he implacable enemies of
the Huns; and the numbers of that haughty people, as soon as they were
reduced to their native strength, might, perhaps, have been contained
within the walls of one of the great and populous cities of China. The
desertion of his subjects, and the perplexity of a civil war, at length
compelled the Tanjou himself to renounce the dignity of an independent
sovereign, and the freedom of a warlike and high-spirited nation. He
was received at Sigan, the capital of the monarchy, by the troops, the
mandarins, and the emperor himself, with all the honors that could adorn
and disguise the triumph of Chinese vanity. A magnificent palace was
prepared for his reception; his place was assigned above all the
princes of the royal family; and the patience of the Barbarian king
was exhausted by the ceremonies of a banquet, which consisted of eight
courses of meat, and of nine solemn pieces of music. But he performed,
on his knees, the duty of a respectful homage to the emperor of China;
pronounced, in his own name, and in the name of his successors, a
perpetual oath of fidelity; and gratefully accepted a seal, which was
bestowed as the emblem of his regal dependence. After this humiliating
submission, the Tanjous sometimes departed from their allegiance and
seized the favorable moments of war and rapine; but the monarchy of the
Huns gradually declined, till it was broken, by civil dissension, into
two hostile and separate kingdoms. One of the princes of the nation
was urged, by fear and ambition, to retire towards the South with eight
hords, which composed between forty and fifty thousand families. He
obtained, with the title of Tanjou, a convenient territory on the verge
of the Chinese provinces; and his constant attachment to the service of
the empire was secured by weakness, and the desire of revenge. From the
time of this fatal schism, the Huns of the North continued to languish
about fifty years; till they were oppressed on every side by their
foreign and domestic enemies. The proud inscription of a column, erected
on a lofty mountain, announced to posterity, that a Chinese army had
marched seven hundred miles into the heart of their country. The Sienpi,
a tribe of Oriental Tartars, retaliated the injuries which they had
formerly sustained; and the power of the Tanjous, after a reign of
thirteen hundred years, was utterly destroyed before the end of the
first century of the Christian aera.

The fate of the va