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.
In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the
escape of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the
Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less
potent than Alexander, they were pressed, like the Macedonian,
both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and had the
Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to
the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and
voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the
vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks; 34 and in a second
expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the
capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms
into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine
war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fifty-seventh degree of
latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants and regulated the
tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the
Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand
horse penetrated through the gates of Derbend; and the Greeks
might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the
recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus, 35 at a distance
from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a
Thracian castle, by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of
their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance
of Azzadin, the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person
and the treasure of the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name
is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable
rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak;
obtained in marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palæologus;
and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The
subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and
fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been
driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant
life, and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the
influence in Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first
terror of their arms secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of
the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal
interview with John Vataces; and his artful policy encouraged the
Turks to defend their barrier against the common enemy. 36 That
barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of
the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The
formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at the
head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of
the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he
had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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