Part 16

While Petrarch indulged these prophetic visions the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor began to mark the irregularity of its course and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not balanced by cool and commanding reason; he magnified in a tenfold proportion the objects of hope and fear; and prudence, which could not have erected, did not presume to fortify his throne. In the blaze of prosperity his virtues were insensibly tinctured with the adjacent vices--justice with cruelty, liberality with profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile and ostentatious vanity. He might have learned that the ancient tribunes, so strong and sacred in the public opinion, were not distinguished in style, habit, or appearance from an ordinary plebeian; and that as often as they visited the city on foot a single _viator_, or beadle, attended the exercise of their office. The Gracchi would have frowned or smiled could they have read the sonorous titles and epithets of their successor, “NICHOLAS, SEVERE AND MERCIFUL; DELIVERER OF ROME; DEFENDER OF ITALY; FRIEND OF MANKIND, AND OF LIBERTY, PEACE, AND JUSTICE; TRIBUNE AUGUST.” His theatrical pageants had prepared the revolution; but Rienzi abused, in luxury and pride, the political maxim of speaking to the eyes as well as the understanding of the multitude. From nature he had received the gift of a handsome person till it was swelled and disfigured by intemperance; and his propensity to laughter was corrected in the magistrate by the affectation of gravity and sternness. He was clothed, at least on public occasions, in a party-colored robe of velvet or satin lined with fur and embroidered with gold. The rod of justice, which he carried in his hand, was a scepter of polished steel, crowned with a globe and cross of gold, and inclosing a small fragment of the true and holy wood. In his civil and religious processions through the city he rode on a white steed, the symbol of royalty. The great banner of the republic, a sun with a circle of stars, a dove with an olive-branch, was displayed over his head; a shower of gold and silver was scattered among the populace; fifty guards with halberds encompassed his person; a troop of horse preceded his march, and their cymbals and trumpets were of massy silver.

These extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people; and their own vanity was gratified in the vanity of their leader. But in his private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and abstinence; and the plebeians, who were awed by the splendor of the nobles, were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His wife, his son, his uncle (a barber in name and profession), exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and princely expense; and without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into the vices of a king.

TIMOUR OR TAMERLANE.

BY EDWARD GIBBON.

[Tamerlane, corruption of Timour Lenk (“the lame”), born 1336, died 1405. One of the greatest conquerors of history, he was a second Genghis Khan, whom he resembled much in character. His descendants speedily lost the greater part of his conquests, and the last of his family fell before the power of the English East India Company in India, of which he had become a mere pensioner, though nominally the “Great Mogul” and Emperor of Delhi.]

The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the ambition of Timour. To live in the memory and esteem of future ages was the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military transactions of his reign were diligently recorded in the journals of his secretaries; the authentic narrative was revised by the persons best informed of each particular transaction, and it is believed in the empire and family of Timour that the monarch himself composed the “Commentaries” of his life and the “Institutions” of his government. But these cares were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and these precious memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed from the world, or at least from the knowledge of Europe. The nations which he vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance has long repeated the tale of calumny which had disfigured the birth and character, the person, and even the name of _Tamerlane_. Yet his real merit would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a peasant to the throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of reproach, unless he had the weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps an honorable, infirmity.

In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the house of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel subject; yet he sprang from the noble tribe of Berlass; his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had been the vizier of Zagatai in his new realm of Transoxiana; and in the ascent of some generations the branch of Timour is confounded, at least by the females, with the imperial stem. He was born forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in the village of Sebzar, in the fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs, as well as of a toman of ten thousand horse. His birth was cast on one of those periods of anarchy which announce the fall of the Asiatic dynasties, and opened a new field to adventurous ambition. The khans of Zagatai were extinct, the emirs aspired to independence, and their domestic feuds could only be suspended by the conquest and tyranny of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or Calmucks, invaded the Transoxian kingdom.

