But Tamerlane hesitated only a moment. Prodigal of men, he set thousands at work to undermine the rocks that formed the foundation of the walls. He emptied the moats by cutting deeper channels for the river. He cut down adjacent forests to prop up the mines dug under the towers of the walls; and then setting on fire this underground forest he saw the rocks give way engulfing walls, houses and defenders in the ruins. Twenty days and nights sufficed to open enormous breaches for his soldiers. The city naked and trembling before him awaited its fate. Timour promised to spare the lives of Mohammedans and Christians, and to be content with servitude. But scarcely had he entered it before he inundated it with the blood of its defenders. By his ferocity he made all the East and the West to shudder, and the world to stand aghast at its recital after more than four centuries have covered its horrors. Four thousand Ottomans were buried alive up to the neck and thus left to perish. Countless Christians were bound in couples and cast into trenches which were then covered with boards and earth, and over them the Tartars pitched their tents and took fiendish delight in their moanings. Women were bound by the hair of their heads to the tails of wild young horses and thus dragged to death. The young children were bound hand and foot and laid together on an open plain and trampled to death by his cavalry. With the exception of the male children fit for slavery, and the young girls reserved for the harem the entire population was destroyed. Do you shudder at even this cool recital? Far worse horrors are still being endured by the Christian people of Armenia this very day on ground that is dyed with the blood of a thousand years of martyrdom. And still Christian Europe is unmoved; and the Turk, drunk with the blood of his victims still is propped up on his throne by the arms that should drive him back to the deserts of Tartary: and Christian America contents itself with trying by their relief funds to keep alive the starving remnants of this harried race whose cry to Christendom is "either kill us or in God's name redeem us." As Timour took up again his march from desolated Siwas he dragged with cords along the stones of the road at the heels of his horse the head of the governor of Siwas, one of the sons of Bajazet who was then besieging Constantinople. Aroused by the danger that threatened him yet with a deep sadness caused by the death of his son which settled upon him as if in presentiment of his own fate, Bajazet raised the siege, called all his forces together to meet the bloody Conqueror of the East. Aleppo and Damascus meanwhile fell with terrible slaughter, and now on the plains not far from Siwas, Timour awaited the coming of Bajazet.