spices
+of India. Some of their countrymen resided in the capital and
+provinces; and the national treaties protected the persons, effects, and
+privileges, of the Russian merchant. [55]
+
+[Footnote 49: The original record of the geography and trade of Russia
+is produced by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Administrat.
+Imperii, c. 2, p. 55, 56, c. 9, p. 59-61, c. 13, p. 63-67, c. 37, p.
+106, c. 42, p. 112, 113,) and illustrated by the diligence of Bayer, (de
+Geographia Russiae vicinarumque Regionum circiter A. C. 948, in Comment.
+Academ. Petropol. tom. ix. p. 367-422, tom. x. p. 371-421,) with the
+aid of the chronicles and traditions of Russia, Scandinavia, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 50: The haughty proverb, "Who can resist God and the great
+Novogorod?" is applied by M. Leveque (Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 60)
+even to the times that preceded the reign of Ruric. In the course of
+his history he frequently celebrates this republic, which was suppressed
+A.D. 1475, (tom. ii. p. 252-266.) That accurate traveller Adam Olearius
+describes (in 1635) the remains of Novogorod, and the route by sea and
+land of the Holstein ambassadors, tom. i. p. 123-129.]
+
+[Footnote 51: In hac magna civitate, quae est caput regni, plus
+trecentae ecclesiae habentur et nundinae octo, populi etiam ignota manus
+(Eggehardus ad A.D. 1018, apud Bayer, tom. ix. p. 412.) He likewise
+quotes (tom. x. p. 397) the words of the Saxon annalist, Cujus (Russioe)
+metropolis est Chive, aemula sceptri Constantinopolitani, quae est
+clarissimum decus Graeciae. The fame of Kiow, especially in the xith
+century, had reached the German and Arabian geographers.]
+
+[Footnote 52: In Odorae ostio qua Scythicas alluit paludes, nobilissima
+civitas Julinum, celeberrimam, Barbaris et Graecis qui sunt in circuitu,
+praestans stationem, est sane maxima omnium quas Europa claudit
+civitatum, (Adam Bremensis, Hist. Eccles. p. 19;) a strange exaggeration
+even in the xith century. The trade of the Baltic, and the Hanseatic
+League, are carefully treated in Anderson's Historical Deduction of
+Commerce; at least, in our language, I am not acquainted with any book
+so satisfactory. * Note: The book of authority is the "Geschichte des
+Hanseatischen Bundes," by George Sartorius, Gottingen, 1803, or rather
+the later edition of that work by M. Lappenberg, 2 vols. 4to., Hamburgh,
+1830.--M. 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 53: According to Adam of Bremen, (de Situ Daniae, p. 58,) the
+old Curland extended eight days' journey along the coast; and by Peter
+Teutoburgicus, (p. 68, A.D. 1326,) Memel is defined as the common
+frontier of Russia, Curland, and Prussia. Aurum ibi plurimum, (says
+Adam,) divinis auguribus atque necromanticis omnes domus sunt plenae....
+a toto orbe ibi responsa petuntur, maxime ab Hispanis (forsan Zupanis,
+id est regulis Lettoviae) et Graecis. The name of Greeks was applied to
+the Russians even before their conversion; an imperfect conversion, if
+they still consulted the wizards of Curland, (Bayer, tom. x. p. 378,
+402, &c. Grotius, Prolegomen. ad Hist. Goth. p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: Constantine only reckons seven cataracts, of which he
+gives the Russian and Sclavonic names; but thirteen are enumerated by
+the Sieur de Beauplan, a French engineer, who had surveyed the
+course and navigation of the Dnieper, or Borysthenes, (Description de
+l'Ukraine, Rouen, 1660, a thin quarto;) but the map is unluckily wanting
+in my copy.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Nestor, apud Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 78-80.
+From the Dnieper, or Borysthenes, the Russians went to Black Bulgaria,
+Chazaria, and Syria. To Syria, how? where? when? The alteration
+is slight; the position of Suania, between Chazaria and Lazica, is
+perfectly suitable; and the name was still used in the xith century,
+(Cedren. tom. ii. p. 770.)]
+
+
+
+Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.--Part III.
+
+But the same communication which had been opened for the benefit, was
+soon abused for the injury, of mankind. In a period of one hundred and
+ninety years, the Russians made four attempts to plunder the treasures
+of Constantinople: the event was various, but the motive, the means, and
+the object, were the same in these naval expeditions. [56] The Russian
+traders had seen the magnificence, and tasted the luxury of the city of
+the Caesars. A marvellous tale, and a scanty supply, excited the desires
+of their savage countrymen: they envied the gifts of nature which their
+climate denied; they coveted the works of art, which they were too lazy
+to imitate and too indigent to purchase; the Varangian princes unfurled
+the banners of piratical adventure, and their bravest soldiers were
+drawn from the nations that dwelt in the northern isles of the ocean.
+[57] The image of their naval armaments was revived in the last century,
+in the fleets of the Cossacks, which issued from the Borysthenes, to
+navigate the same seas for a similar purpose. [58] The Greek appellation
+of monoxyla, or single canoes, might justly be applied to the bottom of
+their vessels. It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech or willow,
+but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and continued on either
+side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the height
+of about twelve, feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with
+two rudders and a mast; to move with sails and oars; and to contain from
+forty to seventy men, with their arms, and provisions of fresh water
+and salt fish. The first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred
+boats; but when the national force was exerted, they might arm against
+Constantinople a thousand or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet was not
+much inferior to the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was magnified in
+the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of its
+strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors been endowed with foresight
+to discern, and vigor to prevent, perhaps they might have sealed with a
+maritime force the mouth of the Borysthenes. Their indolence abandoned
+the coast of Anatolia to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after
+an interval of six hundred years, again infested the Euxine; but as
+long as the capital was respected, the sufferings of a distant province
+escaped the notice both of the prince and the historian. The storm which
+had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond, at length burst on
+the Bosphorus of Thrace; a strait of fifteen miles, in which the rude
+vessels of the Russians might have been stopped and destroyed by a more
+skilful adversary. In their first enterprise [59] under the princes
+of Kiow, they passed without opposition, and occupied the port of
+Constantinople in the absence of the emperor Michael, the son of
+Theophilus. Through a crowd of perils, he landed at the palace-stairs,
+and immediately repaired to a church of the Virgin Mary. [60] By the
+advice of the patriarch, her garment, a precious relic, was drawn from
+the sanctuary and dipped in the sea; and a seasonable tempest, which
+determined the retreat of the Russians, was devoutly ascribed to the
+mother of God. [61] The silence of the Greeks may inspire some doubt of
+the truth, or at least of the importance, of the second attempt by Oleg,
+the guardian of the sons of Ruric. [62] A strong barrier of arms and
+fortifications defended the Bosphorus: they were eluded by the usual
+expedient of drawing the boats over the isthmus; and this simple
+operation is described in the national chronicles, as if the Russian
+fleet had sailed over dry land with a brisk and favorable gale. The
+leader of the third armament, Igor, the son of Ruric, had chosen a
+moment of weakness and decay, when the naval powers of the empire
+were employed against the Saracens. But if courage be not wanting, the
+instruments of defence are seldom deficient. Fifteen broken and decayed
+galleys were boldly launched against the enemy; but instead of the
+single tube of Greek fire usually planted on the prow, the sides
+and stern of each vessel were abundantly supplied with that liquid
+combustible. The engineers were dexterous; the weather was propitious;
+many thousand Russians, who chose rather to be drowned than burnt,
+leaped into the sea; and those who escaped to the Thracian shore were
+inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and soldiers. Yet one third of the
+canoes escaped into shallow water; and the next spring Igor was again
+prepared to retrieve his disgrace and claim his revenge. [63] After
+a long peace, Jaroslaus, the great grandson of Igor, resumed the same
+project of a naval invasion. A fleet, under the command of his son, was
+repulsed at the entrance of the Bosphorus by the same artificial
+flames. But in the rashness of pursuit, the vanguard of the Greeks
+was encompassed by an irresistible multitude of boats and men; their
+provision of fire was probably exhausted; and twenty-four galleys were
+either taken, sunk, or destroyed. [64]
+
+[Footnote 56: The wars of the Russians and Greeks in the ixth, xth, and
+xith centuries, are related in the Byzantine annals, especially those
+of Zonaras and Cedrenus; and all their testimonies are collected in the
+Russica of Stritter, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 939-1044.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Cedrenus in Compend. p. 758]
+
+[Footnote 58: See Beauplan, (Description de l'Ukraine, p. 54-61: )
+his descriptions are lively, his plans accurate, and except the
+circumstances of fire-arms, we may read old Russians for modern
+Cosacks.]
+
+[Footnote 59: It is to be lamented, that Bayer has only given a
+Dissertation de Russorum prima Expeditione Constantinopolitana,
+(Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. vi. p. 265-391.) After disentangling
+some chronological intricacies, he fixes it in the years 864 or 865,
+a date which might have smoothed some doubts and difficulties in the
+beginning of M. Leveque's history.]
+
+[Footnote 60: When Photius wrote his encyclic epistle on the conversion
+of the Russians, the miracle was not yet sufficiently ripe.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Leo Grammaticus, p. 463, 464. Constantini Continuator
+in Script. post Theophanem, p. 121, 122. Symeon Logothet. p. 445, 446.
+Georg. Monach. p. 535, 536. Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 551. Zonaras, tom. ii.
+p. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 62: See Nestor and Nicon, in Leveque's Hist. de Russie, tom.
+i. p. 74-80. Katona (Hist. Ducum, p. 75-79) uses his advantage to
+disprove this Russian victory, which would cloud the siege of Kiow by
+the Hungarians.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Leo Grammaticus, p. 506, 507. Incert. Contin. p. 263, 264
+Symeon Logothet. p. 490, 491. Georg. Monach. p. 588, 589. Cedren tom.
+ii. p. 629. Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 190, 191, and Liutprand, l. v. c. 6,
+who writes from the narratives of his father-in-law, then ambassador at
+Constantinople, and corrects the vain exaggeration of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 64: I can only appeal to Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 758, 759) and
+Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 253, 254;) but they grow more weighty and credible
+as they draw near to their own times.]
+
+Yet the threats or calamities of a Russian war were more frequently
+diverted by treaty than by arms. In these naval hostilities, every
+disadvantage was on the side of the Greeks; their savage enemy afforded
+no mercy: his poverty promised no spoil; his impenetrable retreat
+deprived the conqueror of the hopes of revenge; and the pride or
+weakness of empire indulged an opinion, that no honor could be gained
+or lost in the intercourse with Barbarians. At first their demands were
+high and inadmissible, three pounds of gold for each soldier or mariner
+of the fleet: the Russian youth adhered to the design of conquest and
+glory; but the counsels of moderation were recommended by the hoary
+sages. "Be content," they said, "with the liberal offers of Caesar; it
+is not far better to obtain without a combat the possession of gold,
+silver, silks, and all the objects of our desires? Are we sure of
+victory? Can we conclude a treaty with the sea? We do not tread on the
+land; we float on the abyss of water, and a common death hangs over our
+heads." [65] The memory of these Arctic fleets that seemed to descend
+from the polar circle left deep impression of terror on the Imperial
+city. By the vulgar of every rank, it was asserted and believed, that an
+equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with a
+prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should become masters of
+Constantinople. [66] In our own time, a Russian armament, instead of
+sailing from the Borysthenes, has circumnavigated the continent of
+Europe; and the Turkish capital has been threatened by a squadron of
+strong and lofty ships of war, each of which, with its naval science
+and thundering artillery, could have sunk or scattered a hundred canoes,
+such as those of their ancestors. Perhaps the present generation may yet
+behold the accomplishment of the prediction, of a rare prediction, of
+which the style is unambiguous and the date unquestionable.
+
+[Footnote 65: Nestor, apud Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 87.]
+
+[Footnote 66: This brazen statue, which had been brought from Antioch,
+and was melted down by the Latins, was supposed to represent either
+Joshua or Bellerophon, an odd dilemma. See Nicetas Choniates, (p. 413,
+414,) Codinus, (de Originibus C. P. p. 24,) and the anonymous writer de
+Antiquitat. C. P. (Banduri, Imp. Orient. tom. i. p. 17, 18,) who lived
+about the year 1100. They witness the belief of the prophecy the rest is
+immaterial.]
+
+By land the Russians were less formidable than by sea; and as they
+fought for the most part on foot, their irregular legions must often
+have been broken and overthrown by the cavalry of the Scythian hordes.
+Yet their growing towns, however slight and imperfect, presented a
+shelter to the subject, and a barrier to the enemy: the monarchy of
+Kiow, till a fatal partition, assumed the dominion of the North; and
+the nations from the Volga to the Danube were subdued or repelled by the
+arms of Swatoslaus, [67] the son of Igor, the son of Oleg, the son of
+Ruric. The vigor of his mind and body was fortified by the hardships of
+a military and savage life. Wrapped in a bear-skin, Swatoslaus usually
+slept on the ground, his head reclining on a saddle; his diet was coarse
+and frugal, and, like the heroes of Homer, [68] his meat (it was often
+horse-flesh) was broiled or roasted on the coals. The exercise of war
+gave stability and discipline to his army; and it may be presumed, that
+no soldier was permitted to transcend the luxury of his chief. By an
+embassy from Nicephorus, the Greek emperor, he was moved to undertake
+the conquest of Bulgaria; and a gift of fifteen hundred pounds of gold
+was laid at his feet to defray the expense, or reward the toils, of the
+expedition. An army of sixty thousand men was assembled and embarked;
+they sailed from the Borysthenes to the Danube; their landing was
+effected on the Maesian shore; and, after a sharp encounter, the swords
+of the Russians prevailed against the arrows of the Bulgarian horse. The
+vanquished king sunk into the grave; his children were made captive; and
+his dominions, as far as Mount Haemus, were subdued or ravaged by the
+northern invaders. But instead of relinquishing his prey, and performing
+his engagements, the Varangian prince was more disposed to advance than
+to retire; and, had his ambition been crowned with success, the seat
+of empire in that early period might have been transferred to a more
+temperate and fruitful climate. Swatoslaus enjoyed and acknowledged the
+advantages of his new position, in which he could unite, by exchange or
+rapine, the various productions of the earth. By an easy navigation
+he might draw from Russia the native commodities of furs, wax, and
+hydromed: Hungary supplied him with a breed of horses and the spoils
+of the West; and Greece abounded with gold, silver, and the foreign
+luxuries, which his poverty had affected to disdain. The bands of
+Patzinacites, Chozars, and Turks, repaired to the standard of victory;
+and the ambassador of Nicephorus betrayed his trust, assumed the purple,
+and promised to share with his new allies the treasures of the Eastern
+world. From the banks of the Danube the Russian prince pursued his march
+as far as Adrianople; a formal summons to evacuate the Roman province
+was dismissed with contempt; and Swatoslaus fiercely replied, that
+Constantinople might soon expect the presence of an enemy and a master.
+
+[Footnote 67: The life of Swatoslaus, or Sviatoslaf, or Sphendosthlabus,
+is extracted from the Russian Chronicles by M. Levesque, (Hist. de
+Russie, tom. i. p. 94-107.)]
+
+[Footnote 68: This resemblance may be clearly seen in the ninth book of
+the Iliad, (205-221,) in the minute detail of the cookery of Achilles.
+By such a picture, a modern epic poet would disgrace his work, and
+disgust his reader; but the Greek verses are harmonious--a dead language
+can seldom appear low or familiar; and at the distance of two thousand
+seven hundred years, we are amused with the primitive manners of
+antiquity.]
+
+Nicephorus could no longer expel the mischief which he had introduced;
+but his throne and wife were inherited by John Zimisces, [69] who, in a
+diminutive body, possessed the spirit and abilities of a hero. The
+first victory of his lieutenants deprived the Russians of their foreign
+allies, twenty thousand of whom were either destroyed by the sword,
+or provoked to revolt, or tempted to desert. Thrace was delivered, but
+seventy thousand Barbarians were still in arms; and the legions that had
+been recalled from the new conquests of Syria, prepared, with the return
+of the spring, to march under the banners of a warlike prince, who
+declared himself the friend and avenger of the injured Bulgaria. The
+passes of Mount Haemus had been left unguarded; they were instantly
+occupied; the Roman vanguard was formed of the immortals, (a proud
+imitation of the Persian style;) the emperor led the main body of ten
+thousand five hundred foot; and the rest of his forces followed in slow
+and cautious array, with the baggage and military engines. The first
+exploit of Zimisces was the reduction of Marcianopolis, or Peristhlaba,
+[70] in two days; the trumpets sounded; the walls were scaled; eight
+thousand five hundred Russians were put to the sword; and the sons of
+the Bulgarian king were rescued from an ignominious prison, and invested
+with a nominal diadem. After these repeated losses, Swatoslaus retired
+to the strong post of Drista, on the banks of the Danube, and was
+pursued by an enemy who alternately employed the arms of celerity and
+delay. The Byzantine galleys ascended the river, the legions completed
+a line of circumvallation; and the Russian prince was encompassed,
+assaulted, and famished, in the fortifications of the camp and city.
+Many deeds of valor were performed; several desperate sallies were
+attempted; nor was it till after a siege of sixty-five days that
+Swatoslaus yielded to his adverse fortune. The liberal terms which he
+obtained announce the prudence of the victor, who respected the valor,
+and apprehended the despair, of an unconquered mind. The great duke of
+Russia bound himself, by solemn imprecations, to relinquish all hostile
+designs; a safe passage was opened for his return; the liberty of trade
+and navigation was restored; a measure of corn was distributed to each
+of his soldiers; and the allowance of twenty-two thousand measures
+attests the loss and the remnant of the Barbarians. After a painful
+voyage, they again reached the mouth of the Borysthenes; but their
+provisions were exhausted; the season was unfavorable; they passed
+the winter on the ice; and, before they could prosecute their march,
+Swatoslaus was surprised and oppressed by the neighboring tribes with
+whom the Greeks entertained a perpetual and useful correspondence.
+[71] Far different was the return of Zimisces, who was received in his
+capital like Camillus or Marius, the saviors of ancient Rome. But the
+merit of the victory was attributed by the pious emperor to the mother
+of God; and the image of the Virgin Mary, with the divine infant in her
+arms, was placed on a triumphal car, adorned with the spoils of war,
+and the ensigns of Bulgarian royalty. Zimisces made his public entry on
+horseback; the diadem on his head, a crown of laurel in his hand; and
+Constantinople was astonished to applaud the martial virtues of her
+sovereign. [72]
+
+[Footnote 69: This singular epithet is derived from the Armenian
+language. As I profess myself equally ignorant of these words, I may
+be indulged in the question in the play, "Pray, which of you is the
+interpreter?" From the context, they seem to signify Adolescentulus,
+(Leo Diacon l. iv. Ms. apud Ducange, Glossar. Graec. p. 1570.) * Note:
+Cerbied. the learned Armenian, gives another derivation. There is a city
+called Tschemisch-gaizag, which means a bright or purple sandal, such as
+women wear in the East. He was called Tschemisch-ghigh, (for so his name
+is written in Armenian, from this city, his native place.) Hase. Note to
+Leo Diac. p. 454, in Niebuhr's Byzant. Hist.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 70: In the Sclavonic tongue, the name of Peristhlaba implied
+the great or illustrious city, says Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. vii. p.
+194.) From its position between Mount Haemus and the Lower Danube, it
+appears to fill the ground, or at least the station, of Marcianopolis.
+The situation of Durostolus, or Dristra, is well known and conspicuous,
+(Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. ix. p. 415, 416. D'Anville, Geographie
+Ancienne, tom. i. p. 307, 311.)]
+
+[Footnote 71: The political management of the Greeks, more especially
+with the Patzinacites, is explained in the seven first chapters, de
+Administratione Imperii.]
+
+[Footnote 72: In the narrative of this war, Leo the Deacon (apud Pagi,
+Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 968-973) is more authentic and circumstantial
+than Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 660-683) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. p.
+205-214.) These declaimers have multiplied to 308,000 and 330,000 men,
+those Russian forces, of which the contemporary had given a moderate and
+consistent account.]
+
+Photius of Constantinople, a patriarch, whose ambition was equal to his
+curiosity, congratulates himself and the Greek church on the conversion
+of the Russians. [73] Those fierce and bloody Barbarians had been
+persuaded, by the voice of reason and religion, to acknowledge Jesus for
+their God, the Christian missionaries for their teachers, and the Romans
+for their friends and brethren. His triumph was transient and premature.
+In the various fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian
+chiefs might allow themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of
+baptism; and a Greek bishop, with the name of metropolitan, might
+administer the sacraments in the church of Kiow, to a congregation of
+slaves and natives. But the seed of the gospel was sown on a barren
+soil: many were the apostates, the converts were few; and the baptism
+of Olga may be fixed as the aera of Russian Christianity. [74] A female,
+perhaps of the basest origin, who could revenge the death, and assume
+the sceptre, of her husband Igor, must have been endowed with those
+active virtues which command the fear and obedience of Barbarians. In
+a moment of foreign and domestic peace, she sailed from Kiow to
+Constantinople; and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has
+described, with minute diligence, the ceremonial of her reception in his
+capital and palace. The steps, the titles, the salutations, the banquet,
+the presents, were exquisitely adjusted to gratify the vanity of the
+stranger, with due reverence to the superior majesty of the purple.
+[75] In the sacrament of baptism, she received the venerable name of the
+empress Helena; and her conversion might be preceded or followed by her
+uncle, two interpreters, sixteen damsels of a higher, and eighteen of
+a lower rank, twenty-two domestics or ministers, and forty-four Russian
+merchants, who composed the retinue of the great princess Olga. After
+her return to Kiow and Novogorod, she firmly persisted in her new
+religion; but her labors in the propagation of the gospel were not
+crowned with success; and both her family and nation adhered with
+obstinacy or indifference to the gods of their fathers. Her son
+Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn and ridicule of his companions;
+and her grandson Wolodomir devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and
+decorate the monuments of ancient worship. The savage deities of the
+North were still propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice of
+the victim, a citizen was preferred to a stranger, a Christian to an
+idolater; and the father, who defended his son from the sacerdotal
+knife, was involved in the same doom by the rage of a fanatic tumult.
+Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga had made a deep, though
+secret, impression in the minds of the prince and people: the Greek
+missionaries continued to preach, to dispute, and to baptize: and the
+ambassadors or merchants of Russia compared the idolatry of the woods
+with the elegant superstition of Constantinople. They had gazed with
+admiration on the dome of St. Sophia: the lively pictures of saints
+and martyrs, the riches of the altar, the number and vestments of the
+priests, the pomp and order of the ceremonies; they were edified by the
+alternate succession of devout silence and harmonious song; nor was it
+difficult to persuade them, that a choir of angels descended each day
+from heaven to join in the devotion of the Christians. [76] But the
+conversion of Wolodomir was determined, or hastened, by his desire of a
+Roman bride. At the same time, and in the city of Cherson, the rites of
+baptism and marriage were celebrated by the Christian pontiff: the city
+he restored to the emperor Basil, the brother of his spouse; but the
+brazen gates were transported, as it is said, to Novogorod, and erected
+before the first church as a trophy of his victory and faith. [77] At
+his despotic command, Peround, the god of thunder, whom he had so long
+adored, was dragged through the streets of Kiow; and twelve sturdy
+Barbarians battered with clubs the misshapen image, which was
+indignantly cast into the waters of the Borysthenes. The edict of
+Wolodomir had proclaimed, that all who should refuse the rites of
+baptism would be treated as the enemies of God and their prince; and the
+rivers were instantly filled with many thousands of obedient Russians,
+who acquiesced in the truth and excellence of a doctrine which had been
+embraced by the great duke and his boyars. In the next generation, the
+relics of Paganism were finally extirpated; but as the two brothers
+of Wolodomir had died without baptism, their bones were taken from the
+grave, and sanctified by an irregular and posthumous sacrament.
+
+[Footnote 73: Phot. Epistol. ii. No. 35, p. 58, edit. Montacut. It was
+unworthy of the learning of the editor to mistake the Russian nation,
+for a war-cry of the Bulgarians, nor did it become the enlightened
+patriarch to accuse the Sclavonian idolaters. They were neither Greeks
+nor Atheists.]
+
+[Footnote 74: M. Levesque has extracted, from old chronicles and modern
+researches, the most satisfactory account of the religion of the Slavi,
+and the conversion of Russia, (Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 35-54, 59,
+92, 92, 113-121, 124-129, 148, 149, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 75: See the Ceremoniale Aulae Byzant. tom. ii. c. 15, p.
+343-345: the style of Olga, or Elga. For the chief of Barbarians the
+Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an Athenian magistrate, with a
+female termination, which would have astonished the ear of Demosthenes.]
+
+[Footnote 76: See an anonymous fragment published by Banduri, (Imperium
+Orientale, tom. ii. p. 112, 113, de Conversione Russorum.)]
+
+[Footnote 77: Cherson, or Corsun, is mentioned by Herberstein (apud Pagi
+tom. iv. p. 56) as the place of Wolodomir's baptism and marriage; and
+both the tradition and the gates are still preserved at Novogorod. Yet
+an observing traveller transports the brazen gates from Magdeburgh in
+Germany, (Coxe's Travels into Russia, &c., vol. i. p. 452;) and quotes
+an inscription, which seems to justify his opinion. The modern reader
+must not confound this old Cherson of the Tauric or Crimaean peninsula,
+with a new city of the same name, which has arisen near the mouth of the
+Borysthenes, and was lately honored by the memorable interview of the
+empress of Russia with the emperor of the West.]
+
+In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of the Christian aera,
+the reign of the gospel and of the church was extended over Bulgaria,
+Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Russia.
+[78] The triumphs of apostolic zeal were repeated in the iron age of
+Christianity; and the northern and eastern regions of Europe submitted
+to a religion, more different in theory than in practice, from the
+worship of their native idols. A laudable ambition excited the
+monks both of Germany and Greece, to visit the tents and huts of the
+Barbarians: poverty, hardships, and dangers, were the lot of the first
+missionaries; their courage was active and patient; their motive pure
+and meritorious; their present reward consisted in the testimony of
+their conscience and the respect of a grateful people; but the fruitful
+harvest of their toils was inherited and enjoyed by the proud and
+wealthy prelates of succeeding times. The first conversions were free
+and spontaneous: a holy life and an eloquent tongue were the only arms
+of the missionaries; but the domestic fables of the Pagans were silenced
+by the miracles and visions of the strangers; and the favorable temper
+of the chiefs was accelerated by the dictates of vanity and interest.
+The leaders of nations, who were saluted with the titles of kings and
+saints, [79] held it lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith on
+their subjects and neighbors; the coast of the Baltic, from Holstein to
+the Gulf of Finland, was invaded under the standard of the cross; and
+the reign of idolatry was closed by the conversion of Lithuania in the
+fourteenth century. Yet truth and candor must acknowledge, that the
+conversion of the North imparted many temporal benefits both to the old
+and the new Christians. The rage of war, inherent to the human species,
+could not be healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and peace; and
+the ambition of Catholic princes has renewed in every age the calamities
+of hostile contention. But the admission of the Barbarians into the
+pale of civil and ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the
+depredations, by sea and land, of the Normans, the Hungarians, and
+the Russians, who learned to spare their brethren and cultivate their
+possessions. [80] The establishment of law and order was promoted by
+the influence of the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were
+introduced into the savage countries of the globe. The liberal piety
+of the Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the
+Greeks, to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants: the dome
+and the paintings of St. Sophia were rudely copied in the churches of
+Kiow and Novogorod: the writings of the fathers were translated into
+the Sclavonic idiom; and three hundred noble youths were invited or
+compelled to attend the lessons of the college of Jaroslaus. It should
+appear that Russia might have derived an early and rapid improvement
+from her peculiar connection with the church and state of
+Constantinople, which at that age so justly despised the ignorance of
+the Latins. But the Byzantine nation was servile, solitary, and verging
+to a hasty decline: after the fall of Kiow, the navigation of the
+Borysthenes was forgotten; the great princes of Wolodomir and Moscow
+were separated from the sea and Christendom; and the divided monarchy
+was oppressed by the ignominy and blindness of Tartar servitude. [81]
+The Sclavonic and Scandinavian kingdoms, which had been converted by
+the Latin missionaries, were exposed, it is true, to the spiritual
+jurisdiction and temporal claims of the popes; [82] but they were united
+in language and religious worship, with each other, and with Rome;
+they imbibed the free and generous spirit of the European republic,
+and gradually shared the light of knowledge which arose on the western
+world.
+
+[Footnote 78: Consult the Latin text, or English version, of Mosheim's
+excellent History of the Church, under the first head or section of each
+of these centuries.]
+
+[Footnote 79: In the year 1000, the ambassadors of St. Stephen received
+from Pope Silvester the title of King of Hungary, with a diadem of Greek
+workmanship. It had been designed for the duke of Poland: but the Poles,
+by their own confession, were yet too barbarous to deserve an angelical
+and apostolical crown. (Katona, Hist. Critic Regum Stirpis Arpadianae,
+tom. i. p. 1-20.)]
+
+[Footnote 80: Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen, (A.D. 1080,)
+of which the substance is agreeable to truth: Ecce illa ferocissima
+Danorum, &c., natio..... jamdudum novit in Dei laudibus Alleluia
+resonare..... Ecce populus ille piraticus ..... suis nunc finibus
+contentus est. Ecce patria horribilis semper inaccessa propter cultum
+idolorum... praedicatores veritatis ubique certatim admittit, &c., &c.,
+(de Situ Daniae, &c., p. 40, 41, edit. Elzevir; a curious and original
+prospect of the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity.)]
+
+[Footnote 81: The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which was
+ruined by the Tartars in 1240. Moscow became the seat of empire in the
+xivth century. See the 1st and 2d volumes of Levesque's History, and Mr.
+Coxe's Travels into the North, tom. i. p. 241, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 82: The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the reverential
+expressions of regnum oblatum, debitam obedientiam, &c., which were most
+rigorously interpreted by Gregory VII.; and the Hungarian Catholics are
+distressed between the sanctity of the pope and the independence of the
+crown, (Katona, Hist. Critica, tom. i. p. 20-25, tom. ii. p. 304, 346,
+360, &c.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.--Part I.
+
+     The Saracens, Franks, And Greeks, In Italy.--First
+     Adventures And Settlement Of The Normans.--Character And
+     Conquest Of Robert Guiscard, Duke Of Apulia--Deliverance Of
+     Sicily By His Brother Roger.--Victories Of Robert Over The
+     Emperors Of The East And West.--Roger, King Of Sicily,
+     Invades Africa And Greece.--The Emperor Manuel Comnenus.--
+     Wars Of The Greeks And Normans.--Extinction Of The Normans.
+
+The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the
+Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy. [1] The southern
+provinces, which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for
+the most part, to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum; [2]
+so powerful in war, that they checked for a moment the genius of
+Charlemagne; so liberal in peace, that they maintained in their capital
+an academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians. The division of
+this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento,
+Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of
+the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common
+inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was
+exposed to a repetition of wounds, which the invaders were not capable
+of healing by the union and tranquility of a perfect conquest. Their
+frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo,
+and were entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of
+Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coast;
+and even the Arabs of Andalusia were sometimes tempted to assist or
+oppose the Moslems of an adverse sect. In the revolution of human
+events, a new ambuscade was concealed in the Caudine Forks, the fields
+of Cannae were bedewed a second time with the blood of the Africans, and
+the sovereign of Rome again attacked or defended the walls of Capua and
+Tarentum. A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands
+the entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations
+provoked the resentment, and conciliated the union of the two emperors.
+An offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the Macedonian, the
+first of his race, and Lewis the great-grandson of Charlemagne; [3] and
+each party supplied the deficiencies of his associate. It would have
+been imprudent in the Byzantine monarch to transport his stationary
+troops of Asia to an Italian campaign; and the Latin arms would have
+been insufficient if his superior navy had not occupied the mouth of the
+Gulf. The fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks,
+and by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of
+four years, the Arabian emir submitted to the clemency of Lewis, who
+commanded in person the operations of the siege. This important conquest
+had been achieved by the concord of the East and West; but their recent
+amity was soon imbittered by the mutual complaints of jealousy and
+pride. The Greeks assumed as their own the merit of the conquest and
+the pomp of the triumph; extolled the greatness of their powers,
+and affected to deride the intemperance and sloth of the handful of
+Barbarians who appeared under the banners of the Carlovingian prince.
+His reply is expressed with the eloquence of indignation and truth: "We
+confess the magnitude of your preparation," says the great-grandson of
+Charlemagne. "Your armies were indeed as numerous as a cloud of summer
+locusts, who darken the day, flap their wings, and, after a short
+flight, tumble weary and breathless to the ground. Like them, ye sunk
+after a feeble effort; ye were vanquished by your own cowardice; and
+withdrew from the scene of action to injure and despoil our Christian
+subjects of the Sclavonian coast. We were few in number, and why were
+we few? Because, after a tedious expectation of your arrival, I had
+dismissed my host, and retained only a chosen band of warriors to
+continue the blockade of the city. If they indulged their hospitable
+feasts in the face of danger and death, did these feasts abate the vigor
+of their enterprise? Is it by your fasting that the walls of Bari have
+been overturned? Did not these valiant Franks, diminished as they were
+by languor and fatigue, intercept and vanish the three most powerful
+emirs of the Saracens? and did not their defeat precipitate the fall
+of the city? Bari is now fallen; Tarentum trembles; Calabria will be
+delivered; and, if we command the sea, the Island of Sicily may be
+rescued from the hands of the infidels. My brother," accelerate (a
+name most offensive to the vanity of the Greek,) "accelerate your naval
+succors, respect your allies, and distrust your flatterers." [4]
+
+[Footnote 1: For the general history of Italy in the ixth and xth
+centuries, I may properly refer to the vth, vith, and viith books of
+Sigonius de Regno Italiae, (in the second volume of his works, Milan,
+1732;) the Annals of Baronius, with the criticism of Pagi; the viith and
+viiith books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli of Giannone; the
+viith and viiith volumes (the octavo edition) of the Annali d' Italia
+of Muratori, and the 2d volume of the Abrege Chronologique of M. de St.
+Marc, a work which, under a superficial title, contains much genuine
+learning and industry. But my long-accustomed reader will give me credit
+for saying, that I myself have ascended to the fountain head, as often
+as such ascent could be either profitable or possible; and that I have
+diligently turned over the originals in the first volumes of Muratori's
+great collection of the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Camillo Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last century,
+has illustrated the history of the duchy of Beneventum, in his two books
+Historia Principum Longobardorum, in the Scriptores of Muratori tom. ii.
+pars i. p. 221-345, and tom. v. p 159-245.]
+
+[Footnote 3: See Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Thematibus, l. ii. c xi. in
+Vit Basil. c. 55, p. 181.]
+
+[Footnote 4: The oriental epistle of the emperor Lewis II. to the
+emperor Basil, a curious record of the age, was first published by
+Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 871, No. 51-71,) from the Vatican Ms.
+of Erchempert, or rather of the anonymous historian of Salerno.] These
+lofty hopes were soon extinguished by the death of Lewis, and the decay
+of the Carlovingian house; and whoever might deserve the honor, the
+Greek emperors, Basil, and his son Leo, secured the advantage, of the
+reduction of Bari The Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or
+compelled to acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from Mount
+Garganus to the Bay of Salerno, leaves the far greater part of the
+kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the Eastern empire. Beyond that
+line, the dukes or republics of Amalfi [5] and Naples, who had never
+forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in the neighborhood of
+their lawful sovereign; and Amalfi was enriched by supplying Europe
+with the produce and manufactures of Asia. But the Lombard princes
+of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, [6] were reluctantly torn from the
+communion of the Latin world, and too often violated their oaths of
+servitude and tribute. The city of Bari rose to dignity and wealth, as
+the metropolis of the new theme or province of Lombardy: the title of
+patrician, and afterwards the singular name of Catapan, [7] was assigned
+to the supreme governor; and the policy both of the church and state was
+modelled in exact subordination to the throne of Constantinople. As long
+as the sceptre was disputed by the princes of Italy, their efforts were
+feeble and adverse; and the Greeks resisted or eluded the forces of
+Germany, which descended from the Alps under the Imperial standard of
+the Othos. The first and greatest of those Saxon princes was compelled
+to relinquish the siege of Bari: the second, after the loss of his
+stoutest bishops and barons, escaped with honor from the bloody field of
+Crotona. On that day the scale of war was turned against the Franks by
+the valor of the Saracens. [8] These corsairs had indeed been driven
+by the Byzantine fleets from the fortresses and coasts of Italy; but a
+sense of interest was more prevalent than superstition or resentment,
+and the caliph of Egypt had transported forty thousand Moslems to the
+aid of his Christian ally. The successors of Basil amused themselves
+with the belief, that the conquest of Lombardy had been achieved, and
+was still preserved by the justice of their laws, the virtues of their
+ministers, and the gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from
+anarchy and oppression. A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth
+into the palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery were
+dispelled by the easy and rapid success of the Norman adventurers.
+
+[Footnote 5: See an excellent Dissertation de Republica Amalphitana,
+in the Appendix (p. 1-42) of Henry Brencman's Historia Pandectarum,
+(Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and protection
+prinminibus Capuano et Beneventano, servis meis, quos oppugnare
+dispono.... Nova (potius nota) res est quod eorum patres et avi nostro
+Imperio tributa dederunt, (Liutprand, in Legat. p. 484.) Salerno is not
+mentioned, yet the prince changed his party about the same time, and
+Camillo Pellegrino (Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 285) has
+nicely discerned this change in the style of the anonymous Chronicle.
+On the rational ground of history and language, Liutprand (p. 480) had
+asserted the Latin claim to Apulia and Calabria.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange (catapanus,)
+and his notes on the Alexias, (p. 275.) Against the contemporary notion,
+which derives it from juxta omne, he treats it as a corruption of the
+Latin capitaneus. Yet M. de St. Marc has accurately observed (Abrege
+Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 924) that in this age the capitanei were not
+captains, but only nobles of the first rank, the great valvassors of
+Italy.]
+
+[Footnote 8: (the Lombards), (Leon. Tactic. c. xv. p. 741.) The little
+Chronicle of Beneventum (tom. ii. pars i. p. 280) gives a far different
+character of the Greeks during the five years (A.D. 891-896) that Leo
+was master of the city.]
+
+The revolution of human affairs had produced in Apulia and Calabria a
+melancholy contrast between the age of Pythagoras and the tenth century
+of the Christian aera. At the former period, the coast of Great Greece
+(as it was then styled) was planted with free and opulent cities: these
+cities were peopled with soldiers, artists, and philosophers; and the
+military strength of Tarentum; Sybaris, or Crotona, was not inferior to
+that of a powerful kingdom. At the second aera, these once flourishing
+provinces were clouded with ignorance impoverished by tyranny, and
+depopulated by Barbarian war nor can we severely accuse the exaggeration
+of a contemporary, that a fair and ample district was reduced to the
+same desolation which had covered the earth after the general deluge.
+[9] Among the hostilities of the Arabs, the Franks, and the Greeks, in
+the southern Italy, I shall select two or three anecdotes expressive
+of their national manners. 1. It was the amusement of the Saracens to
+profane, as well as to pillage, the monasteries and churches. At
+the siege of Salerno, a Mussulman chief spread his couch on the
+communion-table, and on that altar sacrificed each night the virginity
+of a Christian nun. As he wrestled with a reluctant maid, a beam in the
+roof was accidentally or dexterously thrown down on his head; and the
+death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of Christ, which was
+at length awakened to the defence of his faithful spouse. [10] 2. The
+Saracens besieged the cities of Beneventum and Capua: after a vain
+appeal to the successors of Charlemagne, the Lombards implored the
+clemency and aid of the Greek emperor. [11] A fearless citizen dropped
+from the walls, passed the intrenchments, accomplished his commission,
+and fell into the hands of the Barbarians as he was returning with the
+welcome news. They commanded him to assist their enterprise, and deceive
+his countrymen, with the assurance that wealth and honors should be the
+reward of his falsehood, and that his sincerity would be punished with
+immediate death. He affected to yield, but as soon as he was conducted
+within hearing of the Christians on the rampart, "Friends and brethren,"
+he cried with a loud voice, "be bold and patient, maintain the city;
+your sovereign is informed of your distress, and your deliverers are
+at hand. I know my doom, and commit my wife and children to your
+gratitude." The rage of the Arabs confirmed his evidence; and the
+self-devoted patriot was transpierced with a hundred spears. He deserves
+to live in the memory of the virtuous, but the repetition of the same
+story in ancient and modern times, may sprinkle some doubts on the
+reality of this generous deed. [12] 3. The recital of a third incident
+may provoke a smile amidst the horrors of war. Theobald, marquis of
+Camerino and Spoleto, [13] supported the rebels of Beneventum; and his
+wanton cruelty was not incompatible in that age with the character of a
+hero. His captives of the Greek nation or party were castrated without
+mercy, and the outrage was aggravated by a cruel jest, that he wished
+to present the emperor with a supply of eunuchs, the most precious
+ornaments of the Byzantine court. The garrison of a castle had been
+defeated in a sally, and the prisoners were sentenced to the customary
+operation. But the sacrifice was disturbed by the intrusion of a frantic
+female, who, with bleeding cheeks dishevelled hair, and importunate
+clamors, compelled the marquis to listen to her complaint. "Is it thus,"
+she cried, "ye magnanimous heroes, that ye wage war against women,
+against women who have never injured ye, and whose only arms are the
+distaff and the loom?" Theobald denied the charge, and protested that,
+since the Amazons, he had never heard of a female war. "And how," she
+furiously exclaimed, "can you attack us more directly, how can you wound
+us in a more vital part, than by robbing our husbands of what we most
+dearly cherish, the source of our joys, and the hope of our posterity?
+The plunder of our flocks and herds I have endured without a murmur, but
+this fatal injury, this irreparable loss, subdues my patience, and calls
+aloud on the justice of heaven and earth." A general laugh applauded her
+eloquence; the savage Franks, inaccessible to pity, were moved by
+her ridiculous, yet rational despair; and with the deliverance of the
+captives, she obtained the restitution of her effects. As she returned
+in triumph to the castle, she was overtaken by a messenger, to inquire,
+in the name of Theobald, what punishment should be inflicted on her
+husband, were he again taken in arms. "Should such," she answered
+without hesitation, "be his guilt and misfortune, he has eyes, and a
+nose, and hands, and feet. These are his own, and these he may deserve
+to forfeit by his personal offences. But let my lord be pleased to spare
+what his little handmaid presumes to claim as her peculiar and lawful
+property." [14]
+
+[Footnote 9: Calabriam adeunt, eamque inter se divisam reperientes
+funditus depopulati sunt, (or depopularunt,) ita ut deserta sit velut in
+diluvio. Such is the text of Herempert, or Erchempert, according to the
+two editions of Carraccioli (Rer. Italic. Script. tom. v. p. 23) and
+of Camillo Pellegrino, (tom. ii. pars i. p. 246.) Both were extremely
+scarce, when they were reprinted by Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 874, No. 2) has drawn this
+story from a Ms. of Erchempert, who died at Capua only fifteen years
+after the event. But the cardinal was deceived by a false title, and
+we can only quote the anonymous Chronicle of Salerno, (Paralipomena, c.
+110,) composed towards the end of the xth century, and published in the
+second volume of Muratori's Collection. See the Dissertations of Camillo
+Pellegrino, tom. ii. pars i. p. 231-281, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 58, p. 183)
+is the original author of this story. He places it under the reigns of
+Basil and Lewis II.; yet the reduction of Beneventum by the Greeks is
+dated A.D. 891, after the decease of both of those princes.]
+
+[Footnote 12: In the year 663, the same tragedy is described by Paul the
+Deacon, (de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 7, 8, p. 870, 871, edit. Grot.,)
+under the walls of the same city of Beneventum. But the actors are
+different, and the guilt is imputed to the Greeks themselves, which in
+the Byzantine edition is applied to the Saracens. In the late war in
+Germany, M. D'Assas, a French officer of the regiment of Auvergne, is
+said to have devoted himself in a similar manner. His behavior is the
+more heroic, as mere silence was required by the enemy who had made him
+prisoner, (Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV. c. 33, tom. ix. p. 172.)]
+
+[Footnote 13: Theobald, who is styled Heros by Liutprand, was properly
+duke of Spoleto and marquis of Camerino, from the year 926 to 935. The
+title and office of marquis (commander of the march or frontier) was
+introduced into Italy by the French emperors, (Abrege Chronologique,
+tom. ii. p. 545-732 &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 14: Liutprand, Hist. l. iv. c. iv. in the Rerum Italic.
+Script. tom. i. pars i. p. 453, 454. Should the licentiousness of the
+tale be questioned, I may exclaim, with poor Sterne, that it is hard
+if I may not transcribe with caution what a bishop could write without
+scruple What if I had translated, ut viris certetis testiculos amputare,
+in quibus nostri corporis refocillatio, &c.?]
+
+The establishment of the Normans in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily
+[15] is an event most romantic in its origin, and in its consequences
+most important both to Italy and the Eastern empire. The broken
+provinces of the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, were exposed to every
+invader, and every sea and land were invaded by the adventurous spirit
+of the Scandinavian pirates. After a long indulgence of rapine and
+slaughter, a fair and ample territory was accepted, occupied, and named,
+by the Normans of France: they renounced their gods for the God of the
+Christians; [16] and the dukes of Normandy acknowledged themselves
+the vassals of the successors of Charlemagne and Capet. The savage
+fierceness which they had brought from the snowy mountains of Norway was
+refined, without being corrupted, in a warmer climate; the companions
+of Rollo insensibly mingled with the natives; they imbibed the manners,
+language, [17] and gallantry, of the French nation; and in a
+martial age, the Normans might claim the palm of valor and glorious
+achievements. Of the fashionable superstitions, they embraced with ardor
+the pilgrimages of Rome, Italy, and the Holy Land. [171] In this active
+devotion, the minds and bodies were invigorated by exercise: danger was
+the incentive, novelty the recompense; and the prospect of the world was
+decorated by wonder, credulity, and ambitious hope. They confederated
+for their mutual defence; and the robbers of the Alps, who had been
+allured by the garb of a pilgrim, were often chastised by the arm of a
+warrior. In one of these pious visits to the cavern of Mount Garganus
+in Apulia, which had been sanctified by the apparition of the archangel
+Michael, [18] they were accosted by a stranger in the Greek habit, but
+who soon revealed himself as a rebel, a fugitive, and a mortal foe of
+the Greek empire. His name was Melo; a noble citizen of Bari, who, after
+an unsuccessful revolt, was compelled to seek new allies and avengers
+of his country. The bold appearance of the Normans revived his hopes
+and solicited his confidence: they listened to the complaints, and
+still more to the promises, of the patriot. The assurance of wealth
+demonstrated the justice of his cause; and they viewed, as the
+inheritance of the brave, the fruitful land which was oppressed by
+effeminate tyrants. On their return to Normandy, they kindled a spark of
+enterprise, and a small but intrepid band was freely associated for the
+deliverance of Apulia. They passed the Alps by separate roads, and in
+the disguise of pilgrims; but in the neighborhood of Rome they were
+saluted by the chief of Bari, who supplied the more indigent with arms
+and horses, and instantly led them to the field of action. In the first
+conflict, their valor prevailed; but in the second engagement they
+were overwhelmed by the numbers and military engines of the Greeks,
+and indignantly retreated with their faces to the enemy. [1811] The
+unfortunate Melo ended his life a suppliant at the court of Germany: his
+Norman followers, excluded from their native and their promised land,
+wandered among the hills and valleys of Italy, and earned their daily
+subsistence by the sword. To that formidable sword the princes of Capua,
+Beneventum, Salerno, and Naples, alternately appealed in their domestic
+quarrels; the superior spirit and discipline of the Normans gave victory
+to the side which they espoused; and their cautious policy observed
+the balance of power, lest the preponderance of any rival state should
+render their aid less important, and their service less profitable.
+Their first asylum was a strong camp in the depth of the marshes of
+Campania: but they were soon endowed by the liberality of the duke of
+Naples with a more plentiful and permanent seat. Eight miles from his
+residence, as a bulwark against Capua, the town of Aversa was built
+and fortified for their use; and they enjoyed as their own the corn and
+fruits, the meadows and groves, of that fertile district. The report of
+their success attracted every year new swarms of pilgrims and soldiers:
+the poor were urged by necessity; the rich were excited by hope; and
+the brave and active spirits of Normandy were impatient of ease and
+ambitious of renown. The independent standard of Aversa afforded shelter
+and encouragement to the outlaws of the province, to every fugitive who
+had escaped from the injustice or justice of his superiors; and these
+foreign associates were quickly assimilated in manners and language to
+the Gallic colony. The first leader of the Normans was Count Rainulf;
+and, in the origin of society, preeminence of rank is the reward and the
+proof of superior merit. [19] [1911]
+
+[Footnote 15: The original monuments of the Normans in Italy are
+collected in the vth volume of Muratori; and among these we may
+distinguish the poems of William Appulus (p. 245-278) and the history
+of Galfridus (Jeffrey) Malaterra, (p. 537-607.) Both were natives of
+France, but they wrote on the spot, in the age of the first conquerors
+(before A.D. 1100,) and with the spirit of freemen. It is needless to
+recapitulate the compilers and critics of Italian history, Sigonius,
+Baronius, Pagi, Giannone, Muratori, St. Marc, &c., whom I have always
+consulted, and never copied. * Note: M. Goutier d'Arc has discovered
+a translation of the Chronicle of Aime, monk of Mont Cassino, a
+contemporary of the first Norman invaders of Italy. He has made use of
+it in his Histoire des Conquetes des Normands, and added a summary of
+its contents. This work was quoted by later writers, but was supposed to
+have been entirely lost.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Some of the first converts were baptized ten or twelve
+times, for the sake of the white garment usually given at this ceremony.
