Mahomet, (Gaubil p.
42.)]

[Footnote 261: Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 410.--M.]

[Footnote 262: On the friendly relations of the Armenians with the Mongols
see Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzuege, vol. vii. p. 402. They eagerly
desired an alliance against the Mahometan powers.--M.]

[Footnote 263: Trebizond escaped, apparently by the dexterous politics of
the sovereign, but it acknowledged the Mogul supremacy. Falmerayer, p.
172.--M.]

III. No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of China, than he
resolved to visit with his arms the most remote countries of the West.
Fifteen hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the
military roll: of these the great khan selected a third, which he
intrusted to the command of his nephew Batou, the son of Tuli; who
reigned over his father's conquests to the north of the Caspian Sea.
[264] After a festival of forty days, Batou set forwards on this great
expedition; and such was the speed and ardor of his innumerable
squadrons, than in less than six years they had measured a line of
ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the
globe. The great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don
and Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either swam with their
horses or passed on the ice, or traversed in leathern boats, which
followed the camp, and transported their wagons and artillery. By
the first victories of Batou, the remains of national freedom were
eradicated in the immense plains of Turkestan and Kipzak. [27] In his
rapid progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now styled, of
Astracan and Cazan; and the troops which he detached towards Mount
Caucasus explored the most secret recesses of Georgia and Circassia. The
civil discord of the great dukes, or princes, of Russia, betrayed their
country to the Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea, and
both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced
to ashes; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps
indelible, mark, which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on
the character of the Russians. The Tartars ravaged with equal fury
the countries which they hoped to possess, and those which they were
hastening to leave. From the permanent conquest of Russia they made a
deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart of Poland, and as far
as the borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were
obliterated: [271] t