At the end of that period appeared on the Indian scene the formidable figure of Timour, the Tartar, sometimes known as Tamerlane or Tambourlaine, meaning Tamer, or Timour, the Lame. He too was a Mahommedan, and doubtless was of the same stock as those Afghan rulers who claimed Turkish descent; but that distant relationship did not deter him from the invasion of India from the north. He won his way easily enough as far as Delhi, and there appears no reason why he should not have pushed his conquests as far south as he wished. He returned to his own country, however, and shortly afterwards went westward against the Ottoman Turks and very heavily defeated them at Angora, the new capital of modern Turkey. But for the lack of ships, it seems certain that Timour, with his Tartar hordes, would have passed over into Europe--with what result on our story no one can say. But he had no means of crossing the Dardanelles, and once more he went back to his own country. Rather more than a thousand years later one of his descendants again invaded India from the north, and made a beginning of that Mogul empire which was to become far more widely and firmly established, {34} under the great Akbar, towards the end of the sixteenth century. Such, or somewhat such, are the main features of the stories of that new world in the West and that old world in the East which were opened up by the enterprise of Spain and Portugal about the year 1500. {35} CHAPTER III THREE KINGS AND A MONK Apart from the discovery of the West and of the new sea-route to the East, the most important events in the early years of the sixteenth century happened in Italy--Northern Italy. We have seen that Italy was almost the only country which showed no sign, as yet, of settling down within something like the boundaries which delimited the European nations up to the time of the Great War. It must be understood that this is a statement which takes no account of the differences made by Napoleon's victories at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We may disregard them, for the moment, because they were not lasting. But the most important of all the events happening in Italy had nothing to do with changes of territories or national boundaries. Far more interesting and more helpful to the world was the growth of that Renaissance, or new birth, of love of letters and of all artistic beauty which we saw beginning with Dante and Petrarch and Boccaccio, and some of the early Italian painters, sculptors, and jewellers. Moreover, we must not forget the glorious architecture which goes by the name of Gothic, nor the noble buildings in that Byzantine style which the influence of the Moors carried into Spain.