+At the funeral of Rollo, the gifts to monasteries for the repose of his
+soul were accompanied by a sacrifice of one hundred captives. But in a
+generation or two, the national change was pure and general.]
+
+[Footnote 17: The Danish language was still spoken by the Normans
+of Bayeux on the sea-coast, at a time (A.D. 940) when it was already
+forgotten at Rouen, in the court and capital. Quem (Richard I.)
+confestim pater Baiocas mittens Botoni militiae suae principi nutriendum
+tradidit, ut, ibi lingua eruditus Danica, suis exterisque hominibus
+sciret aperte dare responsa, (Wilhelm. Gemeticensis de Ducibus
+Normannis, l. iii. c. 8, p. 623, edit. Camden.) Of the vernacular and
+favorite idiom of William the Conqueror, (A.D. 1035,) Selden (Opera,
+tom. ii. p. 1640-1656) has given a specimen, obsolete and obscure even
+to antiquarians and lawyers.]
+
+[Footnote 1711: A band of Normans returning from the Holy Land had
+rescued the city of Salerno from the attack of a numerous fleet of
+Saracens. Gainar, the Lombard prince of Salerno wished to retain them in
+his service and take them into his pay. They answered, "We fight for our
+religion, and not for money." Gaimar entreated them to send some
+Norman knights to his court. This seems to have been the origin of the
+connection of the Normans with Italy. See Histoire des Conquetes des
+Normands par Goutier d'Arc, l. i. c. i., Paris, 1830.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See Leandro Alberti (Descrizione d'Italia, p. 250) and
+Baronius, (A.D. 493, No. 43.) If the archangel inherited the temple
+and oracle, perhaps the cavern, of old Calchas the soothsayer, (Strab.
+Geograph l. vi. p. 435, 436,) the Catholics (on this occasion) have
+surpassed the Greeks in the elegance of their superstition.]
+
+[Footnote 1811: Nine out of ten perished in the field. Chronique d'Aime,
+tom. i. p. 21 quoted by M Goutier d'Arc, p. 42.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 19: See the first book of William Appulus. His words are
+applicable to every swarm of Barbarians and freebooters:--
+
+     Si vicinorum quis pernitiosus ad illos
+
+     Confugiebat eum gratanter suscipiebant:
+
+     Moribus et lingua quoscumque venire videbant
+
+     Informant propria; gens efficiatur ut una.
+
+     And elsewhere, of the native adventurers of Normandy:--
+
+     Pars parat, exiguae vel opes aderant quia nullae:
+
+     Pars, quia de magnis majora subire volebant.]
+
+[Footnote 1911: This account is not accurate. After the retreat of the
+emperor Henry II. the Normans, united under the command of Rainulf, had
+taken possession of Aversa, then a small castle in the duchy of Naples.
+They had been masters of it a few years when Pandulf IV., prince of
+Capua, found means to take Naples by surprise. Sergius, master of
+the soldiers, and head of the republic, with the principal citizens,
+abandoned a city in which he could not behold, without horror, the
+establishment of a foreign dominion he retired to Aversa; and when, with
+the assistance of the Greeks and that of the citizens faithful to their
+country, he had collected money enough to satisfy the rapacity of the
+Norman adventurers, he advanced at their head to attack the garrison of
+the prince of Capua, defeated it, and reentered Naples. It was then that
+he confirmed the Normans in the possession of Aversa and its territory,
+which he raised into a count's fief, and granted the investiture to
+Rainulf. Hist. des Rep. Ital. tom. i. p. 267]
+
+Since the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the Grecian emperors had been
+anxious to regain that valuable possession; but their efforts, however
+strenuous, had been opposed by the distance and the sea. Their costly
+armaments, after a gleam of success, added new pages of calamity and
+disgrace to the Byzantine annals: twenty thousand of their best troops
+were lost in a single expedition; and the victorious Moslems derided the
+policy of a nation which intrusted eunuchs not only with the custody of
+their women, but with the command of their men [20] After a reign of
+two hundred years, the Saracens were ruined by their divisions. [21]
+The emir disclaimed the authority of the king of Tunis; the people rose
+against the emir; the cities were usurped by the chiefs; each meaner
+rebel was independent in his village or castle; and the weaker of two
+rival brothers implored the friendship of the Christians. In every
+service of danger the Normans were prompt and useful; and five hundred
+knights, or warriors on horseback, were enrolled by Arduin, the agent
+and interpreter of the Greeks, under the standard of Maniaces, governor
+of Lombardy. Before their landing, the brothers were reconciled; the
+union of Sicily and Africa was restored; and the island was guarded to
+the water's edge. The Normans led the van and the Arabs of Messina felt
+the valor of an untried foe. In a second action the emir of Syracuse was
+unhorsed and transpierced by the iron arm of William of Hauteville. In a
+third engagement, his intrepid companions discomfited the host of sixty
+thousand Saracens, and left the Greeks no more than the labor of the
+pursuit: a splendid victory; but of which the pen of the historian may
+divide the merit with the lance of the Normans. It is, however, true,
+that they essentially promoted the success of Maniaces, who reduced
+thirteen cities, and the greater part of Sicily, under the obedience
+of the emperor. But his military fame was sullied by ingratitude
+and tyranny. In the division of the spoils, the deserts of his brave
+auxiliaries were forgotten; and neither their avarice nor their pride
+could brook this injurious treatment. They complained by the mouth of
+their interpreter: their complaint was disregarded; their interpreter
+was scourged; the sufferings were his; the insult and resentment
+belonged to those whose sentiments he had delivered. Yet they dissembled
+till they had obtained, or stolen, a safe passage to the Italian
+continent: their brethren of Aversa sympathized in their indignation,
+and the province of Apulia was invaded as the forfeit of the debt. [22]
+Above twenty years after the first emigration, the Normans took the
+field with no more than seven hundred horse and five hundred foot; and
+after the recall of the Byzantine legions [23] from the Sicilian war,
+their numbers are magnified to the amount of threescore thousand men.
+Their herald proposed the option of battle or retreat; "of battle," was
+the unanimous cry of the Normans; and one of their stoutest warriors,
+with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse of the Greek
+messenger. He was dismissed with a fresh horse; the insult was concealed
+from the Imperial troops; but in two successive battles they were more
+fatally instructed of the prowess of their adversaries. In the plains of
+Cannae, the Asiatics fled before the adventurers of France; the duke of
+Lombardy was made prisoner; the Apulians acquiesced in a new dominion;
+and the four places of Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and Tarentum, were
+alone saved in the shipwreck of the Grecian fortunes. From this aera we
+may date the establishment of the Norman power, which soon eclipsed the
+infant colony of Aversa. Twelve counts [24] were chosen by the popular
+suffrage; and age, birth, and merit, were the motives of their choice.
+The tributes of their peculiar districts were appropriated to their use;
+and each count erected a fortress in the midst of his lands, and at
+the head of his vassals. In the centre of the province, the common
+habitation of Melphi was reserved as the metropolis and citadel of
+the republic; a house and separate quarter was allotted to each of the
+twelve counts: and the national concerns were regulated by this military
+senate. The first of his peers, their president and general, was
+entitled count of Apulia; and this dignity was conferred on William
+of the iron arm, who, in the language of the age, is styled a lion in
+battle, a lamb in society, and an angel in council. [25] The manners
+of his countrymen are fairly delineated by a contemporary and national
+historian. [26] "The Normans," says Malaterra, "are a cunning and
+revengeful people; eloquence and dissimulation appear to be their
+hereditary qualities: they can stoop to flatter; but unless they are
+curbed by the restraint of law, they indulge the licentiousness
+of nature and passion. Their princes affect the praises of popular
+munificence; the people observe the medium, or rather blond the
+extremes, of avarice and prodigality; and in their eager thirst of
+wealth and dominion, they despise whatever they possess, and hope
+whatever they desire. Arms and horses, the luxury of dress, the
+exercises of hunting and hawking [27] are the delight of the Normans;
+but, on pressing occasions, they can endure with incredible patience
+the inclemency of every climate, and the toil and absence of a military
+life." [28]
+
+[Footnote 20: Liutprand, in Legatione, p. 485. Pagi has illustrated this
+event from the Ms. history of the deacon Leo, (tom. iv. A.D. 965, No.
+17-19.)]
+
+[Footnote 21: See the Arabian Chronicle of Sicily, apud Muratori,
+Script. Rerum Ital. tom. i. p. 253.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Jeffrey Malaterra, who relates the Sicilian war, and
+the conquest of Apulia, (l. i. c. 7, 8, 9, 19.) The same events are
+described by Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 741-743, 755, 756) and Zonaras,
+(tom. ii. p. 237, 238;) and the Greeks are so hardened to disgrace, that
+their narratives are impartial enough.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Lydia: consult Constantine de Thematibus, i. 3, 4, with
+Delisle's map.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Omnes conveniunt; et bis sex nobiliores,
+
+     Quos genus et gravitas morum decorabat et aetas,
+
+       Elegere duces.  Provectis ad comitatum
+
+     His alii parent.  Comitatus nomen honoris
+
+     Quo donantur erat.  Hi totas undique terras
+
+       Divisere sibi, ni sors inimica repugnet;
+
+     Singula proponunt loca quae contingere sorte
+
+        Cuique duci debent, et quaeque tributa locorum.
+
+     And after speaking of Melphi, William Appulus adds,
+
+     Pro numero comitum bis sex statuere plateas,
+
+Atque domus comitum totidem fabricantur in urbe. Leo Ostiensis (l.
+ii. c. 67) enumerates the divisions of the Apulian cities, which it is
+needless to repeat.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Gulielm. Appulus, l. ii. c 12, according to the reference
+of Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p. 31,) which I cannot
+verify in the original. The Apulian praises indeed his validas vires,
+probitas animi, and vivida virtus; and declares that, had he lived, no
+poet could have equalled his merits, (l. i. p. 258, l. ii. p. 259.)
+He was bewailed by the Normans, quippe qui tanti consilii virum, (says
+Malaterra, l. i. c. 12, p. 552,) tam armis strenuum, tam sibi munificum,
+affabilem, morigeratum, ulterius se habere diffidebant.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The gens astutissima, injuriarum ultrix.... adulari
+sciens.... eloquentiis inserviens, of Malaterra, (l. i. c. 3, p. 550,)
+are expressive of the popular and proverbial character of the Normans.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The hunting and hawking more properly belong to the
+descendants of the Norwegian sailors; though they might import from
+Norway and Iceland the finest casts of falcons.]
+
+[Footnote 28: We may compare this portrait with that of William of
+Malmsbury, (de Gestis Anglorum, l. iii. p. 101, 102,) who appreciates,
+like a philosophic historian, the vices and virtues of the Saxons and
+Normans. England was assuredly a gainer by the conquest.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.--Part II.
+
+The Normans of Apulia were seated on the verge of the two empires; and,
+according to the policy of the hour, they accepted the investiture of
+their lands, from the sovereigns of Germany or Constantinople. But
+the firmest title of these adventurers was the right of conquest: they
+neither loved nor trusted; they were neither trusted nor beloved: the
+contempt of the princes was mixed with fear, and the fear of the natives
+was mingled with hatred and resentment. Every object of desire, a
+horse, a woman, a garden, tempted and gratified the rapaciousness of the
+strangers; [29] and the avarice of their chiefs was only colored by
+the more specious names of ambition and glory. The twelve counts were
+sometimes joined in the league of injustice: in their domestic quarrels
+they disputed the spoils of the people: the virtues of William were
+buried in his grave; and Drogo, his brother and successor, was better
+qualified to lead the valor, than to restrain the violence, of his
+peers. Under the reign of Constantine Monomachus, the policy, rather
+than benevolence, of the Byzantine court, attempted to relieve Italy
+from this adherent mischief, more grievous than a flight of Barbarians;
+[30] and Argyrus, the son of Melo, was invested for this purpose with
+the most lofty titles [31] and the most ample commission. The memory
+of his father might recommend him to the Normans; and he had already
+engaged their voluntary service to quell the revolt of Maniaces, and to
+avenge their own and the public injury. It was the design of Constantine
+to transplant the warlike colony from the Italian provinces to the
+Persian war; and the son of Melo distributed among the chiefs the gold
+and manufactures of Greece, as the first-fruits of the Imperial bounty.
+But his arts were baffled by the sense and spirit of the conquerors of
+Apulia: his gifts, or at least his proposals, were rejected; and they
+unanimously refused to relinquish their possessions and their hopes for
+the distant prospect of Asiatic fortune. After the means of persuasion
+had failed, Argyrus resolved to compel or to destroy: the Latin powers
+were solicited against the common enemy; and an offensive alliance was
+formed of the pope and the two emperors of the East and West. The throne
+of St. Peter was occupied by Leo the Ninth, a simple saint, [32] of a
+temper most apt to deceive himself and the world, and whose venerable
+character would consecrate with the name of piety the measures least
+compatible with the practice of religion. His humanity was affected by
+the complaints, perhaps the calumnies, of an injured people: the impious
+Normans had interrupted the payment of tithes; and the temporal sword
+might be lawfully unsheathed against the sacrilegious robbers, who were
+deaf to the censures of the church. As a German of noble birth and royal
+kindred, Leo had free access to the court and confidence of the emperor
+Henry the Third; and in search of arms and allies, his ardent zeal
+transported him from Apulia to Saxony, from the Elbe to the Tyber.
+During these hostile preparations, Argyrus indulged himself in the use
+of secret and guilty weapons: a crowd of Normans became the victims
+of public or private revenge; and the valiant Drogo was murdered in a
+church. But his spirit survived in his brother Humphrey, the third count
+of Apulia. The assassins were chastised; and the son of Melo, overthrown
+and wounded, was driven from the field, to hide his shame behind the
+walls of Bari, and to await the tardy succor of his allies.
+
+[Footnote 29: The biographer of St. Leo IX. pours his holy venom on the
+Normans. Videns indisciplinatam et alienam gentem Normannorum, crudeli
+et inaudita rabie, et plusquam Pagana impietate, adversus ecclesias Dei
+insurgere, passim Christianos trucidare, &c., (Wibert, c. 6.) The honest
+Apulian (l. ii. p. 259) says calmly of their accuser, Veris commiscens
+fallacia.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The policy of the Greeks, revolt of Maniaces, &c., must be
+collected from Cedrenus, (tom. ii. p. 757, 758,) William Appulus, (l.
+i. p 257, 258, l. ii. p. 259,) and the two Chronicles of Bari, by Lupus
+Protospata, (Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. v. p. 42, 43, 44,) and an
+anonymous writer, (Antiquitat, Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. i. p 31-35.)
+This last is a fragment of some value.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Argyrus received, says the anonymous Chronicle of Bari,
+Imperial letters, Foederatus et Patriciatus, et Catapani et Vestatus.
+In his Annals, Muratori (tom. viii. p. 426) very properly reads, or
+interprets, Sevestatus, the title of Sebastos or Augustus. But in his
+Antiquities, he was taught by Ducange to make it a palatine office,
+master of the wardrobe.]
+
+[Footnote 32: A Life of St. Leo IX., deeply tinged with the passions and
+prejudices of the age, has been composed by Wibert, printed at
+Paris, 1615, in octavo, and since inserted in the Collections of the
+Bollandists, of Mabillon, and of Muratori. The public and private
+history of that pope is diligently treated by M. de St. Marc. (Abrege,
+tom. ii. p. 140-210, and p. 25-95, second column.)]
+
+But the power of Constantine was distracted by a Turkish war; the mind
+of Henry was feeble and irresolute; and the pope, instead of repassing
+the Alps with a German army, was accompanied only by a guard of seven
+hundred Swabians and some volunteers of Lorraine. In his long progress
+from Mantua to Beneventum, a vile and promiscuous multitude of Italians
+was enlisted under the holy standard: [33] the priest and the robber
+slept in the same tent; the pikes and crosses were intermingled in the
+front; and the martial saint repeated the lessons of his youth in the
+order of march, of encampment, and of combat. The Normans of Apulia
+could muster in the field no more than three thousand horse, with a
+handful of infantry: the defection of the natives intercepted their
+provisions and retreat; and their spirit, incapable of fear, was chilled
+for a moment by superstitious awe. On the hostile approach of Leo, they
+knelt without disgrace or reluctance before their spiritual father.
+But the pope was inexorable; his lofty Germans affected to deride the
+diminutive stature of their adversaries; and the Normans were informed
+that death or exile was their only alternative. Flight they disdained,
+and, as many of them had been three days without tasting food, they
+embraced the assurance of a more easy and honorable death. They climbed
+the hill of Civitella, descended into the plain, and charged in three
+divisions the army of the pope. On the left, and in the centre, Richard
+count of Aversa, and Robert the famous Guiscard, attacked, broke,
+routed, and pursued the Italian multitudes, who fought without
+discipline, and fled without shame. A harder trial was reserved for
+the valor of Count Humphrey, who led the cavalry of the right wing. The
+Germans [34] have been described as unskillful in the management of the
+horse and the lance, but on foot they formed a strong and impenetrable
+phalanx; and neither man, nor steed, nor armor, could resist the weight
+of their long and two-handed swords. After a severe conflict, they were
+encompassed by the squadrons returning from the pursuit; and died in the
+ranks with the esteem of their foes, and the satisfaction of revenge.
+The gates of Civitella were shut against the flying pope, and he was
+overtaken by the pious conquerors, who kissed his feet, to implore his
+blessing and the absolution of their sinful victory. The soldiers beheld
+in their enemy and captive the vicar of Christ; and, though we may
+suppose the policy of the chiefs, it is probable that they were infected
+by the popular superstition. In the calm of retirement, the well-meaning
+pope deplored the effusion of Christian blood, which must be imputed to
+his account: he felt, that he had been the author of sin and scandal;
+and as his undertaking had failed, the indecency of his military
+character was universally condemned. [35] With these dispositions, he
+listened to the offers of a beneficial treaty; deserted an alliance
+which he had preached as the cause of God; and ratified the past
+and future conquests of the Normans. By whatever hands they had been
+usurped, the provinces of Apulia and Calabria were a part of the
+donation of Constantine and the patrimony of St. Peter: the grant
+and the acceptance confirmed the mutual claims of the pontiff and the
+adventurers. They promised to support each other with spiritual and
+temporal arms; a tribute or quitrent of twelve pence was afterwards
+stipulated for every ploughland; and since this memorable transaction,
+the kingdom of Naples has remained above seven hundred years a fief of
+the Holy See. [36]
+
+[Footnote 33: See the expedition of Leo XI. against the Normans. See
+William Appulus (l. ii. p. 259-261) and Jeffrey Malaterra (l. i. c. 13,
+14, 15, p. 253.) They are impartial, as the national is counterbalanced
+by the clerical prejudice]
+
+[Footnote 34:
+
+     Teutonici, quia caesaries et forma decoros
+
+     Fecerat egregie proceri corporis illos
+
+     Corpora derident Normannica quae breviora
+
+     Esse videbantur.
+
+The verses of the Apulian are commonly in this strain, though he heats
+himself a little in the battle. Two of his similes from hawking and
+sorcery are descriptive of manners.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Several respectable censures or complaints are produced by
+M. de St. Marc, (tom. ii. p. 200-204.) As Peter Damianus, the oracle
+of the times, has denied the popes the right of making war, the hermit
+(lugens eremi incola) is arraigned by the cardinal, and Baronius (Annal.
+Eccles. A.D. 1053, No. 10-17) most strenuously asserts the two swords of
+St. Peter.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The origin and nature of the papal investitures are ably
+discussed by Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p. 37-49,
+57-66,) as a lawyer and antiquarian. Yet he vainly strives to reconcile
+the duties of patriot and Catholic, adopts an empty distinction of
+"Ecclesia Romana non dedit, sed accepit," and shrinks from an honest but
+dangerous confession of the truth.]
+
+The pedigree of Robert of Guiscard [37] is variously deduced from the
+peasants and the dukes of Normandy: from the peasants, by the pride and
+ignorance of a Grecian princess; [38] from the dukes, by the ignorance
+and flattery of the Italian subjects. [39] His genuine descent may be
+ascribed to the second or middle order of private nobility. [40]
+He sprang from a race of valvassors or bannerets, of the diocese of
+Coutances, in the Lower Normandy: the castle of Hauteville was their
+honorable seat: his father Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army
+of the duke; and his military service was furnished by ten soldiers or
+knights. Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him
+the father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial
+tenderness of his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was insufficient
+for this numerous and daring progeny; they saw around the neighborhood
+the mischiefs of poverty and discord, and resolved to seek in foreign
+wars a more glorious inheritance. Two only remained to perpetuate
+the race, and cherish their father's age: their ten brothers, as they
+successfully attained the vigor of manhood, departed from the castle,
+passed the Alps, and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans. The elder
+were prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their younger
+brethren, and the three first in seniority, William, Drogo, and
+Humphrey, deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the founders of
+the new republic. Robert was the eldest of the seven sons of the second
+marriage; and even the reluctant praise of his foes has endowed him with
+the heroic qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His lofty stature
+surpassed the tallest of his army: his limbs were cast in the true
+proportion of strength and gracefulness; and to the decline of life, he
+maintained the patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his
+form. His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and
+beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with fire, and
+his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress obedience and terror
+amidst the tumult of battle. In the ruder ages of chivalry, such
+qualifications are not below the notice of the poet or historians: they
+may observe that Robert, at once, and with equal dexterity, could wield
+in the right hand his sword, his lance in the left; that in the battle
+of Civitella he was thrice unhorsed; and that in the close of that
+memorable day he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valor from
+the warriors of the two armies. [41] His boundless ambition was founded
+on the consciousness of superior worth: in the pursuit of greatness, he
+was never arrested by the scruples of justice, and seldom moved by the
+feelings of humanity: though not insensible of fame, the choice of open
+or clandestine means was determined only by his present advantage. The
+surname of Guiscard [42] was applied to this master of political wisdom,
+which is too often confounded with the practice of dissimulation and
+deceit; and Robert is praised by the Apulian poet for excelling the
+cunning of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. Yet these arts were
+disguised by an appearance of military frankness: in his highest
+fortune, he was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers; and
+while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in
+his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country. He
+grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal, hand:
+his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the gain of
+a merchant was not below his attention; and his prisoners were tortured
+with slow and unfeeling cruelty, to force a discovery of their secret
+treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with only
+five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even this allowance
+appears too bountiful: the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville passed
+the Alps as a pilgrim; and his first military band was levied among
+the adventurers of Italy. His brothers and countrymen had divided the
+fertile lands of Apulia; but they guarded their shares with the jealousy
+of avarice; the aspiring youth was driven forwards to the mountains of
+Calabria, and in his first exploits against the Greeks and the natives,
+it is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To surprise
+a castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder the
+adjacent villages for necessary food, were the obscure labors which
+formed and exercised the powers of his mind and body. The volunteers of
+Normandy adhered to his standard; and, under his command, the peasants
+of Calabria assumed the name and character of Normans.
+
+[Footnote 37: The birth, character, and first actions of Robert
+Guiscard, may be found in Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. i. c. 3, 4, 11, 16,
+17, 18, 38, 39, 40,) William Appulus, (l. ii. p. 260-262,) William
+Gemeticensis, or of Jumieges, (l. xi. c. 30, p. 663, 664, edit. Camden,)
+and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. i. p. 23-27, l. vi. p. 165, 166,) with
+the annotations of Ducange, (Not. in Alexiad, p. 230-232, 320,) who
+has swept all the French and Latin Chronicles for supplemental
+intelligence.]
+
+[Footnote 38: (a Greek corruption), and elsewhere, (l. iv. p. 84,).
+Anna Comnena was born in the purple; yet her father was no more than a
+private though illustrious subject, who raised himself to the empire.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 2) forgets all his original
+authors, and rests this princely descent on the credit of Inveges,
+an Augustine monk of Palermo in the last century. They continue the
+succession of dukes from Rollo to William II. the Bastard or Conqueror,
+whom they hold (communemente si tiene) to be the father of Tancred of
+Hauteville; a most strange and stupendous blunder! The sons of Tancred
+fought in Apulia, before William II. was three years old, (A.D. 1037.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: The judgment of Ducange is just and moderate: Certe
+humilis fuit ac tenuis Roberti familia, si ducalem et regium spectemus
+apicem, ad quem postea pervenit; quae honesta tamen et praeter nobilium
+vulgarium statum et conditionem illustris habita est, "quae nec humi
+reperet nec altum quid tumeret." (Wilhem. Malmsbur. de Gestis Anglorum,
+l. iii. p. 107. Not. ad Alexiad. p. 230.)]
+
+[Footnote 41: I shall quote with pleasure some of the best lines of the
+Apulian, (l. ii. p. 270.)
+
+     Pugnat utraque manu, nec lancea cassa, nec ensis
+
+     Cassus erat, quocunque manu deducere vellet.
+
+     Ter dejectus equo, ter viribus ipse resumptis
+
+     Major in arma redit: stimulos furor ipse ministrat.
+
+     Ut Leo cum frendens, &c.
+
+     -   --  --  --  --  --   -
+
+     Nullus in hoc bello sicuti post bella probatum est
+
+     Victor vel victus, tam magnos edidit ictus.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The Norman writers and editors most conversant with their
+own idiom interpret Guiscard or Wiscard, by Callidus, a cunning man. The
+root (wise) is familiar to our ear; and in the old word Wiseacre, I
+can discern something of a similar sense and termination. It is no bad
+translation of the surname and character of Robert.]
+
+As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened the
+jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a transient quarrel, his life
+was threatened and his liberty restrained. After the death of Humphrey,
+the tender age of his sons excluded them from the command; they were
+reduced to a private estate, by the ambition of their guardian and
+uncle; and Guiscard was exalted on a buckler, and saluted count of
+Apulia and general of the republic. With an increase of authority and of
+force, he resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank
+that should raise him forever above the heads of his equals.
+
+By some acts of rapine or sacrilege, he had incurred a papal
+excommunication; but Nicholas the Second was easily persuaded that the
+divisions of friends could terminate only in their mutual prejudice;
+that the Normans were the faithful champions of the Holy See; and it
+was safer to trust the alliance of a prince than the caprice of an
+aristocracy. A synod of one hundred bishops was convened at Melphi; and
+the count interrupted an important enterprise to guard the person and
+execute the decrees of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy
+conferred on Robert and his posterity the ducal title, [43] with the
+investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy and
+Sicily, which his sword could rescue from the schismatic Greeks and the
+unbelieving Saracens. [44] This apostolic sanction might justify his
+arms; but the obedience of a free and victorious people could not be
+transferred without their consent; and Guiscard dissembled his elevation
+till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by the conquest of
+Consenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph, he assembled his troops,
+and solicited the Normans to confirm by their suffrage the judgment of
+the vicar of Christ: the soldiers hailed with joyful acclamations their
+valiant duke; and the counts, his former equals, pronounced the oath
+of fidelity with hollow smiles and secret indignation. After this
+inauguration, Robert styled himself, "By the grace of God and St. Peter,
+duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily;" and it was the labor
+of twenty years to deserve and realize these lofty appellations. Such
+sardy progress, in a narrow space, may seem unworthy of the abilities
+of the chief and the spirit of the nation; but the Normans were few in
+number; their resources were scanty; their service was voluntary and
+precarious. The bravest designs of the duke were sometimes opposed by
+the free voice of his parliament of barons: the twelve counts of popular
+election conspired against his authority; and against their perfidious
+uncle, the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By his policy
+and vigor, Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed their rebellions,
+and punished the guilty with death or exile: but in these domestic
+feuds, his years, and the national strength, were unprofitably consumed.
+After the defeat of his foreign enemies, the Greeks, Lombards, and
+Saracens, their broken forces retreated to the strong and populous
+cities of the sea-coast. They excelled in the arts of fortification and
+defence; the Normans were accustomed to serve on horseback in the field,
+and their rude attempts could only succeed by the efforts of persevering
+courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained above eight months;
+the siege or blockade of Bari lasted near four years. In these actions
+the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the
+last and most patient. As he pressed the citadel of Salerno, a huge
+stone from the rampart shattered one of his military engines; and by
+a splinter he was wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari, he
+lodged in a miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry branches, and
+thatched with straw; a perilous station, on all sides open to the
+inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy. [45]
+
+[Footnote 43: The acquisition of the ducal title by Robert Guiscard is
+a nice and obscure business. With the good advice of Giannone, Muratori,
+and St. Marc, I have endeavored to form a consistent and probable
+narrative.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 1059, No. 69) has published
+the original act. He professes to have copied it from the Liber Censuum,
+a Vatican Ms. Yet a Liber Censuum of the xiith century has been printed
+by Muratori, (Antiquit. Medii Aevi, tom. v. p. 851-908;) and the names
+of Vatican and Cardinal awaken the suspicions of a Protestant, and even
+of a philosopher.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Read the life of Guiscard in the second and third books of
+the Apulian, the first and second books of Malaterra.]
+
+The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the
+present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms have
+not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years. [46]
+The monarchy has been composed of the Greek provinces of Calabria and
+Apulia, of the Lombard principality of Salerno, the republic of
+Amalphi, and the inland dependencies of the large and ancient duchy of
+Beneventum. Three districts only were exempted from the common law
+of subjection; the first forever, the two last till the middle of the
+succeeding century. The city and immediate territory of Benevento had
+been transferred, by gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the
+Roman pontiff; and although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the
+name of St. Peter was finally more potent than the sword of the Normans.
+Their first colony of Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua; and
+her princes were reduced to beg their bread before the palace of their
+fathers. The dukes of Naples, the present metropolis, maintained the
+popular freedom, under the shadow of the Byzantine empire. Among the new
+acquisitions of Guiscard, the science of Salerno, [47] and the trade of
+Amalphi, [48] may detain for a moment the curiosity of the reader. I. Of
+the learned faculties, jurisprudence implies the previous establishment
+of laws and property; and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full
+light of religion and reason. But the savage and the sage must alike
+implore the assistance of physic; and, if our diseases are inflamed by
+luxury, the mischiefs of blows and wounds would be more frequent in
+the ruder ages of society. The treasures of Grecian medicine had been
+communicated to the Arabian colonies of Africa, Spain, and Sicily;
+and in the intercourse of peace and war, a spark of knowledge had been
+kindled and cherished at Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men
+were honest and the women beautiful. [49] A school, the first that
+arose in the darkness of Europe, was consecrated to the healing art:
+the conscience of monks and bishops was reconciled to that salutary and
+lucrative profession; and a crowd of patients, of the most eminent rank,
+and most distant climates, invited or visited the physicians of Salerno.
+They were protected by the Norman conquerors; and Guiscard, though bred
+in arms, could discern the merit and value of a philosopher. After a
+pilgrimage of thirty-nine years, Constantine, an African Christian,
+returned from Bagdad, a master of the language and learning of the
+Arabians; and Salerno was enriched by the practice, the lessons, and the
+writings of the pupil of Avicenna. The school of medicine has long slept
+in the name of a university; but her precepts are abridged in a string
+of aphorisms, bound together in the Leonine verses, or Latin rhymes, of
+the twelfth century. [50] II. Seven miles to the west of Salerno, and
+thirty to the south of Naples, the obscure town of Amalphi displayed the
+power and rewards of industry. The land, however fertile, was of narrow
+extent; but the sea was accessible and open: the inhabitants first
+assumed the office of supplying the western world with the manufactures
+and productions of the East; and this useful traffic was the source
+of their opulence and freedom. The government was popular, under the
+administration of a duke and the supremacy of the Greek emperor. Fifty
+thousand citizens were numbered in the walls of Amalphi; nor was any
+city more abundantly provided with gold, silver, and the objects of
+precious luxury. The mariners who swarmed in her port, excelled in the
+theory and practice of navigation and astronomy: and the discovery of
+the compass, which has opened the globe, is owing to their ingenuity or
+good fortune. Their trade was extended to the coasts, or at least to
+the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India: and their settlements
+in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, acquired the
+privileges of independent colonies. [51] After three hundred years of
+prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by the arms of the Normans, and
+sacked by the jealousy of Pisa; but the poverty of one thousand [5111]
+fisherman is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral,
+and the palaces of royal merchants.
+
+[Footnote 46: The conquests of Robert Guiscard and Roger I., the
+exemption of Benevento and the xii provinces of the kingdom, are fairly
+exposed by Giannone in the second volume of his Istoria Civile, l. ix.
+x. xi and l. xvii. p. 460-470. This modern division was not established
+before the time of Frederic II.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 119-127,) Muratori, (Antiquitat.
+Medii Aevi, tom. iii. dissert. xliv. p. 935, 936,) and Tiraboschi,
+(Istoria della Letteratura Italiana,) have given an historical account
+of these physicians; their medical knowledge and practice must be left
+to our physicians.]
+
+[Footnote 48: At the end of the Historia Pandectarum of Henry
+Brenckmann, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.,) the indefatigable
+author has inserted two dissertations, de Republica Amalphitana, and
+de Amalphi a Pisanis direpta, which are built on the testimonies of
+one hundred and forty writers. Yet he has forgotten two most important
+passages of the embassy of Liutprand, (A.D. 939,) which compare the
+trade and navigation of Amalphi with that of Venice.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe,
+
+     Frugibus, arboribus, vinoque redundat; et unde
+
+     Non tibi poma, nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt,
+
+        Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum.
+
+     --Gulielmus Appulus, l. iii. p. 367]
+
+[Footnote 50: Muratori carries their antiquity above the year (1066)
+of the death of Edward the Confessor, the rex Anglorum to whom they are
+addressed. Nor is this date affected by the opinion, or rather mistake,
+of Pasquier (Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 2) and Ducange,
+(Glossar. Latin.) The practice of rhyming, as early as the viith
+century, was borrowed from the languages of the North and East,
+(Muratori, Antiquitat. tom. iii. dissert. xl. p. 686-708.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: The description of Amalphi, by William the Apulian, (l.
+iii. p. 267,) contains much truth and some poetry, and the third line
+may be applied to the sailor's compass:--
+
+     Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro
+
+     Partibus innumeris: hac plurimus urbe moratur
+
+     Nauta maris Caelique vias aperire peritus.
+
+     Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe
+
+     Regis, et Antiochi.  Gens haec freta plurima transit.
+
+     His Arabes, Indi, Siculi nascuntur et Afri.
+
+     Haec gens est totum proore nobilitata per orbem,
+
+     Et mercando forens, et amans mercata referre.]
+
+[Footnote 5111: Amalfi had only one thousand inhabitants at the
+commencement of the 18th century, when it was visited by Brenckmann,
+(Brenckmann de Rep. Amalph. Diss. i. c. 23.) At present it has six or
+eight thousand Hist. des Rep. tom. i. p. 304.--G.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.--Part III.
+
+Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long
+detained in Normandy by his own and his father' age. He accepted the
+welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the
+esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valor and
+ambition were equal; but the youth, the beauty, the elegant manners,
+of Roger engaged the disinterested love of the soldiers and people.
+So scanty was his allowance for himself and forty followers, that he
+descended from conquest to robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft;
+and so loose were the notions of property, that, by his own historian,
+at his special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a stable
+at Melphi. [52] His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace: from these
+base practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy war; and the
+invasion of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and policy of his brother
+Guiscard. After the retreat of the Greeks, the idolaters, a most
+audacious reproach of the Catholics, had retrieved their losses and
+possessions; but the deliverance of the island, so vainly undertaken by
+the forces of the Eastern empire, was achieved by a small and private
+band of adventurers. [53] In the first attempt, Roger braved, in an open
+boat, the real and fabulous dangers of Scylla and Charybdis; landed with
+only sixty soldiers on a hostile shore; drove the Saracens to the gates
+of Messina and safely returned with the spoils of the adjacent country.
+In the fortress of Trani, his active and patient courage were equally
+conspicuous. In his old age he related with pleasure, that, by the
+distress of the siege, himself, and the countess his wife, had been
+reduced to a single cloak or mantle, which they wore alternately; that
+in a sally his horse had been slain, and he was dragged away by the
+Saracens; but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had
+retreated with his saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might
+be left in the hands of the miscreants. In the siege of Trani, three
+hundred Normans withstood and repulsed the forces of the island. In the
+field of Ceramio, fifty thousand horse and foot were overthrown by one
+hundred and thirty-six Christian soldiers, without reckoning St. George,
+who fought on horseback in the foremost ranks. The captive banners, with
+four camels, were reserved for the successor of St. Peter; and had these
+barbaric spoils been exposed, not in the Vatican, but in the Capitol,
+they might have revived the memory of the Punic triumphs. These
+insufficient numbers of the Normans most probably denote their knights,
+the soldiers of honorable and equestrian rank, each of whom was attended
+by five or six followers in the field; [54] yet, with the aid of this
+interpretation, and after every fair allowance on the side of valor,
+arms, and reputation, the discomfiture of so many myriads will reduce
+the prudent reader to the alternative of a miracle or a fable. The Arabs
+of Sicily derived a frequent and powerful succor from their countrymen
+of Africa: in the siege of Palermo, the Norman cavalry was assisted by
+the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of action, the envy of the two
+brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible emulation. After a
+war of thirty years, [55] Roger, with the title of great count,
+obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most fruitful island of the
+Mediterranean; and his administration displays a liberal and enlightened
+mind, above the limits of his age and education. The Moslems were
+maintained in the free enjoyment of their religion and property: [56] a
+philosopher and physician of Mazara, of the race of Mahomet, harangued
+the conqueror, and was invited to court; his geography of the seven
+climates was translated into Latin; and Roger, after a diligent perusal,
+preferred the work of the Arabian to the writings of the Grecian
+Ptolemy. [57] A remnant of Christian natives had promoted the success of
+the Normans: they were rewarded by the triumph of the cross. The island
+was restored to the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff; new bishops
+were planted in the principal cities; and the clergy was satisfied by
+a liberal endowment of churches and monasteries. Yet the Catholic hero
+asserted the rights of the civil magistrate. Instead of resigning the
+investiture of benefices, he dexterously applied to his own profit the
+papal claims: the supremacy of the crown was secured and enlarged, by
+the singular bull, which declares the princes of Sicily hereditary and
+perpetual legates of the Holy See. [58]
+
+[Footnote 52: Latrocinio armigerorum suorum in multis sustentabatur,
+quod quidem ad ejus ignominiam non dicimus; sed ipso ita praecipiente
+adhuc viliora et reprehensibiliora dicturi sumus ut pluribus patescat,
+quam laboriose et cum quanta angustia a profunda paupertate ad summum
+culmen divitiarum vel honoris attigerit. Such is the preface of
+Malaterra (l. i. c. 25) to the horse-stealing. From the moment (l. i. c.
+19) that he has mentioned his patron Roger, the elder brother sinks into
+the second character. Something similar in Velleius Paterculus may be
+observed of Augustus and Tiberius.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Duo sibi proficua deputans animae scilicet et corporis si
+terran: Idolis deditam ad cultum divinum revocaret, (Galfrid Malaterra,
+l. ii. c. 1.) The conquest of Sicily is related in the three last
+books, and he himself has given an accurate summary of the chapters, (p.
+544-546.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: See the word Milites in the Latin Glossary of Ducange.]
+
+[Footnote 55: Of odd particulars, I learn from Malaterra, that the
+Arabs had introduced into Sicily the use of camels (l. i. c. 33) and of
+carrier-pigeons, (c. 42;) and that the bite of the tarantula provokes a
+windy disposition, quae per anum inhoneste crepitando emergit; a symptom
+most ridiculously felt by the whole Norman army in their camp near
+Palermo, (c. 36.) I shall add an etymology not unworthy of the xith
+century: Messana is divided from Messis, the place from whence the
+harvests of the isle were sent in tribute to Rome, (l. ii. c. 1.)]
+
+[Footnote 56: See the capitulation of Palermo in Malaterra, l. ii. c.
+45, and Giannone, who remarks the general toleration of the Saracens,
+(tom ii. p. 72.)]
+
+[Footnote 57: John Leo Afer, de Medicis et Philosophus Arabibus, c. 14,
+apud Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. xiii. p. 278, 279. This philosopher is
+named Esseriph Essachalli, and he died in Africa, A. H. 516, A.D. 1122.
+Yet this story bears a strange resemblance to the Sherif al Edrissi, who
+presented his book (Geographia Nubiensis, see preface p. 88, 90, 170) to
+Roger, king of Sicily, A. H. 541, A.D. 1153, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque
+Orientale, p. 786. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 188. Petit de la
+Croix, Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 535, 536. Casiri, Bibliot. Arab. Hispan.
+tom. ii. p. 9-13;) and I am afraid of some mistake.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Malaterra remarks the foundation of the bishoprics,
+(l. iv. c. 7,) and produces the original of the bull, (l. iv. c. 29.)
+Giannone gives a rational idea of this privilege, and the tribunal of
+the monarchy of Sicily, (tom. ii. p. 95-102;) and St. Marc (Abrege,
+tom. iii. p. 217-301, 1st column) labors the case with the diligence of
+a Sicilian lawyer.]
+
+To Robert Guiscard, the conquest of Sicily was more glorious than
+beneficial: the possession of Apulia and Calabria was inadequate to his
+ambition; and he resolved to embrace or create the first occasion of
+invading, perhaps of subduing, the Roman empire of the East. [59] From
+his first wife, the partner of his humble fortune, he had been divorced
+under the pretence of consanguinity; and her son Bohemond was destined
+to imitate, rather than to succeed, his illustrious father. The second
+wife of Guiscard was the daughter of the princes of Salerno; the
+Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger; their
+five daughters were given in honorable nuptials, [60] and one of them
+was betrothed, in a tender age, to Constantine, a beautiful youth,
+the son and heir of the emperor Michael. [61] But the throne of
+Constantinople was shaken by a revolution: the Imperial family of Ducas
+was confined to the palace or the cloister; and Robert deplored, and
+resented, the disgrace of his daughter and the expulsion of his ally.
+A Greek, who styled himself the father of Constantine, soon appeared
+at Salerno, and related the adventures of his fall and flight. That
+unfortunate friend was acknowledged by the duke, and adorned with the
+pomp and titles of Imperial dignity: in his triumphal progress through
+Apulia and Calabria, Michael [62] was saluted with the tears and
+acclamations of the people; and Pope Gregory the Seventh exhorted the
+bishops to preach, and the Catholics to fight, in the pious work of his
+restoration. His conversations with Robert were frequent and familiar;
+and their mutual promises were justified by the valor of the Normans and
+the treasures of the East. Yet this Michael, by the confession of the
+Greeks and Latins, was a pageant and an impostor; a monk who had fled
+from his convent, or a domestic who had served in the palace. The fraud
+had been contrived by the subtle Guiscard; and he trusted, that after
+this pretender had given a decent color to his arms, he would sink, at
+the nod of the conqueror, into his primitive obscurity. But victory was
+the only argument that could determine the belief of the Greeks; and
+the ardor of the Latins was much inferior to their credulity: the Norman
+veterans wished to enjoy the harvest of their toils, and the unwarlike
+Italians trembled at the known and unknown dangers of a transmarine
+expedition. In his new levies, Robert exerted the influence of gifts and
+promises, the terrors of civil and ecclesiastical authority; and some
+acts of violence might justify the reproach, that age and infancy
+were pressed without distinction into the service of their unrelenting
+prince. After two years' incessant preparations the land and naval
+forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel, or extreme promontory, of
+Italy; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who fought by his
+side, his son Bohemond, and the representative of the emperor Michael.
+Thirteen hundred knights [63] of Norman race or discipline, formed
+the sinews of the army, which might be swelled to thirty thousand [64]
+followers of every denomination. The men, the horses, the arms, the
+engines, the wooden towers, covered with raw hides, were embarked on
+board one hundred and fifty vessels: the transports had been built in
+the ports of Italy, and the galleys were supplied by the alliance of the
+republic of Ragusa.
+
+[Footnote 59: In the first expedition of Robert against the Greeks,
+I follow Anna Comnena, (the ist, iiid, ivth, and vth books of the
+Alexiad,) William Appulus, (l. ivth and vth, p. 270-275,) and Jeffrey
+Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 13, 14, 24-29, 39.) Their information is
+contemporary and authentic, but none of them were eye-witnesses of the
+war.]
+
+[Footnote 60: One of them was married to Hugh, the son of Azzo, or Axo,
+a marquis of Lombardy, rich, powerful, and noble, (Gulielm. Appul. l.
+iii. p. 267,) in the xith century, and whose ancestors in the xth and
+ixth are explored by the critical industry of Leibnitz and Muratori.
+From the two elder sons of the marquis Azzo are derived the illustrious
+lines of Brunswick and Este. See Muratori, Antichita Estense.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Anna Comnena, somewhat too wantonly, praises and bewails
+that handsome boy, who, after the rupture of his barbaric nuptials,
+(l. i. p. 23,) was betrothed as her husband. (p. 27.) Elsewhere she
+describes the red and white of his skin, his hawk's eyes, &c., l. iii.
+p. 71.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Anna Comnena, l. i. p. 28, 29. Gulielm. Appul. l. iv p.
+271. Galfrid Malaterra, l. iii. c. 13, p. 579, 580. Malaterra is more
+cautious in his style; but the Apulian is bold and positive.--Mentitus
+se Michaelem Venerata Danais quidam seductor ad illum. As Gregory VII
+had believed, Baronius almost alone, recognizes the emperor Michael.
+(A.D. No. 44.)]
+
+[Footnote 63: Ipse armatae militiae non plusquam MCCC milites secum
+habuisse, ab eis qui eidem negotio interfuerunt attestatur, (Malaterra,
+l. iii. c. 24, p. 583.) These are the same whom the Apulian (l. iv. p.
+273) styles the equestris gens ducis, equites de gente ducis.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. i. p. 37;) and her account
+tallies with the number and lading of the ships. Ivit in Dyrrachium cum
+xv. millibus hominum, says the Chronicon Breve Normannicum, (Muratori,
+Scriptores, tom. v. p. 278.) I have endeavored to reconcile these
+reckonings.]
+
+At the mouth of the Adriatic Gulf, the shores of Italy and Epirus
+incline towards each other. The space between Brundusium and Durazzo,
+the Roman passage, is no more than one hundred miles; [65] at the last
+station of Otranto, it is contracted to fifty; [66] and this narrow
+distance had suggested to Pyrrhus and Pompey the sublime or extravagant
+idea of a bridge. Before the general embarkation, the Norman duke
+despatched Bohemond with fifteen galleys to seize or threaten the Isle
+of Corfu, to survey the opposite coast, and to secure a harbor in the
+neighborhood of Vallona for the landing of the troops. They passed
+and landed without perceiving an enemy; and this successful experiment
+displayed the neglect and decay of the naval power of the Greeks. The
+islands of Epirus and the maritime towns were subdued by the arms or the
+name of Robert, who led his fleet and army from Corfu (I use the modern
+appellation) to the siege of Durazzo. That city, the western key of the
+empire, was guarded by ancient renown, and recent fortifications, by
+George Palaeologus, a patrician, victorious in the Oriental wars, and a
+numerous garrison of Albanians and Macedonians, who, in every age,
+have maintained the character of soldiers. In the prosecution of his
+enterprise, the courage of Guiscard was assailed by every form of danger
+and mischance. In the most propitious season of the year, as his fleet
+passed along the coast, a storm of wind and snow unexpectedly arose:
+the Adriatic was swelled by the raging blast of the south, and a new
+shipwreck confirmed the old infamy of the Acroceraunian rocks. [67] The
+sails, the masts, and the oars, were shattered or torn away; the sea
+and shore were covered with the fragments of vessels, with arms and dead
+bodies; and the greatest part of the provisions were either drowned or
+damaged. The ducal galley was laboriously rescued from the waves, and
+Robert halted seven days on the adjacent cape, to collect the relics of
+his loss, and revive the drooping spirits of his soldiers. The Normans
+were no longer the bold and experienced mariners who had explored the
+ocean from Greenland to Mount Atlas, and who smiled at the petty dangers
+of the Mediterranean. They had wept during the tempest; they were
+alarmed by the hostile approach of the Venetians, who had been solicited
+by the prayers and promises of the Byzantine court. The first day's
+action was not disadvantageous to Bohemond, a beardless youth, [68]
+who led the naval powers of his father. All night the galleys of the
+republic lay on their anchors in the form of a crescent; and the victory
+of the second day was decided by the dexterity of their evolutions, the
+station of their archers, the weight of their javelins, and the borrowed
+aid of the Greek fire. The Apulian and Ragusian vessels fled to the
+shore, several were cut from their cables, and dragged away by the
+conqueror; and a sally from the town carried slaughter and dismay to the
+tents of the Norman duke. A seasonable relief was poured into Durazzo,
+and as soon as the besiegers had lost the command of the sea, the
+islands and maritime towns withdrew from the camp the supply of tribute
+and provision. That camp was soon afflicted with a pestilential disease;
+five hundred knights perished by an inglorious death; and the list of
+burials (if all could obtain a decent burial) amounted to ten thousand
+persons. Under these calamities, the mind of Guiscard alone was firm and
+invincible; and while he collected new forces from Apulia and Sicily, he
+battered, or scaled, or sapped, the walls of Durazzo. But his industry
+and valor were encountered by equal valor and more perfect industry. A
+movable turret, of a size and capacity to contain five hundred soldiers,
+had been rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart: but the descent of
+the door or drawbridge was checked by an enormous beam, and the wooden
+structure was constantly consumed by artificial flames.
