w to acquire that glory, and to spread the
renown of his conquests. 'My name', said he, 'has spread terror
through the universe, and the least motion I make is capable of
shaking the whole earth.'

Timur returned to his capital of Samarkand in Transoxiana in May,
1399. His army, besides other things which they brought from India,
had an immense number of men, women, and children, whom they had
reduced to slavery, and driven along like flocks of sheep to forage
for their subsistence in the countries through which they passed, or
perish. After the murder on the banks of the Jumna of part of the
multitude they had collected before taking the capital, amounting to
one hundred thousand men, Timur was obliged to assign one-tenth of
his army to guard what were left, the women and children. 'After the
murder in the capital of Delhi,' says the historian, an eye-witness,
'there were some soldiers who had a hundred and fifty slaves, men,
women, and children, whom they drove out of the city before them; and
some soldiers' boys had twenty slaves to their own share.' On
reaching Samarkand, they employed these slaves as best they could;
and Timur employed his, the masons, in raising his great church from
the quarries of the neighbouring hills.[50]

In October following, Timur led this army of demons over the rich and
polished countries of Syria, Anatolia, and Georgia, levelling all the
cities, towns, and villages, and massacring the inhabitants without
any regard to age or sex, with the same _amiable view_ of correcting
the notions of people regarding his creed, propitiating the Deity,
and rewarding his soldiers. He sent to the Christian inhabitants of
Smyrna, then one of the first commercial cities in the world, to
request that they would at once embrace Muhammadanism, in the
_beauties_ of which the general and his soldiers had orders
generously and diligently to instruct them. They refused, and Timur
repaired immediately to the spot, that he might 'share in the merit
of sending their souls to the abyss of hell'. Bajazet, the Turkish
emperor of Anatolia, had recently terminated an unavailing siege of
seven years. Timur took the city in fourteen days, December,
1402;[51] had every man, woman, and child that he found in it
murdered; and caused some of the heads of the Christians to be thrown
by his balistas or catapultas into the ships that had come from
different European nations to their succour. All other Christian
communities fo