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.
641 (return) [ See Schiltberger’s very graphic account of the
massacre. He was led out to be slaughtered in cold blood with the
rest f the Christian prisoners, amounting to 10,000. He was
spared at the intercession of the son of Bajazet, with a few
others, on account of their extreme youth. No one under 20 years
of age was put to death. The “duke of Burgundy” was obliged to be
a spectator of this butchery which lasted from early in the
morning till four o’clock, P. M. It ceased only at the
supplication of the leaders of Bajazet’s army. Schiltberger, p.
14.—M.]
65 (return) [ Sherefeddin Ali (Hist. de Timour Bec, l. v. c. 13)
allows Bajazet a round number of 12,000 officers and servants of
the chase. A part of his spoils was afterwards displayed in a
hunting-match of Timour, l. hounds with satin housings; 2.
leopards with collars set with jewels; 3. Grecian greyhounds; and
4, dogs from Europe, as strong as African lions, (idem, l. vi. c.
15.) Bajazet was particularly fond of flying his hawks at cranes,
(Chalcondyles, l. ii. p. 85.)]
After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John
Palæologus remained thirty-six years, the helpless, and, as it
should seem, the careless spectator of the public ruin. 66 Love,
or rather lust, was his only vigorous passion; and in the
embraces of the wives and virgins of the city, the Turkish slave
forgot the dishonor of the emperor of the _Romans_ Andronicus,
his eldest son, had formed, at Adrianople, an intimate and guilty
friendship with Sauzes, the son of Amurath; and the two youths
conspired against the authority and lives of their parents. The
presence of Amurath in Europe soon discovered and dissipated
their rash counsels; and, after depriving Sauzes of his sight,
the Ottoman threatened his vassal with the treatment of an
accomplice and an enemy, unless he inflicted a similar punishment
on his own son. Palæologus trembled and obeyed; and a cruel
precaution involved in the same sentence the childhood and
innocence of John, the son of the criminal. But the operation was
so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the one retained
the sight of an eye, and the other was afflicted only with the
infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession, the
two princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of
Manuel, the second son of the reigning monarch, was rewarded with
the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the
turbulence of the Latins and the levity of the Greeks, produced a
revolution; 661 and the two emperors were buried in the tower
from whence the two prisoners were exalted to the throne. Another
period of two years afforded Palæologus and Manuel the means of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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