+
+[Footnote 65: The Itinerary of Jerusalem (p. 609, edit. Wesseling) gives
+a true and reasonable space of a thousand stadia or one hundred miles
+which is strangely doubled by Strabo (l. vi. p. 433) and Pliny, (Hist.
+Natur. iii. 16.)]
+
+[Footnote 66: Pliny (Hist. Nat. iii. 6, 16) allows quinquaginta millia
+for this brevissimus cursus, and agrees with the real distance from
+Otranto to La Vallona, or Aulon, (D'Anville, Analyse de sa Carte des
+Cotes de la Grece, &c., p. 3-6.) Hermolaus Barbarus, who substitutes
+centum. (Harduin, Not. lxvi. in Plin. l. iii.,) might have been
+corrected by every Venetian pilot who had sailed out of the gulf.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Infames scopulos Acroceraunia, Horat. carm. i. 3. The
+praecipitem Africum decertantem Aquilonibus, et rabiem Noti and the
+monstra natantia of the Adriatic, are somewhat enlarged; but Horace
+trembling for the life of Virgil, is an interesting moment in the
+history of poetry and friendship.]
+
+[Footnote 68: (Alexias, l. iv. p. 106.) Yet the Normans shaved, and the
+Venetians wore, their beards: they must have derided the no beard of
+Bohemond; a harsh interpretation. (Duncanga ad Alexiad. p. 283.)]
+
+While the Roman empire was attacked by the Turks in the East, east, and
+the Normans in the West, the aged successor of Michael surrendered the
+sceptre to the hands of Alexius, an illustrious captain, and the founder
+of the Comnenian dynasty. The princess Anne, his daughter and historian,
+observes, in her affected style, that even Hercules was unequal to a
+double combat; and, on this principle, she approves a hasty peace with
+the Turks, which allowed her father to undertake in person the relief of
+Durazzo. On his accession, Alexius found the camp without soldiers, and
+the treasury without money; yet such were the vigor and activity of his
+measures, that in six months he assembled an army of seventy thousand
+men, [69] and performed a march of five hundred miles. His troops were
+levied in Europe and Asia, from Peloponnesus to the Black Sea; his
+majesty was displayed in the silver arms and rich trappings of the
+companies of Horse-guards; and the emperor was attended by a train of
+nobles and princes, some of whom, in rapid succession, had been clothed
+with the purple, and were indulged by the lenity of the times in a
+life of affluence and dignity. Their youthful ardor might animate the
+multitude; but their love of pleasure and contempt of subordination were
+pregnant with disorder and mischief; and their importunate clamors for
+speedy and decisive action disconcerted the prudence of Alexius, who
+might have surrounded and starved the besieging army. The enumeration of
+provinces recalls a sad comparison of the past and present limits of the
+Roman world: the raw levies were drawn together in haste and terror;
+and the garrisons of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, had been purchased by the
+evacuation of the cities which were immediately occupied by the
+Turks. The strength of the Greek army consisted in the Varangians, the
+Scandinavian guards, whose numbers were recently augmented by a colony
+of exiles and volunteers from the British Island of Thule. Under the
+yoke of the Norman conqueror, the Danes and English were oppressed
+and united; a band of adventurous youths resolved to desert a land
+of slavery; the sea was open to their escape; and, in their long
+pilgrimage, they visited every coast that afforded any hope of liberty
+and revenge. They were entertained in the service of the Greek emperor;
+and their first station was in a new city on the Asiatic shore: but
+Alexius soon recalled them to the defence of his person and palace; and
+bequeathed to his successors the inheritance of their faith and valor.
+[70] The name of a Norman invader revived the memory of their wrongs:
+they marched with alacrity against the national foe, and panted
+to regain in Epirus the glory which they had lost in the battle of
+Hastings. The Varangians were supported by some companies of Franks or
+Latins; and the rebels, who had fled to Constantinople from the tyranny
+of Guiscard, were eager to signalize their zeal and gratify their
+revenge. In this emergency, the emperor had not disdained the impure
+aid of the Paulicians or Manichaeans of Thrace and Bulgaria; and these
+heretics united with the patience of martyrdom the spirit and discipline
+of active valor. [71] The treaty with the sultan had procured a supply
+of some thousand Turks; and the arrows of the Scythian horse were
+opposed to the lances of the Norman cavalry. On the report and distant
+prospect of these formidable numbers, Robert assembled a council of his
+principal officers. "You behold," said he, "your danger: it is urgent
+and inevitable. The hills are covered with arms and standards; and the
+emperor of the Greeks is accustomed to wars and triumphs. Obedience and
+union are our only safety; and I am ready to yield the command to a more
+worthy leader." The vote and acclamation even of his secret enemies,
+assured him, in that perilous moment, of their esteem and confidence;
+and the duke thus continued: "Let us trust in the rewards of victory,
+and deprive cowardice of the means of escape. Let us burn our vessels
+and our baggage, and give battle on this spot, as if it were the
+place of our nativity and our burial." The resolution was unanimously
+approved; and, without confining himself to his lines, Guiscard awaited
+in battle-array the nearer approach of the enemy. His rear was covered
+by a small river; his right wing extended to the sea; his left to the
+hills: nor was he conscious, perhaps, that on the same ground Caesar and
+Pompey had formerly disputed the empire of the world. [72]
+
+[Footnote 69: Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom. ix. p. 136, 137)
+observes, that some authors (Petrus Diacon. Chron. Casinen. l. iii. c.
+49) compose the Greek army of 170,000 men, but that the hundred may
+be struck off, and that Malaterra reckons only 70,000; a slight
+inattention. The passage to which he alludes is in the Chronicle of
+Lupus Protospata, (Script. Ital. tom. v. p. 45.) Malaterra (l. iv.
+c. 27) speaks in high, but indefinite terms of the emperor, cum
+copiisinnumerabilbus: like the Apulian poet, (l. iv. p. 272:)
+--More locustarum montes et pianna teguntur.]
+
+[Footnote 70: See William of Malmsbury, de Gestis Anglorum, l. ii. p.
+92. Alexius fidem Anglorum suspiciens praecipuis familiaritatibus suis
+eos applicabat, amorem eorum filio transcribens. Odericus Vitalis (Hist.
+Eccles. l. iv. p. 508, l. vii. p. 641) relates their emigration from
+England, and their service in Greece.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See the Apulian, (l. i. p. 256.) The character and the
+story of these Manichaeans has been the subject of the livth chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 72: See the simple and masterly narrative of Caesar himself,
+(Comment. de Bell. Civil. iii. 41-75.) It is a pity that Quintus
+Icilius (M. Guichard) did not live to analyze these operations, as he
+has done the campaigns of Africa and Spain.]
+
+Against the advice of his wisest captains, Alexius resolved to risk
+the event of a general action, and exhorted the garrison of Durazzo to
+assist their own deliverance by a well-timed sally from the town. He
+marched in two columns to surprise the Normans before daybreak on two
+different sides: his light cavalry was scattered over the plain; the
+archers formed the second line; and the Varangians claimed the honors of
+the vanguard. In the first onset, the battle-axes of the strangers made
+a deep and bloody impression on the army of Guiscard, which was
+now reduced to fifteen thousand men. The Lombards and Calabrians
+ignominiously turned their backs; they fled towards the river and the
+sea; but the bridge had been broken down to check the sally of the
+garrison, and the coast was lined with the Venetian galleys, who played
+their engines among the disorderly throng. On the verge of ruin, they
+were saved by the spirit and conduct of their chiefs. Gaita, the wife of
+Robert, is painted by the Greeks as a warlike Amazon, a second Pallas;
+less skilful in arts, but not less terrible in arms, than the Athenian
+goddess: [73] though wounded by an arrow, she stood her ground, and
+strove, by her exhortation and example, to rally the flying troops. [74]
+Her female voice was seconded by the more powerful voice and arm of
+the Norman duke, as calm in action as he was magnanimous in council:
+"Whither," he cried aloud, "whither do ye fly? Your enemy is implacable;
+and death is less grievous than servitude." The moment was decisive: as
+the Varangians advanced before the line, they discovered the nakedness
+of their flanks: the main battle of the duke, of eight hundred knights,
+stood firm and entire; they couched their lances, and the Greeks deplore
+the furious and irresistible shock of the French cavalry. [75] Alexius
+was not deficient in the duties of a soldier or a general; but he no
+sooner beheld the slaughter of the Varangians, and the flight of the
+Turks, than he despised his subjects, and despaired of his fortune. The
+princess Anne, who drops a tear on this melancholy event, is reduced
+to praise the strength and swiftness of her father's horse, and his
+vigorous struggle when he was almost overthrown by the stroke of a
+lance, which had shivered the Imperial helmet. His desperate valor broke
+through a squadron of Franks who opposed his flight; and after wandering
+two days and as many nights in the mountains, he found some repose,
+of body, though not of mind, in the walls of Lychnidus. The victorious
+Robert reproached the tardy and feeble pursuit which had suffered the
+escape of so illustrious a prize: but he consoled his disappointment by
+the trophies and standards of the field, the wealth and luxury of the
+Byzantine camp, and the glory of defeating an army five times more
+numerous than his own. A multitude of Italians had been the victims
+of their own fears; but only thirty of his knights were slain in
+this memorable day. In the Roman host, the loss of Greeks, Turks, and
+English, amounted to five or six thousand: [76] the plain of Durazzo was
+stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of the impostor Michael
+was more honorable than his life.
+
+[Footnote 73: It is very properly translated by the President Cousin,
+(Hist. de Constantinople, tom. iv. p. 131, in 12mo.,) qui combattoit
+comme une Pallas, quoiqu'elle ne fut pas aussi savante que celle
+d'Athenes. The Grecian goddess was composed of two discordant
+characters, of Neith, the workwoman of Sais in Egypt, and of a virgin
+Amazon of the Tritonian lake in Libya, (Banier, Mythologie, tom. iv. p.
+1-31, in 12mo.)]
+
+[Footnote 74: Anna Comnena (l. iv. p. 116) admires, with some degree of
+terror, her masculine virtues. They were more familiar to the Latins and
+though the Apulian (l. iv. p. 273) mentions her presence and her wound,
+he represents her as far less intrepid.
+
+     Uxor in hoc bello Roberti forte sagitta
+
+     Quadam laesa fuit: quo vulnere territa nullam.
+
+     Dum sperabat opem, se poene subegerat hosti.
+
+The last is an unlucky word for a female prisoner.]
+
+[Footnote 75: (Anna, l. v. p. 133;) and elsewhere, (p. 140.) The
+pedantry of the princess in the choice of classic appellations
+encouraged Ducange to apply to his countrymen the characters of the
+ancient Gauls.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Lupus Protospata (tom. iii. p. 45) says 6000: William the
+Apulian more than 5000, (l. iv. p. 273.) Their modesty is singular and
+laudable: they might with so little trouble have slain two or three
+myriads of schismatics and infidels!]
+
+It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by the loss of
+a costly pageant, which had merited only the contempt and derision of
+the Greeks. After their defeat, they still persevered in the defence
+of Durazzo; and a Venetian commander supplied the place of George
+Palaeologus, who had been imprudently called away from his station.
+The tents of the besiegers were converted into barracks, to sustain the
+inclemency of the winter; and in answer to the defiance of the garrison,
+Robert insinuated, that his patience was at least equal to their
+obstinacy. [77] Perhaps he already trusted to his secret correspondence
+with a Venetian noble, who sold the city for a rich and honorable
+marriage. At the dead of night, several rope-ladders were dropped from
+the walls; the light Calabrians ascended in silence; and the Greeks were
+awakened by the name and trumpets of the conqueror. Yet they defended
+the streets three days against an enemy already master of the rampart;
+and near seven months elapsed between the first investment and the final
+surrender of the place. From Durazzo, the Norman duke advanced into the
+heart of Epirus or Albania; traversed the first mountains of Thessaly;
+surprised three hundred English in the city of Castoria; approached
+Thessalonica; and made Constantinople tremble. A more pressing duty
+suspended the prosecution of his ambitious designs. By shipwreck,
+pestilence, and the sword, his army was reduced to a third of the
+original numbers; and instead of being recruited from Italy, he was
+informed, by plaintive epistles, of the mischiefs and dangers which had
+been produced by his absence: the revolt of the cities and barons of
+Apulia; the distress of the pope; and the approach or invasion of Henry
+king of Germany. Highly presuming that his person was sufficient for the
+public safety, he repassed the sea in a single brigantine, and left the
+remains of the army under the command of his son and the Norman counts,
+exhorting Bohemond to respect the freedom of his peers, and the counts
+to obey the authority of their leader. The son of Guiscard trod in the
+footsteps of his father; and the two destroyers are compared, by the
+Greeks, to the caterpillar and the locust, the last of whom devours
+whatever has escaped the teeth of the former. [78] After winning two
+battles against the emperor, he descended into the plain of Thessaly,
+and besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of Achilles, [79] which
+contained the treasure and magazines of the Byzantine camp. Yet a just
+praise must not be refused to the fortitude and prudence of Alexius, who
+bravely struggled with the calamities of the times. In the poverty
+of the state, he presumed to borrow the superfluous ornaments of the
+churches: the desertion of the Manichaeans was supplied by some tribes
+of Moldavia: a reenforcement of seven thousand Turks replaced and
+revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were
+exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of
+ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had been taught by experience, that
+the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was unfit for action, and
+almost incapable of motion; [80] his archers were directed to aim their
+arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety of spikes and
+snares were scattered over the ground on which he might expect an
+attack. In the neighborhood of Larissa the events of war were protracted
+and balanced. The courage of Bohemond was always conspicuous, and often
+successful; but his camp was pillaged by a stratagem of the Greeks; the
+city was impregnable; and the venal or discontented counts deserted
+his standard, betrayed their trusts, and enlisted in the service of the
+emperor. Alexius returned to Constantinople with the advantage, rather
+than the honor, of victory. After evacuating the conquests which he
+could no longer defend, the son of Guiscard embarked for Italy, and
+was embraced by a father who esteemed his merit, and sympathized in his
+misfortune.
+
+[Footnote 77: The Romans had changed the inauspicious name of Epidamnus
+to Dyrrachium, (Plin. iii. 26;) and the vulgar corruption of Duracium
+(see Malaterra) bore some affinity to hardness. One of Robert's names
+was Durand, a durando: poor wit! (Alberic. Monach. in Chron. apud
+Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 137.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: (Anna, l. i. p. 35.) By these similes, so different from
+those of Homer she wishes to inspire contempt as well as horror for
+the little noxious animal, a conqueror. Most unfortunately, the common
+sense, or common nonsense, of mankind, resists her laudable design.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Prodiit hac auctor Trojanae cladis Achilles. The
+supposition of the Apulian (l. v. p. 275) may be excused by the more
+classic poetry of Virgil, (Aeneid. ii. 197,) Larissaeus Achilles, but it
+is not justified by the geography of Homer.]
+
+[Footnote 80: The items which encumbered the knights on foot, have been
+ignorantly translated spurs, (Anna Comnena, Alexias, l. v. p. 140.)
+Ducange has explained the true sense by a ridiculous and inconvenient
+fashion, which lasted from the xith to the xvth century. These peaks, in
+the form of a scorpion, were sometimes two feet and fastened to the knee
+with a silver chain.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.--Part IV.
+
+Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of Robert, the
+most prompt and powerful was Henry the Third or Fourth, king of Germany
+and Italy, and future emperor of the West. The epistle of the Greek
+monarch [81] to his brother is filled with the warmest professions of
+friendship, and the most lively desire of strengthening their alliance
+by every public and private tie. He congratulates Henry on his success
+in a just and pious war; and complains that the prosperity of his own
+empire is disturbed by the audacious enterprises of the Norman Robert.
+The lists of his presents expresses the manners of the age--a radiated
+crown of gold, a cross set with pearls to hang on the breast, a case of
+relics, with the names and titles of the saints, a vase of crystal, a
+vase of sardonyx, some balm, most probably of Mecca, and one hundred
+pieces of purple. To these he added a more solid present, of one hundred
+and forty-four thousand Byzantines of gold, with a further assurance of
+two hundred and sixteen thousand, so soon as Henry should have entered
+in arms the Apulian territories, and confirmed by an oath the league
+against the common enemy. The German, [82] who was already in Lombardy
+at the head of an army and a faction, accepted these liberal offers,
+and marched towards the south: his speed was checked by the sound of the
+battle of Durazzo; but the influence of his arms, or name, in the hasty
+return of Robert, was a full equivalent for the Grecian bribe. Henry was
+the severe adversary of the Normans, the allies and vassals of Gregory
+the Seventh, his implacable foe. The long quarrel of the throne and
+mitre had been recently kindled by the zeal and ambition of that haughty
+priest: [83] the king and the pope had degraded each other; and each had
+seated a rival on the temporal or spiritual throne of his antagonist.
+After the defeat and death of his Swabian rebel, Henry descended into
+Italy, to assume the Imperial crown, and to drive from the Vatican the
+tyrant of the church. [84] But the Roman people adhered to the cause
+of Gregory: their resolution was fortified by supplies of men and money
+from Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually besieged by the
+king of Germany. In the fourth year he corrupted, as it is said, with
+Byzantine gold, the nobles of Rome, whose estates and castles had been
+ruined by the war. The gates, the bridges, and fifty hostages, were
+delivered into his hands: the anti-pope, Clement the Third, was
+consecrated in the Lateran: the grateful pontiff crowned his protector
+in the Vatican; and the emperor Henry fixed his residence in the
+Capitol, as the lawful successor of Augustus and Charlemagne. The ruins
+of the Septizonium were still defended by the nephew of Gregory: the
+pope himself was invested in the castle of St. Angelo; and his last hope
+was in the courage and fidelity of his Norman vassal. Their friendship
+had been interrupted by some reciprocal injuries and complaints; but,
+on this pressing occasion, Guiscard was urged by the obligation of his
+oath, by his interest, more potent than oaths, by the love of fame, and
+his enmity to the two emperors. Unfurling the holy banner, he resolved
+to fly to the relief of the prince of the apostles: the most numerous of
+his armies, six thousand horse, and thirty thousand foot, was instantly
+assembled; and his march from Salerno to Rome was animated by the public
+applause and the promise of the divine favor. Henry, invincible
+in sixty-six battles, trembled at his approach; recollected some
+indispensable affairs that required his presence in Lombardy; exhorted
+the Romans to persevere in their allegiance; and hastily retreated three
+days before the entrance of the Normans. In less than three years, the
+son of Tancred of Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the pope,
+and of compelling the two emperors, of the East and West, to fly before
+his victorious arms. [85] But the triumph of Robert was clouded by the
+calamities of Rome. By the aid of the friends of Gregory, the walls had
+been perforated or scaled; but the Imperial faction was still powerful
+and active; on the third day, the people rose in a furious tumult; and
+a hasty word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the signal
+of fire and pillage. [86] The Saracens of Sicily, the subjects of Roger,
+and auxiliaries of his brother, embraced this fair occasion of rifling
+and profaning the holy city of the Christians: many thousands of the
+citizens, in the sight, and by the allies, of their spiritual father
+were exposed to violation, captivity, or death; and a spacious quarter
+of the city, from the Lateran to the Coliseum, was consumed by the
+flames, and devoted to perpetual solitude. [87] From a city, where he
+was now hated, and might be no longer feared, Gregory retired to end
+his days in the palace of Salerno. The artful pontiff might flatter the
+vanity of Guiscard with the hope of a Roman or Imperial crown; but this
+dangerous measure, which would have inflamed the ambition of the Norman,
+must forever have alienated the most faithful princes of Germany.
+
+[Footnote 81: The epistle itself (Alexias, l. iii. p. 93, 94, 95) well
+deserves to be read. There is one expression which Ducange does not
+understand. I have endeavored to grope out a tolerable meaning: The
+first word is a golden crown; the second is explained by Simon Portius,
+(in Lexico Graeco-Barbar.,) by a flash of lightning.]
+
+[Footnote 82: For these general events I must refer to the general
+historians Sigonius, Baronius, Muratori, Mosheim, St. Marc, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 83: The lives of Gregory VII. are either legends or
+invectives, (St. Marc, Abrege, tom. iii. p. 235, &c.;) and his
+miraculous or magical performances are alike incredible to a modern
+reader. He will, as usual, find some instruction in Le Clerc, (Vie
+de Hildebrand, Bibliot, ancienne et moderne, tom. viii.,) and much
+amusement in Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, Gregoire VII.) That pope was
+undoubtedly a great man, a second Athanasius, in a more fortunate age of
+the church. May I presume to add, that the portrait of Athanasius is one
+of the passages of my history (vol. ii. p. 332, &c.) with which I am
+the least dissatisfied? * Note: There is a fair life of Gregory VII.
+by Voigt, (Weimar. 1815,) which has been translated into French. M.
+Villemain, it is understood, has devoted much time to the study of this
+remarkable character, to whom his eloquence may do justice. There
+is much valuable information on the subject in the accurate work of
+Stenzel, Geschichte Deutschlands unter den Frankischen Kaisern--the
+History of Germany under the Emperors of the Franconian Race.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Anna, with the rancor of a Greek schismatic, calls him (l.
+i. p. 32,) a pope, or priest, worthy to be spit upon and accuses him of
+scourging, shaving, and perhaps of castrating the ambassadors of Henry,
+(p. 31, 33.) But this outrage is improbable and doubtful, (see the
+sensible preface of Cousin.)]
+
+[Footnote 85:
+
+     Sic uno tempore victi
+
+     Sunt terrae Domini duo: rex Alemannicus iste,
+
+         Imperii rector Romani maximus ille.
+
+     Alter ad arma ruens armis superatur; et alter
+
+         Nominis auditi sola formidine cessit.
+
+It is singular enough, that the Apulian, a Latin, should distinguish the
+Greek as the ruler of the Roman empire, (l. iv. p. 274.)]
+
+[Footnote 86: The narrative of Malaterra (l. iii. c. 37, p. 587, 588) is
+authentic, circumstantial, and fair. Dux ignem exclamans urbe incensa,
+&c. The Apulian softens the mischief, (inde quibusdam aedibus exustis,)
+which is again exaggerated in some partial chronicles, (Muratori,
+Annali, tom. ix. p. 147.)]
+
+[Footnote 87: After mentioning this devastation, the Jesuit Donatus
+(de Roma veteri et nova, l. iv. c. 8, p. 489) prettily adds, Duraret
+hodieque in Coelio monte, interque ipsum et capitolium, miserabilis
+facies prostrates urbis, nisi in hortorum vinetorumque amoenitatem
+Roma resurrexisset, ut perpetua viriditate contegeret vulnera et ruinas
+suas.]
+
+The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged himself in a
+season of repose; but in the same year of the flight of the German
+emperor, the indefatigable Robert resumed the design of his eastern
+conquests. The zeal or gratitude of Gregory had promised to his valor
+the kingdoms of Greece and Asia; [88] his troops were assembled in
+arms, flushed with success, and eager for action. Their numbers, in the
+language of Homer, are compared by Anna to a swarm of bees; [89] yet the
+utmost and moderate limits of the powers of Guiscard have been already
+defined; they were contained on this second occasion in one hundred
+and twenty vessels; and as the season was far advanced, the harbor of
+Brundusium [90] was preferred to the open road of Otranto. Alexius,
+apprehensive of a second attack, had assiduously labored to restore the
+naval forces of the empire; and obtained from the republic of Venice an
+important succor of thirty-six transports, fourteen galleys, and
+nine galiots or ships of extra-ordinary strength and magnitude. Their
+services were liberally paid by the license or monopoly of trade, a
+profitable gift of many shops and houses in the port of Constantinople,
+and a tribute to St. Mark, the more acceptable, as it was the produce
+of a tax on their rivals at Amalphi. By the union of the Greeks and
+Venetians, the Adriatic was covered with a hostile fleet; but their
+own neglect, or the vigilance of Robert, the change of a wind, or the
+shelter of a mist, opened a free passage; and the Norman troops were
+safely disembarked on the coast of Epirus. With twenty strong and
+well-appointed galleys, their intrepid duke immediately sought the
+enemy, and though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he trusted his
+own life, and the lives of his brother and two sons, to the event of a
+naval combat. The dominion of the sea was disputed in three engagements,
+in sight of the Isle of Corfu: in the two former, the skill and numbers
+of the allies were superior; but in the third, the Normans obtained a
+final and complete victory. [91] The light brigantines of the Greeks
+were scattered in ignominious flight: the nine castles of the Venetians
+maintained a more obstinate conflict; seven were sunk, two were taken;
+two thousand five hundred captives implored in vain the mercy of the
+victor; and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen
+thousand of his subjects or allies. The want of experience had been
+supplied by the genius of Guiscard; and each evening, when he had
+sounded a retreat, he calmly explored the causes of his repulse, and
+invented new methods how to remedy his own defects, and to baffle the
+advantages of the enemy. The winter season suspended his progress: with
+the return of spring he again aspired to the conquest of Constantinople;
+but, instead of traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms
+against Greece and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labor,
+and where the land and sea forces might pursue their joint operations
+with vigor and effect. But, in the Isle of Cephalonia, his projects
+were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease: Robert himself, in the
+seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent; and a suspicion of
+poison was imputed, by public rumor, to his wife, or to the Greek
+emperor. [92] This premature death might allow a boundless scope for the
+imagination of his future exploits; and the event sufficiently declares,
+that the Norman greatness was founded on his life. [93] Without the
+appearance of an enemy, a victorious army dispersed or retreated in
+disorder and consternation; and Alexius, who had trembled for his
+empire, rejoiced in his deliverance. The galley which transported the
+remains of Guiscard was ship-wrecked on the Italian shore; but the
+duke's body was recovered from the sea, and deposited in the sepulchre
+of Venusia, [94] a place more illustrious for the birth of Horace [95]
+than for the burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, his second son and
+successor, immediately sunk to the humble station of a duke of Apulia:
+the esteem or partiality of his father left the valiant Bohemond to the
+inheritance of his sword.
+
+The national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the first
+crusade against the infidels of the East opened a more splendid field of
+glory and conquest. [96]
+
+[Footnote 88: The royalty of Robert, either promised or bestowed by the
+pope, (Anna, l. i. p. 32,) is sufficiently confirmed by the Apulian, (l.
+iv. p. 270.) --Romani regni sibi promisisse coronam Papa ferebatur.
+Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the other papal advocates, should
+be displeased with this new instance of apostolic jurisdiction.]
+
+[Footnote 89: See Homer, Iliad, B. (I hate this pedantic mode of
+quotation by letters of the Greek alphabet) 87, &c. His bees are the
+image of a disorderly crowd: their discipline and public works seem to
+be the ideas of a later age, (Virgil. Aeneid. l. i.)]
+
+[Footnote 90: Gulielm. Appulus, l. v. p. 276.) The admirable port of
+Brundusium was double; the outward harbor was a gulf covered by an
+island, and narrowing by degrees, till it communicated by a small gullet
+with the inner harbor, which embraced the city on both sides. Caesar and
+nature have labored for its ruin; and against such agents what are the
+feeble efforts of the Neapolitan government? (Swinburne's Travels in the
+Two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 384-390.]
+
+[Footnote 91: William of Apulia (l. v. p. 276) describes the victory of
+the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats, which are diligently
+recorded by Anna Comnena, (l. vi. p. 159, 160, 161.) In her turn, she
+invents or magnifies a fourth action, to give the Venetians revenge and
+rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their
+doge, propter excidium stoli, (Dandulus in Chron in Muratori, Script.
+Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249.)]
+
+[Footnote 92: The most authentic writers, William of Apulia. (l.
+v. 277,) Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 41, p. 589,) and Romuald of
+Salerno, (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.,) are
+ignorant of this crime, so apparent to our countrymen William of
+Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden, (p. 710, in Script.
+post Bedam) and the latter can tell, how the just Alexius married,
+crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English historian
+is indeed so blind, that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the
+knights of Henry I, who ascended the throne fifteen years after the duke
+of Apulia's death.]
+
+[Footnote 93: The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the
+grave of an enemy, (Alexiad, l. v. p. 162-166;) and his best praise
+is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the sovereign of his
+family Graecia (says Malaterra) hostibus recedentibus libera laeta
+quievit: Apulia tota sive Calabria turbatur.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is one
+of the last lines of the Apulian's poems, (l. v. p. 278.) William of
+Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on Guiscard, which is not
+worth transcribing.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia; he was carried
+to Rome in his childhood, (Serm. i. 6;) and his repeated allusions to
+the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii. 4, Serm. ii. I) are
+unworthy of his age and genius.]
+
+[Footnote 96: See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88-93) and the historians of
+the fire crusade.]
+
+Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and
+soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of Robert Guiscard was
+extinguished, both in Apulia and at Antioch, in the second generation;
+but his younger brother became the father of a line of kings; and the
+son of the great count was endowed with the name, the conquests, and the
+spirit, of the first Roger. [97] The heir of that Norman adventurer was
+born in Sicily; and, at the age of only four years, he succeeded to
+the sovereignty of the island, a lot which reason might envy, could she
+indulge for a moment the visionary, though virtuous wish of dominion.
+Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and grateful
+people might have blessed their benefactor; and if a wise administration
+could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies, [98] the
+opulence and power of Sicily alone might have equalled the widest
+scope that could be acquired and desolated by the sword of war. But the
+ambition of the great count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it
+was gratified by the vulgar means of violence and artifice. He sought to
+obtain the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been
+ceded to the elder branch; struggled to enlarge his Calabrian limits
+beyond the measure of former treaties; and impatiently watched the
+declining health of his cousin William of Apulia, the grandson of
+Robert. On the first intelligence of his premature death, Roger sailed
+from Palermo with seven galleys, cast anchor in the Bay of Salerno,
+received, after ten days' negotiation, an oath of fidelity from the
+Norman capital, commanded the submission of the barons, and extorted a
+legal investiture from the reluctant popes, who could not long endure
+either the friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot
+of Benevento was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter;
+but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his uncle
+Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests was possessed
+by the victorious Roger. A conscious superiority of power and merit
+prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and of count; and the Isle of
+Sicily, with a third perhaps of the continent of Italy, might form the
+basis of a kingdom [99] which would only yield to the monarchies of
+France and England. The chiefs of the nation who attended his coronation
+at Palermo might doubtless pronounce under what name he should reign
+over them; but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir was
+insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings of the
+Latin world [100] might disclaim their new associate, unless he were
+consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. The pride of
+Anacletus was pleased to confer a title, which the pride of the Norman
+had stooped to solicit; [101] but his own legitimacy was attacked by the
+adverse election of Innocent the Second; and while Anacletus sat in
+the Vatican, the successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of
+Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown,
+by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword of
+Lothaire the Second of Germany, the excommunications of Innocent, the
+fleets of Pisa, and the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of
+the Sicilian robber. After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince was
+driven from the continent of Italy: a new duke of Apulia was invested by
+the pope and the emperor, each of whom held one end of the gonfanon,
+or flagstaff, as a token that they asserted their right, and suspended
+their quarrel. But such jealous friendship was of short and precarious
+duration: the German armies soon vanished in disease and desertion:
+[102] the Apulian duke, with all his adherents, was exterminated by a
+conqueror who seldom forgave either the dead or the living; like his
+predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though haughty pontiff became
+the captive and friend of the Normans; and their reconciliation was
+celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who now revered the title and
+virtues of the king of Sicily.
+
+[Footnote 97: The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily,
+fills books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone, (tom. ii. l. xi.-xiv. p.
+136-340,) and is spread over the ixth and xth volumes of the Italian
+Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliotheque Italique (tom. i. p. 175-122,)
+I find a useful abstract of Capacelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has
+composed, in two volumes, the history of his country from Roger Frederic
+II. inclusive.]
+
+[Footnote 98: According to the testimony of Philistus and Diodorus, the
+tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse could maintain a standing force of 10,000
+horse, 100,000 foot, and 400 galleys. Compare Hume, (Essays, vol. i. p.
+268, 435,) and his adversary Wallace, (Numbers of Mankind, p. 306, 307.)
+The ruins of Agrigentum are the theme of every traveller, D'Orville,
+Reidesel, Swinburne, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 99: A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger from the
+year 1127 to 1135, founds his title on merit and power, the consent
+of the barons, and the ancient royalty of Sicily and Palermo, without
+introducing Pope Anacletus, (Alexand. Coenobii Telesini Abbatis de Rebus
+gestis Regis Rogerii, lib. iv. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. v.
+p. 607-645)]
+
+[Footnote 100: The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castille,
+Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were
+more ancient than Charlemagne; the three next were created by their
+sword; the three last by their baptism; and of these the king of Hungary
+alone was honored or debased by a papal crown.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more
+early and independent coronation, (A.D. 1130, May 1,) which Giannone
+unwillingly rejects, (tom. ii. p. 137-144.) This fiction is disproved
+by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious
+character of Messina, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. ix. p. 340.
+Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468.)]
+
+[Footnote 102: Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire's army, who
+sounded, or rather cried, a retreat; for the Germans (says Cinnamus,
+l. iii. c. i. p. 51) are ignorant of the use of trumpets. Most ignorant
+himself! * Note: Cinnamus says nothing of their ignorance.--M]
+
+As a penance for his impious war against the successor of St. Peter,
+that monarch might have promised to display the banner of the cross,
+and he accomplished with ardor a vow so propitious to his interest and
+revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might provoke a just retaliation
+on the heads of the Saracens: the Normans, whose blood had been mingled
+with so many subject streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate
+the naval trophies of their fathers, and in the maturity of their
+strength they contended with the decline of an African power. When the
+Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he rewarded the real
+merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a gift of his
+royal mantle, and forty Arabian horses, his palace with its sumptuous
+furniture, and the government of the kingdoms of Tunis and Algiers. The
+Zeirides, [103] the descendants of Joseph, forgot their allegiance and
+gratitude to a distant benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of
+prosperity; and after running the little course of an Oriental dynasty,
+were now fainting in their own weakness. On the side of the land, they
+were pressed by the Almohades, the fanatic princes of Morocco, while
+the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of the Greeks and Franks, who,
+before the close of the eleventh century, had extorted a ransom of two
+hundred thousand pieces of gold. By the first arms of Roger, the island
+or rock of Malta, which has been since ennobled by a military and
+religious colony, was inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily.
+Tripoli, [104] a strong and maritime city, was the next object of his
+attack; and the slaughter of the males, the captivity of the females,
+might be justified by the frequent practice of the Moslems themselves.
+The capital of the Zeirides was named Africa from the country, and
+Mahadia [105] from the Arabian founder: it is strongly built on a neck
+of land, but the imperfection of the harbor is not compensated by the
+fertility of the adjacent plain. Mahadia was besieged by George the
+Sicilian admiral, with a fleet of one hundred and fifty galleys, amply
+provided with men and the instruments of mischief: the sovereign had
+fled, the Moorish governor refused to capitulate, declined the last and
+irresistible assault, and secretly escaping with the Moslem inhabitants
+abandoned the place and its treasures to the rapacious Franks. In
+successive expeditions, the king of Sicily or his lieutenants reduced
+the cities of Tunis, Safax, Capsia, Bona, and a long tract of the
+sea-coast; [106] the fortresses were garrisoned, the country was
+tributary, and a boast that it held Africa in subjection might be
+inscribed with some flattery on the sword of Roger. [107] After his
+death, that sword was broken; and these transmarine possessions
+were neglected, evacuated, or lost, under the troubled reign of his
+successor. [108] The triumphs of Scipio and Belisarius have proved, that
+the African continent is neither inaccessible nor invincible; yet the
+great princes and powers of Christendom have repeatedly failed in their
+armaments against the Moors, who may still glory in the easy conquest
+and long servitude of Spain.
+
+[Footnote 103: See De Guignes, Hist. Generate des Huns, tom. i. p.
+369-373 and Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique, &c., sous la Domination
+des Arabes tom. ii. p. 70-144. Their common original appears to be
+Novairi.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Tripoli (says the Nubian geographer, or more properly
+the Sherif al Edrisi) urbs fortis, saxeo muro vallata, sita prope littus
+maris Hanc expugnavit Rogerius, qui mulieribus captivis ductis, viros
+pere mit.]
+
+[Footnote 105: See the geography of Leo Africanus, (in Ramusio tom. i.
+fol. 74 verso. fol. 75, recto,) and Shaw's Travels, (p. 110,) the viith
+book of Thuanus, and the xith of the Abbe de Vertot. The possession and
+defence of the place was offered by Charles V. and wisely declined by
+the knights of Malta.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Pagi has accurately marked the African conquests of Roger
+and his criticism was supplied by his friend the Abbe de Longuerue with
+some Arabic memorials, (A.D. 1147, No. 26, 27, A.D. 1148, No. 16, A.D.
+1153, No. 16.)]
+
+[Footnote 107: Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer. A
+proud inscription, which denotes, that the Norman conquerors were still
+discriminated from their Christian and Moslem subjects.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Hugo Falcandus (Hist. Sicula, in Muratori, Script. tom.
+vii. p. 270, 271) ascribes these losses to the neglect or treachery of
+the admiral Majo.]
+
+Since the decease of Robert Guiscard, the Normans had relinquished,
+above sixty years, their hostile designs against the empire of the East.
+The policy of Roger solicited a public and private union with the Greek
+princes, whose alliance would dignify his regal character: he demanded
+in marriage a daughter of the Comnenian family, and the first steps of
+the treaty seemed to promise a favorable event. But the contemptuous
+treatment of his ambassadors exasperated the vanity of the new monarch;
+and the insolence of the Byzantine court was expiated, according to the
+laws of nations, by the sufferings of a guiltless people. [109] With the
+fleet of seventy galleys, George, the admiral of Sicily, appeared before
+Corfu; and both the island and city were delivered into his hands by the
+disaffected inhabitants, who had yet to learn that a siege is still
+more calamitous than a tribute. In this invasion, of some moment in the
+annals of commerce, the Normans spread themselves by sea, and over
+the provinces of Greece; and the venerable age of Athens, Thebes, and
+Corinth, was violated by rapine and cruelty. Of the wrongs of Athens,
+no memorial remains. The ancient walls, which encompassed, without
+guarding, the opulence of Thebes, were scaled by the Latin Christians;
+but their sole use of the gospel was to sanctify an oath, that the
+lawful owners had not secreted any relic of their inheritance or
+industry. On the approach of the Normans, the lower town of Corinth
+was evacuated; the Greeks retired to the citadel, which was seated on a
+lofty eminence, abundantly watered by the classic fountain of Pirene;
+an impregnable fortress, if the want of courage could be balanced by any
+advantages of art or nature. As soon as the besiegers had surmounted the
+labor (their sole labor) of climbing the hill, their general, from
+the commanding eminence, admired his own victory, and testified his
+gratitude to Heaven, by tearing from the altar the precious image of
+Theodore, the tutelary saint. The silk weavers of both sexes, whom
+George transported to Sicily, composed the most valuable part of the
+spoil; and in comparing the skilful industry of the mechanic with the
+sloth and cowardice of the soldier, he was heard to exclaim that the
+distaff and loom were the only weapons which the Greeks were capable of
+using. The progress of this naval armament was marked by two conspicuous
+events, the rescue of the king of France, and the insult of the
+Byzantine capital. In his return by sea from an unfortunate crusade,
+Louis the Seventh was intercepted by the Greeks, who basely violated the
+laws of honor and religion. The fortunate encounter of the Norman
+fleet delivered the royal captive; and after a free and honorable
+entertainment in the court of Sicily, Louis continued his journey to
+Rome and Paris. [110] In the absence of the emperor, Constantinople and
+the Hellespont were left without defence and without the suspicion
+of danger. The clergy and people (for the soldiers had followed
+the standard of Manuel) were astonished and dismayed at the hostile
+appearance of a line of galleys, which boldly cast anchor in the front
+of the Imperial city. The forces of the Sicilian admiral were inadequate
+to the siege or assault of an immense and populous metropolis; but
+George enjoyed the glory of humbling the Greek arrogance, and of marking
+the path of conquest to the navies of the West. He landed some soldiers
+to rifle the fruits of the royal gardens, and pointed with silver, or
+most probably with fire, the arrows which he discharged against the
+palace of the Caesars. [111] This playful outrage of the pirates of
+Sicily, who had surprised an unguarded moment, Manuel affected to
+despise, while his martial spirit, and the forces of the empire, were
+awakened to revenge. The Archipelago and Ionian Sea were covered with
+his squadrons and those of Venice; but I know not by what favorable
+allowance of transports, victuallers, and pinnaces, our reason, or
+even our fancy, can be reconciled to the stupendous account of fifteen
+hundred vessels, which is proposed by a Byzantine historian. These
+operations were directed with prudence and energy: in his homeward
+voyage George lost nineteen of his galleys, which were separated and
+taken: after an obstinate defence, Corfu implored the clemency of her
+lawful sovereign; nor could a ship, a soldier, of the Norman prince, be
+found, unless as a captive, within the limits of the Eastern empire. The
+prosperity and the health of Roger were already in a declining state:
+while he listened in his palace of Palermo to the messengers of victory
+or defeat, the invincible Manuel, the foremost in every assault, was
+celebrated by the Greeks and Latins as the Alexander or the Hercules of
+the age.
+
+[Footnote 109: The silence of the Sicilian historians, who end too soon,
+or begin too late, must be supplied by Otho of Frisingen, a German, (de
+Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in Muratori, Script. tom. vi. p. 668,)
+the Venetian Andrew Dandulus, (Id. tom. xii. p. 282, 283) and the Greek
+writers Cinnamus (l. iii. c. 2-5) and Nicetas, (in Manuel. l. iii. c.
+1-6.)]
+
+[Footnote 110: To this imperfect capture and speedy rescue I apply
+Cinnamus, l. ii. c. 19, p. 49. Muratori, on tolerable evidence, (Annali
+d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 420, 421,) laughs at the delicacy of the French,
+who maintain, marisque nullo impediente periculo ad regnum proprium
+reversum esse; yet I observe that their advocate, Ducange, is less
+positive as the commentator on Cinnamus, than as the editor of
+Joinville.]
+
+[Footnote 111: In palatium regium sagittas igneas injecit, says
+Dandulus; but Nicetas (l. ii. c. 8, p. 66) transforms them, and adds,
+that Manuel styled this insult. These arrows, by the compiler, Vincent
+de Beauvais, are again transmuted into gold.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.--Part V.
+
+A prince of such a temper could not be satisfied with having repelled
+the insolence of a Barbarian. It was the right and duty, it might be
+the interest and glory, of Manuel to restore the ancient majesty of the
+empire, to recover the provinces of Italy and Sicily, and to chastise
+this pretended king, the grandson of a Norman vassal. [112] The natives
+of Calabria were still attached to the Greek language and worship, which
+had been inexorably proscribed by the Latin clergy: after the loss of
+her dukes, Apulia was chained as a servile appendage to the crown of
+Sicily; the founder of the monarchy had ruled by the sword; and his
+death had abated the fear, without healing the discontent, of his
+subjects: the feudal government was always pregnant with the seeds of
+rebellion; and a nephew of Roger himself invited the enemies of his
+family and nation. The majesty of the purple, and a series of Hungarian
+and Turkish wars, prevented Manuel from embarking his person in the
+Italian expedition. To the brave and noble Palaeologus, his lieutenant,
+the Greek monarch intrusted a fleet and army: the siege of Bari was his
+first exploit; and, in every operation, gold as well as steel was the
+instrument of victory. Salerno, and some places along the western
+coast, maintained their fidelity to the Norman king; but he lost in
+two campaigns the greater part of his continental possessions; and the
+modest emperor, disdaining all flattery and falsehood, was content
+with the reduction of three hundred cities or villages of Apulia and
+Calabria, whose names and titles were inscribed on all the walls of
+the palace. The prejudices of the Latins were gratified by a genuine or
+fictitious donation under the seal of the German Caesars; [113] but
+the successor of Constantine soon renounced this ignominious pretence,
+claimed the indefeasible dominion of Italy, and professed his design of
+chasing the Barbarians beyond the Alps. By the artful speeches, liberal
+gifts, and unbounded promises, of their Eastern ally, the free cities
+were encouraged to persevere in their generous struggle against the
+despotism of Frederic Barbarossa: the walls of Milan were rebuilt by the
+contributions of Manuel; and he poured, says the historian, a river
+of gold into the bosom of Ancona, whose attachment to the Greeks was
+fortified by the jealous enmity of the Venetians. [114] The situation
+and trade of Ancona rendered it an important garrison in the heart
+of Italy: it was twice besieged by the arms of Frederic; the imperial
+forces were twice repulsed by the spirit of freedom; that spirit was
+animated by the ambassador of Constantinople; and the most intrepid
+patriots, the most faithful servants, were rewarded by the wealth and
+honors of the Byzantine court. [115] The pride of Manuel disdained and
+rejected a Barbarian colleague; his ambition was excited by the hope of
+stripping the purple from the German usurpers, and of establishing,
+in the West, as in the East, his lawful title of sole emperor of the
+Romans. With this view, he solicited the alliance of the people and the
+bishop of Rome. Several of the nobles embraced the cause of the Greek
+monarch; the splendid nuptials of his niece with Odo Frangipani secured
+the support of that powerful family, [116] and his royal standard or
+image was entertained with due reverence in the ancient metropolis.
+[117] During the quarrel between Frederic and Alexander the Third, the
+pope twice received in the Vatican the ambassadors of Constantinople.
+They flattered his piety by the long-promised union of the two churches,
+tempted the avarice of his venal court, and exhorted the Roman pontiff
+to seize the just provocation, the favorable moment, to humble
+the savage insolence of the Alemanni and to acknowledge the true
+representative of Constantine and Augustus. [118]
+
+[Footnote 112: For the invasion of Italy, which is almost overlooked by
+Nicetas see the more polite history of Cinnamus, (l. iv. c. 1-15, p.
+78-101,) who introduces a diffuse narrative by a lofty profession, iii.
+5.]
+
+[Footnote 113: The Latin, Otho, (de Gestis Frederici I. l. ii. c. 30,
+p. 734,) attests the forgery; the Greek, Cinnamus, (l. iv. c. 1, p.
+78,) claims a promise of restitution from Conrad and Frederic. An act of
+fraud is always credible when it is told of the Greeks.]
+
+[Footnote 114: Quod Ancontiani Graecum imperium nimis diligerent ...
+Veneti speciali odio Anconam oderunt. The cause of love, perhaps of
+envy, were the beneficia, flumen aureum of the emperor; and the Latin
+narrative is confirmed by Cinnamus, (l. iv. c. 14, p. 98.)]
+
+[Footnote 115: Muratori mentions the two sieges of Ancona; the first,
+in 1167, against Frederic I. in person (Annali, tom. x. p. 39, &c.;) the
+second, in 1173, against his lieutenant Christian, archbishop of Mentz,
+a man unworthy of his name and office, (p. 76, &c.) It is of the second
+siege that we possess an original narrative, which he has published in
+his great collection, (tom. vi. p. 921-946.)]
+
+[Footnote 116: We derive this anecdote from an anonymous chronicle of
+Fossa Nova, published by Muratori, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p. 874.)]
+
+[Footnote 117: Cinnamus (l. iv. c. 14, p. 99) is susceptible of this
+double sense. A standard is more Latin, an image more Greek.]
+
+[Footnote 118: Nihilominus quoque petebat, ut quia occasio justa et
+tempos opportunum et acceptabile se obtulerant, Romani corona imperii a
+sancto apostolo sibi redderetur; quoniam non ad Frederici Alemanni,
+sed ad suum jus asseruit pertinere, (Vit. Alexandri III. a Cardinal.
+Arragoniae, in Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. par. i. p. 458.) His second
+embassy was accompanied cum immensa multitudine pecuniarum.]
