capital of his future dynasty, he massacred 100,000
prisoners, because some of them were seen to smile when the army of
their countrymen came in sight. He laid a tax of the following sort on
the people of Ispahan, viz, to find him 70,000 human skulls, to build
his towers with; and, after Bagdad had revolted, he exacted of the
inhabitants as many as 90,000. He burned, or sacked, or razed to the
ground, the cities of Astrachan, Carisme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad,
Aleppo, Damascus, Broussa, Smyrna, and a thousand others. We seem to be
reading of some antediluvian giant, rather than of a medieval conqueror.

6.

The terrible races which I have been describing, like those giants of
old, have ever been enemies of God and persecutors of His Church. Celts,
Goths, Lombards, Franks, have been converted, and their descendants to
this day are Christian; but, whether we consider Huns, Moguls, or Turks,
up to this time they are in the outer darkness. And accordingly, to the
innumerable Tartar tribes, and to none other, have been applied by
commentators the solemn passages about Gog and Magog, who are to fight
the battles of Antichrist against the faithful. "Satan shall go forth
and seduce the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, Gog
and Magog, and shall collect them to battle, whose number is as the sea
sand." From time to time the Holy See has fulfilled its apostolic
mission of sending preachers to them, but without success. The only
missionaries who have had any influence upon them have been those of the
Nestorian heresy, who have in certain districts made the same sort of
impression on them which the Greek schism has made upon the Russians.
St. Louis too sent a friar to them on an embassy, when he wished to
persuade them to turn their strength upon the Turks, with whom he was at
war; other European monarchs afterwards followed his pattern; and
sometimes European merchants visited them for the purposes of trade.
However little influence as these various visitants, in the course of
several centuries, had upon their minds, they have at least done us the
service of giving us information concerning their habits and manners;
and this so fully corroborates the historical account of them which I
have been giving, that it will be worth while laying before you some
specimens of it here.

I have said that some of these travellers were laymen travelling for
gain or in secular splendour, and others were humble servants of
reli