356 CONQUEST OF SICILY BY * [CH. LVI. reason. After his decease, the kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous union of the German empire with the kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion blind and inactive; and if it were true that Celestine the Third had kicked away the imperial crown from the head of the prostrate Harry, such an act of impotent pride could serve only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure;† their fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened the harbour of Palermo; and the first act of his government was to abolish the privileges, and to seize the property, of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mahometans; they fought in the capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic the Second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till they were extirpated at the end of the thirteenth century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. All the proturbare contendant. The Normans and Sicilians appear to be confounded. *The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden (p. 689), will lightly weigh against the silence of German and Italian history. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 156.) The priests and pilgrims who returned from Rome exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy father. + Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo. (Caffari, Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 367, 368.) For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the annals of Muratori (tom. x. p. 149, and A.D. 1223-1247), Giannone (tom. ii. p. 385), and of the originals, in Muratori's Collection, Richard de St. Germano A.D. 1201.] THE EMPEROR HENRY VI. * 357 calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored, were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres, and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom; the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily. The young king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps; and, on the slightest rumour of rebellion the captives were deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constantia herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of her country; and the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years after this revolution, the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy; the seeptre of her ancient dukes had been transmitted, by a granddaughter of William the Conqueror, to the house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished nations. (tom. vii. p. 996), Matteo Spinelli de Giovenazzo (tom. vii. p. 1064) Nicholas de Jamsilla (tom. x. p. 494), and Matteo Villani (tom. xiv. 1. 7, p. 103). The last of these insinuates, that in reducing the Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather artifice than violence. + Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec (1. 4, c. 20.) Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omnem lapidum pretiosorum et gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 summariis, gloriose ad terram suam redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions the violation of the royal tombs and corpses, computes the spoil of Salerno at two hundred thousand ounces of gold (p. 746). On these occasions I am almost tempted to exclaim, with the listening maid in La Fontaine-" Par ma foi, je voudrais avoir ce qui s'en faut," 353 THE TURKS. [CH. LVII. CHAPTER LVII-THE TURKS OF THE HOUSE OF SELJUK.—THEIR REVOLT AGAINST MAHMUD, CONQUEROR OF HINDOSTAN. —TOGRUL SUBDUES PERSIA, AND PROTECTS THE CALIPHS.-DEFEAT AND CAPTIVITY OF THE EMPEROR ROMANUS DIOGENES BY ALP ARSLAN.— POWER AND MAGNIFICENCE OF MALEK SHAH.-CONQUEST OF ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA.-STATE AND OPPRESSION OF JERUSALEM.-PILGRIMAGES TO THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. FROM the isle of Sicily, the reader must transport himself beyond the Caspian sea, to the original seat of the Turks or Turkmans, against whom the first crusade was principally directed. Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since dissolved; but the name was still famous among the Greeks and Orientals; and the fragments of the nation, each a powerful and independent people, were scattered over the desert from China to the Oxus and the Danube; the colony of Hungarians was admitted into the republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction. While Apulia and Sicily were subdued by the Norman lance, a swarm of these northern shepherds overspread the kingdoms of Persia; their princes of the race of Seljuk erected a splendid and solid_empire from Samarcand to the confines of Greece and Egypt; and the Turks have maintained their dominion i Asia Minor, till the victorious crescent has been planted on the dome of St. Sophia. But in One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mahmood or Mahmud, the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia, one thousand years after the birth of Christ. His father Sebectagi was the slave of the slave of the slave of the commander of the faithful. this descent of servitude, the first degree was merely titular, since it was filled by the sovereign of Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid a nominal allegiance to the caliph of Bagdad. The second rank was that of a minister of state, a lieutenant of the Samanides,† who broke, by his revolt, the * I am indebted for his character and history to D'Herbelot (Bibliothèque Orientale, Mahmud, p. 533-537), M. de Guignes (Histoire des Huns, tom. iii. p. 155-173), and our countryman Colonel Alexander Dow (vol. i. p. 23-83). In the two first volumes of his history of Hindostan, he styles himself the translator of the Persian Ferishta; but in his florid text, it is not easy to distinguish the version from the original. The dynasty of the Samanides continued A.D. 997-1028.] MAHMUD THE GAZNEVIDE. 