+
+But these Italian conquests, this universal reign, soon escaped from the
+hand of the Greek emperor. His first demands were eluded by the
+prudence of Alexander the Third, who paused on this deep and momentous
+revolution; [119] nor could the pope be seduced by a personal dispute to
+renounce the perpetual inheritance of the Latin name. After the reunion
+with Frederic, he spoke a more peremptory language, confirmed the
+acts of his predecessors, excommunicated the adherents of Manuel,
+and pronounced the final separation of the churches, or at least the
+empires, of Constantinople and Rome. [120] The free cities of Lombardy
+no longer remembered their foreign benefactor, and without preserving
+the friendship of Ancona, he soon incurred the enmity of Venice. [121]
+By his own avarice, or the complaints of his subjects, the Greek emperor
+was provoked to arrest the persons, and confiscate the effects, of the
+Venetian merchants. This violation of the public faith exasperated a
+free and commercial people: one hundred galleys were launched and armed
+in as many days; they swept the coasts of Dalmatia and Greece: but after
+some mutual wounds, the war was terminated by an agreement, inglorious
+to the empire, insufficient for the republic; and a complete vengeance
+of these and of fresh injuries was reserved for the succeeding
+generation. The lieutenant of Manuel had informed his sovereign that he
+was strong enough to quell any domestic revolt of Apulia and Calabria;
+but that his forces were inadequate to resist the impending attack
+of the king of Sicily. His prophecy was soon verified: the death of
+Palaeologus devolved the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in
+rank, alike defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed
+by land and sea; and a captive remnant that escaped the swords of the
+Normans and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the person or
+dominions of their conqueror. [122] Yet the king of Sicily esteemed the
+courage and constancy of Manuel, who had landed a second army on the
+Italian shore; he respectfully addressed the new Justinian; solicited a
+peace or truce of thirty years, accepted as a gift the regal title; and
+acknowledged himself the military vassal of the Roman empire. [123]
+The Byzantine Caesars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without
+expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman army; and
+the truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any hostilities between
+Sicily and Constantinople. About the end of that period, the throne of
+Manuel was usurped by an inhuman tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence
+of his country and mankind: the sword of William the Second, the
+grandson of Roger, was drawn by a fugitive of the Comnenian race; and
+the subjects of Andronicus might salute the strangers as friends,
+since they detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies. The Latin
+historians [124] expatiate on the rapid progress of the four counts
+who invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced many castles and
+cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily. The Greeks [125] accuse
+and magnify the wanton and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated
+in the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. The former
+deplore the fate of those invincible but unsuspecting warriors who were
+destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs
+of triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the Sea of
+Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the walls
+of Durazzo. A revolution which punished the crimes of Andronicus,
+had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful
+insurgents: ten thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the
+new emperor, might indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of
+four thousand captives. Such was the event of the last contest between
+the Greeks and Normans: before the expiration of twenty years, the rival
+nations were lost or degraded in foreign servitude; and the successors
+of Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the Sicilian
+monarchy.
+
+[Footnote 119: Nimis alta et perplexa sunt, (Vit. Alexandri III. p. 460,
+461,) says the cautious pope.]
+
+[Footnote 120: (Cinnamus, l. iv. c. 14, p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 121: In his vith book, Cinnamus describes the Venetian war,
+which Nicetas has not thought worthy of his attention. The Italian
+accounts, which do not satisfy our curiosity, are reported by the
+annalist Muratori, under the years 1171, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 122: This victory is mentioned by Romuald of Salerno, (in
+Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. vii. p. 198.) It is whimsical enough, that
+in the praise of the king of Sicily, Cinnamus (l. iv. c. 13, p. 97, 98)
+is much warmer and copious than Falcandus, (p. 268, 270.) But the Greek
+is fond of description, and the Latin historian is not fond of William
+the Bad.]
+
+[Footnote 123: For the epistle of William I. see Cinnamus (l. iv. c.
+15, p. 101, 102) and Nicetas, (l. ii. c. 8.) It is difficult to affirm,
+whether these Greeks deceived themselves, or the public, in these
+flattering portraits of the grandeur of the empire.]
+
+[Footnote 124: I can only quote, of original evidence, the poor
+chronicles of Sicard of Cremona, (p. 603,) and of Fossa Nova, (p. 875,)
+as they are published in the viith tome of Muratori's historians.
+The king of Sicily sent his troops contra nequitiam Andronici.... ad
+acquirendum imperium C. P. They were.... decepti captique, by Isaac.]
+
+[Footnote 125: By the failure of Cinnamus to Nicetas (in Andronico,
+l.. c. 7, 8, 9, l. ii. c. 1, in Isaac Angelo, l. i. c. 1-4,) who now
+becomes a respectable contemporary. As he survived the emperor and the
+empire, he is above flattery; but the fall of Constantinople exasperated
+his prejudices against the Latins. For the honor of learning I shall
+observe that Homer's great commentator, Eustathias archbishop of
+Thessalonica, refused to desert his flock.]
+
+The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and grandson:
+they might be confounded under the name of William: they are strongly
+discriminated by the epithets of the bad and the good; but these
+epithets, which appear to describe the perfection of vice and virtue,
+cannot strictly be applied to either of the Norman princes. When he was
+roused to arms by danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate
+from the valor of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners
+were dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the monarch
+is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for those of Majo,
+the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and conspired against the
+life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian conquest, Sicily had imbibed a
+deep tincture of Oriental manners; the despotism, the pomp, and even the
+harem, of a sultan; and a Christian people was oppressed and insulted
+by the ascendant of the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly
+cherished, the religion of Mahomet. An eloquent historian of the times
+[126] has delineated the misfortunes of his country: [127] the ambition
+and fall of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his
+assassins; the imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself; the
+private feuds that arose from the public confusion; and the various
+forms of calamity and discord which afflicted Palermo, the island, and
+the continent, during the reign of William the First, and the minority
+of his son. The youth, innocence, and beauty of William the Second,
+[128] endeared him to the nation: the factions were reconciled; the
+laws were revived; and from the manhood to the premature death of that
+amiable prince, Sicily enjoyed a short season of peace, justice, and
+happiness, whose value was enhanced by the remembrance of the past
+and the dread of futurity. The legitimate male posterity of Tancred
+of Hauteville was extinct in the person of the second William; but his
+aunt, the daughter of Roger, had married the most powerful prince of the
+age; and Henry the Sixth, the son of Frederic Barbarossa, descended from
+the Alps to claim the Imperial crown and the inheritance of his wife.
+Against the unanimous wish of a free people, this inheritance could only
+be acquired by arms; and I am pleased to transcribe the style and sense
+of the historian Falcandus, who writes at the moment, and on the spot,
+with the feelings of a patriot, and the prophetic eye of a statesman.
+"Constantia, the daughter of Sicily, nursed from her cradle in the
+pleasures and plenty, and educated in the arts and manners, of this
+fortunate isle, departed long since to enrich the Barbarians with our
+treasures, and now returns, with her savage allies, to contaminate the
+beauties of her venerable parent. Already I behold the swarms of angry
+Barbarians: our opulent cities, the places flourishing in a long peace,
+are shaken with fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by rapine, and
+polluted by intemperance and lust. I see the massacre or captivity
+of our citizens, the rapes of our virgins and matrons. [129] In this
+extremity (he interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act? By
+the unanimous election of a king of valor and experience, Sicily
+and Calabria might yet be preserved; [130] for in the levity of
+the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can repose neither
+confidence nor hope. [131] Should Calabria be lost, the lofty towers,
+the numerous youth, and the naval strength, of Messina, [132] might
+guard the passage against a foreign invader. If the savage Germans
+coalesce with the pirates of Messina; if they destroy with fire the
+fruitful region, so often wasted by the fires of Mount Aetna, [133] what
+resource will be left for the interior parts of the island, these noble
+cities which should never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a
+Barbarian? [134] Catana has again been overwhelmed by an earthquake: the
+ancient virtue of Syracuse expires in poverty and solitude; [135] but
+Palermo is still crowned with a diadem, and her triple walls enclose the
+active multitudes of Christians and Saracens. If the two nations,
+under one king, can unite for their common safety, they may rush on
+the Barbarians with invincible arms. But if the Saracens, fatigued by
+a repetition of injuries, should now retire and rebel; if they should
+occupy the castles of the mountains and sea-coast, the unfortunate
+Christians, exposed to a double attack, and placed as it were between
+the hammer and the anvil, must resign themselves to hopeless and
+inevitable servitude." [136] We must not forget, that a priest here
+prefers his country to his religion; and that the Moslems, whose
+alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful in the state of
+Sicily.
+
+[Footnote 126: The Historia Sicula of Hugo Falcandus, which properly
+extends from 1154 to 1169, is inserted in the viiith volume of
+Muratori's Collection, (tom. vii. p. 259-344,) and preceded by a
+eloquent preface or epistle, (p. 251-258, de Calamitatibus Siciliae.)
+Falcandus has been styled the Tacitus of Sicily; and, after a just, but
+immense, abatement, from the ist to the xiith century, from a senator to
+a monk, I would not strip him of his title: his narrative is rapid and
+perspicuous, his style bold and elegant, his observation keen; he had
+studied mankind, and feels like a man. I can only regret the narrow and
+barren field on which his labors have been cast.]
+
+[Footnote 127: The laborious Benedictines (l'Art de verifier les Dates,
+p. 896) are of opinion, that the true name of Falcandus is Fulcandus, or
+Foucault. According to them, Hugues Foucalt, a Frenchman by birth,
+and at length abbot of St. Denys, had followed into Sicily his patron
+Stephen de la Perche, uncle to the mother of William II., archbishop of
+Palermo, and great chancellor of the kingdom. Yet Falcandus has all the
+feelings of a Sicilian; and the title of Alumnus (which he bestows on
+himself) appears to indicate that he was born, or at least educated, in
+the island.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Falcand. p. 303. Richard de St. Germano begins his
+history from the death and praises of William II. After some unmeaning
+epithets, he thus continues: Legis et justitiae cultus tempore suo
+vigebat in regno; sua erat quilibet sorte contentus; (were they
+mortals?) abique pax, ubique securitas, nec latronum metuebat viator
+insidias, nec maris nauta offendicula piratarum, (Script. Rerum Ital.
+tom. vii p 939.)]
+
+[Footnote 129: Constantia, primis a cunabulis in deliciarun tuarum
+affluentia diutius educata, tuisque institutis, doctrinus et moribus
+informata, tandem opibus tuis Barbaros delatura discessit: et nunc
+cum imgentibus copiis revertitur, ut pulcherrima nutricis ornamenta
+barbarica foeditate contaminet .... Intuari mihi jam videor turbulentas
+bar barorum acies.... civitates opulentas et loca diuturna pace
+florentia, metu concutere, caede vastare, rapinis atterere, et foedare
+luxuria hinc cives aut gladiis intercepti, aut servitute depressi,
+virgines constupratae, matronae, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 130: Certe si regem non dubiae virtutis elegerint, nec a
+Saracenis Christiani dissentiant, poterit rex creatus rebus licet quasi
+desperatis et perditis subvenire, et incursus hostium, si prudenter
+egerit, propulsare.]
+
+[Footnote 131: In Apulis, qui, semper novitate gaudentes, novarum rerum
+studiis aguntur, nihil arbitror spei aut fiduciae reponendum.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Si civium tuorum virtutem et audaciam attendas, ....
+muriorum etiam ambitum densis turribus circumseptum.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Cum erudelitate piratica Theutonum confligat atrocitas,
+et inter aucbustos lapides, et Aethnae flagrant's incendia, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 134: Eam partem, quam nobilissimarum civitatum fulgor
+illustrat, quae et toti regno singulari meruit privilegio praeminere,
+nefarium esset.... vel barbarorum ingressu pollui. I wish to transcribe
+his florid, but curious, description, of the palace, city, and luxuriant
+plain of Palermo.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Vires non suppetunt, et conatus tuos tam inopia civium,
+quam paucitas bellatorum elidunt.]
+
+[Footnote 136: The Normans and Sicilians appear to be confounded.]
+
+The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at first gratified
+by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, the grandson of the first
+king, whose birth was illegitimate, but whose civil and military virtues
+shone without a blemish. During four years, the term of his life and
+reign, he stood in arms on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier,
+against the powers of Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive,
+of Constantia herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass
+the most liberal measure of policy or reason. After his decease, the
+kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and Henry
+pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political
+balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if the pope and the
+free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would
+have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous
+union of the German empire with the kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle
+policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned,
+was on this occasion blind and inactive; and if it were true that
+Celestine the Third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head
+of the prostrate Henry, [137] such an act of impotent pride could serve
+only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who
+enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the
+promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure: [138] their
+fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened the harbor of
+Palermo; and the first act of his government was to abolish the
+privileges, and to seize the property, of these imprudent allies. The
+last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and
+Mahometans: they fought in the capital; several thousands of the latter
+were slain; but their surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and
+disturbed above thirty years the peace of the island. By the policy of
+Frederic the Second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera
+in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor and
+his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the service of the
+enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained their religion
+and manners in the heart of Italy, till they were extirpated, at the
+end of the thirteenth century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of
+Anjou. [139] All the calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored
+were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He
+violated the royal sepulchres, [1391] and explored the secret treasures
+of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom: the pearls and jewels,
+however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty
+horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily. [140] The young
+king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were
+separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps; and, on the slightest
+rumor of rebellion, the captives were deprived of life, of their
+eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constantia herself was touched with
+sympathy for the miseries of her country; and the heiress of the Norman
+line might struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the
+patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age
+under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years after this revolution,
+the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy: the
+sceptre of her ancient dukes had been transmitted, by a granddaughter of
+William the Conqueror, to the house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous
+Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and
+Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost, either in victory
+or servitude, among the vanquished nations.
+
+[Footnote 137: The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden,
+(p. 689,) will lightly weigh against the silence of German and Italian
+history, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. x. p. 156.) The priests
+and pilgrims, who returned from Rome, exalted, by every tale, the
+omnipotence of the holy father.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo, (Caffari,
+Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom vi. p. 367,
+368.)]
+
+[Footnote 139: For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the Annals of
+Muratori, (tom. x. p. 149, and A.D. 1223, 1247,) Giannone, (tom ii. p.
+385,) and of the originals, in Muratori's Collection, Richard de St.
+Germano, (tom. vii. p. 996,) Matteo Spinelli de Giovenazzo, (tom. vii.
+p. 1064,) Nicholas de Jamsilla, (tom. x. p. 494,) and Matreo Villani,
+(tom. xiv l. vii. p. 103.) The last of these insinuates that, in
+reducing the Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather
+artifice than violence.]
+
+[Footnote 1391: It is remarkable that at the same time the tombs of the
+Roman emperors, even of Constantine himself, were violated and ransacked
+by their degenerate successor Alexius Comnenus, in order to enable him
+to pay the "German" tribute exacted by the menaces of the emperor Henry.
+See the end of the first book of the Life of Alexius, in Nicetas, p.
+632, edit.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec, (l. iv.
+c. 20:) Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omnem lapidum pretiosorum et
+gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 somariis, gloriose ad terram suam
+redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions the violation of the royal
+tombs and corpses, computes the spoil of Salerno at 200,000 ounces of
+gold, (p. 746.) On these occasions, I am almost tempted to exclaim
+with the listening maid in La Fontaine, "Je voudrois bien avoir ce qui
+manque."]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII: The Turks.--Part I.
+
+     The Turks Of The House Of Seljuk.--Their Revolt Against
+     Mahmud Conqueror Of Hindostan.--Togrul Subdues Persia, And
+     Protects The Caliphs.--Defeat And Captivity Of The Emperor
+     Romanus Diogenes By Alp Arslan.--Power And Magnificence Of
+     Malek Shah.--Conquest Of Asia Minor And Syria.--State And
+     Oppression Of Jerusalem.--Pilgrimages To The Holy Sepulchre.
+
+From the Isle of Sicily, the reader must transport himself beyond the
+Caspian Sea, to the original seat of the Turks or Turkmans, against whom
+the first crusade was principally directed. Their Scythian empire of the
+sixth century was long since dissolved; but the name was still famous
+among the Greeks and Orientals; and the fragments of the nation, each
+a powerful and independent people, were scattered over the desert from
+China to the Oxus and the Danube: the colony of Hungarians was admitted
+into the republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by
+slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction. While Apulia and Sicily
+were subdued by the Norman lance, a swarm of these northern shepherds
+overspread the kingdoms of Persia; their princes of the race of Seljuk
+erected a splendid and solid empire from Samarcand to the confines of
+Greece and Egypt; and the Turks have maintained their dominion in Asia
+Minor, till the victorious crescent has been planted on the dome of St.
+Sophia.
+
+One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mahmood or Mahmud, [1]
+the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia, one
+thousand years after the birth of Christ. His father Sebectagi was the
+slave of the slave of the slave of the commander of the faithful. But in
+this descent of servitude, the first degree was merely titular, since it
+was filled by the sovereign of Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid
+a nominal allegiance to the caliph of Bagdad. The second rank was that
+of a minister of state, a lieutenant of the Samanides, [2] who broke,
+by his revolt, the bonds of political slavery. But the third step was a
+state of real and domestic servitude in the family of that rebel; from
+which Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity, ascended to the supreme
+command of the city and provinces of Gazna, [3] as the son-in-law and
+successor of his grateful master.
+
+The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at first protected, and at last
+overthrown, by their servants; and, in the public disorders, the fortune
+of Mahmud continually increased. From him the title of Sultan [4] was
+first invented; and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the
+neighborhood of Ispahan, from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of
+the Indus. But the principal source of his fame and riches was the holy
+war which he waged against the Gentoos of Hindostan. In this foreign
+narrative I may not consume a page; and a volume would scarcely suffice
+to recapitulate the battles and sieges of his twelve expeditions. Never
+was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the
+height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers, the barrenness of
+the desert, the multitudes of the enemy, or the formidable array of
+their elephants of war. [5] The sultan of Gazna surpassed the limits
+of the conquests of Alexander: after a march of three months, over the
+hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached the famous city of Kinnoge, [6]
+on the Upper Ganges; and, in a naval combat on one of the branches of
+the Indus, he fought and vanquished four thousand boats of the natives.
+Delhi, Lahor, and Multan, were compelled to open their gates: the
+fertile kingdom of Guzarat attracted his ambition and tempted his stay;
+and his avarice indulged the fruitless project of discovering the golden
+and aromatic isles of the Southern Ocean. On the payment of a tribute,
+the rajahs preserved their dominions; the people, their lives and
+fortunes; but to the religion of Hindostan the zealous Mussulman was
+cruel and inexorable: many hundred temples, or pagodas, were levelled
+with the ground; many thousand idols were demolished; and the servants
+of the prophet were stimulated and rewarded by the precious materials
+of which they were composed. The pagoda of Sumnat was situate on the
+promontory of Guzarat, in the neighborhood of Diu, one of the last
+remaining possessions of the Portuguese. [7] It was endowed with the
+revenue of two thousand villages; two thousand Brahmins were consecrated
+to the service of the Deity, whom they washed each morning and evening
+in water from the distant Ganges: the subordinate ministers consisted of
+three hundred musicians, three hundred barbers, and five hundred dancing
+girls, conspicuous for their birth or beauty. Three sides of the temple
+were protected by the ocean, the narrow isthmus was fortified by a
+natural or artificial precipice; and the city and adjacent country
+were peopled by a nation of fanatics. They confessed the sins and the
+punishment of Kinnoge and Delhi; but if the impious stranger should
+presume to approach their holy precincts, he would surely be overwhelmed
+by a blast of the divine vengeance. By this challenge, the faith of
+Mahmud was animated to a personal trial of the strength of this Indian
+deity. Fifty thousand of his worshippers were pierced by the spear of
+the Moslems; the walls were scaled; the sanctuary was profaned; and the
+conqueror aimed a blow of his iron mace at the head of the idol. The
+trembling Brahmins are said to have offered ten millions [711] sterling
+for his ransom; and it was urged by the wisest counsellors, that the
+destruction of a stone image would not change the hearts of the Gentoos;
+and that such a sum might be dedicated to the relief of the true
+believers. "Your reasons," replied the sultan, "are specious and strong;
+but never in the eyes of posterity shall Mahmud appear as a merchant
+of idols." [712] He repeated his blows, and a treasure of pearls and
+rubies, concealed in the belly of the statue, explained in some degree
+the devout prodigality of the Brahmins. The fragments of the idol were
+distributed to Gazna, Mecca, and Medina. Bagdad listened to the edifying
+tale; and Mahmud was saluted by the caliph with the title of guardian of
+the fortune and faith of Mahomet.
+
+[Footnote 1: I am indebted for his character and history to D'Herbelot,
+(Bibliotheque Orientale, Mahmud, p. 533-537,) M. De Guignes, (Histoire
+des Huns, tom. iii. p. 155-173,) and our countryman Colonel Alexander
+Dow, (vol. i. p. 23-83.) In the two first volumes of his History of
+Hindostan, he styles himself the translator of the Persian Ferishta; but
+in his florid text, it is not easy to distinguish the version and the
+original. * Note: The European reader now possesses a more accurate
+version of Ferishta, that of Col. Briggs. Of Col. Dow's work, Col.
+Briggs observes, "that the author's name will be handed down to
+posterity as one of the earliest and most indefatigable of our Oriental
+scholars. Instead of confining himself, however, to mere translation,
+he has filled his work with his own observations, which have been so
+embodied in the text that Gibbon declares it impossible to distinguish
+the translator from the original author." Preface p. vii.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The dynasty of the Samanides continued 125 years, A.D.
+847-999, under ten princes. See their succession and ruin, in the
+Tables of M. De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 404-406.) They
+were followed by the Gaznevides, A.D. 999-1183, (see tom. i. p. 239,
+240.) His divisions of nations often disturbs the series of time and
+place.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Gaznah hortos non habet: est emporium et domicilium
+mercaturae Indicae. Abulfedae Geograph. Reiske, tab. xxiii. p. 349.
+D'Herbelot, p. 364. It has not been visited by any modern traveller.]
+
+[Footnote 4: By the ambassador of the caliph of Bagdad, who employed an
+Arabian or Chaldaic word that signifies lord and master, (D'Herbelot,
+p. 825.) It is interpreted by the Byzantine writers of the eleventh
+century; and the name (Soldanus) is familiarly employed in the Greek
+and Latin languages, after it had passed from the Gaznevides to the
+Seljukides, and other emirs of Asia and Egypt. Ducange (Dissertation
+xvi. sur Joinville, p. 238-240. Gloss. Graec. et Latin.) labors to find
+the title of Sultan in the ancient kingdom of Persia: but his proofs are
+mere shadows; a proper name in the Themes of Constantine, (ii. 11,) an
+anticipation of Zonaras, &c., and a medal of Kai Khosrou, not (as he
+believes) the Sassanide of the vith, but the Seljukide of Iconium of the
+xiiith century, (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 246.)]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ferishta (apud Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p. 49)
+mentions the report of a gun in the Indian army. But as I am slow in
+believing this premature (A.D. 1008) use of artillery, I must desire to
+scrutinize first the text, and then the authority of Ferishta, who
+lived in the Mogul court in the last century. * Note: This passage is
+differently written in the various manuscripts I have seen; and in some
+the word tope (gun) has been written for nupth, (naphtha, and toofung)
+(musket) for khudung, (arrow.) But no Persian or Arabic history speaks
+of gunpowder before the time usually assigned for its invention, (A.D.
+1317;) long after which, it was first applied to the purposes of war.
+Briggs's Ferishta, vol. i. p. 47, note.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Kinnouge, or Canouge, (the old Palimbothra) is marked in
+latitude 27 Degrees 3 Minutes, longitude 80 Degrees 13 Minutes. See
+D'Anville, (Antiquite de l'Inde, p. 60-62,) corrected by the local
+knowledge of Major Rennel (in his excellent Memoir on his Map of
+Hindostan, p. 37-43: ) 300] jewellers, 30,000 shops for the arreca nut,
+60,000 bands of musicians, &c. (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. xv. p. 274. Dow,
+vol. i. p. 16,) will allow an ample deduction. * Note: Mr. Wilson (Hindu
+Drama, vol. iii. p. 12) and Schlegel (Indische Bibliothek, vol. ii.
+p. 394) concur in identifying Palimbothra with the Patalipara of the
+Indians; the Patna of the moderns.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The idolaters of Europe, says Ferishta, (Dow, vol. i. p.
+66.) Consult Abulfeda, (p. 272,) and Rennel's Map of Hindostan.]
+
+[Footnote 711: Ferishta says, some "crores of gold." Dow says, in a note
+at the bottom of the page, "ten millions," which is the explanation of
+the word "crore." Mr. Gibbon says rashly that the sum offered by the
+Brahmins was ten millions sterling. Note to Mill's India, vol. ii. p.
+222. Col. Briggs's translation is "a quantity of gold." The treasure
+found in the temple, "perhaps in the image," according to Major Price's
+authorities, was twenty millions of dinars of gold, above nine millions
+sterling; but this was a hundred-fold the ransom offered by the
+Brahmins. Price, vol. ii. p. 290.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 712: Rather than the idol broker, he chose to be called Mahmud
+the idol breaker. Price, vol. ii. p. 289--M]
+
+From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I cannot
+refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue.
+The name of Mahmud the Gaznevide is still venerable in the East: his
+subjects enjoyed the blessings of prosperity and peace; his vices
+were concealed by the veil of religion; and two familiar examples will
+testify his justice and magnanimity.
+
+I. As he sat in the Divan, an unhappy subject bowed before the throne to
+accuse the insolence of a Turkish soldier who had driven him from his
+house and bed. "Suspend your clamors," said Mahmud; "inform me of his
+next visit, and ourself in person will judge and punish the offender."
+The sultan followed his guide, invested the house with his guards, and
+extinguishing the torches, pronounced the death of the criminal, who had
+been seized in the act of rapine and adultery. After the execution of
+his sentence, the lights were rekindled, Mahmud fell prostrate in
+prayer, and rising from the ground, demanded some homely fare, which he
+devoured with the voraciousness of hunger. The poor man, whose injury he
+had avenged, was unable to suppress his astonishment and curiosity; and
+the courteous monarch condescended to explain the motives of this
+singular behavior. "I had reason to suspect that none, except one of my
+sons, could dare to perpetrate such an outrage; and I extinguished the
+lights, that my justice might be blind and inexorable. My prayer was a
+thanksgiving on the discovery of the offender; and so painful was my
+anxiety, that I had passed three days without food since the first
+moment of your complaint."
+
+II. The sultan of Gazna had declared war against the dynasty of the
+Bowides, the sovereigns of the western Persia: he was disarmed by an
+epistle of the sultana mother, and delayed his invasion till the manhood
+of her son. [8] "During the life of my husband," said the artful regent,
+"I was ever apprehensive of your ambition: he was a prince and a soldier
+worthy of your arms. He is now no more his sceptre has passed to a woman
+and a child, and you dare not attack their infancy and weakness. How
+inglorious would be your conquest, how shameful your defeat! and yet the
+event of war is in the hand of the Almighty." Avarice was the only
+defect that tarnished the illustrious character of Mahmud; and never has
+that passion been more richly satiated. [811] The Orientals exceed the
+measure of credibility in the account of millions of gold and silver,
+such as the avidity of man has never accumulated; in the magnitude of
+pearls, diamonds, and rubies, such as have never been produced by the
+workmanship of nature. [9] Yet the soil of Hindostan is impregnated with
+precious minerals: her trade, in every age, has attracted the gold and
+silver of the world; and her virgin spoils were rifled by the first of
+the Mahometan conquerors. His behavior, in the last days of his life,
+evinces the vanity of these possessions, so laboriously won, so
+dangerously held, and so inevitably lost. He surveyed the vast and
+various chambers of the treasury of Gazna, burst into tears, and again
+closed the doors, without bestowing any portion of the wealth which he
+could no longer hope to preserve. The following day he reviewed the
+state of his military force; one hundred thousand foot, fifty-five
+thousand horse, and thirteen hundred elephants of battle. [10] He again
+wept the instability of human greatness; and his grief was imbittered by
+the hostile progress of the Turkmans, whom he had introduced into the
+heart of his Persian kingdom.
+
+[Footnote 8: D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 527. Yet these
+letters apothegms, &c., are rarely the language of the heart, or the
+motives of public action.]
+
+[Footnote 811: Compare Price, vol. ii. p. 295.--M]
+
+[Footnote 9: For instance, a ruby of four hundred and fifty miskals,
+(Dow, vol. i. p. 53,) or six pounds three ounces: the largest in the
+treasury of Delhi weighed seventeen miskals, (Voyages de Tavernier,
+partie ii. p. 280.) It is true, that in the East all colored stones are
+calied rubies, (p. 355,) and that Tavernier saw three larger and more
+precious among the jewels de notre grand roi, le plus puissant et plus
+magnifique de tous les rois de la terre, (p. 376.)]
+
+[Footnote 10: Dow, vol. i. p. 65. The sovereign of Kinoge is said to
+have possessed 2500 elephants, (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. xv. p. 274.)
+From these Indian stories, the reader may correct a note in my first
+volume, (p. 245;) or from that note he may correct these stories.]
+
+In the modern depopulation of Asia, the regular operation of government
+and agriculture is confined to the neighborhood of cities; and the
+distant country is abandoned to the pastoral tribes of Arabs, Curds, and
+Turkmans. [11] Of the last-mentioned people, two considerable branches
+extend on either side of the Caspian Sea: the western colony can muster
+forty thousand soldiers; the eastern, less obvious to the traveller,
+but more strong and populous, has increased to the number of one hundred
+thousand families. In the midst of civilized nations, they preserve the
+manners of the Scythian desert, remove their encampments with a change
+of seasons, and feed their cattle among the ruins of palaces and
+temples. Their flocks and herds are their only riches; their tents,
+either black or white, according to the color of the banner, are covered
+with felt, and of a circular form; their winter apparel is a sheep-skin;
+a robe of cloth or cotton their summer garment: the features of the
+men are harsh and ferocious; the countenance of their women is soft
+and pleasing. Their wandering life maintains the spirit and exercise
+of arms; they fight on horseback; and their courage is displayed in
+frequent contests with each other and with their neighbors. For the
+license of pasture they pay a slight tribute to the sovereign of the
+land; but the domestic jurisdiction is in the hands of the chiefs and
+elders. The first emigration of the Eastern Turkmans, the most ancient
+of the race, may be ascribed to the tenth century of the Christian
+aera. [12] In the decline of the caliphs, and the weakness of their
+lieutenants, the barrier of the Jaxartes was often violated; in each
+invasion, after the victory or retreat of their countrymen, some
+wandering tribe, embracing the Mahometan faith, obtained a free
+encampment in the spacious plains and pleasant climate of Transoxiana
+and Carizme. The Turkish slaves who aspired to the throne encouraged
+these emigrations which recruited their armies, awed their subjects
+and rivals, and protected the frontier against the wilder natives of
+Turkestan; and this policy was abused by Mahmud the Gaznevide beyond the
+example of former times. He was admonished of his error by the chief of
+the race of Seljuk, who dwelt in the territory of Bochara. The sultan
+had inquired what supply of men he could furnish for military service.
+"If you send," replied Ismael, "one of these arrows into our camp,
+fifty thousand of your servants will mount on horseback."--"And if
+that number," continued Mahmud, "should not be sufficient?"--"Send this
+second arrow to the horde of Balik, and you will find fifty thousand
+more."--"But," said the Gaznevide, 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 Ismael, "and as it is circulated around, the
+summons will be obeyed by two hundred thousand horse." The apprehension
+of such formidable friendship induced Mahmud to transport the most
+obnoxious tribes into the heart of Chorasan, where they would be
+separated from their brethren of the River Oxus, and enclosed on all
+sides by the walls of obedient cities. But the face of the country was
+an object of temptation rather than terror; and the vigor of government
+was relaxed by the absence and death of the sultan of Gazna. The
+shepherds were converted into robbers; the bands of robbers were
+collected into an army of conquerors: as far as Ispahan and the Tigris,
+Persia was afflicted by their predatory inroads; and the Turkmans were
+not ashamed or afraid to measure their courage and numbers with the
+proudest sovereigns of Asia. Massoud, the son and successor of Mahmud,
+had too long neglected the advice of his wisest Omrahs. "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 venom and magnitude of serpents." After some alternatives
+of truce and hostility, after the repulse or partial success of his
+lieutenants, the sultan marched in person against the Turkmans, who
+attacked him on all sides with barbarous shouts and irregular onset.
+"Massoud," says the Persian historian, [13] "plunged singly to oppose
+the torrent of gleaming arms, exhibiting such acts of gigantic force and
+valor as never king had before displayed. A few of his friends, roused
+by his words and actions, and that innate honor which inspires the
+brave, seconded their lord so well, that wheresoever he turned his fatal
+sword, the enemies were mowed down, or retreated before him. But now,
+when victory seemed to blow on his standard, misfortune was active
+behind it; for when he looked round, be beheld almost his whole army,
+excepting that body he commanded in person, devouring the paths of
+flight." The Gaznevide was abandoned by the cowardice or treachery of
+some generals of Turkish race; and this memorable day of Zendecan [14]
+founded in Persia the dynasty of the shepherd kings. [15]
+
+[Footnote 11: See a just and natural picture of these pastoral manners,
+in the history of William archbishop of Tyre, (l. i. c. vii. in the
+Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 633, 634,) and a valuable note by the editor
+of the Histoire Genealogique des Tatars, p. 535-538.]
+
+[Footnote 12: The first emigration of the Turkmans, and doubtful origin
+of the Seljukians, may be traced in the laborious History of the Huns,
+by M. De Guignes, (tom. i. Tables Chronologiques, l. v. tom. iii.
+l. vii. ix. x.) and the Bibliotheque Orientale, of D'Herbelot, (p.
+799-802, 897-901,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 321-333,) and
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 221, 222.)]
+
+[Footnote 13: Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p. 89, 95-98. I have
+copied this passage as a specimen of the Persian manner; but I suspect
+that, by some odd fatality, the style of Ferishta has been improved by
+that of Ossian. * Note: Gibbon's conjecture was well founded. Compare
+the more sober and genuine version of Col. Briggs, vol. i. p. 110.-M.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The Zendekan of D'Herbelot, (p. 1028,) the Dindaka of Dow
+(vol. i. p. 97,) is probably the Dandanekan of Abulfeda, (Geograph. p.
+345, Reiske,) a small town of Chorasan, two days' journey from Maru, and
+renowned through the East for the production and manufacture of cotton.]
+
+[Footnote 15: The Byzantine historians (Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 766, 766,
+Zonaras tom. ii. p. 255, Nicephorus Bryennius, p. 21) have confounded,
+in this revolution, the truth of time and place, of names and persons,
+of causes and events. The ignorance and errors of these Greeks (which
+I shall not stop to unravel) may inspire some distrust of the story of
+Cyaxares and Cyrus, as it is told by their most eloquent predecessor.]
+
+The victorious Turkmans immediately proceeded to the election of a king;
+and, if the probable tale of a Latin historian [16] deserves any credit,
+they determined by lot the choice of their new master. A number of
+arrows were successively inscribed with the name of a tribe, a family,
+and a candidate; they were drawn from the bundle by the hand of a child;
+and the important prize was obtained by Togrul Beg, the son of Michael
+the son of Seljuk, whose surname was immortalized in the greatness of
+his posterity. The sultan Mahmud, who valued himself on his skill in
+national genealogy, professed his ignorance of the family of Seljuk;
+yet the father of that race appears to have been a chief of power and
+renown. [17] For a daring intrusion into the harem of his prince. Seljuk
+was banished from Turkestan: with a numerous tribe of his friends
+and vassals, he passed the Jaxartes, encamped in the neighborhood of
+Samarcand, embraced the religion of Mahomet, and acquired the crown of
+martyrdom in a war against the infidels. His age, of a hundred and seven
+years, surpassed the life of his son, and Seljuk adopted the care of
+his two grandsons, Togrul and Jaafar; the eldest of whom, at the age of
+forty-five, was invested with the title of Sultan, in the royal city of
+Nishabur. The blind determination of chance was justified by the virtues
+of the successful candidate. It would be superfluous to praise the valor
+of a Turk; and the ambition of Togrul [18] was equal to his valor. By
+his arms, the Gasnevides were expelled from the eastern kingdoms of
+Persia, and gradually driven to the banks of the Indus, in search of a
+softer and more wealthy conquest. In the West he annihilated the dynasty
+of the Bowides; and the sceptre of Irak passed from the Persian to the
+Turkish nation. The princes who had felt, or who feared, the Seljukian
+arrows, bowed their heads in the dust; by the conquest of Aderbijan, or
+Media, he approached the Roman confines; and the shepherd presumed to
+despatch an ambassador, or herald, to demand the tribute and obedience
+of the emperor of Constantinople. [19] In his own dominions, Togrul
+was the father of his soldiers and people; by a firm and equal
+administration, Persia was relieved from the evils of anarchy; and
+the same hands which had been imbrued in blood became the guardians
+of justice and the public peace. The more rustic, perhaps the wisest,
+portion of the Turkmans [20] continued to dwell in the tents of their
+ancestors; and, from the Oxus to the Euphrates, these military colonies
+were protected and propagated by their native princes. But the Turks of
+the court and city were refined by business and softened by pleasure:
+they imitated the dress, language, and manners of Persia; and the royal
+palaces of Nishabur and Rei displayed the order and magnificence of a
+great monarchy. The most deserving of the Arabians and Persians were
+promoted to the honors of the state; and the whole body of the Turkish
+nation embraced, with fervor and sincerity, the religion of Mahomet. The
+northern swarms of Barbarians, who overspread both Europe and Asia, have
+been irreconcilably separated by the consequences of a similar conduct.
+Among the Moslems, as among the Christians, their vague and local
+traditions have yielded to the reason and authority of the prevailing
+system, to the fame of antiquity, and the consent of nations. But
+the triumph of the Koran is more pure and meritorious, as it was not
+assisted by any visible splendor of worship which might allure the
+Pagans by some resemblance of idolatry. The first of the Seljukian
+sultans was conspicuous by his zeal and faith: each day he repeated the
+five prayers which are enjoined to the true believers; of each week, the
+two first days were consecrated by an extraordinary fast; and in
+every city a mosch was completed, before Togrul presumed to lay the
+foundations of a palace. [21]
+
+[Footnote 16: Willerm. Tyr. l. i. c. 7, p. 633. The divination by arrows
+is ancient and famous in the East.]
+
+[Footnote 17: D'Herbelot, p. 801. Yet after the fortune of his
+posterity, Seljuk became the thirty-fourth in lineal descent from the
+great Afrasiab, emperor of Touran, (p. 800.) The Tartar pedigree of the
+house of Zingis gave a different cast to flattery and fable; and the
+historian Mirkhond derives the Seljukides from Alankavah, the virgin
+mother, (p. 801, col. 2.) If they be the same as the Zalzuts of
+Abulghazi Bahadur Kahn, (Hist. Genealogique, p. 148,) we quote in
+their favor the most weighty evidence of a Tartar prince himself, the
+descendant of Zingis, Alankavah, or Alancu, and Oguz Khan.]
+
+[Footnote 18: By a slight corruption, Togrul Beg is the Tangroli-pix
+of the Greeks. His reign and character are faithfully exhibited by
+D'Herbelot (Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 1027, 1028) and De Guignes,
+(Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 189-201.)]
+
+[Footnote 19: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 774, 775. Zonaras, tom. ii. p.
+257. With their usual knowledge of Oriental affairs, they describe the
+ambassador as a sherif, who, like the syncellus of the patriarch, was
+the vicar and successor of the caliph.]
+
+[Footnote 20: From William of Tyre I have borrowed this distinction of
+Turks and Turkmans, which at least is popular and convenient. The names
+are the same, and the addition of man is of the same import in the
+Persic and Teutonic idioms. Few critics will adopt the etymology of
+James de Vitry, (Hist. Hierosol. l. i. c. 11 p. 1061,) of Turcomani,
+quesi Turci et Comani, a mixed people.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. iii. p. 165, 166, 167. M.
+DeGognes Abulmahasen, an historian of Egypt.]
+
+With the belief of the Koran, the son of Seljuk imbibed a lively
+reverence for the successor of the prophet. But that sublime character
+was still disputed by the caliphs of Bagdad and Egypt, and each of the
+rivals was solicitous to prove his title in the judgment of the strong,
+though illiterate Barbarians. Mahmud the Gaznevide had declared himself
+in favor of the line of Abbas; and had treated with indignity the
+robe of honor which was presented by the Fatimite ambassador. Yet
+the ungrateful Hashemite had changed with the change of fortune; he
+applauded the victory of Zendecan, and named the Seljukian sultan
+his temporal vicegerent over the Moslem world. As Togrul executed and
+enlarged this important trust, he was called to the deliverance of the
+caliph Cayem, and obeyed the holy summons, which gave a new kingdom to
+his arms. [22] In the palace of Bagdad, the commander of the faithful
+still slumbered, a venerable phantom. His servant or master, the prince
+of the Bowides, could no longer protect him from the insolence of meaner
+tyrants; and the Euphrates and Tigris were oppressed by the revolt of
+the Turkish and Arabian emirs. The presence of a conqueror was implored
+as a blessing; and the transient mischiefs of fire and sword were
+excused as the sharp but salutary remedies which alone could restore the
+health of the republic. At the head of an irresistible force, the sultan
+of Persia marched from Hamadan: the proud were crushed, the prostrate
+were spared; the prince of the Bowides disappeared; the heads of the
+most obstinate rebels were laid at the feet of Togrul; and he inflicted
+a lesson of obedience on the people of Mosul and Bagdad. After the
+chastisement of the guilty, and the restoration of peace, the royal
+shepherd accepted the reward of his labors; and a solemn comedy
+represented the triumph of religious prejudice over Barbarian power.
+[23] The Turkish sultan embarked on the Tigris, landed at the gate of
+Racca, and made his public entry on horseback. At the palace-gate he
+respectfully dismounted, and walked on foot, preceded by his emirs
+without arms. The caliph was seated behind his black veil: the black
+garment of the Abbassides was cast over his shoulders, and he held in
+his hand the staff of the apostle of God. The conqueror of the East
+kissed the ground, stood some time in a modest posture, and was led
+towards the throne by the vizier and interpreter. After Togrul had
+seated himself on another throne, his commission was publicly read,
+which declared him the temporal lieutenant of the vicar of the prophet.
+He was successively invested with seven robes of honor, and presented
+with seven slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the Arabian
+empire. His mystic veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns [231] were
+placed on his head; two cimeters were girded to his side, as the symbols
+of a double reign over the East and West. After this inauguration, the
+sultan was prevented from prostrating himself a second time; but he
+twice kissed the hand of the commander of the faithful, and his titles
+were proclaimed by the voice of heralds and the applause of the Moslems.
+In a second visit to Bagdad, the Seljukian prince again rescued the
+caliph from his enemies and devoutly, on foot, led the bridle of his
+mule from the prison to the palace. Their alliance was cemented by the
+marriage of Togrul's sister with the successor of the prophet. Without
+reluctance he had introduced a Turkish virgin into his harem; but Cayem
+proudly refused his daughter to the sultan, disdained to mingle the
+blood of the Hashemites with the blood of a Scythian shepherd; and
+protracted the negotiation many months, till the gradual diminution of
+his revenue admonished him that he was still in the hands of a master.
+The royal nuptials were followed by the death of Togrul himself; [24]
+as he left no children, his nephew Alp Arslan succeeded to the title
+and prerogatives of sultan; and his name, after that of the caliph, was
+pronounced in the public prayers of the Moslems. Yet in this revolution,
+the Abbassides acquired a larger measure of liberty and power. On the
+throne of Asia, the Turkish monarchs were less jealous of the domestic
+administration of Bagdad; and the commanders of the faithful were
+relieved from the ignominious vexations to which they had been exposed
+by the presence and poverty of the Persian dynasty.
+
+[Footnote 22: Consult the Bibliotheque Orientale, in the articles of
+the Abbassides, Caher, and Caiem, and the Annals of Elmacin and
+Abulpharagius.]
+
+[Footnote 23: For this curious ceremony, I am indebted to M. De Guignes
+(tom. iii. p. 197, 198,) and that learned author is obliged to Bondari,
+who composed in Arabic the history of the Seljukides, tom. v. p. 365) I
+am ignorant of his age, country, and character.]
+
+[Footnote 231: According to Von Hammer, "crowns" are incorrect. They
+are unknown as a symbol of royalty in the East. V. Hammer, Osmanische
+Geschischte, vol. i. p. 567.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Eodem anno (A. H. 455) obiit princeps Togrulbecus .... rex
+fuit clemens, prudens, et peritus regnandi, cujus terror corda mortalium
+invaserat, ita ut obedirent ei reges atque ad ipsum scriberent. Elma
+cin, Hist. Saracen. p. 342, vers. Erpenii. * Note: He died, being 75
+years old. V. Hammer.--M.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII: The Turks.--Part II.
+
+Since the fall of the caliphs, the discord and degeneracy of the
+Saracens respected the Asiatic provinces of Rome; which, by the
+victories of Nicephorus, Zimisces, and Basil, had been extended as far
+as Antioch and the eastern boundaries of Armenia.
+
+Twenty-five years after the death of Basil, his successors were suddenly
+assaulted by an unknown race of Barbarians, who united the Scythian
+valor with the fanaticism of new proselytes, and the art and riches of
+a powerful monarchy. [25] The myriads of Turkish horse overspread a
+frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to Arzeroum, and the blood of
+one hundred and thirty thousand Christians was a grateful sacrifice to
+the Arabian prophet. Yet the arms of Togrul did not make any deep or
+lasting impression on the Greek empire. The torrent rolled away from the
+open country; the sultan retired without glory or success from the siege
+of an Armenian city; the obscure hostilities were continued or suspended
+with a vicissitude of events; and the bravery of the Macedonian legions
+renewed the fame of the conqueror of Asia. [26] The name of Alp Arslan,
+the valiant lion, is expressive of the popular idea of the perfection of
+man; and the successor of Togrul displayed the fierceness and generosity
+of the royal animal. He passed the Euphrates at the head of the Turkish
+cavalry, and entered Caesarea, the metropolis of Cappadocia, to which
+he had been attracted by the fame and wealth of the temple of St. Basil.
+The solid structure resisted the destroyer: but he carried away the
+doors of the shrine incrusted with gold and pearls, and profaned the
+relics of the tutelar saint, whose mortal frailties were now covered
+by the venerable rust of antiquity. The final conquest of Armenia and
+Georgia was achieved by Alp Arslan. In Armenia, the title of a
+kingdom, and the spirit of a nation, were annihilated: the artificial
+fortifications were yielded by the mercenaries of Constantinople; by
+strangers without faith, veterans without pay or arms, and recruits
+without experience or discipline. The loss of this important frontier
+was the news of a day; and the Catholics were neither surprised nor
+displeased, that a people so deeply infected with the Nestorian and
+Eutychian errors had been delivered by Christ and his mother into the
+hands of the infidels. [27] The woods and valleys of Mount Caucasus were
+more strenuously defended by the native Georgians [28] or Iberians; but
+the Turkish sultan and his son Malek were indefatigable in this holy
+war: their captives were compelled to promise a spiritual, as well as
+temporal, obedience; and, instead of their collars and bracelets, an
+iron horseshoe, a badge of ignominy, was imposed on the infidels who
+still adhered to the worship of their fathers. The change, however, was
+not sincere or universal; and, through ages of servitude, the Georgians
+have maintained the succession of their princes and bishops. But a race
+of men, whom nature has cast in her most perfect mould, is degraded by
+poverty, ignorance, and vice; their profession, and still more their
+practice, of Christianity is an empty name; and if they have emerged
+from heresy, it is only because they are too illiterate to remember a
+metaphysical creed. [29]
+
+[Footnote 25: For these wars of the Turks and Romans, see in general the
+Byzantine histories of Zonaras and Cedrenus, Scylitzes the continuator
+of Cedrenus, and Nicephorus Bryennius Caesar. The two first of these
+were monks, the two latter statesmen; yet such were the Greeks, that
+the difference of style and character is scarcely discernible. For the
+Orientals, I draw as usuul on the wealth of D'Herbelot (see titles of
+the first Seljukides) and the accuracy of De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns,
+tom. iii. l. x.)]
+
+[Footnote 26: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 791. The credulity of the vulgar is
+always probable; and the Turks had learned from the Arabs the history or
+legend of Escander Dulcarnein, (D'Herbelot, p. 213 &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 27: (Scylitzes, ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 834, whose
+ambiguous construction shall not tempt me to suspect that he confounded
+the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies,) He familiarly talks of the
+qualities, as I should apprehend, very foreign to the perfect Being;
+but his bigotry is forced to confess that they were soon afterwards
+discharged on the orthodox Romans.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Had the name of Georgians been known to the Greeks,
+(Stritter, Memoriae Byzant. tom. iv. Iberica,) I should derive it from
+their agriculture, (l. iv. c. 18, p. 289, edit. Wesseling.) But it
+appears only since the crusades, among the Latins (Jac. a Vitriaco,
+Hist. Hierosol. c. 79, p. 1095) and Orientals, (D'Herbelot, p. 407,) and
+was devoutly borrowed from St. George of Cappadocia.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 632. See, in Chardin's
+Travels, (tom. i. p. 171-174,) the manners and religion of this
+handsome but worthless nation. See the pedigree of their princes from
+Adam to the present century, in the tables of M. De Guignes, (tom. i. p.
+433-438.)]
