Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3): The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive ChristianityNewman, John Henry
HistoryHistory
Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3): The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive Christianity
Newman, John Henry
Apollonius, of Tyana; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Turkey -- History
The exploits of those warriors have the air of Eastern romance; 700,000
men marched under the standard of Zingis; and in one of his battles he
left 160,000 of his enemies upon the field. Before Timour died, he had
had twenty-seven crowns upon his head. When he invaded Turkistan, his
army stretched along a line of thirteen miles. We may conceive his
energy and determination, when we are told that, for five months, he
marched through wildernesses, subsisting his immense army on the
fortunes of the chase. In his invasion of Hindostan he had to pass over
a high chain of mountains, and, in one stage of the passage, had to be
lowered by ropes on a scaffold, down a precipice of 150 cubits in depth.
He attempted the operation five times before he got safely to the
bottom.
These two extraordinary men rivalled or exceeded Attila in their
wholesale barbarities. Attila vaunted that the grass never grew again
after his horse's hoof; so it was the boast of Zingis, that when he
destroyed a city, he did it so completely, that his horse could gallop
across its site without stumbling. He depopulated the whole country from
the Danube to the Baltic in a season; and the ruins of cities and
churches were strewed with the bones of the inhabitants. He allured the
fugitives from the woods, where they lay hid, under a promise of pardon
and peace; he made them gather in the harvest and the vintage, and then
he put them to death. At Gran, in Hungary, he had 300 noble ladies
slaughtered in his presence. But these were slight excesses compared
with other of his acts. When he had subdued the northern part of China,
he proposed, not in the heat of victory, but deliberately in council, to
exterminate all its inhabitants, and to turn it into a cattle-walk; from
this project indeed he was diverted, but a similar process was his rule
with the cities he conquered. Let it be understood, he came down upon
cities living in peace and prosperity, as the cities of England now,
which had done him no harm, which had not resisted him, which submitted
to him at discretion on his summons. What was his treatment of such? He
ordered out the whole population on some adjacent plain; then he
proceeded to sack their city. Next he divided them into three parts:
first, the soldiers and others capable of bearing arms; these he either
enlisted into his armies, or slaughtered on the spot. The second class
consisted of the rich, the women, and the artizans;--these he divided
amongst his followers. The remainder, the old, infirm, and poor, he
suffered to return to their rifled city. Such was his ordinary course;
but when anything occurred to provoke him, the most savage excesses
followed. The slightest offence, or appearance of offence, on the part
of an individual, sufficed for the massacre of whole populations. The
three great capitals of Khorasan were destroyed by his orders, and a
reckoning made of the slain; at Maru were killed 1,300,000; at Herat,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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