359 bonds of political slavery. But the third step was a state of real and domestic servitude in the family of that rebel; from which Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity, ascended to the supreme command of the city and province of Gazna,* as the son-in-law and successor of his grateful master. The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at first protected, and at last overthrown, by their servants; and, in the public disorders, the fortune of Mahmud continually increased. For him, the title of sultan † was first invented; and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighbourhood of Ispahan, from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. But the principal source of his fame and riches was the holy war which he waged against the Gentoos of Hindostan. In this foreign narrative I may not consume a page; and a volume would scarcely suffice to recapitulate the battles and sieges of his twelve expeditions. Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy, or the formidable array of their one hundred and twenty-five years, A.D. 874-999, under ten princes. See their succession and ruin in the tables of M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. 404-406). They were followed by the Gaznevides, A.D. 999-1183. (See tom. i. p. 239, 240.) His division of nations often disturbs the series of time and place. * Gaznah hortos non habet; est emporium et domicilium mercaturæ Indicæ. Abulfedæ Geograph. Reiske, tab. 23, p. 349, D'Herbelot, p. 364. It has not been visited by any modern traveller. [Gaznah has of late emerged from the obscurity of ages, as the Ghuznee of our Indian warfare in 1839-42. It is described in Elphinstone's Caubul (p. 121, 4to. edit.) and by all writers on the war in Affghanistan.-ED.] By the ambassador of the caliph of Bagdad, who employed an Arabian or Chaldaic word that signifies lord and master (D'Herbelot, p. 825). It is interpreted Αὐτοκράτωρ, Βασιλεὺς Βασιλέων, by the Byzantine writers of the eleventh century; and the name (Σovλravòs, Souldanus) is familiarly employed in the Greek and Latin languages, after it had passed from the Gaznevides to the Seljukides, and other emirs of Asia and Egypt. Ducange (Dissertation 16. sur Joinville, p. 238-240. Gloss. Græc. et Latin.) labours to find the title of sultan in the ancient kingdom of Persia; but his proofs are mere shadows; a proper name in the Themes of Constantine (2. 11), an anticipation of Zonaras, &c. and a medal of Kai Khosrou, not (as he believes) the Sassanide of the sixth, but the Seljukide of Iconium of the thirteenth century. (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 246.) 360 MAHMUD'S TWELVE EXPEDITIONS [CH. LVII. elephants of war.* The sultan of Gasna surpassed the limits of the conquests of Alexander; after a march of three months, over the hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached the famous city of Kinnoge,† on the Upper Ganges; and, in a naval combat on one of the branches of the Indus, he fought and vanquished four thousand boats of the natives. Delhi, Lahor, and Multan, were compelled to open their gates; the fertile kingdom of Guzarat attracted his ambition and tempted his stay; and his avarice indulged the fruitless project of discovering the golden and aromatic isles of the Southern ocean. On the payment of a tribute, the rajahs preserved their dominions; the people, their lives and fortunes; but to the religion of Hindostan the zealous Mussulman was cruel and inexorable; many hundred tem * Ferishta (apud Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p. 49) mentions the report of a gun in the Indian army. But as I am slow in believing this premature (A.D. 1008) use of artillery, I must desire to scrutinize first the text, and then the authority of Ferishta, who lived in the Mogul court in the last century. [Dow himself questions the fact. But he adds, that "many Eastern authors mention guns. and ascribe the invention to one Lockman." (Lokman is the evil spirit of the East.) If guns be spoken of at so early a period, they can only mean the tubes used in projecting the Greek fire. In Briggs's version of Ferishta (vol. i. p. 47) this passage is rendered "the effects of naphtha balls," and MSS. are cited, which have nuph, naphtha, instead of tope, a gun. The "report" which alarmed the elephant, is one of Dow's embellishments.-ED.] +Kinnouge, or Canouge (the old Palimbothra), is marked in latitude 27° 3', longitude 80° 13'. See D'Anville (Antiquité de l'Inde, p. 60—62), corrected by the local knowledge of Major Rennell (in his excellent Memoir on his map of Hindostan, p. 37-43): three hundred jewellers, thirty thousand shops for the areca nut, sixty thousand bands of musicians, &c. (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. 15, p. 274. Dow, vol. i. p. 16), will allow an ample deduction. [We are indebted to Major Rennell for much valuable information on the geography of India. But in his Memoir (p. 49), he misunderstood Pliny's "per Palibotros" (Hist. Nat. 6. 19), which the context explains to be the country of the Prasii, and which he considered to mean the city of Palibothra. He has therefore erroneously placed the confluence of the Jomanes and Ganges at this point. This mistake led him to concur in the error of M. d'Anville (Ant. de l'Inde, p. 54), and regard the Erannoboas and Jomanes of the ancients to be the same river. By correcting this mistranslation, and comparing all the imperfect information which Greek and Latin writers possessed respecting the tributary streams of the Ganges, it will appear evident that the Inamuna of Polyænus (1. 8, c. 26), the Jobares and Commenases of Arrian (Hist. Ind. c. 4 and 8), the Diamuna of Ptolemy (7. 1), and the Jomanes of Pliny (6. 19), are all different names of the |