+
+The false or genuine magnanimity of Mahmud the Gaznevide was not
+imitated by Alp Arslan; and he attacked without scruple the Greek
+empress Eudocia and her children. His alarming progress compelled her
+to give herself and her sceptre to the hand of a soldier; and Romanus
+Diogenes was invested with the Imperial purple. His patriotism, and
+perhaps his pride, urged him from Constantinople within two months after
+his accession; and the next campaign he most scandalously took the field
+during the holy festival of Easter. In the palace, Diogenes was no more
+than the husband of Eudocia: in the camp, he was the emperor of the
+Romans, and he sustained that character with feeble resources and
+invincible courage. By his spirit and success the soldiers were taught
+to act, the subjects to hope, and the enemies to fear. The Turks
+had penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; but the sultan himself had
+resigned to his emirs the prosecution of the war; and their numerous
+detachments were scattered over Asia in the security of conquest. Laden
+with spoil, and careless of discipline, they were separately surprised
+and defeated by the Greeks: the activity of the emperor seemed to
+multiply his presence: and while they heard of his expedition to
+Antioch, the enemy felt his sword on the hills of Trebizond. In three
+laborious campaigns, the Turks were driven beyond the Euphrates; in
+the fourth and last, Romanus undertook the deliverance of Armenia. The
+desolation of the land obliged him to transport a supply of two months'
+provisions; and he marched forwards to the siege of Malazkerd, [30] an
+important fortress in the midway between the modern cities of Arzeroum
+and Van. His army amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand
+men. The troops of Constantinople were reenforced by the disorderly
+multitudes of Phrygia and Cappadocia; but the real strength was composed
+of the subjects and allies of Europe, the legions of Macedonia, and the
+squadrons of Bulgaria; the Uzi, a Moldavian horde, who were themselves
+of the Turkish race; [31] and, above all, the mercenary and adventurous
+bands of French and Normans. Their lances were commanded by the valiant
+Ursel of Baliol, the kinsman or father of the Scottish kings, [32] and
+were allowed to excel in the exercise of arms, or, according to the
+Greek style, in the practice of the Pyrrhic dance.
+
+[Footnote 30: This city is mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de
+Administrat. Imperii, l. ii. c. 44, p. 119,) and the Byzantines of the
+xith century, under the name of Mantzikierte, and by some is confounded
+with Theodosiopolis; but Delisle, in his notes and maps, has very
+properly fixed the situation. Abulfeda (Geograph. tab. xviii. p. 310)
+describes Malasgerd as a small town, built with black stone, supplied
+with water, without trees, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The Uzi of the Greeks (Stritter, Memor. Byzant. tom. iii.
+p. 923-948) are the Gozz of the Orientals, (Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p.
+522, tom. iii. p. 133, &c.) They appear on the Danube and the Volga, and
+Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and the name seems to have been extended
+to the whole Turkman race.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Urselius (the Russelius of Zonaras) is distinguished by
+Jeffrey Malaterra (l. i. c. 33) among the Norman conquerors of Sicily,
+and with the surname of Baliol: and our own historians will tell how
+the Baliols came from Normandy to Durham, built Bernard's castle on the
+Tees, married an heiress of Scotland, &c. Ducange (Not. ad Nicephor.
+Bryennium, l. ii. No. 4) has labored the subject in honor of the
+president de Bailleul, whose father had exchanged the sword for the
+gown.]
+
+On the report of this bold invasion, which threatened his hereditary
+dominions, Alp Arslan flew to the scene of action at the head of forty
+thousand horse. [33] His rapid and skilful evolutions distressed and
+dismayed the superior numbers of the Greeks; and in the defeat of
+Basilacius, one of their principal generals, he displayed the first
+example of his valor and clemency. The imprudence of the emperor had
+separated his forces after the reduction of Malazkerd. It was in vain
+that he attempted to recall the mercenary Franks: they refused to obey
+his summons; he disdained to await their return: the desertion of the
+Uzi filled his mind with anxiety and suspicion; and against the most
+salutary advice he rushed forwards to speedy and decisive action. Had he
+listened to the fair proposals of the sultan, Romanus might have secured
+a retreat, perhaps a peace; but in these overtures he supposed the fear
+or weakness of the enemy, and his answer was conceived in the tone
+of insult and defiance. "If the Barbarian wishes for peace, let him
+evacuate the ground which he occupies for the encampment of the Romans,
+and surrender his city and palace of Rei as a pledge of his sincerity."
+Alp Arslan smiled at the vanity of the demand, but he wept the death of
+so many faithful Moslems; and, after a devout prayer, proclaimed a free
+permission to all who were desirous of retiring from the field. With his
+own hands he tied up his horse's tail, exchanged his bow and arrows for
+a mace and cimeter, 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. [34] The sultan himself had affected
+to cast away his missile weapons: but his hopes of victory were placed
+in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry, whose squadrons were loosely
+distributed in the form of a crescent. Instead of the successive lines
+and reserves of the Grecian tactics, Romulus led his army in a single
+and solid phalanx, and pressed with vigor and impatience the artful and
+yielding resistance of the Barbarians. In this desultory and fruitless
+combat he spent the greater part of a summer's day, till prudence and
+fatigue compelled him to return to his camp. But a retreat is always
+perilous in the face of an active foe; and no sooner had the standard
+been turned to the rear than the phalanx was broken by the base
+cowardice, or the baser jealousy, of Andronicus, a rival prince, who
+disgraced his birth and the purple of the Caesars. [35] The Turkish
+squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on this moment of confusion and
+lassitude; and the horns of their formidable crescent were closed in the
+rear of the Greeks. In the destruction of the army and pillage of
+the camp, it would be needless to mention the number of the slain or
+captives. The Byzantine writers deplore the loss of an inestimable
+pearl: they forgot to mention, that in this fatal day the Asiatic
+provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.
+
+[Footnote 33: Elmacin (p. 343, 344) assigns this probable number, which
+is reduced by Abulpharagius to 15,000, (p. 227,) and by D'Herbelot (p.
+102) to 12,000 horse. But the same Elmacin gives 300,000 met to the
+emperor, of whom Abulpharagius says, Cum centum hominum millibus,
+multisque equis et magna pompa instructus. The Greeks abstain from any
+definition of numbers.]
+
+[Footnote 34: The Byzantine writers do not speak so distinctly of the
+presence of the sultan: he committed his forces to a eunuch, had retired
+to a distance, &c. Is it ignorance, or jealousy, or truth?]
+
+[Footnote 35: He was the son of Caesar John Ducas, brother of the
+emperor Constantine, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 165.) Nicephorus
+Bryennius applauds his virtues and extenuates his faults, (l. i. p. 30,
+38. l. ii. p. 53.) Yet he owns his enmity to Romanus. Scylitzes speaks
+more explicitly of his treason.]
+
+As long as a hope survived, Romanus attempted to rally and save the
+relics of his army. When the centre, the Imperial station, was left
+naked on all sides, and encompassed by the victorious Turks, he still,
+with desperate courage, maintained the fight till the close of day, at
+the head of the brave and faithful subjects who adhered to his standard.
+They fell around him; his horse was slain; the emperor was wounded;
+yet he stood alone and intrepid, till he was oppressed and bound by the
+strength of multitudes. The glory of this illustrious prize was disputed
+by a slave and a soldier; a slave who had seen him on the throne of
+Constantinople, and a soldier whose extreme deformity had been excused
+on the promise of some signal service.
+
+Despoiled of his arms, his jewels, and his purple, Romanus spent a
+dreary and perilous night on the field of battle, amidst a disorderly
+crowd of the meaner Barbarians. In the morning the royal captive was
+presented to Alp Arslan, who doubted of his fortune, till the identity
+of the person was ascertained by the report of his ambassadors, and by
+the more pathetic evidence of Basilacius, who embraced with tears
+the feet of his unhappy sovereign. The successor of Constantine, in a
+plebeian habit, was led into the Turkish divan, and commanded to kiss
+the ground before the lord of Asia. He reluctantly obeyed; and Alp
+Arslan, starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on
+the neck of the Roman emperor. [36] But the fact is doubtful; and if, in
+this moment of insolence, the sultan complied with the national custom,
+the rest of his conduct has extorted the praise of his bigoted foes, and
+may afford a lesson to the most civilized ages. He instantly raised the
+royal captive from the ground; and thrice clasping his hand with tender
+sympathy, assured him, that his life and dignity should be inviolate
+in the hands of a prince who had learned to respect the majesty of his
+equals and the vicissitudes of fortune. From the divan, Romanus was
+conducted to an adjacent tent, where he was served with pomp and
+reverence by the officers of the sultan, who, twice each day, seated
+him in the place of honor at his own table. In a free and familiar
+conversation of eight days, not a word, not a look, of insult escaped
+from the conqueror; but he severely censured the unworthy subjects who
+had deserted their valiant prince in the hour of danger, and gently
+admonished his antagonist of some errors which he had committed in the
+management of the war. In the preliminaries of negotiation, Alp
+Arslan asked him what treatment he expected to receive, and the calm
+indifference of the emperor displays the freedom of his mind. "If you
+are cruel," said he, "you will take my life; if you listen to pride, you
+will drag me at your chariot-wheels; if you consult your interest,
+you will accept a ransom, and restore me to my country." "And what,"
+continued the sultan, "would have been your own behavior, had fortune
+smiled on your arms?" The reply of the Greek betrays a sentiment, which
+prudence, and even gratitude, should have taught him to suppress. "Had I
+vanquished," he fiercely said, "I would have inflicted on thy body many
+a stripe." The Turkish conqueror smiled at the insolence of his captive
+observed that the Christian law inculcated the love of enemies and
+forgiveness of injuries; and nobly declared, that he would not imitate
+an example which he condemned. After mature deliberation, Alp Arslan
+dictated the terms of liberty and peace, a ransom of a million, [361] an
+annual tribute of three hundred and sixty thousand pieces of gold,
+[37] the marriage of the royal children, and the deliverance of all
+the Moslems, who were in the power of the Greeks. Romanus, with a sigh,
+subscribed this treaty, so disgraceful to the majesty of the empire; he
+was immediately invested with a Turkish robe of honor; his nobles and
+patricians were restored to their sovereign; and the sultan, after
+a courteous embrace, dismissed him with rich presents and a military
+guard. No sooner did he reach the confines of the empire, than he was
+informed that the palace and provinces had disclaimed their allegiance
+to a captive: a sum of two hundred thousand pieces was painfully
+collected; and the fallen monarch transmitted this part of his ransom,
+with a sad confession of his impotence and disgrace. The generosity, or
+perhaps the ambition, of the sultan, prepared to espouse the cause of
+his ally; but his designs were prevented by the defeat, imprisonment,
+and death, of Romanus Diogenes. [38]
+
+[Footnote 36: This circumstance, which we read and doubt in Scylitzes
+and Constantine Manasses, is more prudently omitted by Nicephorus and
+Zonaras.]
+
+[Footnote 361: Elmacin gives 1,500,000. Wilken, Geschichte der
+Kreuz-zuge, vol. l. p. 10.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 37: The ransom and tribute are attested by reason and
+the Orientals. The other Greeks are modestly silent; but Nicephorus
+Bryennius dares to affirm, that the terms were bad and that the emperor
+would have preferred death to a shameful treaty.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The defeat and captivity of Romanus Diogenes may be found
+in John Scylitzes ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 835-843. Zonaras,
+tom. ii. p. 281-284. Nicephorus Bryennius, l. i. p. 25-32. Glycas, p.
+325-327. Constantine Manasses, p. 134. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 343
+344. Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 227. D'Herbelot, p. 102, 103. D Guignes,
+tom. iii. p. 207-211. Besides my old acquaintance Elmacin and
+Abulpharagius, the historian of the Huns has consulted Abulfeda, and his
+epitomizer Benschounah, a Chronicle of the Caliphs, by Abulmahasen of
+Egypt, and Novairi of Africa.]
+
+In the treaty of peace, it does not appear that Alp Arslan extorted any
+province or city from the captive emperor; and his revenge was satisfied
+with the trophies of his victory, and the spoils of Anatolia, from
+Antioch to the Black Sea. The fairest part of Asia was subject to his
+laws: twelve hundred princes, or the sons of princes, stood before his
+throne; and two hundred thousand soldiers marched under his banners.
+The sultan disdained to pursue the fugitive Greeks; but he meditated the
+more glorious conquest of Turkestan, the original seat of the house
+of Seljuk. He moved from Bagdad to the banks of the Oxus; a bridge was
+thrown over the river; and twenty days were consumed in the passage
+of his troops. But the progress of the great king was retarded by the
+governor of Berzem; and Joseph the Carizmian presumed to defend his
+fortress against the powers of the East. When he was produced a captive
+in the royal tent, the sultan, instead of praising his valor, severely
+reproached his obstinate folly: and the insolent replies of the rebel
+provoked a sentence, that he should be fastened to four stakes, and
+left to expire in that painful situation. At this command, the desperate
+Carizmian, drawing a dagger, rushed headlong towards the throne: the
+guards raised their battle-axes; their zeal was checked by Alp Arslan,
+the most skilful archer of the age: he drew his bow, but his foot
+slipped, the arrow glanced aside, and he received in his breast the
+dagger of Joseph, who was instantly cut in pieces.
+
+The wound was mortal; and the Turkish prince bequeathed a dying
+admonition to the pride of kings. "In my youth," said Alp Arslan, "I
+was advised by a sage to humble myself before God; to distrust my
+own strength; and never to despise the most contemptible foe. I have
+neglected these lessons; and my neglect has been deservedly punished.
+Yesterday, as from an eminence I beheld the numbers, the discipline, and
+the spirit, of my armies, the earth seemed to tremble under my feet; and
+I said in my heart, Surely thou art the king of the world, the greatest
+and most invincible of warriors. These armies are no longer mine; and,
+in the confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the hand of
+an assassin." [39] Alp Arslan possessed the virtues of a Turk and a
+Mussulman; his voice and stature commanded the reverence of mankind; his
+face was shaded with long whiskers; and his ample turban was fashioned
+in the shape of a crown. The remains of the sultan were deposited in the
+tomb of the Seljukian dynasty; and the passenger might read and meditate
+this useful inscription: [40] "O ye who have seen the glory of Alp
+Arslan exalted to the heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it
+buried in the dust." The annihilation of the inscription, and the tomb
+itself, more forcibly proclaims the instability of human greatness.
+
+[Footnote 39: This interesting death is told by D'Herbelot, (p. 103,
+104,) and M. De Guignes, (tom. iii. p. 212, 213.) from their Oriental
+writers; but neither of them have transfused the spirit of Elmacin,
+(Hist. Saracen p. 344, 345.)]
+
+[Footnote 40: A critic of high renown, (the late Dr. Johnson,) who has
+severely scrutinized the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in this sublime
+inscription at the words "repair to Maru," since the reader must already
+be at Maru before he could peruse the inscription.]
+
+During the life of Alp Arslan, his eldest son had been acknowledged as
+the future sultan of the Turks. On his father's death the inheritance
+was disputed by an uncle, a cousin, and a brother: they drew their
+cimeters, and assembled their followers; and the triple victory of Malek
+Shah [41] established his own reputation and the right of primogeniture.
+In every age, and more especially in Asia, the thirst of power has
+inspired the same passions, and occasioned the same disorders; but,
+from the long series of civil war, it would not be easy to extract a
+sentiment more pure and magnanimous than is contained in the saying of
+the Turkish prince. On the eve of the battle, he performed his devotions
+at Thous, before the tomb of the Imam Riza. As the sultan rose from the
+ground, he asked his vizier Nizam, who had knelt beside him, what had
+been the object of his secret petition: "That your arms may be crowned
+with victory," was the prudent, and most probably the sincere, answer of
+the minister. "For my part," replied the generous Malek, "I implored
+the Lord of Hosts that he would take from me my life and crown, if
+my brother be more worthy than myself to reign over the Moslems." The
+favorable judgment of heaven was ratified by the caliph; and for
+the first time, the sacred title of Commander of the Faithful was
+communicated to a Barbarian. But this Barbarian, by his personal merit,
+and the extent of his empire, was the greatest prince of his age.
+After the settlement of Persia and Syria, he marched at the head of
+innumerable armies to achieve the conquest of Turkestan, which had been
+undertaken by his father. In his passage of the Oxus, the boatmen, who
+had been employed in transporting some troops, complained, that their
+payment was assigned on the revenues of Antioch. The sultan frowned at
+this preposterous choice; but he miled at the artful flattery of his
+vizier. "It was not to postpone their reward, that I selected those
+remote places, but to leave a memorial to posterity, that, under your
+reign, Antioch and the Oxus were subject to the same sovereign." But
+this description of his limits was unjust and parsimonious: beyond the
+Oxus, he reduced to his obedience the cities of Bochara, Carizme, and
+Samarcand, and crushed each rebellious slave, or independent savage, who
+dared to resist. Malek passed the Sihon or Jaxartes, the last boundary
+of Persian civilization: the hordes of Turkestan yielded to his
+supremacy: his name was inserted on the coins, and in the prayers of
+Cashgar, a Tartar kingdom on the extreme borders of China. From the
+Chinese frontier, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction or feudatory
+sway to the west and south, as far as the mountains of Georgia, the
+neighborhood of Constantinople, the holy city of Jerusalem, and the
+spicy groves of Arabia Felix. Instead of resigning himself to the luxury
+of his harem, the shepherd king, both in peace and war, was in action
+and in the field. By the perpetual motion of the royal camp, each
+province was successively blessed with his presence; and he is said to
+have perambulated twelve times the wide extent of his dominions,
+which surpassed the Asiatic reign of Cyrus and the caliphs. Of these
+expeditions, the most pious and splendid was the pilgrimage of Mecca:
+the freedom and safety of the caravans were protected by his arms; the
+citizens and pilgrims were enriched by the profusion of his alms; and
+the desert was cheered by the places of relief and refreshment, which
+he instituted for the use of his brethren. Hunting was the pleasure, and
+even the passion, of the sultan, and his train consisted of forty-seven
+thousand horses; but after the massacre of a Turkish chase, for each
+piece of game, he bestowed a piece of gold on the poor, a slight
+atonement, at the expense of the people, for the cost and mischief of
+the amusement of kings. In the peaceful prosperity of his reign, the
+cities of Asia were adorned with palaces and hospitals with moschs and
+colleges; few departed from his Divan without reward, and none without
+justice. The language and literature of Persia revived under the house
+of Seljuk; [42] and if Malek emulated the liberality of a Turk less
+potent than himself, [43] his palace might resound with the songs of a
+hundred poets. The sultan bestowed a more serious and learned care
+on the reformation of the calendar, which was effected by a general
+assembly of the astronomers of the East. By a law of the prophet, the
+Moslems are confined to the irregular course of the lunar months; in
+Persia, since the age of Zoroaster, the revolution of the sun has been
+known and celebrated as an annual festival; [44] but after the fall of
+the Magian empire, the intercalation had been neglected; the fractions
+of minutes and hours were multiplied into days; and the date of the
+springs was removed from the sign of Aries to that of Pisces. The reign
+of Malek was illustrated by the Gelalaean aera; and all errors, either
+past or future, were corrected by a computation of time, which surpasses
+the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian, style. [45]
+
+[Footnote 41: The Bibliotheque Orientale has given the text of the reign
+of Malek, (p. 542, 543, 544, 654, 655;) and the Histoire Generale des
+Huns (tom. iii. p. 214-224) has added the usual measure of repetition
+emendation, and supplement. Without those two learned Frenchmen I should
+be blind indeed in the Eastern world.]
+
+[Footnote 42: See an excellent discourse at the end of Sir William
+Jones's History of Nadir Shah, and the articles of the poets, Amak,
+Anvari, Raschidi, &c., in the Bibliotheque Orientale. ]
+
+[Footnote 43: His name was Kheder Khan. Four bags were placed round
+his sopha, and as he listened to the song, he cast handfuls of gold and
+silver to the poets, (D'Herbelot, p. 107.) All this may be true; but I
+do not understand how he could reign in Transoxiana in the time of Malek
+Shah, and much less how Kheder could surpass him in power and pomp. I
+suspect that the beginning, not the end, of the xith century is the true
+aera of his reign.]
+
+[Footnote 44: See Chardin, Voyages en Perse, tom. ii. p. 235.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The Gelalaean aera (Gelaleddin, Glory of the Faith, was
+one of the names or titles of Malek Shah) is fixed to the xvth of March,
+A. H. 471, A.D. 1079. Dr. Hyde has produced the original testimonies
+of the Persians and Arabians, (de Religione veterum Persarum, c. 16 p.
+200-211.)]
+
+In a period when Europe was plunged in the deepest barbarism, the light
+and splendor of Asia may be ascribed to the docility rather than the
+knowledge of the Turkish conquerors. An ample share of their wisdom and
+virtue is due to a Persian vizier, who ruled the empire under the reigns
+of Alp Arslan and his son. Nizam, one of the most illustrious ministers
+of the East, was honored by the caliph as an oracle of religion and
+science; he was trusted by the sultan as the faithful vicegerent of his
+power and justice. After an administration of thirty years, the fame
+of the vizier, his wealth, and even his services, were transformed into
+crimes. He was overthrown by the insidious arts of a woman and a rival;
+and his fall was hastened by a rash declaration, that his cap and
+ink-horn, the badges of his office, were connected by the divine decree
+with the throne and diadem of the sultan. At the age of ninety-three
+years, the venerable statesman was dismissed by his master, accused by
+his enemies, and murdered by a fanatic: [451] the last words of Nizam
+attested his innocence, and the remainder of Malek's life was short and
+inglorious. From Ispahan, the scene of this disgraceful transaction, the
+sultan moved to Bagdad, with the design of transplanting the caliph,
+and of fixing his own residence in the capital of the Moslem world. The
+feeble successor of Mahomet obtained a respite of ten days; and before
+the expiration of the term, the Barbarian was summoned by the angel of
+death. His ambassadors at Constantinople had asked in marriage a Roman
+princess; but the proposal was decently eluded; and the daughter
+of Alexius, who might herself have been the victim, expresses her
+abhorrence of his unnatural conjunction. [46] The daughter of the sultan
+was bestowed on the caliph Moctadi, with the imperious condition, that,
+renouncing the society of his wives and concubines, he should forever
+confine himself to this honorable alliance.
+
+[Footnote 451: He was the first great victim of his enemy, Hassan Sabek,
+founder of the Assassins. Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p.
+95.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 46: She speaks of this Persian royalty. Anna Comnena was only
+nine years old at the end of the reign of Malek Shah, (A.D. 1092,) and
+when she speaks of his assassination, she confounds the sultan with the
+vizier, (Alexias, l. vi. p. 177, 178.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII: The Turks.--Part III.
+
+The greatness and unity of the Turkish empire expired in the person of
+Malek Shah. His vacant throne was disputed by his brother and his
+four sons; [461] and, after a series of civil wars, the treaty which
+reconciled the surviving candidates confirmed a lasting separation in
+the Persian dynasty, the eldest and principal branch of the house of
+Seljuk. The three younger dynasties were those of Kerman, of Syria, and
+of Roum: the first of these commanded an extensive, though obscure, [47]
+dominion on the shores of the Indian Ocean: [48] the second expelled
+the Arabian princes of Aleppo and Damascus; and the third, our peculiar
+care, invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. The generous policy
+of Malek contributed to their elevation: he allowed the princes of
+his blood, even those whom he had vanquished in the field, to seek
+new kingdoms worthy of their ambition; nor was he displeased that they
+should draw away the more ardent spirits, who might have disturbed the
+tranquillity of his reign. As the supreme head of his family and nation,
+the great sultan of Persia commanded the obedience and tribute of his
+royal brethren: the thrones of Kerman and Nice, of Aleppo and Damascus;
+the Atabeks, and emirs of Syria and Mesopotamia, erected their standards
+under the shadow of his sceptre: [49] and the hordes of Turkmans
+overspread the plains of the Western Asia.
+
+After the death of Malek, the bands of union and subordination were
+relaxed and finally dissolved: the indulgence of the house of Seljuk
+invested their slaves with the inheritance of kingdoms; and, in the
+Oriental style, a crowd of princes arose from the dust of their feet.
+[50]
+
+[Footnote 461: See Von Hammer, Osmanische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 16. The
+Seljukian dominions were for a time reunited in the person of Sandjar,
+one of the sons of Malek Shah, who ruled "from Kashgar to Antioch, from
+the Caspian to the Straits of Babelmandel."--M.]
+
+[Footnote 47: So obscure, that the industry of M. De Guignes could only
+copy (tom. i. p. 244, tom. iii. part i. p. 269, &c.) the history, or
+rather list, of the Seljukides of Kerman, in Bibliotheque Orientale.
+They were extinguished before the end of the xiith century.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Tavernier, perhaps the only traveller who has visited
+Kerman, describes the capital as a great ruinous village, twenty-five
+days' journey from Ispahan, and twenty-seven from Ormus, in the midst of
+a fertile country, (Voyages en Turquie et en Perse, p. 107, 110.)]
+
+[Footnote 49: It appears from Anna Comnena, that the Turks of Asia Minor
+obeyed the signet and chiauss of the great sultan, (Alexias, l. vi. p.
+170;) and that the two sons of Soliman were detained in his court, (p.
+180.)]
+
+[Footnote 50: This expression is quoted by Petit de la Croix (Vie de
+Gestis p. 160) from some poet, most probably a Persian.]
+
+A prince of the royal line, Cutulmish, [501] the son of Izrail, the
+son of Seljuk, had fallen in a battle against Alp Arslan and the humane
+victor had dropped a tear over his grave. His five sons, strong in arms,
+ambitious of power, and eager for revenge, unsheathed their cimeters
+against the son of Alp Arslan. The two armies expected the signal when
+the caliph, forgetful of the majesty which secluded him from vulgar
+eyes, interposed his venerable mediation. "Instead of shedding the blood
+of your brethren, your brethren both in descent and faith, unite your
+forces in a holy war against the Greeks, the enemies of God and his
+apostle." They listened to his voice; the sultan embraced his rebellious
+kinsmen; and the eldest, the valiant Soliman, accepted the royal
+standard, which gave him the free conquest and hereditary command of the
+provinces of the Roman empire, from Arzeroum to Constantinople, and the
+unknown regions of the West. [51] Accompanied by his four brothers,
+he passed the Euphrates; the Turkish camp was soon seated in the
+neighborhood of Kutaieh in Phrygia; and his flying cavalry laid waste
+the country as far as the Hellespont and the Black Sea. Since the
+decline of the empire, the peninsula of Asia Minor had been exposed to
+the transient, though destructive, inroads of the Persians and Saracens;
+but the fruits of a lasting conquest were reserved for the Turkish
+sultan; and his arms were introduced by the Greeks, who aspired to reign
+on the ruins of their country. Since the captivity of Romanus, six years
+the feeble son of Eudocia had trembled under the weight of the Imperial
+crown, till the provinces of the East and West were lost in the same
+month by a double rebellion: of either chief Nicephorus was the common
+name; but the surnames of Bryennius and Botoniates distinguish the
+European and Asiatic candidates. Their reasons, or rather their
+promises, were weighed in the Divan; and, after some hesitation, Soliman
+declared himself in favor of Botoniates, opened a free passage to his
+troops in their march from Antioch to Nice, and joined the banner of the
+Crescent to that of the Cross. After his ally had ascended the throne of
+Constantinople, the sultan was hospitably entertained in the suburb of
+Chrysopolis or Scutari; and a body of two thousand Turks was transported
+into Europe, to whose dexterity and courage the new emperor was indebted
+for the defeat and captivity of his rival, Bryennius. But the conquest
+of Europe was dearly purchased by the sacrifice of Asia: Constantinople
+was deprived of the obedience and revenue of the provinces beyond the
+Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the regular progress of the Turks, who
+fortified the passes of the rivers and mountains, left not a hope of
+their retreat or expulsion. Another candidate implored the aid of the
+sultan: Melissenus, in his purple robes and red buskins, attended the
+motions of the Turkish camp; and the desponding cities were tempted by
+the summons of a Roman prince, who immediately surrendered them into the
+hands of the Barbarians. These acquisitions were confirmed by a treaty
+of peace with the emperor Alexius: his fear of Robert compelled him to
+seek the friendship of Soliman; and it was not till after the sultan's
+death that he extended as far as Nicomedia, about sixty miles from
+Constantinople, the eastern boundary of the Roman world. Trebizond
+alone, defended on either side by the sea and mountains, preserved at
+the extremity of the Euxine the ancient character of a Greek colony, and
+the future destiny of a Christian empire.
+
+[Footnote 501: Wilken considers Cutulmish not a Turkish name. Geschicht
+Kreuz-zuge, vol. i. p. 9.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 51: On the conquest of Asia Minor, M. De Guignes has derived
+no assistance from the Turkish or Arabian writers, who produce a naked
+list of the Seljukides of Roum. The Greeks are unwilling to expose their
+shame, and we must extort some hints from Scylitzes, (p. 860, 863,)
+Nicephorus Bryennius, (p. 88, 91, 92, &c., 103, 104,) and Anna Comnena
+(Alexias, p. 91, 92, &c., 163, &c.)]
+
+Since the first conquests of the caliphs, the establishment of the Turks
+in Anatolia or Asia Minor was the most deplorable loss which the church
+and empire had sustained. By the propagation of the Moslem faith,
+Soliman deserved the name of Gazi, a holy champion; and his new
+kingdoms, of the Romans, or of Roum, was added to the tables of
+Oriental geography. It is described as extending from the Euphrates to
+Constantinople, from the Black Sea to the confines of Syria; pregnant
+with mines of silver and iron, of alum and copper, fruitful in corn and
+wine, and productive of cattle and excellent horses. [52] The wealth of
+Lydia, the arts of the Greeks, the splendor of the Augustan age, existed
+only in books and ruins, which were equally obscure in the eyes of the
+Scythian conquerors. Yet, in the present decay, Anatolia still contains
+some wealthy and populous cities; and, under the Byzantine empire, they
+were far more flourishing in numbers, size, and opulence. By the choice
+of the sultan, Nice, the metropolis of Bithynia, was preferred for
+his palace and fortress: the seat of the Seljukian dynasty of Roum
+was planted one hundred miles from Constantinople; and the divinity of
+Christ was denied and derided in the same temple in which it had been
+pronounced by the first general synod of the Catholics. The unity
+of God, and the mission of Mahomet, were preached in the moschs; the
+Arabian learning was taught in the schools; the Cadhis judged according
+to the law of the Koran; the Turkish manners and language prevailed
+in the cities; and Turkman camps were scattered over the plains and
+mountains of Anatolia. On the hard conditions of tribute and servitude,
+the Greek Christians might enjoy the exercise of their religion; but
+their most holy churches were profaned; their priests and bishops were
+insulted; [53] they were compelled to suffer the triumph of the Pagans,
+and the apostasy of their brethren; many thousand children were marked
+by the knife of circumcision; and many thousand captives were devoted
+to the service or the pleasures of their masters. [54] After the loss
+of Asia, Antioch still maintained her primitive allegiance to Christ and
+Caesar; but the solitary province was separated from all Roman aid,
+and surrounded on all sides by the Mahometan powers. The despair of
+Philaretus the governor prepared the sacrifice of his religion and
+loyalty, had not his guilt been prevented by his son, who hastened to
+the Nicene palace, and offered to deliver this valuable prize into the
+hands of Soliman. The ambitious sultan mounted on horseback, and in
+twelve nights (for he reposed in the day) performed a march of six
+hundred miles. Antioch was oppressed by the speed and secrecy of
+his enterprise; and the dependent cities, as far as Laodicea and the
+confines of Aleppo, [55] obeyed the example of the metropolis. From
+Laodicea to the Thracian Bosphorus, or arm of St. George, the conquests
+and reign of Soliman extended thirty days' journey in length, and in
+breadth about ten or fifteen, between the rocks of Lycia and the Black
+Sea. [56] The Turkish ignorance of navigation protected, for a while,
+the inglorious safety of the emperor; but no sooner had a fleet of two
+hundred ships been constructed by the hands of the captive Greeks, than
+Alexius trembled behind the walls of his capital. His plaintive epistles
+were dispersed over Europe, to excite the compassion of the Latins,
+and to paint the danger, the weakness, and the riches of the city of
+Constantine. [57]
+
+[Footnote 52: Such is the description of Roum by Haiton the Armenian,
+whose Tartar history may be found in the collections of Ramusio and
+Bergeron, (see Abulfeda, Geograph. climat. xvii. p. 301-305.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: Dicit eos quendam abusione Sodomitica intervertisse
+episcopum, (Guibert. Abbat. Hist. Hierosol. l. i. p. 468.) It is odd
+enough, that we should find a parallel passage of the same people in the
+present age. "Il n'est point d'horreur que ces Turcs n'ayent commis,
+et semblables aux soldats effrenes, qui dans le sac d'une ville, non
+contens de disposer de tout a leur gre pretendent encore aux succes
+les moins desirables. Quelque Sipahis ont porte leurs attentats sur la
+personne du vieux rabbi de la synagogue, et celle de l'Archeveque Grec."
+(Memoires du Baron de Tott, tom. ii. p. 193.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: The emperor, or abbot describe the scenes of a Turkish
+camp as if they had been present. Matres correptae in conspectu filiarum
+multipliciter repetitis diversorum coitibus vexabantur; (is that the
+true reading?) cum filiae assistentes carmina praecinere saltando
+cogerentur. Mox eadem passio ad filias, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 55: See Antioch, and the death of Soliman, in Anna Comnena,
+(Alexius, l. vi. p. 168, 169,) with the notes of Ducange.]
+
+[Footnote 56: William of Tyre (l. i. c. 9, 10, p. 635) gives the most
+authentic and deplorable account of these Turkish conquests.]
+
+[Footnote 57: In his epistle to the count of Flanders, Alexius seems to
+fall too low beneath his character and dignity; yet it is approved by
+Ducange, (Not. ad Alexiad. p. 335, &c.,) and paraphrased by the Abbot
+Guibert, a contemporary historian. The Greek text no longer exists;
+and each translator and scribe might say with Guibert, (p. 475,) verbis
+vestita meis, a privilege of most indefinite latitude.]
+
+But the most interesting conquest of the Seljukian Turks was that of
+Jerusalem, [58] which soon became the theatre of nations. In their
+capitulation with Omar, the inhabitants had stipulated the assurance
+of their religion and property; but the articles were interpreted by a
+master against whom it was dangerous to dispute; and in the four hundred
+years of the reign of the caliphs, the political climate of Jerusalem
+was exposed to the vicissitudes of storm and sunshine. [59] By the
+increase of proselytes and population, the Mahometans might excuse the
+usurpation of three fourths of the city: but a peculiar quarter was
+resolved for the patriarch with his clergy and people; a tribute of two
+pieces of gold was the price of protection; and the sepulchre of Christ,
+with the church of the Resurrection, was still left in the hands of his
+votaries. Of these votaries, the most numerous and respectable portion
+were strangers to Jerusalem: the pilgrimages to the Holy Land had been
+stimulated, rather than suppressed, by the conquest of the Arabs; and
+the enthusiasm which had always prompted these perilous journeys, was
+nourished by the congenial passions of grief and indignation. A crowd of
+pilgrims from the East and West continued to visit the holy sepulchre,
+and the adjacent sanctuaries, more especially at the festival of Easter;
+and the Greeks and Latins, the Nestorians and Jacobites, the Copts and
+Abyssinians, the Armenians and Georgians, maintained the chapels, the
+clergy, and the poor of their respective communions. The harmony of
+prayer in so many various tongues, the worship of so many nations in
+the common temple of their religion, might have afforded a spectacle
+of edification and peace; but the zeal of the Christian sects was
+imbittered by hatred and revenge; and in the kingdom of a suffering
+Messiah, who had pardoned his enemies, they aspired to command and
+persecute their spiritual brethren. The preeminence was asserted by the
+spirit and numbers of the Franks; and the greatness of Charlemagne [60]
+protected both the Latin pilgrims and the Catholics of the East. The
+poverty of Carthage, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, was relieved by the alms
+of that pious emperor; and many monasteries of Palestine were founded
+or restored by his liberal devotion. Harun Alrashid, the greatest of
+the Abbassides, esteemed in his Christian brother a similar supremacy
+of genius and power: their friendship was cemented by a frequent
+intercourse of gifts and embassies; and the caliph, without resigning
+the substantial dominion, presented the emperor with the keys of the
+holy sepulchre, and perhaps of the city of Jerusalem. In the decline of
+the Carlovingian monarchy, the republic of Amalphi promoted the interest
+of trade and religion in the East. Her vessels transported the Latin
+pilgrims to the coasts of Egypt and Palestine, and deserved, by their
+useful imports, the favor and alliance of the Fatimite caliphs: [61] an
+annual fair was instituted on Mount Calvary: and the Italian merchants
+founded the convent and hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the cradle of
+the monastic and military order, which has since reigned in the isles of
+Rhodes and of Malta. Had the Christian pilgrims been content to revere
+the tomb of a prophet, the disciples of Mahomet, instead of blaming,
+would have imitated, their piety: but these rigid Unitarians were
+scandalized by a worship which represents the birth, death, and
+resurrection, of a God; the Catholic images were branded with the name
+of idols; and the Moslems smiled with indignation [62] at the miraculous
+flame which was kindled on the eve of Easter in the holy sepulchre. [63]
+This pious fraud, first devised in the ninth century, [64] was devoutly
+cherished by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by the
+clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects, [65] who impose on
+the credulous spectators [66] for their own benefit, and that of their
+tyrants. In every age, a principle of toleration has been fortified by
+a sense of interest: and the revenue of the prince and his emir was
+increased each year, by the expense and tribute of so many thousand
+strangers.
+
+[Footnote 58: Our best fund for the history of Jerusalem from Heraclius
+to the crusades is contained in two large and original passages of
+William archbishop of Tyre, (l. i. c. 1-10, l. xviii. c. 5, 6,)
+the principal author of the Gesta Dei per Francos. M. De Guignes has
+composed a very learned Memoire sur le Commerce des Francois dans le de
+Levant avant les Croisades, &c. (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions,
+tom. xxxvii. p. 467-500.)]
+
+[Footnote 59: Secundum Dominorum dispositionem plerumque lucida plerum
+que nubila recepit intervalla, et aegrotantium more temporum praesentium
+gravabatur aut respirabat qualitate, (l. i. c. 3, p. 630.) The latinity
+of William of Tyre is by no means contemptible: but in his account of
+490 years, from the loss to the recovery of Jerusalem, precedes the true
+account by 30 years.]
+
+[Footnote 60: For the transactions of Charlemagne with the Holy Land,
+see Eginhard, (de Vita Caroli Magni, c. 16, p. 79-82,) Constantine
+Porphyrogenitus, (de Administratione Imperii, l. ii. c. 26, p. 80,) and
+Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 800, No. 13, 14, 15.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: The caliph granted his privileges, Amalphitanis viris
+amicis et utilium introductoribus, (Gesta Dei, p. 934.) The trade of
+Venice to Egypt and Palestine cannot produce so old a title, unless
+we adopt the laughable translation of a Frenchman, who mistook the
+two factions of the circus (Veneti et Prasini) for the Venetians and
+Parisians.]
+
+[Footnote 62: An Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem (apud Asseman. Bibliot.
+Orient. tom. i. p. 268, tom. iv. p. 368) attests the unbelief of the
+caliph and the historian; yet Cantacuzene presumes to appeal to the
+Mahometans themselves for the truth of this perpetual miracle.]
+
+[Footnote 63: In his Dissertations on Ecclesiastical History, the
+learned Mosheim has separately discussed this pretended miracle, (tom.
+ii. p. 214-306,) de lumine sancti sepulchri.]
+
+[Footnote 64: William of Malmsbury (l. iv. c. 2, p. 209) quotes the
+Itinerary of the monk Bernard, an eye-witness, who visited Jerusalem
+A.D. 870. The miracle is confirmed by another pilgrim some years older;
+and Mosheim ascribes the invention to the Franks, soon after the decease
+of Charlemagne.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Our travellers, Sandys, (p. 134,) Thevenot, (p. 621-627,)
+Maundrell, (p. 94, 95,) &c., describes this extravagant farce. The
+Catholics are puzzled to decide when the miracle ended and the trick
+began.]
+
+[Footnote 66: The Orientals themselves confess the fraud, and plead
+necessity and edification, (Memoires du Chevalier D'Arvieux, tom. ii. p.
+140. Joseph Abudacni, Hist. Copt. c. 20;) but I will not attempt, with
+Mosheim, to explain the mode. Our travellers have failed with the blood
+of St. Januarius at Naples.]
+
+The revolution which transferred the sceptre from the Abbassides to
+the Fatimites was a benefit, rather than an injury, to the Holy Land.
+A sovereign resident in Egypt was more sensible of the importance of
+Christian trade; and the emirs of Palestine were less remote from the
+justice and power of the throne. But the third of these Fatimite caliphs
+was the famous Hakem, [67] a frantic youth, who was delivered by his
+impiety and despotism from the fear either of God or man; and whose
+reign was a wild mixture of vice and folly. Regardless of the
+most ancient customs of Egypt, he imposed on the women an absolute
+confinement; the restraint excited the clamors of both sexes; their
+clamors provoked his fury; a part of Old Cairo was delivered to the
+flames and the guards and citizens were engaged many days in a bloody
+conflict. At first the caliph declared himself a zealous Mussulman, the
+founder or benefactor of moschs and colleges: twelve hundred and ninety
+copies of the Koran were transcribed at his expense in letters of gold;
+and his edict extirpated the vineyards of the Upper Egypt. But his
+vanity was soon flattered by the hope of introducing a new religion;
+he aspired above the fame of a prophet, and styled himself the visible
+image of the Most High God, who, after nine apparitions on earth, was at
+length manifest in his royal person. At the name of Hakem, the lord of
+the living and the dead, every knee was bent in religious adoration:
+his mysteries were performed on a mountain near Cairo: sixteen thousand
+converts had signed his profession of faith; and at the present hour, a
+free and warlike people, the Druses of Mount Libanus, are persuaded
+of the life and divinity of a madman and tyrant. [68] In his divine
+character, Hakem hated the Jews and Christians, as the servants of his
+rivals; while some remains of prejudice or prudence still pleaded in
+favor of the law of Mahomet. Both in Egypt and Palestine, his cruel
+and wanton persecution made some martyrs and many apostles: the common
+rights and special privileges of the sectaries were equally disregarded;
+and a general interdict was laid on the devotion of strangers
+and natives. The temple of the Christian world, the church of the
+Resurrection, was demolished to its foundations; the luminous prodigy of
+Easter was interrupted, and much profane labor was exhausted to destroy
+the cave in the rock which properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At
+the report of this sacrilege, the nations of Europe were astonished and
+afflicted: but instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land, they
+contented themselves with burning, or banishing, the Jews, as the secret
+advisers of the impious Barbarian. [69] Yet the calamities of Jerusalem
+were in some measure alleviated by the inconstancy or repentance of
+Hakem himself; and the royal mandate was sealed for the restitution of
+the churches, when the tyrant was assassinated by the emissaries of
+his sister. The succeeding caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and
+policy: a free toleration was again granted; with the pious aid of the
+emperor of Constantinople, the holy sepulchre arose from its ruins;
+and, after a short abstinence, the pilgrims returned with an increase
+of appetite to the spiritual feast. [70] In the sea-voyage of Palestine,
+the dangers were frequent, and the opportunities rare: but the
+conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between Germany and
+Greece. The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved
+and conducted his itinerant brethren; [71] and from Belgrade to Antioch,
+they traversed fifteen hundred miles of a Christian empire. Among the
+Franks, the zeal of pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former
+times: and the roads were covered with multitudes of either sex, and of
+every rank, who professed their contempt of life, so soon as they should
+have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned
+the care of their dominions; and the numbers of these pious caravans
+were a prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under the
+banner of the cross. About thirty years before the first crusade,
+the arch bishop of Mentz, with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and
+Ratisbon, undertook this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan;
+and the multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons.
+At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the emperor; but
+the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault of the wild Arabs:
+they drew their swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained
+siege in the village of Capernaum, till they were rescued by the venal
+protection of the Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places, they
+embarked for Italy, but only a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety
+in their native land.
+
+Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion of this
+pilgrimage: he observes that they sailed from Normandy, thirty stout
+and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed the Alps, twenty
+miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand, and the wallet at their
+back. [72]
+
+[Footnote 67: See D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 411,) Renaudot,
+(Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 390, 397, 400, 401,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen.
+p. 321-323,) and Marei, (p. 384-386,) an historian of Egypt, translated
+by Reiske from Arabic into German, and verbally interpreted to me by a
+friend.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The religion of the Druses is concealed by their ignorance
+and hypocrisy. Their secret doctrines are confined to the elect
+who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar Druses, the most
+indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the worship of the
+Mahometans and Christians of their neighborhood. The little that is, or
+deserves to be, known, may be seen in the industrious Niebuhr,
+(Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354-357,) and the second volume of the recent and
+instructive Travels of M. de Volney. * Note: The religion of the Druses
+has, within the present year, been fully developed from their own
+writings, which have long lain neglected in the libraries of Paris and
+Oxford, in the "Expose de la Religion des Druses, by M. Silvestre de
+Sacy." Deux tomes, Paris, 1838. The learned author has prefixed a life
+of Hakem Biamr-Allah, which enables us to correct several errors in the
+account of Gibbon. These errors chiefly arose from his want of knowledge
+or of attention to the chronology of Hakem's life. Hakem succeeded to
+the throne of Egypt in the year of the Hegira 386. He did not assume
+his divinity till 408. His life was indeed "a wild mixture of vice and
+folly," to which may be added, of the most sanguinary cruelty. During
+his reign, 18,000 persons were victims of his ferocity. Yet such is the
+god, observes M. de Sacy, whom the Druses have worshipped for 800 years!
+(See p. ccccxxix.) All his wildest and most extravagant actions were
+interpreted by his followers as having a mystic and allegoric meaning,
+alluding to the destruction of other religions and the propagation
+of his own. It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which
+induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new
+faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian
+religion, (such is its boastful title,) was content to take a secondary
+part. While Hakem was God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his
+Intelligence. It was not in his "divine character" that Hakem "hated
+the Jews and Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he
+displayed in the earlier years of his reign. His barbarous persecution,
+and the burning of the church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem, belong
+entirely to that period; and his assumption of divinity was followed
+by an edict of toleration to Jews and Christians. The Mahometans, whose
+religion he then treated with hostility and contempt, being far the most
+numerous, were his most dangerous enemies, and therefore the objects of
+his most inveterate hatred. It is another singular fact, that the
+religion of Hakem was by no means confined to Egypt and Syria. M. de
+Sacy quotes a letter addressed to the chief of the sect in India; and
+there is likewise a letter to the Byzantine emperor Constantine, son of
+Armanous, (Romanus,) and the clergy of the empire. (Constantine VIII.,
+M. de Sacy supposes, but this is irreconcilable with chronology; it must
+mean Constantine XI., Monomachus.) The assassination of Hakem is, of
+course, disbelieved by his sectaries. M. de Sacy seems to consider the
+fact obscure and doubtful. According to his followers he disappeared,
+but is hereafter to return. At his return the resurrection is to take
+place; the triumph of Unitarianism, and the final discomfiture of all
+other religions. The temple of Mecca is especially devoted to
+destruction. It is remarkable that one of the signs of this final
+consummation, and of the reappearance of Hakem, is that Christianity
+shall be gaining a manifest predominance over Mahometanism. As for the
+religion of the Druses, I cannot agree with Gibbon that it does not
+"deserve" to be better known; and am grateful to M. de Sacy,
+notwithstanding the prolixity and occasional repetition in his two large
+volumes, for the full examination of the most extraordinary religious
+aberration which ever extensively affected the mind of man. The worship
+of a mad tyrant is the basis of a subtle metaphysical creed, and of a
+severe, and even ascetic, morality.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 69: See Glaber, l. iii. c. 7, and the Annals of Baronius and
+Pagi, A.D. 1009.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Per idem tempus ex universo orbe tam innumerabilis
+multitudo coepit confluere ad sepulchrum Salvatoris Hierosolymis,
+quantum nullus hominum prius sperare poterat. Ordo inferioris plebis....
+mediocres.... reges et comites..... praesules ..... mulieres multae
+nobilis cum pauperioribus.... Pluribus enim erat mentis desiderium
+mori priusquam ad propria reverterentur, (Glaber, l. iv. c. 6, Bouquet.
+Historians of France, tom. x. p. 50.) * Note: Compare the first chap. of
+Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuz-zuge.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 71: Glaber, l. iii. c. 1. Katona (Hist. Critic. Regum
+Hungariae, tom. i. p. 304-311) examines whether St. Stephen founded a
+monastery at Jerusalem.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Baronius (A.D. 1064, No. 43-56) has transcribed the
+greater part of the original narratives of Ingulphus, Marianus, and
+Lambertus.]