From the twelfth year of his age, Timour had entered the field of action; in the twenty-fifth he stood forth as the deliverer of his country; and the eyes and wishes of the people were turned toward a hero who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of the law and of the army had pledged their salvation to support him with their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were silent and afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he retreated to the desert with only sixty horsemen. The fugitives were overtaken by a thousand Getes, whom he repulsed with incredible slaughter, and his enemies were forced to exclaim, “Timour is a wonderful man; fortune and the divine favor are with him.” But in this bloody action his own followers were reduced to ten, a number which was soon diminished by the desertion of three Carizmians. He wandered in the desert with his wife, seven companions, and four horses; and sixty-two days was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, whence he escaped by his own courage and the remorse of the oppressor. After swimming the broad and rapid stream of the Jihoon, or Oxus, he led, during some months, the life of a vagrant and outlaw, on the borders of the adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in adversity; he learned to distinguish the friends of his person, the associates of his fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for their advantage, and above all for his own. On his return to his native country, Timour was successively joined by the parties of his confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor can I refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity, one of their fortunate encounters. He presented himself as a guide to three chiefs, who were at the head of seventy horse. “When their eyes fell upon me,” says Timour, “they were overwhelmed with joy; and they alighted from their horses; and they came and kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my horse, and took each of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of the first chief; and my girdle, rich in jewels and wrought with gold, I bound on the loins of the second; and the third, I clothed in my own coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and the hour of prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our horses, and came to my dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a feast.”

His trusty hands were soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he led them against a superior foe, and after some vicissitudes of war, the Getes were finally driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own glory, but much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some blood to be spilled, before he could teach his equals to obey him as their master. The birth and power of Emir Houssein compelled him to accept a vicious and unworthy colleague, whose sister was the best beloved of his wives. Their union was short and jealous; but the policy of Timour in their frequent quarrels exposed his rival to the reproach of injustice and perfidy; and, after a small defeat, Houssein was slain by some sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last time, to disobey the commands of their lord.

At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet or _couroultai_, he was invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the Emir Timour reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. A fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world, and before his death the crown of Zagatai was one of the twenty-seven crowns which he had placed on his head.

The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is still invested with the imperial title; and the admiration of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he was lame of a hand and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest, and, if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements. In his religion he was a zealous though not perhaps an orthodox Mussulman; but his sound understanding may tempt us to believe, that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of policy.

In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim that, whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed that the commands of anger and destruction were more strictly executed than those of beneficence and favor. His sons and grandsons, of whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his decease, were his first and most submissive subjects; and whenever they deviated from their duty they were corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastinado, and afterward restored to honor and command. Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of loving his friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded on the public interest, and it may be sufficient to applaud the wisdom of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not impoverished, and for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveler and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labors of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes--are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast that at his accession to the throne Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, while under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the east to the west. Such was his confidence of merit, that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories and a title to universal dominion.

The following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities, was often marked by his abominable trophies--by columns or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkistan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. Thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits.

The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor of inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the “Institutions” of Timour, as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren--the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after _his_ decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood, and, before the end of a century, Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbecks from the north, and the Turkomans of the black and white sheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbeck arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls) extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been dissolved, the treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber, and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the northern ocean.[23]

JEANNE D’ARC.

BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

[A French heroine, otherwise known as La Pucelle and the Maid of Orleans, date of birth uncertain, burned at the stake by English influence as a sorceress at Rouen in 1431. Her enthusiasm and the belief in the supernatural mission so inspired the French and daunted the English as to turn the tide of war against the latter, and was a main cause of ending that series of English invasions which had imperiled the national existence of France.]

Jeanne d’Arc was the child of a laborer of Domrémy, a little village in the neighborhood of Vaucouleurs on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domrémy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees, and sang songs to the “good people,” who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but “a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways,” spinning and sewing by her mother’s side while the other girls went to the fields, attended to the poor and sick, fond of church, and listening to the church-bell with a dreamy passion of delight which never left her. The quiet life was soon broken by the storm of war as it at last came home to Domrémy. As the outcasts and wounded passed by the young peasant-girl gave them her bed and nursed them in their sickness. Her whole nature summed itself up in one absorbing passion: she “had pity,” to use the phrase forever on her lip, “on the fair realm of France.”

