History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
suspend, the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle
the flame, of science; to restrain the military commander by the
restoration of civil magistrates; and to instil the love of peace
and justice into the minds of the Moguls. He struggled with the
barbarism of the first conquerors; but his salutary lessons
produced a rich harvest in the second generation. 321 The
northern, and by degrees the southern, empire acquiesced in the
government of Cublai, the lieutenant, and afterwards the
successor, of Mangou; and the nation was loyal to a prince who
had been educated in the manners of China. He restored the forms
of her venerable constitution; and the victors submitted to the
laws, the fashions, and even the prejudices, of the vanquished
people. This peaceful triumph, which has been more than once
repeated, may be ascribed, in a great measure, to the numbers and
servitude of the Chinese. The Mogul army was dissolved in a vast
and populous country; and their emperors adopted with pleasure a
political system, which gives to the prince the solid substance
of despotism, and leaves to the subject the empty names of
philosophy, freedom, and filial obedience. 322 Under the reign of
Cublai, letters and commerce, peace and justice, were restored;
the great canal, of five hundred miles, was opened from Nankin to
the capital: he fixed his residence at Pekin; and displayed in
his court the magnificence of the greatest monarch of Asia. Yet
this learned prince declined from the pure and simple religion of
his great ancestor: he sacrificed to the idol Fo; and his blind
attachment to the lamas of Thibet and the bonzes of China 33
provoked the censure of the disciples of Confucius. His
successors polluted the palace with a crowd of eunuchs,
physicians, and astrologers, while thirteen millions of their
subjects were consumed in the provinces by famine. One hundred
and forty years after the death of Zingis, his degenerate race,
the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by a revolt of the native
Chinese; and the Mogul emperors were lost in the oblivion of the
desert. Before this revolution, they had forfeited their
supremacy over the dependent branches of their house, the khans
of Kipzak and Russia, the khans of Zagatai, or Transoxiana, and
the khans of Iran or Persia. By their distance and power, these
royal lieutenants had soon been released from the duties of
obedience; and after the death of Cublai, they scorned to accept
a sceptre or a title from his unworthy successors. According to
their respective situations, they maintained the simplicity of
the pastoral life, or assumed the luxury of the cities of Asia;
but the princes and their hordes were alike disposed for the
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