+
+After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the Fatimite caliphs
+was invaded by the Turks. [73] One of the lieutenants of Malek Shah,
+Atsiz the Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head of a powerful army,
+and reduced Damascus by famine and the sword. Hems, and the other cities
+of the province, acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of
+Persia; and the victorious emir advanced without resistance to the banks
+of the Nile: the Fatimite was preparing to fly into the heart of
+Africa; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of Cairo made
+a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of Egypt. In
+his retreat he indulged the license of slaughter and rapine: the judge
+and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his camp; and their execution
+was followed by the massacre of three thousand citizens. The cruelty or
+the defeat of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother
+of Malek Shah, who, with a higher title and more formidable powers,
+asserted the dominion of Syria and Palestine. The house of Seljuk
+reigned about twenty years in Jerusalem; [74] but the hereditary command
+of the holy city and territory was intrusted or abandoned to the emir
+Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans, whose children, after their
+expulsion from Palestine, formed two dynasties on the borders of
+Armenia and Assyria. [75] The Oriental Christians and the Latin pilgrims
+deplored a revolution, which, instead of the regular government and old
+alliance of the caliphs, imposed on their necks the iron yoke of the
+strangers of the North. [76] In his court and camp the great sultan had
+adopted in some degree the arts and manners of Persia; but the body
+of the Turkish nation, and more especially the pastoral tribes, still
+breathed the fierceness of the desert. From Nice to Jerusalem,
+the western countries of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic
+hostility; and the shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on
+a doubtful frontier, had neither leisure nor capacity to await the slow
+profits of commercial and religious freedom. The pilgrims, who, through
+innumerable perils, had reached the gates of Jerusalem, were the
+victims of private rapine or public oppression, and often sunk under the
+pressure of famine and disease, before they were permitted to salute the
+holy sepulchre. A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal, prompted
+the Turkmans to insult the clergy of every sect: the patriarch was
+dragged by the hair along the pavement, and cast into a dungeon, to
+extort a ransom from the sympathy of his flock; and the divine worship
+in the church of the Resurrection was often disturbed by the savage
+rudeness of its masters. The pathetic tale excited the millions of the
+West to march under the standard of the cross to the relief of the Holy
+Land; and yet how trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if
+compared with the single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been
+so patiently endured by the Latin Christians! A slighter provocation
+inflamed the more irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit
+had arisen of religious chivalry and papal dominion; a nerve was touched
+of exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 73: See Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 349, 350) and
+Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 237, vers. Pocock.) M. De Guignes (Hist. des
+Huns, tom iii. part i. p. 215, 216) adds the testimonies, or rather the
+names, of Abulfeda and Novairi.]
+
+[Footnote 74: From the expedition of Isar Atsiz, (A. H. 469, A.D. 1076,)
+to the expulsion of the Ortokides, (A.D. 1096.) Yet William of Tyre (l.
+i. c. 6, p. 633) asserts, that Jerusalem was thirty-eight years in the
+hands of the Turks; and an Arabic chronicle, quoted by Pagi, (tom. iv.
+p. 202) supposes that the city was reduced by a Carizmian general to
+the obedience of the caliph of Bagdad, A. H. 463, A.D. 1070. These early
+dates are not very compatible with the general history of Asia; and I am
+sure, that as late as A.D. 1064, the regnum Babylonicum (of Cairo) still
+prevailed in Palestine, (Baronius, A.D. 1064, No. 56.)]
+
+[Footnote 75: De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 249-252. ]
+
+[Footnote 76: Willierm. Tyr. l. i. c. 8, p. 634, who strives hard to
+magnify the Christian grievances. The Turks exacted an aureus from each
+pilgrim! The caphar of the Franks now is fourteen dollars: and Europe
+does not complain of this voluntary tax.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part I.
+
+Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade.--Characters Of The Latin
+Princes.--Their March To Constantinople.--Policy Of The Greek
+Emperor Alexius.--Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And Jerusalem, By The
+Franks.--Deliverance Of The Holy Sepulchre.-- Godfrey Of Bouillon, First
+King Of Jerusalem.--Institutions Of The French Or Latin Kingdom.
+
+About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, the
+holy sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of Peter, a native
+of Amiens, in the province of Picardy [1] in France. His resentment
+and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the
+Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and
+earnestly inquired, if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the
+Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness
+of the successors of Constantine. "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit,
+"the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was obedient
+to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with
+epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at Bari,
+than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff. His stature
+was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively;
+and he possessed that vehemence of speech, which seldom fails to impart
+the persuasion of the soul. [2] He was born of a gentleman's family,
+(for we must now adopt a modern idiom,) and his military service was
+under the neighboring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first
+crusade. But he soon relinquished the sword and the world; and if it
+be true, that his wife, however noble, was aged and ugly, he might
+withdraw, with the less reluctance, from her bed to a convent, and at
+length to a hermitage. [211] In this austere solitude, his body was
+emaciated, his fancy was inflamed; whatever he wished, he believed;
+whatever he believed, he saw in dreams and revelations. From Jerusalem
+the pilgrim returned an accomplished fanatic; but as he excelled in the
+popular madness of the times, Pope Urban the Second received him as
+a prophet, applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a
+general council, and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the
+Holy Land. Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff, his zealous
+missionary traversed. with speed and success, the provinces of Italy and
+France. His diet was abstemious, his prayers long and fervent, and the
+alms which he received with one hand, he distributed with the other: his
+head was bare, his feet naked, his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse
+garment; he bore and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which
+he rode was sanctified, in the public eye, by the service of the man of
+God. He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and
+the highways: the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and
+the cottage; and the people (for all was people) was impetuously moved
+by his call to repentance and arms. When he painted the sufferings
+of the natives and pilgrims of Palestine, every heart was melted to
+compassion; every breast glowed with indignation, when he challenged the
+warriors of the age to defend their brethren, and rescue their Savior:
+his ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and tears,
+and ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud
+and frequent appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels
+of paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. [212] The most
+perfect orator of Athens might have envied the success of his eloquence;
+the rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and
+Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and decrees of the
+supreme pontiff.
+
+[Footnote 1: Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and
+from thence of Picardie, which does not date later than A.D. 1200. It
+was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome
+humor of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the
+frontier of France and Flanders, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447,
+Longuerue. Description de la France, p. 54.)]
+
+[Footnote 2: William of Tyre (l. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus describes
+the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis ingenii, et oculum
+habeas perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium.
+See Albert Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p. 482. Anna Comnena in Alex isd,
+l. x. p. 284, &c., with Ducarge's Notes, p. 349.]
+
+[Footnote 211: Wilken considers this as doubtful, (vol. i. p. 47.)--M.]
+
+[Footnote 212: He had seen the Savior in a vision: a letter had fallen
+from heaven Wilken, (vol. i. p. 49.)--M.]
+
+The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already embraced the
+design of arming Europe against Asia; the ardor of his zeal and ambition
+still breathes in his epistles: from either side of the Alps, fifty
+thousand Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St. Peter; [3] and
+his successor reveals his intention of marching at their head against
+the impious sectaries of Mahomet. But the glory or reproach of
+executing, though not in person, this holy enterprise, was reserved for
+Urban the Second, [4] the most faithful of his disciples. He undertook
+the conquest of the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was
+possessed and fortified by his rival Guibert of Ravenna, who contended
+with Urban for the name and honors of the pontificate. He attempted to
+unite the powers of the West, at a time when the princes were
+separated from the church, and the people from their princes, by the
+excommunication which himself and his predecessors had thundered
+against the emperor and the king of France. Philip the First, of France,
+supported with patience the censures which he had provoked by his
+scandalous life and adulterous marriage. Henry the Fourth, of Germany,
+asserted the right of investitures, the prerogative of confirming his
+bishops by the delivery of the ring and crosier. But the emperor's
+party was crushed in Italy by the arms of the Normans and the Countess
+Mathilda; and the long quarrel had been recently envenomed by the revolt
+of his son Conrad and the shame of his wife, [5] who, in the synods of
+Constance and Placentia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to which
+she had been exposed by a husband regardless of her honor and his own.
+[6] So popular was the cause of Urban, so weighty was his influence,
+that the council which he summoned at Placentia [7] was composed of two
+hundred bishops of Italy, France, Burgandy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four
+thousand of the clergy, and thirty thousand of the laity, attended this
+important meeting; and, as the most spacious cathedral would have been
+inadequate to the multitude, the session of seven days was held in
+a plain adjacent to the city. The ambassadors of the Greek emperor,
+Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their
+sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was divided only by
+a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common enemies of the
+Christian name. In their suppliant address they flattered the pride of
+the Latin princes; and, appealing at once to their policy and religion,
+exhorted them to repel the Barbarians on the confines of Asia, rather
+than to expect them in the heart of Europe. At the sad tale of the
+misery and perils of their Eastern brethren, the assembly burst into
+tears; the most eager champions declared their readiness to march; and
+the Greek ambassadors were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and
+powerful succor. The relief of Constantinople was included in the
+larger and most distant project of the deliverance of Jerusalem; but the
+prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to a second synod, which he
+proposed to celebrate in some city of France in the autumn of the same
+year. The short delay would propagate the flame of enthusiasm; and
+his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers [8] still proud of
+the preeminence of their name, and ambitious to emulate their hero
+Charlemagne, [9] who, in the popular romance of Turpin, [10] had
+achieved the conquest of the Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or
+vanity might influence the choice of Urban: he was himself a native of
+France, a monk of Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended
+the throne of St. Peter. The pope had illustrated his family and
+province; nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to
+revisit, in a conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious scenes of
+our youth.
+
+[Footnote 3: Ultra quinquaginta millia, si me possunt in expeditione pro
+duce et pontifice habere, armata manu volunt in inimicos Dei insurgere
+et ad sepulchrum Domini ipso ducente pervenire, (Gregor. vii. epist. ii.
+31, in tom. xii. 322, concil.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: See the original lives of Urban II. by Pandulphus Pisanus
+and Bernardus Guido, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. iii. pars i.
+p. 352, 353.]
+
+[Footnote 5: She is known by the different names of Praxes, Eupraecia,
+Eufrasia, and Adelais; and was the daughter of a Russian prince, and the
+widow of a margrave of Brandenburgh. (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p.
+340.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: Henricus odio eam coepit habere: ideo incarceravit eam,
+et concessit ut plerique vim ei inferrent; immo filium hortans ut eam
+subagitaret, (Dodechin, Continuat. Marian. Scot. apud Baron. A.D. 1093,
+No. 4.) In the synod of Constance, she is described by Bertholdus, rerum
+inspector: quae se tantas et tam inauditas fornicationum spur citias, et
+a tantis passam fuisse conquesta est, &c.; and again at Placentia: satis
+misericorditer suscepit, eo quod ipsam tantas spurcitias pertulisse pro
+certo cognoverit papa cum sancta synodo. Apud Baron. A.D. 1093, No. 4,
+1094, No. 3. A rare subject for the infallible decision of a pope and
+council. These abominations are repugnant to every principle of human
+nature, which is not altered by a dispute about rings and crosiers. Yet
+it should seem, that the wretched woman was tempted by the priests to
+relate or subscribe some infamous stories of herself and her husband.]
+
+[Footnote 7: See the narrative and acts of the synod of Placentia,
+Concil. tom. xii. p. 821, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Guibert, himself a Frenchman, praises the piety and valor
+of the French nation, the author and example of the crusades: Gens
+nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis et nitida .... Quos enim Britones,
+Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus videamus, non illico Francos
+homines appellemus? (p. 478.) He owns, however, that the vivacity of the
+French degenerates into petulance among foreigners, (p. 488.) and vain
+loquaciousness, (p. 502.)]
+
+[Footnote 9: Per viam quam jamdudum Carolus Magnus mirificus rex
+Francorum aptari fecit usque C. P., (Gesta Francorum, p. 1. Robert.
+Monach. Hist. Hieros. l. i. p. 33, &c.)]
+
+[Footnote 10: John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was archbishop of Rheims, A.D.
+773. After the year 1000, this romance was composed in his name, by
+a monk of the borders of France and Spain; and such was the idea of
+ecclesiastical merit, that he describes himself as a fighting and
+drinking priest! Yet the book of lies was pronounced authentic by Pope
+Calixtus II., (A.D. 1122,) and is respectfully quoted by the abbot
+Suger, in the great Chronicles of St. Denys, (Fabric Bibliot. Latin
+Medii Aevi, edit. Mansi, tom. iv. p. 161.)]
+
+It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should erect, in
+the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas
+against the king; but our surprise will vanish so soon as we form a just
+estimate of a king of France of the eleventh century. [11] Philip the
+First was the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, the founder of the present
+race, who, in the decline of Charlemagne's posterity, added the regal
+title to his patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans. In this narrow
+compass, he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the rest
+of France, Hugh and his first descendants were no more than the feudal
+lords of about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and hereditary
+power, [12] who disdained the control of laws and legal assemblies, and
+whose disregard of their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of
+their inferior vassals. At Clermont, in the territories of the count
+of Auvergne, [13] the pope might brave with impunity the resentment
+of Philip; and the council which he convened in that city was not less
+numerous or respectable than the synod of Placentia. [14] Besides his
+court and council of Roman cardinals, he was supported by thirteen
+archbishops and two hundred and twenty-five bishops: the number of
+mitred prelates was computed at four hundred; and the fathers of the
+church were blessed by the saints and enlightened by the doctors of the
+age. From the adjacent kingdoms, a martial train of lords and knights of
+power and renown attended the council, [15] in high expectation of its
+resolves; and such was the ardor of zeal and curiosity, that the city
+was filled, and many thousands, in the month of November, erected their
+tents or huts in the open field. A session of eight days produced some
+useful or edifying canons for the reformation of manners; a severe
+censure was pronounced against the license of private war; the Truce of
+God [16] was confirmed, a suspension of hostilities during four days
+of the week; women and priests were placed under the safeguard of the
+church; and a protection of three years was extended to husbandmen
+and merchants, the defenceless victims of military rapine. But a law,
+however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper
+of the times; and the benevolent efforts of Urban deserve the less
+praise, since he labored to appease some domestic quarrels that he might
+spread the flames of war from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. From the
+synod of Placentia, the rumor of his great design had gone forth among
+the nations: the clergy on their return had preached in every diocese
+the merit and glory of the deliverance of the Holy Land; and when the
+pope ascended a lofty scaffold in the market-place of Clermont, his
+eloquence was addressed to a well-prepared and impatient audience.
+His topics were obvious, his exhortation was vehement, his success
+inevitable. The orator was interrupted by the shout of thousands, who
+with one voice, and in their rustic idiom, exclaimed aloud, "God wills
+it, God wills it." [17] "It is indeed the will of God," replied the
+pope; "and let this memorable word, the inspiration surely of the
+Holy Spirit, be forever adopted as your cry of battle, to animate the
+devotion and courage of the champions of Christ. His cross is the symbol
+of your salvation; wear it, a red, a bloody cross, as an external mark,
+on your breasts or shoulders, as a pledge of your sacred and irrevocable
+engagement." The proposal was joyfully accepted; great numbers, both of
+the clergy and laity, impressed on their garments the sign of the cross,
+[18] and solicited the pope to march at their head. This dangerous honor
+was declined by the more prudent successor of Gregory, who alleged
+the schism of the church, and the duties of his pastoral office,
+recommending to the faithful, who were disqualified by sex or
+profession, by age or infirmity, to aid, with their prayers and alms,
+the personal service of their robust brethren. The name and powers
+of his legate he devolved on Adhemar bishop of Puy, the first who had
+received the cross at his hands. The foremost of the temporal chiefs was
+Raymond count of Thoulouse, whose ambassadors in the council excused the
+absence, and pledged the honor, of their master. After the confession
+and absolution of their sins, the champions of the cross were dismissed
+with a superfluous admonition to invite their countrymen and friends;
+and their departure for the Holy Land was fixed to the festival of the
+Assumption, the fifteenth of August, of the ensuing year. [19]
+
+[Footnote 11: See Etat de la France, by the Count de Boulainvilliers,
+tom. i. p. 180-182, and the second volume of the Observations sur
+l'Histoire de France, by the Abbe de Mably.]
+
+[Footnote 12: In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the first
+Capetians were scarcely allowed a feudal supremacy. On all sides,
+Normandy, Bretagne, Aquitain, Burgundy, Lorraine, and Flanders,
+contracted the same and limits of the proper France. See Hadrian Vales.
+Notitia Galliarum]
+
+[Footnote 13: These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of Aquitain,
+were at length despoiled of the greatest part of their country by Philip
+Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually became princes of the city.
+Melanges, tires d'une grand Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvi. p. 288, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 14: See the Acts of the council of Clermont, Concil. tom. xii.
+p. 829, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Confluxerunt ad concilium e multis regionibus, viri
+potentes et honorati, innumeri quamvis cingulo laicalis militiae
+superbi, (Baldric, an eye-witness, p. 86-88. Robert. Monach. p. 31, 32.
+Will. Tyr. i. 14, 15, p. 639-641. Guibert, p. 478-480. Fulcher. Carnot.
+p. 382.)]
+
+[Footnote 16: The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first invented
+in Aquitain, A.D. 1032; blamed by some bishops as an occasion of
+perjury, and rejected by the Normans as contrary to their privileges
+(Ducange, Gloss Latin. tom. vi. p. 682-685.)]
+
+[Footnote 17: Deus vult, Deus vult! was the pure acclamation of
+the clergy who understood Latin, (Robert. Mon. l. i. p. 32.) By the
+illiterate laity, who spoke the Provincial or Limousin idiom, it was
+corrupted to Deus lo volt, or Diex el volt. See Chron. Casinense, l. iv.
+c. 11, p. 497, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iv., and Ducange,
+(Dissertat xi. p. 207, sur Joinville, and Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p.
+690,) who, in his preface, produces a very difficult specimen of the
+dialect of Rovergue, A.D. 1100, very near, both in time and place, to
+the council of Clermont, (p. 15, 16.)]
+
+[Footnote 18: Most commonly on their shoulders, in gold, or silk, or
+cloth sewed on their garments. In the first crusade, all were red, in
+the third, the French alone preserved that color, while green crosses
+were adopted by the Flemings, and white by the English, (Ducange, tom.
+ii. p. 651.) Yet in England, the red ever appears the favorite, and as
+if were, the national, color of our military ensigns and uniforms.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Bongarsius, who has published the original writers of the
+crusades, adopts, with much complacency, the fanatic title of Guibertus,
+Gesta Dei per Francos; though some critics propose to read Gesta Diaboli
+per Francos, (Hanoviae, 1611, two vols. in folio.) I shall briefly
+enumerate, as they stand in this collection, the authors whom I have
+used for the first crusade.
+
+     I.    Gesta Francorum.
+
+     II.   Robertus Monachus.
+
+     III.  Baldricus.
+
+     IV.   Raimundus de Agiles.
+
+     V.    Albertus Aquensis VI. Fulcherius Carnotensis.
+
+     VII.  Guibertus.
+
+     VIII. Willielmus Tyriensis. Muratori has given us,
+
+     IX.   Radulphus Cadomensis de Gestis Tancredi,
+
+     (Script. Rer. Ital. tom. v. p. 285-333,)
+
+     X.    Bernardus Thesaurarius de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae,
+
+         (tom. vii. p. 664-848.)
+
+The last of these was unknown to a late French historian, who has given
+a large and critical list of the writers of the crusades, (Esprit des
+Croisades, tom. i. p. 13-141,) and most of whose judgments my own
+experience will allow me to ratify. It was late before I could obtain a
+sight of the French historians collected by Duchesne. I. Petri Tudebodi
+Sacerdotis Sivracensis Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, (tom. iv.
+p. 773-815,) has been transfused into the first anonymous writer of
+Bongarsius. II. The Metrical History of the first Crusade, in vii.
+books, (p. 890-912,) is of small value or account. * Note: Several
+new documents, particularly from the East, have been collected by
+the industry of the modern historians of the crusades, M. Michaud and
+Wilken.--M.]
+
+So familiar, and as it were so natural to man, is the practice of
+violence, that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most
+disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility. But the
+name and nature of a holy war demands a more rigorous scrutiny; nor
+can we hastily believe, that the servants of the Prince of Peace would
+unsheathe the sword of destruction, unless the motive were pure, the
+quarrel legitimate, and the necessity inevitable. The policy of an
+action may be determined from the tardy lessons of experience; but,
+before we act, our conscience should be satisfied of the justice and
+propriety of our enterprise. In the age of the crusades, the Christians,
+both of the East and West, were persuaded of their lawfulness and merit;
+their arguments are clouded by the perpetual abuse of Scripture and
+rhetoric; but they seem to insist on the right of natural and religious
+defence, their peculiar title to the Holy Land, and the impiety of their
+Pagan and Mahometan foes. [20]
+
+I. The right of a just defence may fairly include our civil and
+spiritual allies: it depends on the existence of danger; and that danger
+must be estimated by the twofold consideration of the malice, and
+the power, of our enemies. A pernicious tenet has been imputed to the
+Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other religions by the sword.
+This charge of ignorance and bigotry is refuted by the Koran, by the
+history of the Mussulman conquerors, and by their public and legal
+toleration of the Christian worship. But it cannot be denied, that the
+Oriental churches are depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace
+and war, they assert a divine and indefeasible claim of universal
+empire; and that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are
+continually threatened with the loss of religion or liberty. In the
+eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks presented a real
+and urgent apprehension of these losses. They had subdued, in less
+than thirty years, the kingdoms of Asia, as far as Jerusalem and the
+Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on the verge of destruction.
+Besides an honest sympathy for their brethren, the Latins had a right
+and interest in the support of Constantinople, the most important
+barrier of the West; and the privilege of defence must reach to prevent,
+as well as to repel, an impending assault. But this salutary purpose
+might have been accomplished by a moderate succor; and our calmer
+reason must disclaim the innumerable hosts, and remote operations, which
+overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe. [2011]
+
+[Footnote 20: If the reader will turn to the first scene of the First
+Part of Henry the Fourth, he will see in the text of Shakespeare the
+natural feelings of enthusiasm; and in the notes of Dr. Johnson the
+workings of a bigoted, though vigorous mind, greedy of every pretence to
+hate and persecute those who dissent from his creed.]
+
+[Footnote 2011: The manner in which the war was conducted surely has
+little relation to the abstract question of the justice or injustice of
+the war. The most just and necessary war may be conducted with the
+most prodigal waste of human life, and the wildest fanaticism; the
+most unjust with the coolest moderation and consummate generalship. The
+question is, whether the liberties and religion of Europe were in danger
+from the aggressions of Mahometanism? If so, it is difficult to
+limit the right, though it may be proper to question the wisdom, of
+overwhelming the enemy with the armed population of a whole continent,
+and repelling, if possible, the invading conqueror into his native
+deserts. The crusades are monuments of human folly! but to which of
+the more regular wars civilized. Europe, waged for personal ambition or
+national jealousy, will our calmer reason appeal as monuments either of
+human justice or human wisdom?--M.]
+
+II. Palestine could add nothing to the strength or safety of the Latins;
+and fanaticism alone could pretend to justify the conquest of that
+distant and narrow province. The Christians affirmed that their
+inalienable title to the promised land had been sealed by the blood
+of their divine Savior; it was their right and duty to rescue their
+inheritance from the unjust possessors, who profaned his sepulchre, and
+oppressed the pilgrimage of his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged
+that the preeminence of Jerusalem, and the sanctity of Palestine, have
+been abolished with the Mosaic law; that the God of the Christians is
+not a local deity, and that the recovery of Bethlem or Calvary, his
+cradle or his tomb, will not atone for the violation of the moral
+precepts of the gospel. Such arguments glance aside from the leaden
+shield of superstition; and the religious mind will not easily
+relinquish its hold on the sacred ground of mystery and miracle.
+
+III. But the holy wars which have been waged in every climate of the
+globe, from Egypt to Livonia, and from Peru to Hindostan, require the
+support of some more general and flexible tenet. It has been often
+supposed, and sometimes affirmed, that a difference of religion is a
+worthy cause of hostility; that obstinate unbelievers may be slain
+or subdued by the champions of the cross; and that grace is the sole
+fountain of dominion as well as of mercy. [2012] Above four hundred
+years before the first crusade, the eastern and western provinces of
+the Roman empire had been acquired about the same time, and in the same
+manner, by the Barbarians of Germany and Arabia. Time and treaties had
+legitimated the conquest of the Christian Franks; but in the eyes of
+their subjects and neighbors, the Mahometan princes were still tyrants
+and usurpers, who, by the arms of war or rebellion, might be lawfully
+driven from their unlawful possession. [21]
+
+[Footnote 2012: "God," says the abbot Guibert, "invented the crusades as
+a new way for the laity to atone for their sins and to merit salvation."
+This extraordinary and characteristic passage must be given entire.
+"Deus nostro tempore praelia sancta instituit, ut ordo equestris et
+vulgus oberrans qui vetustae Paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabatur
+caedes, novum reperirent salutis promerendae genus, ut nec funditus
+electa, ut fieri assolet, monastica conversatione, seu religiosa
+qualibet professione saeculum relinquere congerentur; sed sub consueta
+licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio Dei aliquantenus gratiam
+consequerentur." Guib. Abbas, p. 371. See Wilken, vol. i. p. 63.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The vith Discourse of Fleury on Ecclesiastical History
+(p. 223-261) contains an accurate and rational view of the causes and
+effects of the crusades.]
+
+As the manners of the Christians were relaxed, their discipline of
+penance [22] was enforced; and with the multiplication of sins, the
+remedies were multiplied. In the primitive church, a voluntary and
+open confession prepared the work of atonement. In the middle ages, the
+bishops and priests interrogated the criminal; compelled him to account
+for his thoughts, words, and actions; and prescribed the terms of
+his reconciliation with God. But as this discretionary power might
+alternately be abused by indulgence and tyranny, a rule of discipline
+was framed, to inform and regulate the spiritual judges. This mode of
+legislation was invented by the Greeks; their penitentials [23] were
+translated, or imitated, in the Latin church; and, in the time of
+Charlemagne, the clergy of every diocese were provided with a code,
+which they prudently concealed from the knowledge of the vulgar. In this
+dangerous estimate of crimes and punishments, each case was supposed,
+each difference was remarked, by the experience or penetration of
+the monks; some sins are enumerated which innocence could not have
+suspected, and others which reason cannot believe; and the more ordinary
+offences of fornication and adultery, of perjury and sacrilege, of
+rapine and murder, were expiated by a penance, which, according to the
+various circumstances, was prolonged from forty days to seven years.
+During this term of mortification, the patient was healed, the criminal
+was absolved, by a salutary regimen of fasts and prayers: the disorder
+of his dress was expressive of grief and remorse; and he humbly
+abstained from all the business and pleasure of social life. But the
+rigid execution of these laws would have depopulated the palace, the
+camp, and the city; the Barbarians of the West believed and trembled;
+but nature often rebelled against principle; and the magistrate labored
+without effect to enforce the jurisdiction of the priest. A literal
+accomplishment of penance was indeed impracticable: the guilt of
+adultery was multiplied by daily repetition; that of homicide might
+involve the massacre of a whole people; each act was separately
+numbered; and, in those times of anarchy and vice, a modest sinner might
+easily incur a debt of three hundred years. His insolvency was relieved
+by a commutation, or indulgence: a year of penance was appreciated at
+twenty-six solidi [24] of silver, about four pounds sterling, for the
+rich; at three solidi, or nine shillings, for the indigent: and these
+alms were soon appropriated to the use of the church, which derived,
+from the redemption of sins, an inexhaustible source of opulence and
+dominion. A debt of three hundred years, or twelve hundred pounds,
+was enough to impoverish a plentiful fortune; the scarcity of gold
+and silver was supplied by the alienation of land; and the princely
+donations of Pepin and Charlemagne are expressly given for the remedy
+of their soul. It is a maxim of the civil law, that whosoever cannot pay
+with his purse, must pay with his body; and the practice of flagellation
+was adopted by the monks, a cheap, though painful equivalent. By a
+fantastic arithmetic, a year of penance was taxed at three thousand
+lashes; [25] and such was the skill and patience of a famous hermit, St.
+Dominic of the iron Cuirass, [26] that in six days he could discharge
+an entire century, by a whipping of three hundred thousand stripes.
+His example was followed by many penitents of both sexes; and, as a
+vicarious sacrifice was accepted, a sturdy disciplinarian might expiate
+on his own back the sins of his benefactors. [27] These compensations
+of the purse and the person introduced, in the eleventh century, a more
+honorable mode of satisfaction. The merit of military service against
+the Saracens of Africa and Spain had been allowed by the predecessors
+of Urban the Second. In the council of Clermont, that pope proclaimed
+a plenary indulgence to those who should enlist under the banner of the
+cross; the absolution of all their sins, and a full receipt for all that
+might be due of canonical penance. [28] The cold philosophy of modern
+times is incapable of feeling the impression that was made on a sinful
+and fanatic world. At the voice of their pastor, the robber, the
+incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls,
+by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had exercised
+against their Christian brethren; and the terms of atonement were
+eagerly embraced by offenders of every rank and denomination. None were
+pure; none were exempt from the guilt and penalty of sin; and those who
+were the least amenable to the justice of God and the church were the
+best entitled to the temporal and eternal recompense of their pious
+courage. If they fell, the spirit of the Latin clergy did not hesitate
+to adorn their tomb with the crown of martyrdom; [29] and should they
+survive, they could expect without impatience the delay and increase of
+their heavenly reward. They offered their blood to the Son of God, who
+had laid down his life for their salvation: they took up the cross, and
+entered with confidence into the way of the Lord. His providence would
+watch over their safety; perhaps his visible and miraculous power would
+smooth the difficulties of their holy enterprise. The cloud and pillar
+of Jehovah had marched before the Israelites into the promised land.
+Might not the Christians more reasonably hope that the rivers would open
+for their passage; that the walls of their strongest cities would fall
+at the sound of their trumpets; and that the sun would be arrested in
+his mid career, to allow them time for the destruction of the infidels?
+
+[Footnote 22: The penance, indulgences, &c., of the middle ages are
+amply discussed by Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. v.
+dissert. lxviii. p. 709-768,) and by M. Chais, (Lettres sur les Jubiles
+et les Indulgences, tom. ii. lettres 21 & 22, p. 478-556,) with this
+difference, that the abuses of superstition are mildly, perhaps faintly,
+exposed by the learned Italian, and peevishly magnified by the Dutch
+minister.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Schmidt (Histoire des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 211-220,
+452-462) gives an abstract of the Penitential of Rhegino in the ninth,
+and of Burchard in the tenth, century. In one year, five-and-thirty
+murders were perpetrated at Worms.]
+
+[Footnote 24: Till the xiith century, we may support the clear account
+of xii. denarii, or pence, to the solidus, or shilling; and xx. solidi
+to the pound weight of silver, about the pound sterling. Our money is
+diminished to a third, and the French to a fiftieth, of this primitive
+standard.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Each century of lashes was sanctified with a recital of a
+psalm, and the whole Psalter, with the accompaniment of 15,000 stripes,
+was equivalent to five years.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The Life and Achievements of St. Dominic Loricatus was
+composed by his friend and admirer, Peter Damianus. See Fleury, Hist.
+Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 96-104. Baronius, A.D. 1056, No. 7, who observes,
+from Damianus, how fashionable, even among ladies of quality, (sublimis
+generis,) this expiation (purgatorii genus) was grown.]
+
+[Footnote 27: At a quarter, or even half a rial a lash, Sancho Panza
+was a cheaper, and possibly not a more dishonest, workman. I remember in
+Pere Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom. vii. p. 16-29) a very lively picture
+of the dexterity of one of these artists.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecuniae
+adoptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem profectus fuerit, iter
+illud pro omni poenitentia reputetur. Canon. Concil. Claromont. ii.
+p. 829. Guibert styles it novum salutis genus, (p. 471,) and is almost
+philosophical on the subject. * Note: See note, page 546.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Such at least was the belief of the crusaders, and such is
+the uniform style of the historians, (Esprit des Croisades, tom. iii.
+p. 477;) but the prayer for the repose of their souls is inconsistent in
+orthodox theology with the merits of martyrdom.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part II.
+
+Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre, I will
+dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of enthusiasm; the
+belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the assurance of divine aid.
+But I am equally persuaded, that in many it was not the sole, that in
+some it was not the leading, principle of action. The use and abuse of
+religion are feeble to stem, they are strong and irresistible to
+impel, the stream of national manners. Against the private wars of the
+Barbarians, their bloody tournaments, licentious love, and judicial
+duels, the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder. It is a more
+easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to drive
+into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to sanctify the
+patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the merit of the humanity
+and benevolence of modern Christians. War and exercise were the reigning
+passions of the Franks or Latins; they were enjoined, as a penance, to
+gratify those passions, to visit distant lands, and to draw their swords
+against the nation of the East. Their victory, or even their attempt,
+would immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and the
+purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid prospect of
+military glory. In the petty quarrels of Europe, they shed the blood of
+their friends and countrymen, for the acquisition perhaps of a castle
+or a village. They could march with alacrity against the distant and
+hostile nations who were devoted to their arms; their fancy already
+grasped the golden sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and
+Sicily by the Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most
+private adventurer. Christendom, in her rudest state, must have yielded
+to the climate and cultivation of the Mahometan countries; and their
+natural and artificial wealth had been magnified by the tales of
+pilgrims, and the gifts of an imperfect commerce. The vulgar, both the
+great and small, were taught to believe every wonder, of lands flowing
+with milk and honey, of mines and treasures, of gold and diamonds, of
+palaces of marble and jasper, and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and
+frankincense. In this earthly paradise, each warrior depended on
+his sword to carve a plenteous and honorable establishment, which
+he measured only by the extent of his wishes. [30] Their vassals and
+soldiers trusted their fortunes to God and their master: the spoils of
+a Turkish emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and
+the flavor of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women, [31] were
+temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession, of the
+champions of the cross. The love of freedom was a powerful incitement to
+the multitudes who were oppressed by feudal or ecclesiastical tyranny.
+Under this holy sign, the peasants and burghers, who were attached
+to the servitude of the glebe, might escape from a haughty lord, and
+transplant themselves and their families to a land of liberty. The monk
+might release himself from the discipline of his convent: the debtor
+might suspend the accumulation of usury, and the pursuit of his
+creditors; and outlaws and malefactors of every cast might continue to
+brave the laws and elude the punishment of their crimes. [32]
+
+[Footnote 30: The same hopes were displayed in the letters of the
+adventurers ad animandos qui in Francia residerant. Hugh de Reiteste
+could boast, that his share amounted to one abbey and ten castles, of
+the yearly value of 1500 marks, and that he should acquire a hundred
+castles by the conquest of Aleppo, (Guibert, p. 554, 555.)]
+
+[Footnote 31: In his genuine or fictitious letter to the count of
+Flanders, Alexius mingles with the danger of the church, and the relics
+of saints, the auri et argenti amor, and pulcherrimarum foeminarum
+voluptas, (p. 476;) as if, says the indignant Guibert, the Greek women
+were handsomer than those of France.]
+
+[Footnote 32: See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom from debt,
+usury injury, secular justice, &c. The pope was their perpetual guardian
+(Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651, 652.)]
+
+These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly computed
+their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add the infinite
+series, the multiplying powers, of example and fashion. The first
+proselytes became the warmest and most effectual missionaries of the
+cross: among their friends and countrymen they preached the duty, the
+merit, and the recompense, of their holy vow; and the most reluctant
+hearers were insensibly drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and
+authority. The martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion
+of cowardice; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre of
+Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and children, who
+consulted rather their zeal than their strength; and those who in the
+evening had derided the folly of their companions, were the most eager,
+the ensuing day, to tread in their footsteps. The ignorance, which
+magnified the hopes, diminished the perils, of the enterprise. Since the
+Turkish conquest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated; the chiefs
+themselves had an imperfect notion of the length of the way and the
+state of their enemies; and such was the stupidity of the people, that,
+at the sight of the first city or castle beyond the limits of their
+knowledge, they were ready to ask whether that was not the Jerusalem,
+the term and object of their labors. Yet the more prudent of the
+crusaders, who were not sure that they should be fed from heaven with
+a shower of quails or manna, provided themselves with those precious
+metals, which, in every country, are the representatives of every
+commodity. To defray, according to their rank, the expenses of the
+road, princes alienated their provinces, nobles their lands and castles,
+peasants their cattle and the instruments of husbandry. The value of
+property was depreciated by the eager competition of multitudes; while
+the price of arms and horses was raised to an exorbitant height by the
+wants and impatience of the buyers. [33] Those who remained at home,
+with sense and money, were enriched by the epidemical disease: the
+sovereigns acquired at a cheap rate the domains of their vassals; and
+the ecclesiastical purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of
+their prayers. The cross, which was commonly sewed on the garment, in
+cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin: a hot iron,
+or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark; and a crafty
+monk, who showed the miraculous impression on his breast was repaid with
+the popular veneration and the richest benefices of Palestine. [34]
+
+[Footnote 33: Guibert (p. 481) paints in lively colors this general
+emotion. He was one of the few contemporaries who had genius enough to
+feel the astonishing scenes that were passing before their eyes. Erat
+itaque videre miraculum, caro omnes emere, atque vili vendere, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Some instances of these stigmata are given in the Esprit
+des Croisades, (tom. iii. p. 169 &c.,) from authors whom I have not
+seen]
+
+The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the council of Clermont
+for the departure of the pilgrims; but the day was anticipated by the
+thoughtless and needy crowd of plebeians, and I shall briefly despatch
+the calamities which they inflicted and suffered, before I enter on
+the more serious and successful enterprise of the chiefs. Early in the
+spring, from the confines of France and Lorraine, above sixty thousand
+of the populace of both sexes flocked round the first missionary of the
+crusade, and pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the
+holy sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the talents
+or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of
+his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and
+numbers soon compelled them to separate, and his lieutenant, Walter
+the Penniless, a valiant though needy soldier, conducted a van guard of
+pilgrims, whose condition may be determined from the proportion of eight
+horsemen to fifteen thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter
+were closely pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose
+sermons had swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the
+villages of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by a herd of two
+hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who
+mingled with their devotion a brutal license of rapine, prostitution,
+and drunkenness. Some counts and gentlemen, at the head of three
+thousand horse, attended the motions of the multitude to partake in
+the spoil; but their genuine leaders (may we credit such folly?) were
+a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these
+worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit. [35]
+Of these, and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy
+warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In
+the trading cities of the Moselle and the Rhine, their colonies were
+numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the protection of the emperor
+and the bishops, the free exercise of their religion. [36] At Verdun,
+Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people
+were pillaged and massacred: [37] nor had they felt a more bloody stroke
+since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of
+their bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the
+more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the
+Christians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating themselves,
+their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames,
+disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable
+foes.
+
+[Footnote 35: Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac congregatione
+pedestris populi stulti et vesanae levitatis, anserem quendam divino
+spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam non minus eodem repletam, et
+has sibi duces secundae viae fecerant, &c., (Albert. Aquensis, l. i.
+c. 31, p. 196.) Had these peasants founded an empire, they might have
+introduced, as in Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic
+descend ants would have glossed over with some specious and subtile
+allegory. * Note: A singular "allegoric" explanation of this strange
+fact has recently been broached: it is connected with the charge of
+idolatry and Eastern heretical opinions subsequently made against
+the Templars. "We have no doubt that they were Manichee or Gnostic
+standards." (The author says the animals themselves were carried before
+the army.--M.) "The goose, in Egyptian symbols, as every Egyptian
+scholar knows, meant 'divine Son,' or 'Son of God.' The goat meant
+Typhon, or Devil. Thus we have the Manichee opposing principles of good
+and evil, as standards, at the head of the ignorant mob of crusading
+invaders. Can any one doubt that a large portion of this host must have
+been infected with the Manichee or Gnostic idolatry?" Account of the
+Temple Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838. This is, at all
+events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in connection with
+the extensive dissemination of the Paulician opinions among the common
+people of Europe. At any rate, in so inexplicable a matter, we are
+inclined to catch at any explanation, however wild or subtile.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his Jewish
+brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich, generous,
+learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the Messiah,
+(Voyage, tom. i. p. 243-245, par Baratier.) In seventy years (he wrote
+about A.D. 1170) they had recovered from these massacres.]
+
+[Footnote 37: These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which
+were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related. It is true, that St.
+Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329) admonishes the Oriental Franks, non
+sunt persequendi Judaei, non sunt trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had
+been preached by a rival monk. * Note: This is an unjust sarcasm against
+St. Bernard. He stood above all rivalry of this kind See note 31, c. l
+x.--M]
+
+Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzan tine
+monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse as interval of six
+hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary [38] and
+Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected with rivers; but it
+was then covered with morasses and forests, which spread to a boundless
+extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth.
+Both nations had imbibed the rudiments of Christianity; the Hungarians
+were ruled by their native princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of
+the Greek emperor; but, on the slightest provocation, their ferocious
+nature was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the
+disorders of the first pilgrims Agriculture must have been unskilful
+and languid among a people, whose cities were built of reeds and timber,
+which were deserted in the summer season for the tents of hunters and
+shepherds. A scanty supply of provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly
+seized, and greedily consumed; and on the first quarrel, the crusaders
+gave a loose to indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the
+country, of war, and of discipline, exposed them to every snare. The
+Greek praefect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; [381] at the
+trumpet of the Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial
+subjects bent their bows and mounted on horseback; their policy was
+insidious, and their retaliation on these pious robbers was unrelenting
+and bloody. [39] About a third of the naked fugitives (and the hermit
+Peter was of the number) escaped to the Thracian mountains; and
+the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and succor of the Latins,
+conducted them by secure and easy journeys to Constantinople, and
+advised them to await the arrival of their brethren. For a while they
+remembered their faults and losses; but no sooner were they revived by
+the hospitable entertainment, than their venom was again inflamed; they
+stung their benefactor, and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches,
+were safe from their depredations. For his own safety, Alexius allured
+them to pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; but their blind
+impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had assigned,
+and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied the road to
+Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had withdrawn from the
+camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, who
+was worthy of a better command, attempted without success to introduce
+some order and prudence among the herd of savages. They separated in
+quest of prey, and themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the
+sultan. By a rumor that their foremost companions were rioting in the
+spoils of his capital, Soliman [391] tempted the main body to descend
+into the plain of Nice: they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows; and
+a pyramid of bones [40] informed their companions of the place of their
+defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand had already
+perished, before a single city was rescued from the infidels, before
+their graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of
+their enterprise. [41]
+
+[Footnote 38: See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho of
+Frisin gen, l. ii. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom.
+vi. p. 665 666.]
+
+[Footnote 381: The narrative of the first march is very incorrect. The
+first party moved under Walter de Pexego and Walter the Penniless: they
+passed safe through Hungary, the kingdom of Kalmeny, and were attacked
+in Bulgaria. Peter followed with 40,000 men; passed through Hungary;
+but seeing the clothes of sixteen crusaders, who had been empaled on the
+walls of Semlin. he attacked and stormed the city. He then marched to
+Nissa, where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an accidental
+quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat. Wilken, vol. i. p.
+84-86--M.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill
+informed of the first crusade, which they involve in a single passage.
+Katona, like ourselves, can only quote the writers of France; but he
+compares with local science the ancient and modern geography. Ante
+portam Cyperon, is Sopron or Poson; Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius
+Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith; Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Moson;
+Tollenburg, Pragg, (de Regibus Hungariae, tom. iii. p. 19-53.)]
+
+[Footnote 391: Soliman had been killed in 1085, in a battle against
+Toutoneh, brother of Malek Schah, between Appelo and Antioch. It was
+not Soliman, therefore, but his son David, surnamed Kilidje Arslan,
+the "Sword of the Lion," who reigned in Nice. Almost all the occidental
+authors have fallen into this mistake, which was detected by M.
+Michaud, Hist. des Crois. 4th edit. and Extraits des Aut. Arab. rel. aux
+Croisades, par M. Reinaud Paris, 1829, p. 3. His kingdom extended from
+the Orontes to the Euphra tes, and as far as the Bosphorus. Kilidje
+Arslan must uniformly be substituted for Soliman. Brosset note on Le
+Beau, tom. xv. p. 311.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. x. p. 287) describes this as a
+mountain. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the Franks themselves
+as the materials of a wall.]
+
+[Footnote 41: See table on following page.]
+
+"To save time and space, I shall represent, in a short table, the
+particular references to the great events of the first crusade."
+
+
+    [See Table 1.: Events Of The First Crusade]
+
+None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their persons in the
+first crusade. The emperor Henry the Fourth was not disposed to obey
+the summons of the pope: Philip the First of France was occupied by his
+pleasures; William Rufus of England by a recent conquest; the kin`gs of
+Spain were engaged in a domestic war against the Moors; and the northern
+monarchs of Scotland, Denmark, [42] Sweden, and Poland, were yet
+strangers to the passions and interests of the South. The religious
+ardor was more strongly felt by the princes of the second order, who
+held an important place in the feudal system. Their situation will
+naturally cast under four distinct heads the review of their names and
+characters; but I may escape some needless repetition, by observing at
+once, that courage and the exercise of arms are the common attribute of
+these Christian adventurers. I. The first rank both in war and council
+is justly due to Godfrey of Bouillon; and happy would it have been for
+the crusaders, if they had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of
+that accomplished hero, a worthy representative of Charlemagne, from
+whom he was descended in the female line. His father was of the noble
+race of the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower province of Lorraine,
+[43] was the inheritance of his mother; and by the emperor's bounty he
+was himself invested with that ducal title, which has been improperly
+transferred to his lordship of Bouillon in the Ardennes. [44] In the
+service of Henry the Fourth, he bore the great standard of the empire,
+and pierced with his lance the breast of Rodolph, the rebel king:
+Godfrey was the first who ascended the walls of Rome; and his sickness,
+his vow, perhaps his remorse for bearing arms against the pope,
+confirmed an early resolution of visiting the holy sepulchre, not as
+a pilgrim, but a deliverer. His valor was matured by prudence and
+moderation; his piety, though blind, was sincere; and, in the tumult
+of a camp, he practised the real and fictitious virtues of a convent.
+Superior to the private factions of the chiefs, he reserved his enmity
+for the enemies of Christ; and though he gained a kingdom by the
+attempt, his pure and disinterested zeal was acknowledged by his rivals.
+Godfrey of Bouillon [45] was accompanied by his two brothers, by Eustace
+the elder, who had succeeded to the county of Boulogne, and by the
+younger, Baldwin, a character of more ambiguous virtue. The duke of
+Lorraine, was alike celebrated on either side of the Rhine: from his
+birth and education, he was equally conversant with the French and
+Teutonic languages: the barons of France, Germany, and Lorraine,
+assembled their vassals; and the confederate force that marched under
+his banner was composed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten
+thousand horse. II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the
+king's presence, about two months after the council of Clermont, Hugh,
+count of Vermandois, was the most conspicuous of the princes who assumed
+the cross. But the appellation of the Great was applied, not so much to
+his merit or possessions, (though neither were contemptible,) as to the
+royal birth of the brother of the king of France. [46] Robert, duke
+of Normandy, was the eldest son of William the Conqueror; but on his
+father's death he was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own
+indolence and the activity of his brother Rufus. The worth of Robert was
+degraded by an excessive levity and easiness of temper: his cheerfulness
+seduced him to the indulgence of pleasure; his profuse liberality
+impoverished the prince and people; his indiscriminate clemency
+multiplied the number of offenders; and the amiable qualities of
+a private man became the essential defects of a sovereign. For the
+trifling sum of ten thousand marks, he mortgaged Normandy during his
+absence to the English usurper; [47] but his engagement and behavior in
+the holy war announced in Robert a reformation of manners, and restored
+him in some degree to the public esteem. Another Robert was count of
+Flanders, a royal province, which, in this century, gave three queens to
+the thrones of France, England, and Denmark: he was surnamed the
+Sword and Lance of the Christians; but in the exploits of a soldier he
+sometimes forgot the duties of a general. Stephen, count of Chartres, of
+Blois, and of Troyes, was one of the richest princes of the age; and
+the number of his castles has been compared to the three hundred and
+sixty-five days of the year. His mind was improved by literature; and,
+in the council of the chiefs, the eloquent Stephen [48] was chosen to
+discharge the office of their president. These four were the principal
+leaders of the French, the Normans, and the pilgrims of the British
+isles: but the list of the barons who were possessed of three or four
+towns would exceed, says a contemporary, the catalogue of the Trojan
+war. [49] III. In the south of France, the command was assumed by
+Adhemar bishop of Puy, the pope egate, and by Raymond count of St.
+Giles and Thoulouse who added the prouder titles of duke of Narbonne
+and marquis of Provence. The former was a respectable prelate, alike
+qualified for this world and the next. The latter was a veteran warrior,
+who had fought against the Saracens of Spain, and who consecrated
+his declining age, not only to the deliverance, but to the perpetual
+service, of the holy sepulchre. His experience and riches gave him a
+strong ascendant in the Christian camp, whose distress he was often
+able, and sometimes willing, to relieve. But it was easier for him to
+extort the praise of the Infidels, than to preserve the love of his
+subjects and associates. His eminent qualities were clouded by a temper
+haughty, envious, and obstinate; and, though he resigned an ample
+patrimony for the cause of God, his piety, in the public opinion, was
+not exempt from avarice and ambition. [50] A mercantile, rather than
+a martial, spirit prevailed among his provincials, [51] a common name,
+which included the natives of Auvergne and Languedoc, [52] the vassals
+of the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles. From the adjacent frontier of Spain
+he drew a band of hardy adventurers; as he marched through Lombardy,
+a crowd of Italians flocked to his standard, and his united force
+consisted of one hundred thousand horse and foot. If Raymond was the
+first to enlist and the last to depart, the delay may be excused by the
+greatness of his preparation and the promise of an everlasting farewell.
+IV. The name of Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, was already famous
+by his double victory over the Greek emperor; but his father's will had
+reduced him to the principality of Tarentum, and the remembrance of his
+Eastern trophies, till he was awakened by the rumor and passage of the
+French pilgrims. It is in the person of this Norman chief that we
+may seek for the coolest policy and ambition, with a small allay of
+religious fanaticism. His conduct may justify a belief that he had
+secretly directed the design of the pope, which he affected to second
+with astonishment and zeal: at the siege of Amalphi, his example and
+discourse inflamed the passions of a confederate army; he instantly tore
+his garment to supply crosses for the numerous candidates, and prepared
+to visit Constantinople and Asia at the head of ten thousand horse and
+twenty thousand foot. Several princes of the Norman race accompanied
+this veteran general; and his cousin Tancred [53] was the partner,
+rather than the servant, of the war.
