After a mild expostulation, and a glorious victory he resolved on revenge. He invaded Tartary with armies so vast that thirteen miles stretched between his left and right wing. In a march of five months they rarely beheld the footsteps of man. At length the armies met in most fearful conflict. In the heat of conflict the treachery of the bearer of the imperial standard of Kipzak turned the tide of victory to the Zagatai, and Timour gave up the mingled hosts to the "wind of desolation." The pursuit of a flying enemy led him into the provinces of Russia. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar, but he turned his armies southward, and on the banks of the Don received a deputation of the merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, and Spain, who had built up the great commerce and the city of Azoph. They offered him gifts, admired his magnificence, trusted his word. But the peaceful visit of an Emir who explored the state of the magazines and harbors was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars, who reduced the city to ashes, pillaged the Moslems, and put every Christian to the sword or sold them into slavery. Having laid waste all the cities in Southern Russia, he returned to his capital at Samarcand. Samarcand, the center of his magnificence, the depot of all riches, arose and extended itself as by magic at each return of the world's conqueror. It is said that Babylon, Bagdad, Persepolis, Palmyra, Baalbec and Damascus, were all cast into the shade by the mosques, palaces, gardens, and aqueducts which arose under the hands of most skillful artisans brought from every captured city to decorate the capital of a barbarian. Here amid the delights of his gardens, the love of his women, the conversation of his men of letters, the eulogies of poets, did Tamerlane refresh himself after the exploits of a five years' campaign. But his loves, and delights of ease, did not make him forget that dream of all conquerors--India, and at this invasion he overran it from the Indus to Delhi, and from the Ocean to Thibet. As he proceeded on his march, his army became encumbered with the captives, and he ordered one hundred thousand of them slain in a single night. Remorse, pity, and indignation, seized even a Tartar army, but Tamerlane answered it only by the conquest and massacre of Delhi, that great and magnificent city which had flourished for three hundred years, under Mohammedan kings; the ruins of which are still seen for miles on every side of the modern city. The blood of the slain, crimsoned the waters of the Sacred Ganges for many, many miles on its course to the sea. The recital of his cruelties could not be believed, were they not recorded in the history of all the nations he conquered. The treasures were of incalculable value, and every soldier received one hundred slaves for his share and every Tartar camp follower, twenty.