al carnage.

All the soldiers, high and low, were murdered when taken prisoners,
as a matter of course; but the officers and soldiers of Timur's army,
after taking all the valuable movables, thought they might be able to
find a market for the artificers by whom they were made, and for
their families; and they collected together an immense number of men,
women, and children. All who asked for mercy pretended to be able to
make something that these Tartars had taken a liking to. On coming
before Delhi, Timur's army encamped on the opposite or left bank of
the river Jumna; and here he learned that his soldiers had collected
together above one hundred thousand of these artificers, besides
their women and children. There were no soldiers among them; but
Timur thought it might be troublesome either to keep them or to turn
them away without their women and children; and still more so to make
his soldiers send away these women and children immediately. He asked
whether the prisoners were not for the most part unbelievers in his
prophet Muhammad; and being told that the majority were Hindoos, he
gave orders that every man should be put to death; and that any
officer or soldier who refused to kill or have killed all such men,
should suffer death. 'As soon as this order was made known,' says
Timur's historian and great eulogist, 'the officers and soldiers
began to put it in execution; and, in less than one hour, one hundred
thousand prisoners, according to the smallest computation, were put
to death and their bodies thrown into the river Jumna. Among the
rest, Mulana Nasir-ud-din Amr, one of the most venerable doctors of
the court, who would never consent so much as to kill a single sheep,
was constrained to order fifteen slaves, whom he had in his tents, to
be slain. Timur then gave orders that one-tenth of his soldiers
should keep watch over the Indian women, children, and camels taken
in the pillage.'[46]

The city was soon after taken, and the people commanded, as usual, to
purchase their lives by the surrender of their property--troops were
sent in to take it--numbers were tortured to death--and then the
usual pillage and massacre of the whole people followed without
regard to religion, age, or sex; and about a hundred thousand more of
innocent and unoffending people were murdered. The troops next
massacred the inhabitants of the old city, which had become crowded
with fugitives from the new;[47] the last remnant took refug