+
+In the accomplished character of Tancred we discover all the virtues of
+a perfect knight, [54] the true spirit of chivalry, which inspired the
+generous sentiments and social offices of man far better than the base
+philosophy, or the baser religion, of the times.
+
+[Footnote 42: The author of the Esprit des Croisades has doubted, and
+might have disbelieved, the crusade and tragic death of Prince Sueno,
+with 1500 or 15,000 Danes, who was cut off by Sultan Soliman in
+Cappadocia, but who still lives in the poem of Tasso, (tom. iv. p.
+111-115.)]
+
+[Footnote 43: The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or Lorraine,
+were broken into the two duchies of the Moselle and of the Meuse: the
+first has preserved its name, which in the latter has been changed into
+that of Brabant, (Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 283-288.)]
+
+[Footnote 44: See, in the Description of France, by the Abbe de
+Longuerue, the articles of Boulogne, part i. p. 54; Brabant, part ii.
+p. 47, 48; Bouillon, p. 134. On his departure, Godfrey sold or pawned
+Bouillon to the church for 1300 marks.]
+
+[Footnote 45: See the family character of Godfrey, in William of Tyre,
+l. ix. c. 5-8; his previous design in Guibert, (p. 485;) his sickness
+and vow in Bernard. Thesaur., (c 78.)]
+
+[Footnote 46: Anna Comnena supposes, that Hugh was proud of his nobility
+riches, and power, (l. x. p. 288: ) the two last articles appear more
+equivocal; but an item, which seven hundred years ago was famous in the
+palace of Constantinople, attests the ancient dignity of the Capetian
+family of France.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Will. Gemeticensis, l. vii. c. 7, p. 672, 673, in Camden.
+Normani cis. He pawned the duchy for one hundredth part of the present
+yearly revenue. Ten thousand marks may be equal to five hundred thousand
+livres, and Normandy annually yields fifty-seven millions to the king,
+(Necker, Administration des Finances, tom. i. p. 287.)]
+
+[Footnote 48: His original letter to his wife is inserted in the
+Spicilegium of Dom. Luc. d'Acheri, tom. iv. and quoted in the Esprit des
+Croisades tom. i. p. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Unius enim duum, trium seu quatuor oppidorum dominos quis
+numeret? quorum tanta fuit copia, ut non vix totidem Trojana obsidio
+coegisse putetur. (Ever the lively and interesting Guibert, p. 486.)]
+
+[Footnote 50: It is singular enough, that Raymond of St. Giles, a second
+character in the genuine history of the crusades, should shine as the
+first of heroes in the writings of the Greeks (Anna Comnen. Alexiad, l.
+x xi.) and the Arabians, (Longueruana, p. 129.)]
+
+[Footnote 51: Omnes de Burgundia, et Alvernia, et Vasconia, et Gothi,
+(of Languedoc,) provinciales appellabantur, caeteri vero Francigenae
+et hoc in exercitu; inter hostes autem Franci dicebantur. Raymond des
+Agiles, p. 144.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The town of his birth, or first appanage, was consecrated
+to St Aegidius, whose name, as early as the first crusade, was corrupted
+by the French into St. Gilles, or St. Giles. It is situate in the Iowen
+Languedoc, between Nismes and the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate
+church of the foundation of Raymond, (Melanges tires d'une Grande
+Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvii. p 51.)]
+
+[Footnote 53: The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great Robert
+Guiscard; his father, the Marquis Odo the Good. It is singular enough,
+that the family and country of so illustrious a person should be
+unknown; but Muratori reasonably conjectures that he was an Italian, and
+perhaps of the race of the marquises of Montferrat in Piedmont, (Script.
+tom. v. p. 281, 282.)]
+
+[Footnote 54: To gratify the childish vanity of the house of Este. Tasso
+has inserted in his poem, and in the first crusade, a fabulous hero,
+the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x. 75, xvii. 66-94.) He might borrow his
+name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila bianca Estense, who vanquished,
+as the standard-bearer of the Roman church, the emperor Frederic I.,
+(Storia Imperiale di Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script. Ital. tom. ix. p.
+360. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.) But, 1. The distance of sixty
+years between the youth of the two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2.
+The Storia Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the end of
+the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281-289.) 3. This Rinaldo, and his
+exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero of Tasso, (Muratori,
+Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part III.
+
+Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the crusades, a revolution
+had taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and the French,
+which was gradually extended to the rest of Europe. The service of the
+infantry was degraded to the plebeians; the cavalry formed the strength
+of the armies, and the honorable name of miles, or soldier, was confined
+to the gentlemen [55] who served on horseback, and were invested with
+the character of knighthood. The dukes and counts, who had usurped
+the rights of sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful
+barons: the barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or
+benefices of their jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers
+of each other and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian
+order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same
+species with themselves. The dignity of their birth was preserved by
+pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who could produce four
+quarters or lines of ancestry without spot or reproach, might legally
+pretend to the honor of knighthood; but a valiant plebeian was sometimes
+enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the father of a new race.
+A single knight could impart, according to his judgment, the character
+which he received; and the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more
+glory from this personal distinction than from the lustre of their
+diadem. This ceremony, of which some traces may be found in Tacitus and
+the woods of Germany, [56] was in its origin simple and profane; the
+candidate, after some previous trial, was invested with the sword and
+spurs; and his cheek or shoulder was touched with a slight blow, as an
+emblem of the last affront which it was lawful for him to endure. But
+superstition mingled in every public and private action of life: in
+the holy wars, it sanctified the profession of arms; and the order of
+chivalry was assimilated in its rights and privileges to the sacred
+orders of priesthood. The bath and white garment of the novice were
+an indecent copy of the regeneration of baptism: his sword, which he
+offered on the altar, was blessed by the ministers of religion: his
+solemn reception was preceded by fasts and vigils; and he was created
+a knight in the name of God, of St. George, and of St. Michael the
+archangel. He swore to accomplish the duties of his profession;
+and education, example, and the public opinion, were the inviolable
+guardians of his oath. As the champion of God and the ladies, (I blush
+to unite such discordant names,) he devoted himself to speak the truth;
+to maintain the right; to protect the distressed; to practise courtesy,
+a virtue less familiar to the ancients; to pursue the infidels; to
+despise the allurements of ease and safety; and to vindicate in every
+perilous adventure the honor of his character. The abuse of the same
+spirit provoked the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry
+and peace; to esteem himself the sole judge and avenger of his own
+injuries; and proudly to neglect the laws of civil society and military
+discipline. Yet the benefits of this institution, to refine the temper
+of Barbarians, and to infuse some principles of faith, justice, and
+humanity, were strongly felt, and have been often observed. The asperity
+of national prejudice was softened; and the community of religion and
+arms spread a similar color and generous emulation over the face of
+Christendom. Abroad in enterprise and pilgrimage, at home in martial
+exercise, the warriors of every country were perpetually associated; and
+impartial taste must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic games of
+classic antiquity. [57] Instead of the naked spectacles which corrupted
+the manners of the Greeks, and banished from the stadium the virgins
+and matrons, the pompous decoration of the lists was crowned with the
+presence of chaste and high-born beauty, from whose hands the conqueror
+received the prize of his dexterity and courage. The skill and strength
+that were exerted in wrestling and boxing bear a distant and doubtful
+relation to the merit of a soldier; but the tournaments, as they were
+invented in France, and eagerly adopted both in the East and West,
+presented a lively image of the business of the field. The single
+combats, the general skirmish, the defence of a pass, or castle, were
+rehearsed as in actual service; and the contest, both in real and mimic
+war, was decided by the superior management of the horse and lance. The
+lance was the proper and peculiar weapon of the knight: his horse was
+of a large and heavy breed; but this charger, till he was roused by the
+approaching danger, was usually led by an attendant, and he quietly rode
+a pad or palfrey of a more easy pace. His helmet and sword, his greaves
+and buckler, it would be superfluous to describe; but I may remark,
+that, at the period of the crusades, the armor was less ponderous than
+in later times; and that, instead of a massy cuirass, his breast was
+defended by a hauberk or coat of mail. When their long lances were fixed
+in the rest, the warriors furiously spurred their horses against the
+foe; and the light cavalry of the Turks and Arabs could seldom stand
+against the direct and impetuous weight of their charge. Each knight was
+attended to the field by his faithful squire, a youth of equal birth and
+similar hopes; he was followed by his archers and men at arms, and four,
+or five, or six soldiers were computed as the furniture of a complete
+lance. In the expeditions to the neighboring kingdoms or the Holy Land,
+the duties of the feudal tenure no longer subsisted; the voluntary
+service of the knights and their followers were either prompted by zeal
+or attachment, or purchased with rewards and promises; and the numbers
+of each squadron were measured by the power, the wealth, and the fame,
+of each independent chieftain. They were distinguished by his banner,
+his armorial coat, and his cry of war; and the most ancient families
+of Europe must seek in these achievements the origin and proof of
+their nobility. In this rapid portrait of chivalry I have been urged to
+anticipate on the story of the crusades, at once an effect and a cause,
+of this memorable institution. [58]
+
+[Footnote 55: Of the words gentilis, gentilhomme, gentleman, two
+etymologies are produced: 1. From the Barbarians of the fifth century,
+the soldiers, and at length the conquerors of the Roman empire, who were
+vain of their foreign nobility; and 2. From the sense of the civilians,
+who consider gentilis as synonymous with ingenuus. Selden inclines to
+the first but the latter is more pure, as well as probable.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Framea scutoque juvenem ornant. Tacitus, Germania. c. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 57: The athletic exercises, particularly the caestus and
+pancratium, were condemned by Lycurgus, Philopoemen, and Galen, a
+lawgiver, a general, and a physician. Against their authority and
+reasons, the reader may weigh the apology of Lucian, in the character of
+Solon. See West on the Olympic Games, in his Pindar, vol. ii. p. 86-96
+243-248]
+
+[Footnote 58: On the curious subjects of knighthood, knights-service,
+nobility, arms, cry of war, banners, and tournaments, an ample fund of
+information may be sought in Selden, (Opera, tom. iii. part i. Titles
+of Honor, part ii. c. 1, 3, 5, 8,) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p.
+398-412, &c.,) Dissertations sur Joinville, (i. vi.--xii. p. 127-142,
+p. 161-222,) and M. de St. Palaye, (Memoires sur la Chevalerie.)]
+
+Such were the troops, and such the leaders, who assumed the cross for
+the deliverance of the holy sepulchre. As soon as they were relieved by
+the absence of the plebeian multitude, they encouraged each other,
+by interviews and messages, to accomplish their vow, and hasten their
+departure. Their wives and sisters were desirous of partaking the danger
+and merit of the pilgrimage: their portable treasures were conveyed in
+bars of silver and gold; and the princes and barons were attended by
+their equipage of hounds and hawks to amuse their leisure and to supply
+their table. The difficulty of procuring subsistence for so many myriads
+of men and horses engaged them to separate their forces: their choice
+or situation determined the road; and it was agreed to meet in
+the neighborhood of Constantinople, and from thence to begin their
+operations against the Turks. From the banks of the Meuse and the
+Moselle, Godfrey of Bouillon followed the direct way of Germany,
+Hungary, and Bulgaria; and, as long as he exercised the sole command
+every step afforded some proof of his prudence and virtue. On the
+confines of Hungary he was stopped three weeks by a Christian people,
+to whom the name, or at least the abuse, of the cross was justly odious.
+The Hungarians still smarted with the wounds which they had received
+from the first pilgrims: in their turn they had abused the right of
+defence and retaliation; and they had reason to apprehend a severe
+revenge from a hero of the same nation, and who was engaged in the same
+cause. But, after weighing the motives and the events, the virtuous
+duke was content to pity the crimes and misfortunes of his worthless
+brethren; and his twelve deputies, the messengers of peace, requested in
+his name a free passage and an equal market. To remove their suspicions,
+Godfrey trusted himself, and afterwards his brother, to the faith of
+Carloman, [581] king of Hungary, who treated them with a simple but
+hospitable entertainment: the treaty was sanctified by their common
+gospel; and a proclamation, under pain of death, restrained the
+animosity and license of the Latin soldiers. From Austria to Belgrade,
+they traversed the plains of Hungary, without enduring or offering an
+injury; and the proximity of Carloman, who hovered on their flanks with
+his numerous cavalry, was a precaution not less useful for their safety
+than for his own. They reached the banks of the Save; and no sooner had
+they passed the river, than the king of Hungary restored the hostages,
+and saluted their departure with the fairest wishes for the success of
+their enterprise. With the same conduct and discipline, Godfrey
+pervaded the woods of Bulgaria and the frontiers of Thrace; and might
+congratulate himself that he had almost reached the first term of his
+pilgrimage, without drawing his sword against a Christian adversary.
+After an easy and pleasant journey through Lombardy, from Turin to
+Aquileia, Raymond and his provincials marched forty days through
+the savage country of Dalmatia [59] and Sclavonia. The weather was a
+perpetual fog; the land was mountainous and desolate; the natives were
+either fugitive or hostile: loose in their religion and government, they
+refused to furnish provisions or guides; murdered the stragglers; and
+exercised by night and day the vigilance of the count, who derived
+more security from the punishment of some captive robbers than from his
+interview and treaty with the prince of Scodra. [60] His march between
+Durazzo and Constantinople was harassed, without being stopped, by
+the peasants and soldiers of the Greek emperor; and the same faint and
+ambiguous hostility was prepared for the remaining chiefs, who passed
+the Adriatic from the coast of Italy. Bohemond had arms and vessels,
+and foresight and discipline; and his name was not forgotten in the
+provinces of Epirus and Thessaly. Whatever obstacles he encountered were
+surmounted by his military conduct and the valor of Tancred; and if the
+Norman prince affected to spare the Greeks, he gorged his soldiers
+with the full plunder of an heretical castle. [61] The nobles of France
+pressed forwards with the vain and thoughtless ardor of which their
+nation has been sometimes accused. From the Alps to Apulia the march of
+Hugh the Great, of the two Roberts, and of Stephen of Chartres, through
+a wealthy country, and amidst the applauding Catholics, was a devout or
+triumphant progress: they kissed the feet of the Roman pontiff; and the
+golden standard of St. Peter was delivered to the brother of the French
+monarch. [62] But in this visit of piety and pleasure, they neglected
+to secure the season, and the means of their embarkation: the winter was
+insensibly lost: their troops were scattered and corrupted in the towns
+of Italy. They separately accomplished their passage, regardless
+of safety or dignity; and within nine months from the feast of the
+Assumption, the day appointed by Urban, all the Latin princes had
+reached Constantinople. But the count of Vermandois was produced as
+a captive; his foremost vessels were scattered by a tempest; and his
+person, against the law of nations, was detained by the lieutenants of
+Alexius. Yet the arrival of Hugh had been announced by four-and-twenty
+knights in golden armor, who commanded the emperor to revere the general
+of the Latin Christians, the brother of the king of kings. [63] [631]
+
+[Footnote 581: Carloman (or Calmany) demanded the brother of Godfrey as
+hostage but Count Baldwin refused the humiliating submission. Godfrey
+shamed him into this sacrifice for the common good by offering to
+surrender himself Wilken, vol. i. p. 104.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The Familiae Dalmaticae of Ducange are meagre and
+imperfect; the national historians are recent and fabulous, the Greeks
+remote and careless. In the year 1104 Coloman reduced the maritine
+country as far as Trau and Saloma, (Katona, Hist. Crit. tom. iii. p.
+195-207.)]
+
+[Footnote 60: Scodras appears in Livy as the capital and fortress of
+Gentius, king of the Illyrians, arx munitissima, afterwards a Roman
+colony, (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 393, 394.) It is now called Iscodar, or
+Scutari, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 164.) The sanjiak
+(now a pacha) of Scutari, or Schendeire, was the viiith under the
+Beglerbeg of Romania, and furnished 600 soldiers on a revenue of 78,787
+rix dollars, (Marsigli, Stato Militare del Imperio Ottomano, p. 128.)]
+
+[Footnote 61: In Pelagonia castrum haereticum..... spoliatum cum suis
+habi tatoribus igne combussere. Nec id eis injuria contigit: quia
+illorum detestabilis sermo et cancer serpebat, jamque circumjacentes
+regiones suo pravo dogmate foedaverat, (Robert. Mon. p. 36, 37.) After
+cooly relating the fact, the Archbishop Baldric adds, as a praise, Omnes
+siquidem illi viatores, Judeos, haereticos, Saracenos aequaliter habent
+exosos; quos omnes appellant inimicos Dei, (p. 92.)]
+
+[Footnote 62: (Alexiad. l. x. p. 288.)]
+
+[Footnote 63: This Oriental pomp is extravagant in a count of
+Vermandois; but the patriot Ducange repeats with much complacency (Not.
+ad Alexiad. p. 352, 353. Dissert. xxvii. sur Joinville, p. 315) the
+passages of Matthew Paris (A.D. 1254) and Froissard, (vol. iv. p. 201,)
+which style the king of France rex regum, and chef de tous les rois
+Chretiens.]
+
+[Footnote 631: Hugh was taken at Durazzo, and sent by land to
+Constantinople Wilken--M.]
+
+In some oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd, who was
+ruined by the accomplishment of his own wishes: he had prayed for water;
+the Ganges was turned into his grounds, and his flock and cottage were
+swept away by the inundation. Such was the fortune, or at least the
+apprehension of the Greek emperor Alexius Comnenus, whose name has
+already appeared in this history, and whose conduct is so differently
+represented by his daughter Anne, [64] and by the Latin writers. [65]
+In the council of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate
+succor, perhaps of ten thousand soldiers, but he was astonished by
+the approach of so many potent chiefs and fanatic nations. The emperor
+fluctuated between hope and fear, between timidity and courage; but
+in the crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom, I cannot believe, I
+cannot discern, that he maliciously conspired against the life or honor
+of the French heroes. The promiscuous multitudes of Peter the Hermit
+were savage beasts, alike destitute of humanity and reason: nor was it
+possible for Alexius to prevent or deplore their destruction. The
+troops of Godfrey and his peers were less contemptible, but not less
+suspicious, to the Greek emperor. Their motives might be pure and pious:
+but he was equally alarmed by his knowledge of the ambitious Bohemond,
+[651] and his ignorance of the Transalpine chiefs: the courage of the
+French was blind and headstrong; they might be tempted by the luxury and
+wealth of Greece, and elated by the view and opinion of their
+invincible strength: and Jerusalem might be forgotten in the prospect of
+Constantinople. After a long march and painful abstinence, the troops of
+Godfrey encamped in the plains of Thrace; they heard with indignation,
+that their brother, the count of Vermandois, was imprisoned by the
+Greeks; and their reluctant duke was compelled to indulge them in some
+freedom of retaliation and rapine. They were appeased by the submission
+of Alexius: he promised to supply their camp; and as they refused, in
+the midst of winter, to pass the Bosphorus, their quarters were assigned
+among the gardens and palaces on the shores of that narrow sea. But an
+incurable jealousy still rankled in the minds of the two nations, who
+despised each other as slaves and Barbarians. Ignorance is the ground of
+suspicion, and suspicion was inflamed into daily provocations: prejudice
+is blind, hunger is deaf; and Alexius is accused of a design to starve
+or assault the Latins in a dangerous post, on all sides encompassed with
+the waters. [66] Godfrey sounded his trumpets, burst the net, overspread
+the plain, and insulted the suburbs; but the gates of Constantinople
+were strongly fortified; the ramparts were lined with archers; and,
+after a doubtful conflict, both parties listened to the voice of peace
+and religion. The gifts and promises of the emperor insensibly soothed
+the fierce spirit of the western strangers; as a Christian warrior, he
+rekindled their zeal for the prosecution of their holy enterprise, which
+he engaged to second with his troops and treasures. On the return of
+spring, Godfrey was persuaded to occupy a pleasant and plentiful camp in
+Asia; and no sooner had he passed the Bosphorus, than the Greek vessels
+were suddenly recalled to the opposite shore. The same policy was
+repeated with the succeeding chiefs, who were swayed by the example, and
+weakened by the departure, of their foremost companions. By his skill
+and diligence, Alexius prevented the union of any two of the confederate
+armies at the same moment under the walls of Constantinople; and before
+the feast of the Pentecost not a Latin pilgrim was left on the coast of
+Europe.
+
+[Footnote 64: Anna Comnena was born the 1st of December, A.D. 1083,
+indiction vii., (Alexiad. l. vi. p. 166, 167.) At thirteen, the time of
+the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps married to the younger
+Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly styles, (l. x. p. 295, 296.) Some
+moderns have imagined, that her enmity to Bohemond was the fruit of
+disappointed love. In the transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her
+partial accounts (Alex. l. x. xi. p. 283-317) may be opposed to the
+partiality of the Latins, but in their subsequent exploits she is brief
+and ignorant.]
+
+[Footnote 65: In their views of the character and conduct of Alexius,
+Maimbourg has favored the Catholic Franks, and Voltaire has been
+partial to the schismatic Greeks. The prejudice of a philosopher is less
+excusable than that of a Jesuit.]
+
+[Footnote 651: Wilken quotes a remarkable passage of William of
+Malmsbury as to the secret motives of Urban and of Bohemond in urging
+the crusade. Illud repositius propositum non ita vulgabatur, quod
+Boemundi consilio, pene totam Europam in Asiaticam expeditionem moveret,
+ut in tanto tumultu omnium provinciarum facile obaeratis auxiliaribus,
+et Urbanus Romam et Boemundus Illyricum et Macedoniam pervaderent. Nam
+eas terras et quidquid praeterea a Dyrrachio usque ad Thessalonicam
+protenditur, Guiscardus pater, super Alexium acquisierat; ideirco illas
+Boemundus suo juri competere clamitabat: inops haereditatis Apuliae,
+quam genitor Rogerio, minori filio delegaverat. Wilken, vol. ii. p.
+313.--M]
+
+[Footnote 66: Between the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the River
+Barbyses, which is deep in summer, and runs fifteen miles through a flat
+meadow. Its communication with Europe and Constantinople is by the
+stone bridge of the Blachernoe, which in successive ages was restored by
+Justinian and Basil, (Gyllius de Bosphoro Thracio, l. ii. c. 3. Ducange
+O. P. Christiana, l. v. c. 2, p, 179.)]
+
+The same arms which threatened Europe might deliver Asia, and repel the
+Turks from the neighboring shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont. The
+fair provinces from Nice to Antioch were the recent patrimony of the
+Roman emperor; and his ancient and perpetual claim still embraced the
+kingdoms of Syria and Egypt. In his enthusiasm, Alexius indulged, or
+affected, the ambitious hope of leading his new allies to subvert
+the thrones of the East; but the calmer dictates of reason and temper
+dissuaded him from exposing his royal person to the faith of unknown
+and lawless Barbarians. His prudence, or his pride, was content with
+extorting from the French princes an oath of homage and fidelity, and a
+solemn promise, that they
+
+would either restore, or hold, their Asiatic conquests as the humble and
+loyal vassals of the Roman empire. Their independent spirit was fired at
+the mention of this foreign and voluntary servitude: they successively
+yielded to the dexterous application of gifts and flattery; and the
+first proselytes became the most eloquent and effectual missionaries to
+multiply the companions of their shame. The pride of Hugh of Vermandois
+was soothed by the honors of his captivity; and in the brother of the
+French king, the example of submission was prevalent and weighty. In the
+mind of Godfrey of Bouillon every human consideration was subordinate to
+the glory of God and the success of the crusade. He had firmly resisted
+the temptations of Bohemond and Raymond, who urged the attack and
+conquest of Constantinople. Alexius esteemed his virtues, deservedly
+named him the champion of the empire, and dignified his homage with the
+filial name and the rights of adoption. [67] The hateful Bohemond was
+received as a true and ancient ally; and if the emperor reminded him
+of former hostilities, it was only to praise the valor that he had
+displayed, and the glory that he had acquired, in the fields of Durazzo
+and Larissa. The son of Guiscard was lodged and entertained, and served
+with Imperial pomp: one day, as he passed through the gallery of the
+palace, a door was carelessly left open to expose a pile of gold and
+silver, of silk and gems, of curious and costly furniture, that was
+heaped, in seeming disorder, from the floor to the roof of the chamber.
+"What conquests," exclaimed the ambitious miser, "might not be achieved
+by the possession of such a treasure!"--"It is your own," replied a
+Greek attendant, who watched the motions of his soul; and Bohemond,
+after some hesitation, condescended to accept this magnificent
+present. The Norman was flattered by the assurance of an independent
+principality; and Alexius eluded, rather than denied, his daring
+demand of the office of great domestic, or general of the East. The two
+Roberts, the son of the conqueror of England, and the kinsmen of three
+queens, [68] bowed in their turn before the Byzantine throne. A private
+letter of Stephen of Chartres attests his admiration of the emperor, the
+most excellent and liberal of men, who taught him to believe that he was
+a favorite, and promised to educate and establish his youngest son.
+In his southern province, the count of St. Giles and Thoulouse faintly
+recognized the supremacy of the king of France, a prince of a foreign
+nation and language. At the head of a hundred thousand men, he declared
+that he was the soldier and servant of Christ alone, and that the Greek
+might be satisfied with an equal treaty of alliance and friendship. His
+obstinate resistance enhanced the value and the price of his submission;
+and he shone, says the princess Anne, among the Barbarians, as the sun
+amidst the stars of heaven. His disgust of the noise and insolence
+of the French, his suspicions of the designs of Bohemond, the emperor
+imparted to his faithful Raymond; and that aged statesman might clearly
+discern, that however false in friendship, he was sincere in his enmity.
+[69] The spirit of chivalry was last subdued in the person of Tancred;
+and none could deem themselves dishonored by the imitation of that
+gallant knight. He disdained the gold and flattery of the Greek monarch;
+assaulted in his presence an insolent patrician; escaped to Asia in the
+habit of a private soldier; and yielded with a sigh to the authority
+of Bohemond, and the interest of the Christian cause. The best and
+most ostensible reason was the impossibility of passing the sea and
+accomplishing their vow, without the license and the vessels of
+Alexius; but they cherished a secret hope, that as soon as they trod
+the continent of Asia, their swords would obliterate their shame, and
+dissolve the engagement, which on his side might not be very faithfully
+performed. The ceremony of their homage was grateful to a people who
+had long since considered pride as the substitute of power. High on his
+throne, the emperor sat mute and immovable: his majesty was adored by
+the Latin princes; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or his
+knees, an indignity which their own writers are ashamed to confess and
+unable to deny. [70]
+
+[Footnote 67: There are two sorts of adoption, the one by arms, the
+other by introducing the son between the shirt and skin of his father.
+Ducange isur Joinville, (Diss. xxii. p. 270) supposes Godfrey's adoption
+to have been of the latter sort.]
+
+[Footnote 68: After his return, Robert of Flanders became the man of the
+king of England, for a pension of four hundred marks. See the first act
+in Rymer's Foedera.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Sensit vetus regnandi, falsos in amore, odia non fingere.
+Tacit. vi. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The proud historians of the crusades slide and stumble
+over this humiliating step. Yet, since the heroes knelt to salute the
+emperor, as he sat motionless on his throne, it is clear that they must
+have kissed either his feet or knees. It is only singular, that Anna
+should not have amply supplied the silence or ambiguity of the Latins.
+The abasement of their princes would have added a fine chapter to the
+Ceremoniale Aulae Byzantinae.]
+
+Private or public interest suppressed the murmurs of the dukes and
+counts; but a French baron (he is supposed to be Robert of Paris [71]
+presumed to ascend the throne, and to place himself by the side of
+Alexius. The sage reproof of Baldwin provoked him to exclaim, in his
+barbarous idiom, "Who is this rustic, that keeps his seat, while so many
+valiant captains are standing round him?" The emperor maintained his
+silence, dissembled his indignation, and questioned his interpreter
+concerning the meaning of the words, which he partly suspected from the
+universal language of gesture and countenance. Before the departure
+of the pilgrims, he endeavored to learn the name and condition of the
+audacious baron. "I am a Frenchman," replied Robert, "of the purest and
+most ancient nobility of my country. All that I know is, that there is a
+church in my neighborhood, [72] the resort of those who are desirous
+of approving their valor in single combat. Till an enemy appears,
+they address their prayers to God and his saints. That church I have
+frequently visited. But never have I found an antagonist who dared to
+accept my defiance." Alexius dismissed the challenger with some prudent
+advice for his conduct in the Turkish warfare; and history repeats with
+pleasure this lively example of the manners of his age and country.
+
+[Footnote 71: He called himself (see Alexias, l. x. p. 301.) What a
+title of noblesse of the eleventh century, if any one could now prove
+his inheritance! Anna relates, with visible pleasure, that the swelling
+Barbarian, was killed, or wounded, after fighting in the front in the
+battle of Dorylaeum, (l. xi. p. 317.) This circumstance may justify the
+suspicion of Ducange, (Not. p. 362,) that he was no other than Robert
+of Paris, of the district most peculiarly styled the Duchy or Island of
+France, (L'Isle de France.)]
+
+[Footnote 72: With the same penetration, Ducange discovers his church to
+be that of St. Drausus, or Drosin, of Soissons, quem duello dimicaturi
+solent invocare: pugiles qui ad memoriam ejus (his tomb) pernoctant
+invictos reddit, ut et de Burgundia et Italia tali necessitate
+confugiatur ad eum. Joan. Sariberiensis, epist. 139.]
+
+The conquest of Asia was undertaken and achieved by Alexander, with
+thirty-five thousand Macedonians and Greeks; [73] and his best hope was
+in the strength and discipline of his phalanx of infantry. The principal
+force of the crusaders consisted in their cavalry; and when that force
+was mustered in the plains of Bithynia, the knights and their martial
+attendants on horseback amounted to one hundred thousand fighting men,
+completely armed with the helmet and coat of mail. The value of these
+soldiers deserved a strict and authentic account; and the flower of
+European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort, this formidable body
+of heavy horse. A part of the infantry might be enrolled for the service
+of scouts, pioneers, and archers; but the promiscuous crowd were lost in
+their own disorder; and we depend not on the eyes and knowledge, but
+on the belief and fancy, of a chaplain of Count Baldwin, [74] in the
+estimate of six hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms, besides the
+priests and monks, the women and children of the Latin camp. The reader
+starts; and before he is recovered from his surprise, I shall add, on
+the same testimony, that if all who took the cross had accomplished
+their vow, above six millions would have migrated from Europe to
+Asia. Under this oppression of faith, I derive some relief from a more
+sagacious and thinking writer, [75] who, after the same review of the
+cavalry, accuses the credulity of the priest of Chartres, and even
+doubts whether the Cisalpine regions (in the geography of a Frenchman)
+were sufficient to produce and pour forth such incredible multitudes.
+The coolest scepticism will remember, that of these religious volunteers
+great numbers never beheld Constantinople and Nice. Of enthusiasm the
+influence is irregular and transient: many were detained at home by
+reason or cowardice, by poverty or weakness; and many were repulsed by
+the obstacles of the way, the more insuperable as they were unforeseen,
+to these ignorant fanatics. The savage countries of Hungary and Bulgaria
+were whitened with their bones: their vanguard was cut in pieces by the
+Turkish sultan; and the loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or
+climate, or fatigue, has already been stated at three hundred thousand
+men. Yet the myriads that survived, that marched, that pressed forwards
+on the holy pilgrimage, were a subject of astonishment to themselves
+and to the Greeks. The copious energy of her language sinks under the
+efforts of the princess Anne: [76] the images of locusts, of leaves and
+flowers, of the sands of the sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly
+represent what she had seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius
+exclaims, that Europe was loosened from its foundations, and hurled
+against Asia. The ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labor under the
+same doubt of a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to
+believe, that a larger number has never been contained within the lines
+of a single camp, than at the siege of Nice, the first operation of the
+Latin princes. Their motives, their characters, and their arms, have
+been already displayed. Of their troops the most numerous portion
+were natives of France: the Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and
+Apulia, sent a powerful reenforcement: some bands of adventurers were
+drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and England; [77] and from the distant bogs
+and mountains of Ireland or Scotland [78] issued some naked and savage
+fanatics, ferocious at home but unwarlike abroad. Had not superstition
+condemned the sacrilegious prudence of depriving the poorest or weakest
+Christian of the merit of the pilgrimage, the useless crowd, with mouths
+but without hands, might have been stationed in the Greek empire, till
+their companions had opened and secured the way of the Lord. A small
+remnant of the pilgrims, who passed the Bosphorus, was permitted to
+visit the holy sepulchre. Their northern constitution was scorched by
+the rays, and infected by the vapors, of a Syrian sun. They consumed,
+with heedless prodigality, their stores of water and provision: their
+numbers exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks
+were unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the
+voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire necessity of
+famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the flesh of their infant
+or adult captives. Among the Turks and Saracens, the idolaters of Europe
+were rendered more odious by the name and reputation of Cannibals; the
+spies, who introduced themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were
+shown several human bodies turning on the spit: and the artful Norman
+encouraged a report, which increased at the same time the abhorrence and
+the terror of the infidels. [79]
+
+[Footnote 73: There is some diversity on the numbers of his army; but
+no authority can be compared with that of Ptolemy, who states it at five
+thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, (see Usher's Annales, p 152.)]
+
+[Footnote 74: Fulcher. Carnotensis, p. 387. He enumerates nineteen
+nations of different names and languages, (p. 389;) but I do not clearly
+apprehend his difference between the Franci and Galli, Itali and Apuli.
+Elsewhere (p. 385) he contemptuously brands the deserters.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Guibert, p. 556. Yet even his gentle opposition implies an
+immense multitude. By Urban II., in the fervor of his zeal, it is only
+rated at 300,000 pilgrims, (epist. xvi. Concil. tom. xii. p. 731.)]
+
+[Footnote 76: Alexias, l. x. p. 283, 305. Her fastidious delicacy
+complains of their strange and inarticulate names; and indeed there
+is scarcely one that she has not contrived to disfigure with the proud
+ignorance so dear and familiar to a polished people. I shall select only
+one example, Sangeles, for the count of St. Giles.]
+
+[Footnote 77: William of Malmsbury (who wrote about the year 1130) has
+inserted in his history (l. iv. p. 130-154) a narrative of the first
+crusade: but I wish that, instead of listening to the tenue murmur which
+had passed the British ocean, (p. 143,) he had confined himself to the
+numbers, families, and adventures of his countrymen. I find in Dugdale,
+that an English Norman, Stephen earl of Albemarle and Holdernesse, led
+the rear-guard with Duke Robert, at the battle of Antioch, (Baronage,
+part i. p. 61.)]
+
+[Footnote 78: Videres Scotorum apud se ferocium alias imbellium cuneos,
+(Guibert, p. 471;) the crus intectum and hispida chlamys, may suit the
+Highlanders; but the finibus uliginosis may rather apply to the Irish
+bogs. William of Malmsbury expressly mentions the Welsh and Scots,
+&c., (l. iv. p. 133,) who quitted, the former venatiorem, the latter
+familiaritatem pulicum.]
+
+[Footnote 79: This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more frequently
+an artifice or a lie, may be found in Anna Comnena, (Alexias, l. x.
+p. 288,) Guibert, (p. 546,) Radulph. Cadom., (c. 97.) The stratagem is
+related by the author of the Gesta Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric,
+and Raymond des Agiles, in the siege and famine of Antioch.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part IV.
+
+I have expiated with pleasure on the first steps of the crusaders, as
+they paint the manners and character of Europe: but I shall abridge the
+tedious and uniform narrative of their blind achievements, which were
+performed by strength and are described by ignorance. From their first
+station in the neighborhood of Nicomedia, they advanced in successive
+divisions; passed the contracted limit of the Greek empire; opened a
+road through the hills, and commenced, by the siege of his capital,
+their pious warfare against the Turkish sultan. His kingdom of Roum
+extended from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria, and barred the
+pilgrimage of Jerusalem, his name was Kilidge-Arslan, or Soliman,
+[80] of the race of Seljuk, and son of the first conqueror; and in the
+defence of a land which the Turks considered as their own, he deserved
+the praise of his enemies, by whom alone he is known to posterity.
+Yielding to the first impulse of the torrent, he deposited his family
+and treasure in Nice; retired to the mountains with fifty thousand
+horse; and twice descended to assault the camps or quarters of the
+Christian besiegers, which formed an imperfect circle of above six
+miles. The lofty and solid walls of Nice were covered by a deep ditch,
+and flanked by three hundred and seventy towers; and on the verge of
+Christendom, the Moslems were trained in arms, and inflamed by religion.
+Before this city, the French princes occupied their stations, and
+prosecuted their attacks without correspondence or subordination:
+emulation prompted their valor; but their valor was sullied by cruelty,
+and their emulation degenerated into envy and civil discord. In the
+siege of Nice, the arts and engines of antiquity were employed by the
+Latins; the mine and the battering-ram, the tortoise, and the belfrey or
+movable turret, artificial fire, and the catapult and balist, the sling,
+and the crossbow for the casting of stones and darts. [81] In the space
+of seven weeks much labor and blood were expended, and some progress,
+especially by Count Raymond, was made on the side of the besiegers. But
+the Turks could protract their resistance and secure their escape, as
+long as they were masters of the Lake [82] Ascanius, which stretches
+several miles to the westward of the city. The means of conquest were
+supplied by the prudence and industry of Alexius; a great number of
+boats was transported on sledges from the sea to the lake; they were
+filled with the most dexterous of his archers; the flight of the sultana
+was intercepted; Nice was invested by land and water; and a Greek
+emissary persuaded the inhabitants to accept his master's protection,
+and to save themselves, by a timely surrender, from the rage of the
+savages of Europe. In the moment of victory, or at least of hope, the
+crusaders, thirsting for blood and plunder, were awed by the Imperial
+banner that streamed from the citadel; [821] and Alexius guarded with
+jealous vigilance this important conquest. The murmurs of the chiefs
+were stifled by honor or interest; and after a halt of nine days, they
+directed their march towards Phrygia under the guidance of a Greek
+general, whom they suspected of a secret connivance with the sultan.
+The consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honorably
+restored without ransom; and the emperor's generosity to the miscreants
+[83] was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.
+
+[Footnote 80: His Mussulman appellation of Soliman is used by the
+Latins, and his character is highly embellished by Tasso. His Turkish
+name of Kilidge-Arslan (A. H. 485-500, A.D. 1192-1206. See De Guignes's
+Tables, tom. i. p. 245) is employed by the Orientals, and with some
+corruption by the Greeks; but little more than his name can be found in
+the Mahometan writers, who are dry and sulky on the subject of the first
+crusade, (De Guignes, tom. iii. p. ii. p. 10-30.) * Note: See note,
+page 556. Soliman and Kilidge-Arslan were father and son--M.]
+
+[Footnote 81: On the fortifications, engines, and sieges of the middle
+ages, see Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae, tom. ii. dissert. xxvi. p.
+452-524.) The belfredus, from whence our belfrey, was the movable tower
+of the ancients, (Ducange, tom. i. p. 608.)]
+
+[Footnote 82: I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between the
+siege and lake of Nice, with the operations of Hernan Cortez before
+Mexico. See Dr. Robertson, History of America, l. v.]
+
+[Footnote 821: See Anna Comnena.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Mecreant, a word invented by the French crusaders, and
+confined in that language to its primitive sense. It should seem, that
+the zeal of our ancestors boiled higher, and that they branded every
+unbeliever as a rascal. A similar prejudice still lurks in the minds of
+many who think themselves Christians.]
+
+Soliman was rather provoked than dismayed by the loss of his capital:
+he admonished his subjects and allies of this strange invasion of the
+Western Barbarians; the Turkish emirs obeyed the call of loyalty or
+religion; the Turkman hordes encamped round his standard; and his whole
+force is loosely stated by the Christians at two hundred, or even three
+hundred and sixty thousand horse. Yet he patiently waited till they had
+left behind them the sea and the Greek frontier; and hovering on the
+flanks, observed their careless and confident progress in two columns
+beyond the view of each other. Some miles before they could reach
+Dorylaeum in Phrygia, the left, and least numerous, division was
+surprised, and attacked, and almost oppressed, by the Turkish cavalry.
+[84] The heat of the weather, the clouds of arrows, and the barbarous
+onset, overwhelmed the crusaders; they lost their order and confidence,
+and the fainting fight was sustained by the personal valor, rather than
+by the military conduct, of Bohemond, Tancred, and Robert of Normandy.
+They were revived by the welcome banners of Duke Godfrey, who flew to
+their succor, with the count of Vermandois, and sixty thousand horse;
+and was followed by Raymond of Tholouse, the bishop of Puy, and the
+remainder of the sacred army. Without a moment's pause, they formed
+in new order, and advanced to a second battle. They were received with
+equal resolution; and, in their common disdain for the unwarlike people
+of Greece and Asia, it was confessed on both sides, that the Turks
+and the Franks were the only nations entitled to the appellation of
+soldiers. [85] Their encounter was varied, and balanced by the contrast
+of arms and discipline; of the direct charge, and wheeling evolutions;
+of the couched lance, and the brandished javelin; of a weighty
+broadsword, and a crooked sabre; of cumbrous armor, and thin flowing
+robes; and of the long Tartar bow, and the arbalist or crossbow, a
+deadly weapon, yet unknown to the Orientals. [86] As long as the horses
+were fresh, and the quivers full, Soliman maintained the advantage
+of the day; and four thousand Christians were pierced by the Turkish
+arrows. In the evening, swiftness yielded to strength: on either side,
+the numbers were equal or at least as great as any ground could hold, or
+any generals could manage; but in turning the hills, the last division
+of Raymond and his provincials was led, perhaps without design on the
+rear of an exhausted enemy; and the long contest was determined. Besides
+a nameless and unaccounted multitude, three thousand Pagan knights were
+slain in the battle and pursuit; the camp of Soliman was pillaged; and
+in the variety of precious spoil, the curiosity of the Latins was amused
+with foreign arms and apparel, and the new aspect of dromedaries and
+camels. The importance of the victory was proved by the hasty retreat
+of the sultan: reserving ten thousand guards of the relics of his army,
+Soliman evacuated the kingdom of Roum, and hastened to implore the aid,
+and kindle the resentment, of his Eastern brethren. In a march of five
+hundred miles, the crusaders traversed the Lesser Asia, through a wasted
+land and deserted towns, without finding either a friend or an enemy.
+The geographer [87] may trace the position of Dorylaeum, Antioch of
+Pisidia, Iconium, Archelais, and Germanicia, and may compare those
+classic appellations with the modern names of Eskishehr the old city,
+Akshehr the white city, Cogni, Erekli, and Marash. As the pilgrims
+passed over a desert, where a draught of water is exchanged for silver,
+they were tormented by intolerable thirst; and on the banks of the first
+rivulet, their haste and intemperance were still more pernicious to
+the disorderly throng. They climbed with toil and danger the steep and
+slippery sides of Mount Taurus; many of the soldiers cast away their
+arms to secure their footsteps; and had not terror preceded their van,
+the long and trembling file might have been driven down the precipice by
+a handful of resolute enemies. Two of their most respectable chiefs,
+the duke of Lorraine and the count of Tholouse, were carried in litters:
+Raymond was raised, as it is said by miracle, from a hopeless malady;
+and Godfrey had been torn by a bear, as he pursued that rough and
+perilous chase in the mountains of Pisidia.
+
+[Footnote 84: Baronius has produced a very doubtful letter to his
+brother Roger, (A.D. 1098, No. 15.) The enemies consisted of Medes,
+Persians, Chaldeans: be it so. The first attack was cum nostro
+incommodo; true and tender. But why Godfrey of Bouillon and Hugh
+brothers! Tancred is styled filius; of whom? Certainly not of Roger, nor
+of Bohemond.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Verumtamen dicunt se esse de Francorum generatione; et
+quia nullus homo naturaliter debet esse miles nisi Franci et Turci,
+(Gesta Francorum, p. 7.) The same community of blood and valor is
+attested by Archbishop Baldric, (p. 99.)]
+
+[Footnote 86: Balista, Balestra, Arbalestre. See Muratori, Antiq. tom.
+ii. p. 517-524. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. i. p. 531, 532. In the
+time of Anna Comnena, this weapon, which she describes under the name
+of izangra, was unknown in the East, (l. x. p. 291.) By a humane
+inconsistency, the pope strove to prohibit it in Christian wars.]
+
+[Footnote 87: The curious reader may compare the classic learning of
+Cellarius and the geographical science of D'Anville. William of Tyre is
+the only historian of the crusades who has any knowledge of antiquity;
+and M. Otter trod almost in the footsteps of the Franks from
+Constantinople to Antioch, (Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, tom. i. p.
+35-88.) * Note: The journey of Col. Macdonald Kinneir in Asia Minor
+throws considerable light on the geography of this march of the
+crusaders.--M.]
+
+To improve the general consternation, the cousin of Bohemond and
+the brother of Godfrey were detached from the main army with their
+respective squadrons of five, and of seven, hundred knights. They
+overran in a rapid career the hills and sea-coast of Cilicia, from Cogni
+to the Syrian gates: the Norman standard was first planted on the walls
+of Tarsus and Malmistra; but the proud injustice of Baldwin at length
+provoked the patient and generous Italian; and they turned their
+consecrated swords against each other in a private and profane quarrel.
+Honor was the motive, and fame the reward, of Tancred; but fortune
+smiled on the more selfish enterprise of his rival. [88] He was called
+to the assistance of a Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been suffered
+under the Turkish yoke to reign over the Christians of Edessa. Baldwin
+accepted the character of his son and champion: but no sooner was he
+introduced into the city, than he inflamed the people to the massacre
+of his father, occupied the throne and treasure, extended his conquests
+over the hills of Armenia and the plain of Mesopotamia, and founded the
+first principality of the Franks or Latins, which subsisted fifty-four
+years beyond the Euphrates. [89]
+
+[Footnote 88: This detached conquest of Edessa is best represented
+by Fulcherius Carnotensis, or of Chartres, (in the collections of
+Bongarsius Duchesne, and Martenne,) the valiant chaplain of Count
+Baldwin (Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13, 14.) In the disputes
+of that prince with Tancred, his partiality is encountered by the
+partiality of Radulphus Cadomensis, the soldier and historian of the
+gallant marquis.]
+
+[Footnote 89: See de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 456.]
+
+Before the Franks could enter Syria, the summer, and even the autumn,
+were completely wasted: the siege of Antioch, or the separation and
+repose of the army during the winter season, was strongly debated in
+their council: the love of arms and the holy sepulchre urged them to
+advance; and reason perhaps was on the side of resolution, since every
+hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies
+the resources of defensive war. The capital of Syria was protected by
+the River Orontes; and the iron bridge, [891] of nine arches, derives
+its name from the massy gates of the two towers which are constructed at
+either end. They were opened by the sword of the duke of Normandy: his
+victory gave entrance to three hundred thousand crusaders, an account
+which may allow some scope for losses and desertion, but which clearly
+detects much exaggeration in the review of Nice. In the description of
+Antioch, [90] it is not easy to define a middle term between her ancient
+magnificence, under the successors of Alexander and Augustus, and the
+modern aspect of Turkish desolation. The Tetrapolis, or four cities, if
+they retained their name and position, must have left a large vacuity in
+a circumference of twelve miles; and that measure, as well as the number
+of four hundred towers, are not perfectly consistent with the five
+gates, so often mentioned in the history of the siege. Yet Antioch must
+have still flourished as a great and populous capital. At the head of
+the Turkish emirs, Baghisian, a veteran chief, commanded in the place:
+his garrison was composed of six or seven thousand horse, and fifteen
+or twenty thousand foot: one hundred thousand Moslems are said to have
+fallen by the sword; and their numbers were probably inferior to the
+Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, who had been no more than fourteen
+years the slaves of the house of Seljuk. From the remains of a solid and
+stately wall, it appears to have arisen to the height of threescore feet
+in the valleys; and wherever less art and labor had been applied, the
+ground was supposed to be defended by the river, the morass, and the
+mountains. Notwithstanding these fortifications, the city had been
+repeatedly taken by the Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks;
+so large a circuit must have yielded many pervious points of attack; and
+in a siege that was formed about the middle of October, the vigor of
+the execution could alone justify the boldness of the attempt. Whatever
+strength and valor could perform in the field was abundantly discharged
+by the champions of the cross: in the frequent occasions of sallies,
+of forage, of the attack and defence of convoys, they were often
+victorious; and we can only complain, that their exploits are sometimes
+enlarged beyond the scale of probability and truth. The sword of Godfrey
+[91] divided a Turk from the shoulder to the haunch; and one half of the
+infidel fell to the ground, while the other was transported by his horse
+to the city gate. As Robert of Normandy rode against his antagonist, "I
+devote thy head," he piously exclaimed, "to the daemons of hell;" and
+that head was instantly cloven to the breast by the resistless stroke of
+his descending falchion. But the reality or the report of such gigantic
+prowess [92] must have taught the Moslems to keep within their walls:
+and against those walls of earth or stone, the sword and the lance were
+unavailing weapons. In the slow and successive labors of a siege, the
+crusaders were supine and ignorant, without skill to contrive, or money
+to purchase, or industry to use, the artificial engines and implements
+of assault. In the conquest of Nice, they had been powerfully assisted
+by the wealth and knowledge of the Greek emperor: his absence was poorly
+supplied by some Genoese and Pisan vessels, that were attracted by
+religion or trade to the coast of Syria: the stores were scanty, the
+return precarious, and the communication difficult and dangerous.
