site without stumbling. He depopulated the whole country from
the Danube to the Baltic in a season; and the ruins of cities and
churches were strewed with the bones of the inhabitants. He allured the
fugitives from the woods, where they lay hid, under a promise of pardon
and peace; he made them gather in the harvest and the vintage, and then
he put them to death. At Gran, in Hungary, he had 300 noble ladies
slaughtered in his presence. But these were slight excesses compared
with other of his acts. When he had subdued the northern part of China,
he proposed, not in the heat of victory, but deliberately in council, to
exterminate all its inhabitants, and to turn it into a cattle-walk; from
this project indeed he was diverted, but a similar process was his rule
with the cities he conquered. Let it be understood, he came down upon
cities living in peace and prosperity, as the cities of England now,
which had done him no harm, which had not resisted him, which submitted
to him at discretion on his summons. What was his treatment of such? He
ordered out the whole population on some adjacent plain; then he
proceeded to sack their city. Next he divided them into three parts:
first, the soldiers and others capable of bearing arms; these he either
enlisted into his armies, or slaughtered on the spot. The second class
consisted of the rich, the women, and the artizans;--these he divided
amongst his followers. The remainder, the old, infirm, and poor, he
suffered to return to their rifled city. Such was his ordinary course;
but when anything occurred to provoke him, the most savage excesses
followed. The slightest offence, or appearance of offence, on the part
of an individual, sufficed for the massacre of whole populations. The
three great capitals of Khorasan were destroyed by his orders, and a
reckoning made of the slain; at Maru were killed 1,300,000; at Herat,
1,600,000; and at Neisabour, 1,747,000; making a total of 4,647,000
deaths. Say these numbers are exaggerated fourfold or tenfold; even on
the last supposition you will have a massacre of towards half a million
of helpless beings. After recounting such preternatural crimes, it is
little to add, that his devastation of the fine countries between the
Caspian and the Indus, a tract of many hundred miles, was so complete,
that six centuries have been unable to repair the ravages of four years.

Timour equalled Zingis, if he could not surpass him, in barbarity. At
Delhi, the