As her passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from the Lorraine border should save the land; she saw visions; St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, and bade her go to the help of the king and restore to him his realm. “Messire,” answered the girl, “I am but a poor maiden; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to lead men-at-arms.” The archangel returned to give her courage, and to tell her of “the pity” that there was in heaven for the fair realm of France. The girl wept, and longed that the angels who appeared to her would carry her away, but her mission was clear. It was in vain that her father, when he heard her purpose, swore to drown her ere she should go to the field with men-at-arms. It was in vain that the priest, the wise people of the village, the captain of Vaucouleurs, doubted and refused to aid her. “I must go to the king,” persisted the peasant-girl, “even if I wear my limbs to the very knees.... I had far rather rest and spin by my mother’s side,” she pleaded, with a touching pathos, “for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it.” “And who,” they asked, “is your Lord?” “He is God.” Words such as these touched the rough captain at last; he took Jeanne by the hand and swore to lead her to the king. When she reached Chinon she found hesitation and doubt. The theologians proved from their books that they ought not to believe her. “There is more in God’s book than in yours,” Jeanne answered, simply. At last Charles received her in the midst of a throng of nobles and soldiers. “Gentle Dauphin,” said the girl, “my name is Jeanne the Maid. The heavenly King sends me to tell you that you shall be anointed and crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the heavenly King who is the King of France.”

The girl was in her eighteenth year, tall, finely formed, with all the vigor and activity of her peasant rearing, able to stay from dawn to nightfall on horseback without meat or drink. As she mounted her charger, clad in white armor from head to foot, with the great white banner studded with _fleur-de-lis_ waving over her head, she seemed “a thing wholly divine, whether to see or hear.” The ten thousand men-at-arms who followed her from Blois, rough plunderers whose only prayer was that of La Hire, “Sire Dieu, I pray you to do for La Hire what La Hire would do for you were you captain-at-arms and he God,” left off their oaths and foul living at her word and gathered round the altars on their march. Her shrewd peasant humor helped her to manage the wild soldiery, and her followers laughed over their camp-fires at the old warrior who had been so puzzled by her prohibition of oaths that she suffered him still to swear by his _bâton_. In the midst of her enthusiasm her good sense never left her. The people crowded round her as she rode along, praying her to work miracles, and bringing crosses and chaplets to be blessed by her touch. “Touch them yourself,” she said to an old Dame Margaret; “your touch will be just as good as mine.” But her faith in her mission remained as firm as ever. “The Maid prays and requires you,” she wrote to Bedford, “to work no more distraction in France, but to come in her company to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the Turk.”--“I bring you,” she told Dunois when he sallied out of Orleans to meet her, “the best aid ever sent to any one, the aid of the King of Heaven.”

The besiegers looked on overawed as she entered Orleans, and, riding round the walls, bade the people look fearlessly on the dreaded forts which surrounded them. Her enthusiasm drove the hesitating generals to engage the handful of besiegers, and the enormous disproportion of forces at once made itself felt. Fort after fort was taken till only the strongest remained, and then the council of war resolved to adjourn the attack. “You have taken your counsel,” replied Jeanne, “and I take mine.” Placing herself at the head of the men-at-arms, she ordered the gates to be thrown open, and led them against the fort. Few as they were, the English fought desperately, and the Maid, who had fallen wounded while endeavoring to scale its walls, was borne into a vineyard, while Dunois sounded the retreat. “Wait a while!” the girl imperiously pleaded, “eat and drink! So soon as my standard touches the wall you shall enter the fort.” It touched, and the assailants burst in. On the next day the siege was abandoned, and the force which had conducted it withdrew in good order to the north.

In the midst of her triumph, Jeanne still remained the pure, tender-hearted peasant-girl of the Vosges. Her first visit as she entered Orleans was to the great church, and there, as she knelt at mass, she wept in such a passion of devotion that “all the people wept with her.” Her tears burst forth afresh at her first sight of bloodshed and of the corpses strewed over the battle-field. She grew frightened at her first wound, and only threw off the touch of womanly fear when she heard the signal for retreat.

Yet more womanly was the purity with which she passed through the brutal warriors of a mediæval camp. It was her care for her honor that had led her to clothe herself in a soldier’s dress. She wept hot tears when told of the foul taunts of the English, and called passionately on God to witness her chastity. “Yield thee, yield thee, Glasdale,” she cried to the English warrior whose insults had been foulest, as he fell wounded at her feet; “you called me harlot! I have great pity on your soul.” But all thought of herself was lost in the thought of her mission. It was in vain that the French generals strove to remain on the Loire. Jeanne was resolute to complete her task, and, while the English remained panic-stricken around Paris, the army followed her from Gien through Troyes, growing in number as it advanced, till it reached the gates of Rheims. With the coronation of Charles, the Maid felt her errand to be over. “O gentle king, the pleasure of God is done!” she cried, as she flung herself at the feet of Charles VII, and asked leave to go home. “Would it were his pleasure,” she pleaded with the archbishop, as he forced her to remain, “that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be so glad to see me again!”