+Indolence or weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the entire
+circuit; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the wants and
+recruited the garrison of the city. At the end of seven months, after
+the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous loss by famine, desertion
+and fatigue, the progress of the crusaders was imperceptible, and their
+success remote, if the Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond,
+had not employed the arms of cunning and deceit. The Christians of
+Antioch were numerous and discontented: Phirouz, a Syrian renegado, had
+acquired the favor of the emir and the command of three towers; and the
+merit of his repentance disguised to the Latins, and perhaps to himself,
+the foul design of perfidy and treason. A secret correspondence, for
+their mutual interest, was soon established between Phirouz and the
+prince of Tarento; and Bohemond declared in the council of the chiefs,
+that he could deliver the city into their hands. [921] But he claimed
+the sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service; and the
+proposal which had been rejected by the envy, was at length extorted
+from the distress, of his equals. The nocturnal surprise was executed
+by the French and Norman princes, who ascended in person the
+scaling-ladders that were thrown from the walls: their new proselyte,
+after the murder of his too scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced
+the servants of Christ; the army rushed through the gates; and the
+Moslems soon found, that although mercy was hopeless, resistance was
+impotent.
+
+But the citadel still refused to surrender; and the victims themselves
+were speedily encompassed and besieged by the innumerable forces of
+Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who, with twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced
+to the deliverance of Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent
+on the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and
+the sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. [93] In this
+extremity they collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the
+town, and in a single memorable day, annihilated or dispersed the host
+of Turks and Arabians, which they might safely report to have consisted
+of six hundred thousand men. [94] Their supernatural allies I shall
+proceed to consider: the human causes of the victory of Antioch were the
+fearless despair of the Franks; and the surprise, the discord, perhaps
+the errors, of their unskilful and presumptuous adversaries. The battle
+is described with as much disorder as it was fought; but we may observe
+the tent of Kerboga, a movable and spacious palace, enriched with the
+luxury of Asia, and capable of holding above two thousand persons; we
+may distinguish his three thousand guards, who were cased, the horse as
+well as the men, in complete steel.
+
+[Footnote 891: This bridge was over the Ifrin, not the Orontes, at a
+distance of three leagues from Antioch. See Wilken, vol. i. p. 172.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 90: For Antioch, see Pocock, (Description of the East, vol.
+ii. p. i. p. 188-193,) Otter, (Voyage en Turquie, &c., tom. i. p. 81,
+&c.,) the Turkish geographer, (in Otter's notes,) the Index Geographicus
+of Schultens, (ad calcem Bohadin. Vit. Saladin.,) and Abulfeda, (Tabula
+Syriae, p. 115, 116, vers. Reiske.)]
+
+[Footnote 91: Ensem elevat, eumque a sinistra parte scapularum, tanta
+virtute intorsit, ut quod pectus medium disjunxit spinam et vitalia
+interrupit; et sic lubricus ensis super crus dextrum integer exivit:
+sicque caput integrum cum dextra parte corporis immersit gurgite,
+partemque quae equo praesidebat remisit civitati, (Robert. Mon. p. 50.)
+Cujus ense trajectus, Turcus duo factus est Turci: ut inferior alter in
+urbem equitaret, alter arcitenens in flumine nataret, (Radulph. Cadom.
+c. 53, p. 304.) Yet he justifies the deed by the stupendis viribus
+of Godfrey; and William of Tyre covers it by obstupuit populus facti
+novitate .... mirabilis, (l. v. c. 6, p. 701.) Yet it must not have
+appeared incredible to the knights of that age.]
+
+[Footnote 92: See the exploits of Robert, Raymond, and the modest
+Tancred who imposed silence on his squire, (Randulph. Cadom. c. 53.)]
+
+[Footnote 921: See the interesting extract from Kemaleddin's History of
+Aleppo in Wilken, preface to vol. ii. p. 36. Phirouz, or Azzerrad, the
+breastplate maker, had been pillaged and put to the torture by Bagi
+Sejan, the prince of Antioch.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 93: After mentioning the distress and humble petition of the
+Franks, Abulpharagius adds the haughty reply of Codbuka, or Kerboga,
+"Non evasuri estis nisi per gladium," (Dynast. p. 242.)]
+
+[Footnote 94: In describing the host of Kerboga, most of the Latin
+historians, the author of the Gesta, (p. 17,) Robert Monachus, (p. 56,)
+Baldric, (p. 111,) Fulcherius Carnotensis, (p. 392,) Guibert, (p. 512,)
+William of Tyre, (l. vi. c. 3, p. 714,) Bernard Thesaurarius, (c. 39,
+p. 695,) are content with the vague expressions of infinita multitudo,
+immensum agmen, innumerae copiae or gentes, which correspond with Anna
+Comnena, (Alexias, l. xi. p. 318-320.) The numbers of the Turks are
+fixed by Albert Aquensis at 200,000, (l. iv. c. 10, p. 242,) and by
+Radulphus Cadomensis at 400,000 horse, (c. 72, p. 309.)]
+
+In the eventful period of the siege and defence of Antioch, the
+crusaders were alternately exalted by victory or sunk in despair; either
+swelled with plenty or emaciated with hunger. A speculative reasoner
+might suppose, that their faith had a strong and serious influence on
+their practice; and that the soldiers of the cross, the deliverers of
+the holy sepulchre, prepared themselves by a sober and virtuous life
+for the daily contemplation of martyrdom. Experience blows away this
+charitable illusion; and seldom does the history of profane war display
+such scenes of intemperance and prostitution as were exhibited under
+the walls of Antioch. The grove of Daphne no longer flourished; but the
+Syrian air was still impregnated with the same vices; the Christians
+were seduced by every temptation [95] that nature either prompts or
+reprobates; the authority of the chiefs was despised; and sermons and
+edicts were alike fruitless against those scandalous disorders, not less
+pernicious to military discipline, than repugnant to evangelic purity.
+In the first days of the siege and the possession of Antioch, the Franks
+consumed with wanton and thoughtless prodigality the frugal subsistence
+of weeks and months: the desolate country no longer yielded a supply;
+and from that country they were at length excluded by the arms of the
+besieging Turks. Disease, the faithful companion of want, was envenomed
+by the rains of the winter, the summer heats, unwholesome food, and the
+close imprisonment of multitudes. The pictures of famine and pestilence
+are always the same, and always disgustful; and our imagination may
+suggest the nature of their sufferings and their resources. The remains
+of treasure or spoil were eagerly lavished in the purchase of the vilest
+nourishment; and dreadful must have been the calamities of the poor,
+since, after paying three marks of silver for a goat and fifteen for a
+lean camel, [96] the count of Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner, and
+Duke Godfrey to borrow a horse. Sixty thousand horse had been reviewed
+in the camp: before the end of the siege they were diminished to two
+thousand, and scarcely two hundred fit for service could be mustered on
+the day of battle. Weakness of body and terror of mind extinguished
+the ardent enthusiasm of the pilgrims; and every motive of honor and
+religion was subdued by the desire of life. [97] Among the chiefs, three
+heroes may be found without fear or reproach: Godfrey of Bouillon was
+supported by his magnanimous piety; Bohemond by ambition and interest;
+and Tancred declared, in the true spirit of chivalry, that as long as
+he was at the head of forty knights, he would never relinquish the
+enterprise of Palestine. But the count of Tholouse and Provence was
+suspected of a voluntary indisposition; the duke of Normandy was
+recalled from the sea-shore by the censures of the church: Hugh the
+Great, though he led the vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous
+opportunity of returning to France and Stephen, count of Chartres,
+basely deserted the standard which he bore, and the council in which
+he presided. The soldiers were discouraged by the flight of William,
+viscount of Melun, surnamed the Carpenter, from the weighty strokes of
+his axe; and the saints were scandalized by the fall [971] of Peter the
+Hermit, who, after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from
+the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors,
+the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of life; and the
+opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the deserters
+who dropped in the night from the walls of Antioch. The emperor Alexius,
+[98] who seemed to advance to the succor of the Latins, was dismayed by
+the assurance of their hopeless condition. They expected their fate in
+silent despair; oaths and punishments were tried without effect; and to
+rouse the soldiers to the defence of the walls, it was found necessary
+to set fire to their quarters.
+
+[Footnote 95: See the tragic and scandalous fate of an archdeacon of
+royal birth, who was slain by the Turks as he reposed in an orchard,
+playing at dice with a Syrian concubine.]
+
+[Footnote 96: The value of an ox rose from five solidi, (fifteen
+shillings,) at Christmas to two marks, (four pounds,) and afterwards
+much higher; a kid or lamb, from one shilling to eighteen of our present
+money: in the second famine, a loaf of bread, or the head of an animal,
+sold for a piece of gold. More examples might be produced; but it is the
+ordinary, not the extraordinary, prices, that deserve the notice of the
+philosopher.]
+
+[Footnote 97: Alli multi, quorum nomina non tenemus; quia, deleta de
+libro vitae, praesenti operi non sunt inserenda, (Will. Tyr. l. vi. c.
+5, p. 715.) Guibert (p. 518, 523) attempts to excuse Hugh the Great, and
+even Stephen of Chartres.]
+
+[Footnote 971: Peter fell during the siege: he went afterwards on an
+embassy to Kerboga Wilken. vol. i. p. 217.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 98: See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of Alexius,
+the victory of Antioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem, in the Alexiad,
+l. xi. p. 317-327. Anna was so prone to exaggeration, that she
+magnifies the exploits of the Latins.]
+
+For their salvation and victory, they were indebted to the same
+fanaticism which had led them to the brink of ruin. In such a cause, and
+in such an army, visions, prophecies, and miracles, were frequent and
+familiar. In the distress of Antioch, they were repeated with unusual
+energy and success: St. Ambrose had assured a pious ecclesiastic, that
+two years of trial must precede the season of deliverance and grace; the
+deserters were stopped by the presence and reproaches of Christ himself;
+the dead had promised to arise and combat with their brethren; the
+Virgin had obtained the pardon of their sins; and their confidence was
+revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and splendid discovery of
+the Holy Lance. The policy of their chiefs has on this occasion been
+admired, and might surely be excused; but a pious baud is seldom
+produced by the cool conspiracy of many persons; and a voluntary
+impostor might depend on the support of the wise and the credulity of
+the people. Of the diocese of Marseilles, there was a priest of low
+cunning and loose manners, and his name was Peter Bartholemy. He
+presented himself at the door of the council-chamber, to disclose an
+apparition of St. Andrew, which had been thrice reiterated in his sleep
+with a dreadful menace, if he presumed to suppress the commands of
+Heaven. "At Antioch," said the apostle, "in the church of my brother
+St. Peter, near the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance
+that pierced the side of our Redeemer. In three days that instrument
+of eternal, and now of temporal, salvation, will be manifested to his
+disciples. Search, and ye shall find: bear it aloft in battle; and that
+mystic weapon shall penetrate the souls of the miscreants." The
+pope's legate, the bishop of Puy, affected to listen with coldness and
+distrust; but the revelation was eagerly accepted by Count Raymond, whom
+his faithful subject, in the name of the apostle, had chosen for the
+guardian of the holy lance. The experiment was resolved; and on the
+third day after a due preparation of prayer and fasting, the priest
+of Marseilles introduced twelve trusty spectators, among whom were the
+count and his chaplain; and the church doors were barred against the
+impetuous multitude. The ground was opened in the appointed place; but
+the workmen, who relieved each other, dug to the depth of twelve feet
+without discovering the object of their search. In the evening, when
+Count Raymond had withdrawn to his post, and the weary assistants began
+to murmur, Bartholemy, in his shirt, and without his shoes, boldly
+descended into the pit; the darkness of the hour and of the place
+enabled him to secrete and deposit the head of a Saracen lance; and the
+first sound, the first gleam, of the steel was saluted with a devout
+rapture. The holy lance was drawn from its recess, wrapped in a veil
+of silk and gold, and exposed to the veneration of the crusaders; their
+anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of joy and hope, and
+the desponding troops were again inflamed with the enthusiasm of valor.
+Whatever had been the arts, and whatever might be the sentiments of the
+chiefs, they skilfully improved this fortunate revolution by every aid
+that discipline and devotion could afford. The soldiers were dismissed
+to their quarters with an injunction to fortify their minds and bodies
+for the approaching conflict, freely to bestow their last pittance on
+themselves and their horses, and to expect with the dawn of day the
+signal of victory. On the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the gates
+of Antioch were thrown open: a martial psalm, "Let the Lord arise, and
+let his enemies be scattered!" was chanted by a procession of priests
+and monks; the battle array was marshalled in twelve divisions, in honor
+of the twelve apostles; and the holy lance, in the absence of Raymond,
+was intrusted to the hands of his chaplain. The influence of his relic
+or trophy, was felt by the servants, and perhaps by the enemies, of
+Christ; [99] and its potent energy was heightened by an accident, a
+stratagem, or a rumor, of a miraculous complexion. Three knights, in
+white garments and resplendent arms, either issued, or seemed to issue,
+from the hills: the voice of Adhemar, the pope's legate, proclaimed them
+as the martyrs St. George, St. Theodore, and St. Maurice: the tumult of
+battle allowed no time for doubt or scrutiny; and the welcome apparition
+dazzled the eyes or the imagination of a fanatic army. [991] In the
+season of danger and triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles
+was unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service was
+accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal arms which the count of
+Tholouse derived from the custody of the holy lance, provoked the envy,
+and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A Norman clerk presumed to sift,
+with a philosophic spirit, the truth of the legend, the circumstances of
+the discovery, and the character of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond
+ascribed their deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ
+alone. For a while, the Provincials defended their national palladium
+with clamors and arms and new visions condemned to death and hell the
+profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinize the truth and merit of the
+discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the author to submit
+his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of dry fagots, four
+feet high and fourteen long, was erected in the midst of the camp; the
+flames burnt fiercely to the elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow
+path of twelve inches was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate
+priest of Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but
+the thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired the
+next day; [992] and the logic of believing minds will pay some regard to
+his dying protestations of innocence and truth. Some efforts were made
+by the Provincials to substitute a cross, a ring, or a tabernacle,
+in the place of the holy lance, which soon vanished in contempt and
+oblivion. [100] Yet the revelation of Antioch is gravely asserted by
+succeeding historians: and such is the progress of credulity, that
+miracles most doubtful on the spot, and at the moment, will be received
+with implicit faith at a convenient distance of time and space.
+
+[Footnote 99: The Mahometan Aboulmahasen (apud De Guignes, tom. ii. p.
+ii. p. 95) is more correct in his account of the holy lance than the
+Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the Greek princess confounds
+it with the nail of the cross, (l. xi. p. 326;) the Jacobite primate,
+with St. Peter's staff, (p. 242.)]
+
+[Footnote 991: The real cause of this victory appears to have been the
+feud in Kerboga's army Wilken, vol. ii. p. 40.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 992: The twelfth day after. He was much injured, and his
+flesh torn off, from the ardor of pious congratulation with which he
+was assailed by those who witnessed his escape, unhurt, as it was first
+supposed. Wilken vol. i p. 263--M.]
+
+[Footnote 100: The two antagonists who express the most intimate
+knowledge and the strongest conviction of the miracle, and of the fraud,
+are Raymond des Agiles, and Radulphus Cadomensis, the one attached
+to the count of Tholouse, the other to the Norman prince. Fulcherius
+Carnotensis presumes to say, Audite fraudem et non fraudem! and
+afterwards, Invenit lanceam, fallaciter occultatam forsitan. The rest of
+the herd are loud and strenuous.]
+
+The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion till
+the decline of the Turkish empire. [101] Under the manly government of
+the three first sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were united in peace and
+justice; and the innumerable armies which they led in person were equal
+in courage, and superior in discipline, to the Barbarians of the West.
+But at the time of the crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was
+disputed by his four sons; their private ambition was insensible of
+the public danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the
+royal vassals were ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their
+allegiance. The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard or
+Kerboga were his rivals or enemies: their hasty levies were drawn from
+the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans
+were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The
+caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness and discord
+to recover his ancient possessions; and his sultan Aphdal besieged
+Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of Ortok, and restored in
+Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. [102]
+They heard with astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had
+passed from Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles
+which broke the power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and
+monarchy. But the same Christians were the enemies of the prophet; and
+from the overthrow of Nice and Antioch, the motive of their enterprise,
+which was gradually understood, would urge them forwards to the banks of
+the Jordan, or perhaps of the Nile.
+
+An intercourse of epistles and embassies, which rose and fell with the
+events of war, was maintained between the throne of Cairo and the camp
+of the Latins; and their adverse pride was the result of ignorance and
+enthusiasm. The ministers of Egypt declared in a haughty, or insinuated
+in a milder, tone, that their sovereign, the true and lawful commander
+of the faithful, had rescued Jerusalem from the Turkish yoke; and that
+the pilgrims, if they would divide their numbers, and lay aside their
+arms, should find a safe and hospitable reception at the sepulchre
+of Jesus. In the belief of their lost condition, the caliph Mostali
+despised their arms and imprisoned their deputies: the conquest and
+victory of Antioch prompted him to solicit those formidable champions
+with gifts of horses and silk robes, of vases, and purses of gold and
+silver; and in his estimate of their merit or power, the first place was
+assigned to Bohemond, and the second to Godfrey. In either fortune, the
+answer of the crusaders was firm and uniform: they disdained to inquire
+into the private claims or possessions of the followers of Mahomet;
+whatsoever was his name or nation, the usurper of Jerusalem was
+their enemy; and instead of prescribing the mode and terms of their
+pilgrimage, it was only by a timely surrender of the city and province,
+their sacred right, that he could deserve their alliance, or deprecate
+their impending and irresistible attack. [103]
+
+[Footnote 101: See M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 223, &c.; and the
+articles of Barkidrok, Mohammed, Sangiar, in D'Herbelot.]
+
+[Footnote 102: The emir, or sultan, Aphdal, recovered Jerusalem and
+Tyre, A. H. 489, (Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 478. De
+Guignes, tom. i. p. 249, from Abulfeda and Ben Schounah.) Jerusalem
+ante adventum vestrum recuperavimus, Turcos ejecimus, say the Fatimite
+ambassadors]
+
+[Footnote 103: See the transactions between the caliph of Egypt and the
+crusaders in William of Tyre (l. iv. c. 24, l. vi. c. 19) and Albert
+Aquensis, (l. iii. c. 59,) who are more sensible of their importance
+than the contemporary writers.]
+
+Yet this attack, when they were within the view and reach of their
+glorious prize, was suspended above ten months after the defeat of
+Kerboga. The zeal and courage of the crusaders were chilled in the
+moment of victory; and instead of marching to improve the consternation,
+they hastily dispersed to enjoy the luxury, of Syria. The causes of this
+strange delay may be found in the want of strength and subordination. In
+the painful and various service of Antioch, the cavalry was annihilated;
+many thousands of every rank had been lost by famine, sickness, and
+desertion: the same abuse of plenty had been productive of a third
+famine; and the alternative of intemperance and distress had generated
+a pestilence, which swept away above fifty thousand of the pilgrims. Few
+were able to command, and none were willing to obey; the domestic feuds,
+which had been stifled by common fear, were again renewed in acts, or at
+least in sentiments, of hostility; the fortune of Baldwin and Bohemond
+excited the envy of their companions; the bravest knights were enlisted
+for the defence of their new principalities; and Count Raymond exhausted
+his troops and treasures in an idle expedition into the heart of Syria.
+[1031] The winter was consumed in discord and disorder; a sense of honor
+and religion was rekindled in the spring; and the private soldiers, less
+susceptible of ambition and jealousy, awakened with angry clamors the
+indolence of their chiefs. In the month of May, the relics of this
+mighty host proceeded from Antioch to Laodicea: about forty thousand
+Latins, of whom no more than fifteen hundred horse, and twenty thousand
+foot, were capable of immediate service. Their easy march was continued
+between Mount Libanus and the sea-shore: their wants were liberally
+supplied by the coasting traders of Genoa and Pisa; and they drew
+large contributions from the emirs of Tripoli, Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and
+Caesarea, who granted a free passage, and promised to follow the example
+of Jerusalem. From Caesarea they advanced into the midland country;
+their clerks recognized the sacred geography of Lydda, Ramla, Emmaus,
+and Bethlem, [1032] and as soon as they descried the holy city, the
+crusaders forgot their toils and claimed their reward. [104]
+
+[Footnote 1031: This is not quite correct: he took Marra on his road.
+His excursions were partly to obtain provisions for the army and fodder
+for the horses Wilken, vol. i. p. 226.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 1032: Scarcely of Bethlehem, to the south of Jerusalem.-- M.]
+
+[Footnote 104: The greatest part of the march of the Franks is traced,
+and most accurately traced, in Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to
+Jerusalem, (p. 11-67;) un des meilleurs morceaux, sans contredit qu'on
+ait dans ce genre, (D'Anville, Memoire sur Jerusalem, p. 27.)]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.--Part V.
+
+Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and importance of
+her memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and obstinate contest
+that Babylon and Rome could prevail against the obstinacy of the people,
+the craggy ground that might supersede the necessity of fortifications,
+and the walls and towers that would have fortified the most accessible
+plain. [105] These obstacles were diminished in the age of the crusades.
+The bulwarks had been completely destroyed and imperfectly restored: the
+Jews, their nation, and worship, were forever banished; but nature is
+less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem, though somewhat
+softened and somewhat removed, was still strong against the assaults
+of an enemy. By the experience of a recent siege, and a three years'
+possession, the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in
+some degree to remedy, the defects of a place, which religion as well
+as honor forbade them to resign. Aladin, or Iftikhar, the caliph's
+lieutenant, was intrusted with the defence: his policy strove to
+restrain the native Christians by the dread of their own ruin and
+that of the holy sepulchre; to animate the Moslems by the assurance of
+temporal and eternal rewards. His garrison is said to have consisted
+of forty thousand Turks and Arabians; and if he could muster twenty
+thousand of the inhabitants, it must be confessed that the besieged were
+more numerous than the besieging army. [106] Had the diminished strength
+and numbers of the Latins allowed them to grasp the whole circumference
+of four thousand yards, (about two English miles and a half, [107] to
+what useful purpose should they have descended into the valley of Ben
+Hinnom and torrent of Cedron, [108] or approach the precipices of the
+south and east, from whence they had nothing either to hope or fear?
+Their siege was more reasonably directed against the northern and
+western sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his standard on
+the first swell of Mount Calvary: to the left, as far as St. Stephen's
+gate, the line of attack was continued by Tancred and the two Roberts;
+and Count Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to the foot
+of Mount Sion, which was no longer included within the precincts of the
+city. On the fifth day, the crusaders made a general assault, in the
+fanatic hope of battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling
+them without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they burst the first
+barrier; but they were driven back with shame and slaughter to the camp:
+the influence of vision and prophecy was deadened by the too frequent
+abuse of those pious stratagems; and time and labor were found to be
+the only means of victory. The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled
+in forty days, but they were forty days of calamity and anguish. A
+repetition of the old complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree
+to the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks; but the stony
+soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute of water; the scanty springs and
+hasty torrents were dry in the summer season; nor was the thirst of the
+besiegers relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of cisterns
+and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally destitute of trees
+for the uses of shade or building, but some large beams were discovered
+in a cave by the crusaders: a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of
+Tasso, [109] was cut down: the necessary timber was transported to the
+camp by the vigor and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed
+by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbor of
+Jaffa. Two movable turrets were constructed at the expense, and in the
+stations, of the duke of Lorraine and the count of Tholouse, and rolled
+forwards with devout labor, not to the most accessible, but to the most
+neglected, parts of the fortification. Raymond's Tower was reduced to
+ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant
+and successful; [1091] the enemies were driven by his archers from the
+rampart; the draw-bridge was let down; and on a Friday, at three in the
+afternoon, the day and hour of the passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood
+victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every
+side by the emulation of valor; and about four hundred and sixty years
+after the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan
+yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had
+agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the
+spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold
+and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of
+Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the
+God of the Christians: resistance might provoke but neither age nor sex
+could mollify, their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three
+days in a promiscuous massacre; [110] and the infection of the dead
+bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems
+had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in
+their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives, whom
+interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of
+the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet
+we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a
+capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the citadel. [111]
+The holy sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to
+accomplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and
+in an humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud
+anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Savior of
+the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of
+their redemption. This union of the fiercest and most tender passions
+has been variously considered by two philosophers; by the one, [112] as
+easy and natural; by the other, [113] as absurd and incredible. Perhaps
+it is too rigorously applied to the same persons and the same hour; the
+example of the virtuous Godfrey awakened the piety of his companions;
+while they cleansed their bodies, they purified their minds; nor shall
+I believe that the most ardent in slaughter and rapine were the foremost
+in the procession to the holy sepulchre.
+
+[Footnote 105: See the masterly description of Tacitus, (Hist. v. 11,
+12, 13,) who supposes that the Jewish lawgivers had provided for a
+perpetual state of hostility against the rest of mankind. * Note: This
+is an exaggerated inference from the words of Tacitus, who speaks of
+the founders of the city, not the lawgivers. Praeviderant conditores,
+ex diversitate morum, crebra bella; inde cuncta quamvis adversus loagum
+obsidium.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The lively scepticism of Voltaire is balanced with sense
+and erudition by the French author of the Esprit des Croisades, (tom.
+iv. p. 386-388,) who observes, that, according to the Arabians, the
+inhabitants of Jerusalem must have exceeded 200,000; that in the siege
+of Titus, Josephus collects 1,300,000 Jews; that they are stated by
+Tacitus himself at 600,000; and that the largest defalcation, that his
+accepimus can justify, will still leave them more numerous than the
+Roman army.]
+
+[Footnote 107: Maundrell, who diligently perambulated the walls, found
+a circuit of 4630 paces, or 4167 English yards, (p. 109, 110: ) from an
+authentic plan, D'Anville concludes a measure nearly similar, of 1960
+French toises, (p. 23-29,) in his scarce and valuable tract. For the
+topography of Jerusalem, see Reland, (Palestina, tom. ii. p. 832-860.)]
+
+[Footnote 108: Jerusalem was possessed only of the torrent of Kedron,
+dry in summer, and of the little spring or brook of Siloe, (Reland,
+tom. i. p. 294, 300.) Both strangers and natives complain of the want
+of water, which, in time of war, was studiously aggravated. Within the
+city, Tacitus mentions a perennial fountain, an aqueduct and cisterns
+for rain water. The aqueduct was conveyed from the rivulet Tekos or
+Etham, which is likewise mentioned by Bohadin, (in Vit. Saludio p.
+238.)]
+
+[Footnote 109: Gierusalomme Liberata, canto xiii. It is pleasant enough
+to observe how Tasso has copied and embellished the minutest details of
+the siege.]
+
+[Footnote 1091: This does not appear by Wilken's account, (p. 294.) They
+fought in vair the whole of the Thursday.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 110: Besides the Latins, who are not ashamed of the massacre,
+see Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 363,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 243,)
+and M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99, from Aboulmahasen.]
+
+[Footnote 111: The old tower Psephina, in the middle ages Neblosa, was
+named Castellum Pisanum, from the patriarch Daimbert. It is still the
+citadel, the residence of the Turkish aga, and commands a prospect of
+the Dead Sea, Judea, and Arabia, (D'Anville, p. 19-23.) It was likewise
+called the Tower of David.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Hume, in his History of England, vol. i. p. 311, 312,
+octavo edition.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Voltaire, in his Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, tom ii.
+c. 54, p 345, 346]
+
+Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not live to
+hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a king, to guard
+and govern their conquests in Palestine. Hugh the Great, and Stephen of
+Chartres, had retired with some loss of reputation, which they strove
+to regain by a second crusade and an honorable death. Baldwin was
+established at Edessa, and Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the
+duke of Normandy [114] and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair
+inheritance in the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre.
+The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own
+followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the army
+proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the
+champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of
+danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had been crowned with
+thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty;
+and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the
+modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government
+of a single year, [115] too short for the public happiness, was
+interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field, by the
+approach of the vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to
+prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His
+total overthrow in the battle of Ascalon sealed the establishment of the
+Latins in Syria, and signalized the valor of the French princes who in
+this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.
+
+Some glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of numbers,
+though I shall not count the myriads of horse and foot [1151] on the
+side of the Fatimites; but, except three thousand Ethiopians or Blacks,
+who were armed with flails or scourges of iron, the Barbarians of
+the South fled on the first onset, and afforded a pleasing comparison
+between the active valor of the Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of
+the natives of Egypt. After suspending before the holy sepulchre the
+sword and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title)
+embraced his departing companions, and could retain only with the
+gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers
+for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new
+enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop
+of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in
+the last plague at Antioch: the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only
+the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious clamors
+had required that the choice of a bishop should precede that of a king.
+The revenue and jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the
+Latin clergy: the exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified
+by the reproach of heresy or schism; [116] and, under the iron yoke
+of their deliverers, the Oriental Christians regretted the tolerating
+government of the Arabian caliphs. Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had
+long been trained in the secret policy of Rome: he brought a fleet
+at his countrymen to the succor of the Holy Land, and was installed,
+without a competitor, the spiritual and temporal head of the church.
+[1161] The new patriarch [117] immediately grasped the sceptre which had
+been acquired by the toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and both
+Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the investiture
+of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient; Daimbert claimed
+the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa; instead of a firm and
+generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest; a quarter of
+either city was ceded to the church; and the modest bishop was satisfied
+with an eventual reversion of the rest, on the death of Godfrey without
+children, or on the future acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or
+Damascus.
+
+[Footnote 114: The English ascribe to Robert of Normandy, and the
+Provincials to Raymond of Tholouse, the glory of refusing the crown; but
+the honest voice of tradition has preserved the memory of the ambition
+and revenge (Villehardouin, No. 136) of the count of St. Giles. He died
+at the siege of Tripoli, which was possessed by his descendants.]
+
+[Footnote 115: See the election, the battle of Ascalon, &c., in William
+of Tyre l. ix. c. 1-12, and in the conclusion of the Latin historians
+of the first crusade.]
+
+[Footnote 1151: 20,000 Franks, 300,000 Mussulmen, according to Wilken,
+(vol. ii. p. 9)--M.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 479.]
+
+[Footnote 1161: Arnulf was first chosen, but illegitimately, and
+degraded. He was ever after the secret enemy of Daimbert or Dagobert.
+Wilken, vol. i. p. 306, vol. ii. p. 52.--M]
+
+[Footnote 117: See the claims of the patriarch Daimbert, in William of
+Tyre (l. ix. c. 15-18, x. 4, 7, 9,) who asserts with marvellous candor
+the independence of the conquerors and kings of Jerusalem.]
+
+Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost been stripped
+of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem and Jaffa, with
+about twenty villages and towns of the adjacent country. [118] Within
+this narrow verge, the Mahometans were still lodged in some impregnable
+castles: and the husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrim, were exposed
+to daily and domestic hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of
+the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne,
+the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at length they
+equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the millions
+of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel. [119] After
+the reduction of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and
+Ascalon, [120] which were powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice,
+Genoa, and Pisa, and even of Flanders and Norway, [121] the range of
+sea-coast from Scanderoon to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the
+Christian pilgrims. If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy,
+the counts of Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of the
+king of Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four
+cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only relics of the
+Mahometan conquests in Syria. [122] The laws and language, the manners
+and titles, of the French nation and Latin church, were introduced into
+these transmarine colonies. According to the feudal jurisprudence, the
+principal states and subordinate baronies descended in the line of male
+and female succession: [123] but the children of the first conquerors,
+[124] a motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the
+climate; the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful
+hope and a casual event. The service of the feudal tenures [125] was
+performed by six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid
+of two hundred more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and
+each knight was attended to the field by four squires or archers on
+horseback. [126] Five thousand and seventy sergeants, most probably
+foot-soldiers, were supplied by the churches and cities; and the whole
+legal militia of the kingdom could not exceed eleven thousand men, a
+slender defence against the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks.
+[127] But the firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of
+the Hospital of St. John, [128] and of the temple of Solomon; [129]
+on the strange association of a monastic and military life, which
+fanaticism might suggest, but which policy must approve. The flower of
+the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross, and to profess the
+vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit and discipline were
+immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand farms, or
+manors, [130] enabled them to support a regular force of cavalry and
+infantry for the defence of Palestine. The austerity of the convent soon
+evaporated in the exercise of arms; the world was scandalized by the
+pride, avarice, and corruption of these Christian soldiers; their claims
+of immunity and jurisdiction disturbed the harmony of the church and
+state; and the public peace was endangered by their jealous emulation.
+But in their most dissolute period, the knights of their hospital and
+temple maintained their fearless and fanatic character: they neglected
+to live, but they were prepared to die, in the service of Christ; and
+the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring of the crusades, has
+been transplanted by this institution from the holy sepulchre to the
+Isle of Malta. [131]
+
+[Footnote 118: Willerm. Tyr. l. x. 19. The Historia Hierosolimitana of
+Jacobus a Vitriaco (l. i. c. 21-50) and the Secreta Fidelium Crucis of
+Marinus Sanutus (l. iii. p. 1) describe the state and conquests of the
+Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.]
+
+[Footnote 119: An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi and
+Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or 1,574,000 fighting men;
+which, with the addition of women, children, and slaves, may imply a
+population of thirteen millions, in a country sixty leagues in length,
+and thirty broad. The honest and rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d Samuel
+xxiv. and 1st Chronicles, xxi.) aestuat angusto in limite, and mutters
+his suspicion of a false transcript; a dangerous suspicion! * Note:
+David determined to take a census of his vast dominions, which extended
+from Lebanon to the frontiers of Egypt, from the Euphrates to the
+Mediterranean. The numbers (in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi. 5)
+differ; but the lowest gives 800,000 men fit to bear arms in Israel,
+500,000 in Judah. Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 248. Gibbon has taken the
+highest census in his estimate of the population, and confined the
+dominions of David to Jordandic Palestine.--M.]
+
+[Footnote 120: These sieges are related, each in its proper place, in
+the great history of William of Tyre, from the ixth to the xviiith book,
+and more briefly told by Bernardus Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terrae
+Sanctae, c. 89-98, p. 732-740.) Some domestic facts are celebrated in
+the Chronicles of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith
+tomes of Muratori.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et maxime
+de ea parte quae Norvegia dicitur. William of Tyre (l. xi. c. 14, p.
+804) marks their course per Britannicum Mare et Calpen to the siege of
+Sidon.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Benelathir, apud De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii.
+part ii. p. 150, 151, A.D. 1127. He must speak of the inland country.]
+
+[Footnote 123: Sanut very sensibly descants on the mischiefs of female
+succession, in a land hostibus circumdata, ubi cuncta virilia et
+virtuosa esse deberent. Yet, at the summons, and with the approbation,
+of her feudal lord, a noble damsel was obliged to choose a husband and
+champion, (Assises de Jerusalem, c. 242, &c.) See in M. De Guignes (tom.
+i. p. 441-471) the accurate and useful tables of these dynasties, which
+are chiefly drawn from the Lignages d'Outremer.]
+
+[Footnote 124: They were called by derision Poullains, Pallani, and
+their name is never pronounced without contempt, (Ducange, Gloss. Latin.
+tom. v. p. 535; and Observations sur Joinville, p. 84, 85; Jacob. a
+Vitriaco Hist. Hierosol. i. c. 67, 72; and Sanut, l. iii. p. viii. c. 2,
+p. 182.) Illustrium virorum, qui ad Terrae Sanctae.... liberationem
+in ipsa manserunt, degeneres filii.... in deliciis enutriti, molles et
+effoe minati, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 125: This authentic detail is extracted from the Assises de
+Jerusalem (c. 324, 326-331.) Sanut (l. iii. p. viii. c. 1, p. 174)
+reckons only 518 knights, and 5775 followers.]
+
+[Footnote 126: The sum total, and the division, ascertain the service
+of the three great baronies at 100 knights each; and the text of the
+Assises, which extends the number to 500, can only be justified by this
+supposition.]
+
+[Footnote 127: Yet on great emergencies (says Sanut) the barons brought
+a voluntary aid; decentem comitivam militum juxta statum suum.]
+
+[Footnote 128: William of Tyre (l. xviii. c. 3, 4, 5) relates the
+ignoble origin and early insolence of the Hospitallers, who soon
+deserted their humble patron, St. John the Eleemosynary, for the more
+august character of St. John the Baptist, (see the ineffectual struggles
+of Pagi, Critica, A. D 1099, No. 14-18.) They assumed the profession of
+arms about the year 1120; the Hospital was mater; the Temple filia; the
+Teutonic order was founded A.D. 1190, at the siege of Acre, (Mosheim
+Institut p. 389, 390.)]
+
+[Footnote 129: See St. Bernard de Laude Novae Militiae Templi, composed
+A.D. 1132-1136, in Opp. tom. i. p. ii. p. 547-563, edit. Mabillon,
+Venet. 1750. Such an encomium, which is thrown away on the dead
+Templars, would be highly valued by the historians of Malta.]
+
+[Footnote 130: Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544. He assigns to the
+Hospitallers 19,000, to the Templars 9,000 maneria, word of much higher
+import (as Ducange has rightly observed) in the English than in the
+French idiom. Manor is a lordship, manoir a dwelling.]
+
+[Footnote 131: In the three first books of the Histoire de Chevaliers de
+Malthe par l'Abbe de Vertot, the reader may amuse himself with a fair,
+and sometimes flattering, picture of the order, while it was employed
+for the defence of Palestine. The subsequent books pursue their
+emigration to Rhodes and Malta.]
+
+The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions, was felt
+in its strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross, who elected for
+their chief the most deserving of his peers. Amidst the slaves of Asia,
+unconscious of the lesson or example, a model of political liberty was
+introduced; and the laws of the French kingdom are derived from the
+purest source of equality and justice. Of such laws, the first and
+indispensable condition is the assent of those whose obedience they
+require, and for whose benefit they are designed. No sooner had Godfrey
+of Bouillon accepted the office of supreme magistrate, than he solicited
+the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims, who were the best
+skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe. From these materials,
+with the counsel and approbation of the patriarch and barons, of the
+clergy and laity, Godfrey composed the Assise of Jerusalem, [132] a
+precious monument of feudal jurisprudence. The new code, attested by
+the seals of the king, the patriarch, and the viscount of Jerusalem,
+was deposited in the holy sepulchre, enriched with the improvements of
+succeeding times, and respectfully consulted as often as any doubtful
+question arose in the tribunals of Palestine. With the kingdom and city
+all was lost: [133] the fragments of the written law were preserved by
+jealous tradition [134] and variable practice till the middle of the
+thirteenth century: the code was restored by the pen of John d'Ibelin,
+count of Jaffa, one of the principal feudatories; [135] and the final
+revision was accomplished in the year thirteen hundred and sixty-nine,
+for the use of the Latin kingdom of Cyprus. [136]
+
+[Footnote 132: The Assises de Jerusalem, in old law French, were printed
+with Beaumanoir's Coutumes de Beauvoisis, (Bourges and Paris, 1690, in
+folio,) and illustrated by Gaspard Thaumas de la Thaumassiere, with a
+comment and glossary. An Italian version had been published in 1534, at
+Venice, for the use of the kingdom of Cyprus. * Note: See Wilken, vol.
+i. p. 17, &c.,--M.]
+
+[Footnote 133: A la terre perdue, tout fut perdu, is the vigorous
+expression of the Assise, (c. 281.) Yet Jerusalem capitulated with
+Saladin; the queen and the principal Christians departed in peace; and
+a code so precious and so portable could not provoke the avarice of the
+conquerors. I have sometimes suspected the existence of this original
+copy of the Holy Sepulchre, which might be invented to sanctify and
+authenticate the traditionary customs of the French in Palestine.]
+
+[Footnote 134: A noble lawyer, Raoul de Tabarie, denied the prayer of
+King Amauri, (A.D. 1195-1205,) that he would commit his knowledged to
+writing, and frankly declared, que de ce qu'il savoit ne feroit-il ja
+nul borjois son pareill, ne null sage homme lettre, (c. 281.)]
+
+[Footnote 135: The compiler of this work, Jean d'Ibelin, was count of
+Jaffa and Ascalon, lord of Baruth (Berytus) and Rames, and died A.D.
+1266, (Sanut, l. iii. p. ii. c. 5, 8.) The family of Ibelin, which
+descended from a younger brother of a count of Chartres in France, long
+flourished in Palestine and Cyprus, (see the Lignages de deca Mer, or
+d'Outremer, c. 6, at the end of the Assises de Jerusalem, an original
+book, which records the pedigrees of the French adventurers.)]
+
+[Footnote 136: By sixteen commissioners chosen in the states of the
+island: the work was finished the 3d of November, 1369, sealed with four
+seals and deposited in the cathedral of Nicosia, (see the preface to the
+Assises.)]
+
+The justice and freedom of the constitution were maintained by two
+tribunals of unequal dignity, which were instituted by Godfrey of
+Bouillon after the conquest of Jerusalem. The king, in person, presided
+in the upper court, the court of the barons. Of these the four most
+conspicuous were the prince of Galilee, the lord of Sidon and Caesarea,
+and the counts of Jaffa and Tripoli, who, perhaps with the constable and
+marshal, [137] were in a special manner the compeers and judges of
+each other. But all the nobles, who held their lands immediately of
+the crown, were entitled and bound to attend the king's court; and each
+baron exercised a similar jurisdiction on the subordinate assemblies of
+his own feudatories. The connection of lord and vassal was honorable
+and voluntary: reverence was due to the benefactor, protection to the
+dependant; but they mutually pledged their faith to each other; and the
+obligation on either side might be suspended by neglect or dissolved
+by injury. The cognizance of marriages and testaments was blended with
+religion, and usurped by the clergy: but the civil and criminal causes
+of the nobles, the inheritance and tenure of their fiefs, formed the
+proper occupation of the supreme court. Each member was the judge and
+guardian both of public and private rights. It was his duty to assert
+with his tongue and sword the lawful claims of the lord; but if an
+unjust superior presumed to violate the freedom or property of a vassal,
+the confederate peers stood forth to maintain his quarrel by word and
+deed. They boldly affirmed his innocence and his wrongs; demanded the
+restitution of his liberty or his lands; suspended, after a fruitless
+demand, their own service; rescued their brother from prison; and
+employed every weapon in his defence, without offering direct violence
+to the person of their lord, which was ever sacred in their eyes. [138]
+In their pleadings, replies, and rejoinders, the advocates of the court
+were subtle and copious; but the use of argument and evidence was often
+superseded by judicial combat; and the Assise of Jerusalem admits in
+many cases this barbarous institution, which has been slowly abolished
+by the laws and manners of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 137: The cautious John D'Ibelin argues, rather than affirms,
+that Tripoli is the fourth barony, and expresses some doubt concerning
+the right or pretension of the constable and marshal, (c. 323.)]
+
+[Footnote 138: Entre seignor et homme ne n'a que la foi;.... mais tant
+que l'homme doit a son seignor reverence en toutes choses, (c. 206.)
+Tous les hommes dudit royaume sont par ladite Assise tenus les uns as
+autres.... et en celle maniere que le seignor mette main ou face mettre
+au cors ou au fie d'aucun d'yaus sans esgard et sans connoissans de
+court, que tous les autres doivent venir devant le seignor, &c., (212.)
+The form of their remonstrances is conceived with the noble simplicity
+of freedom.]
+
+The trial by battle was established in all criminal cases which
+affected the life, or limb, or honor, of any person; and in all civil
+transactions, of or above the value of one mark of silver. It appears
+that in criminal cases the combat was the privilege of the accuser, who,
+except in a charge of treason, avenged his personal injury, or the death
+of those persons whom he had a right to represent; but wherever, from
+the nature of the charge, testimony could be obtained, it was necessary
+for him to produce witnesses of the fact. In civil cases, the combat was
+not allowed as the means of establishing the claim of the demandant;
+but he was obliged to produce witnesses who had, or assumed to have,
+knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the privilege of the
+defendant; because he charged the witness with an attempt by perjury to
+take away his right. He came therefore to be in the same situation as
+the appellant in criminal cases. It was not then as a mode of proof that
+the combat was received, nor as making negative evidence, (according
+to the supposition of Montesquieu; [139] but in every case the right to
+offer battle was founded on the right to pursue by arms the redress of
+an injury; and the judicial combat was fought on the same principle, and
+with the same spirit, as a private duel. Champions were only allowed to
+women, and to men maimed or past the age of sixty. The consequence of a
+defeat was death to the person accused, or to the champion or witness,
+as well as to the accuser himself: but in civil cases, the demandant
+was punished with infamy and the loss of his suit, while his witness and
+champion suffered ignominious death. In many cases it was in the option
+of the judge to award or to refuse the combat: but two are specified,
+in which it was the inevitable result of the challenge; if a faithful
+vassal gave the lie to his compeer, who unjustly claimed any portion of
+their lord's demesnes; or if an unsuccessful suitor presumed to impeach
+the judgment and veracity of the court. He might impeach them, but the
+terms were severe and perilous: in the same day he successively fought
+all the members of the tribunal, even those who had been absent; a
+single defeat was followed by death and infamy; and where none could
+hope for victory, it is highly probable that none would adventure the
+trial. In the Assise of Jerusalem, the legal subtlety of the count
+of Jaffa is more laudably employed to elude, than to facilitate, the
+judicial combat, which he derives from a principle of honor rather than
+of superstition. [140]
+
+[Footnote 139: See l'Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. In the forty years
+since its publication, no work has been more read and criticized; and
+the spirit of inquiry which it has excited is not the least of our
+obligations to the author.]
+
+[Footnote 140: For the intelligence of this obscure and obsolete
+jurisprudence (c. 80-111) I am deeply indebted to the friendship of a
+learned lord, who, with an accurate and discerning eye, has surveyed the
+philosophic history of law. By his studies, posterity might be
+enriched: the merit of the orator and the judge can be felt only by his
+contemporaries.]
+
+Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the yoke of
+feudal tyranny, the institution of cities and corporations is one of
+the most powerful; and if those of Palestine are coeval with the first
+crusade, they may be ranked with the most ancient of the Latin world.
+Many of the pilgrims had escaped from their lords under the banner of
+the cross; and it was the policy of the French princes to tempt their
+stay by the assurance of the rights and privileges of freemen. It is
+expressly declared in the Assise of Jerusalem, that after instituting,
+for his knights and barons, the court of peers, in which he presided
+himself, Godfrey of Bouillon established a second tribunal, in which
+his person was represented by his viscount. The jurisdiction of this
+inferior court extended over the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was
+composed of a select number of the most discreet and worthy citizens,
+who were sworn to judge, according to the laws of the actions and
+fortunes of their equals. [141] In the conquest and settlement of new
+cities, the example of Jerusalem was imitated by the kings and their
+great vassals; and above thirty similar corporations were founded before
+the loss of the Holy Land. Another class of subjects, the Syrians, [142]
+or Oriental Christians, were oppressed by the zeal of the clergy, and
+protected by the toleration of the state. Godfrey listened to their
+reasonable prayer, that they might be judged by their own national laws.
+A third court was instituted for their use, of limited and domestic
+jurisdiction: the sworn members were Syrians, in blood, language, and
+religion; but the office of the president (in Arabic, of the rais) was
+sometimes exercised by the viscount of the city. At an immeasurable
+distance below the nobles, the burgesses, and the strangers, the
+Assise of Jerusalem condescends to mention the villains and slaves, the
+peasants of the land and the captives of war, who were almost equally
+considered as the objects of property. The relief or protection of these
+unhappy men was not esteemed worthy of the care of the legislator;
+but he diligently provides for the recovery, though not indeed for the
+punishment, of the fugitives. Like hounds, or hawks, who had strayed
+from the lawful owner, they might be lost and claimed: the slave and
+falcon were of the same value; but three slaves, or twelve oxen, were
+accumulated to equal the price of the war-horse; and a sum of three
+hundred pieces of gold was fixed, in the age of chivalry, as the
+equivalent of the more noble animal. [143]
+
+[Footnote 141: Louis le Gros, who is considered as the father of this
+institution in France, did not begin his reign till nine years (A.D.
+1108) after Godfrey of Bouillon, (Assises, c. 2, 324.) For its origin
+and effects, see the judicious remarks of Dr. Robertson, (History of
+Charles V. vol. i. p. 30-36, 251-265, quarto edition.)]
+
+[Footnote 142: Every reader conversant with the historians of the
+crusades will understand by the peuple des Suriens, the Oriental
+Christians, Melchites, Jacobites, or Nestorians, who had all adopted the
+use of the Arabic language, (vol. iv. p. 593.)]
+
+[Footnote 143: See the Assises de Jerusalem, (310, 311, 312.) These laws
+were enacted as late as the year 1350, in the kingdom of Cyprus. In
+the same century, in the reign of Edward I., I understand, from a late
+publication, (of his Book of Account,) that the price of a war-horse was
+not less exorbitant in England.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of The Decline and Fall of
+the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
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