Timur (Tamerlane) – 2

When Timur first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India or Hindustan, he was answered by a murmur of discontent:

Continuing Timur’s (Tamerlane) Conquests,
our selection from Edward Gibbon. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Timur’s (Tamerlane).Conquests

Time: 1370-1405

When Timur first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India or Hindustan, he was answered by a murmur of discontent: “The rivers! and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armor! and the elephants, destroyers of men!” But the displeasure of the Emperor was more dreadful than all these terrors; and his superior reason was convinced that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was safe and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindustan: the subahs of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mongol army moved in three great divisions, and Timur observes with pleasure that the ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with the ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet.

Between the Jihun and the Indus they crossed one of the ridges of mountains which are styled by the Arabian geographers the “Stony Girdles of the Earth.” The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the Emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold — the ropes were one hundred and fifty cubits in length — and before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timur crossed the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attock, and successively traversed, in the footsteps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers, that fall into the master stream. From Attock to Delhi the high road measures no more than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the southeast; and the motive of Timur was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command the conquest of Multan. On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept; the Mongol entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city, which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings.

The siege, more especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of weakness, the Sultan Mahmud and his wazir to descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Mongols to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timur made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindustan, and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but the order or license of a general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or Gentoos, who still surpass, in the proportion of ten to one, the numbers of the Moslems. In this pious design he advanced one hundred miles to the northeast of Delhi, passed the Ganges, fought several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the famous rock of Cupele, the statue of the cow, * that seems to discharge the mighty river, whose source is far distant among the mountains of Tibet. His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children in a warm climate would degenerate into a race of Hindus.

[* A most wonderful scene. The B’hagiratha or Ganges issues from under a very low arch at the foot of the grand snow-bed. The illiterate mountaineers compare the pendent icicles to Mahodeva’s hair. Hindoos of research may formerly have been here; and if so, one cannot think of any place to which they might more aptly give the name of a cow’s mouth than to this extraordinary débouché.]

It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timur was informed, by his speedy messengers, of the disturbances which had arisen on the confines of Georgia and Anatolia, of the revolt of the Christians, and the ambitious designs of the sultan Bajazet. His vigor of mind and body was not impaired by sixty-three years and innumerable fatigues; and, after enjoying some tranquil months in the palace of Samarkand, he proclaimed a new expedition of seven years into the western countries of Asia. To the soldiers who had served in the Indian war he granted the choice of remaining at home or following their prince; but the troops of all the provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble at Ispahan and wait the arrival of the imperial standard. It was first directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong only in their rocks, their castles, and the winter season; but these obstacles were overcome by the zeal and perseverance of Timur: the rebels submitted to the tribute or the Koran; and if both religions boasted of their martyrs, that name is more justly due to the Christian prisoners, who were offered the choice of abjuration or death.

On his descent from the hills the Emperor gave audience to the first ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the hostile correspondence of complaints and menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between two jealous and haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting. The Mongol and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the neighborhood of Erzerum and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful limit been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these ambitious monarchs might accuse his rival of violating his territory, of threatening his vassals and protecting his rebels; and, by the name of rebels, each understood the fugitive princes, whose kingdoms he had usurped and whose life or liberty he implacably pursued. In their victorious career Timur was impatient of an equal, and Bajazet was ignorant of a superior.

Continued.

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