1.—Preparation of the First Angel
The loosing must not be confounded with the preparation of the four angels. If they had been “prepared for the hour and day and month and year,” we might have been led to look for their contemporaneous existence during all that period; which would have made any effort at exposition a hopeless failure. Each individual power was neither prepared nor loosed for a separate and independent continuance of 391 years and 30 days. This period was the time appointed of the Spirit for the work of killing the third of p. 508 the men. He could have caused them to be resolved into political extinction in a much shorter period; but this would not have been a sufficient punishment for their dæmonialism. The enormity of their offense in worshipping deified immortal souls, and images of the bodies of such fictions of fancy, demanded nearly four hundred years of severe national suffering. In these centuries they were baptized in blood and calamity, and no rest was granted them day or night.
The word rendered “prepared,” οι ητοιμασμενοι, is the perfect participle passive, and signifies having been prepared. Thus, it may be read, “the four having-been-prepared angels were loosed for the hour and day and month and year.” Their preparation and loosing were for the work of this period. The time and circumstances of their preparation are not indicated; nor how long each angel was to continue loose, or unrepressed. These particulars must be learned from history, which gives us the following information with respect to the preparation of the first of the four Euphratean angel-powers.
In tracing the preparation of the first angel-power, the reader must transport himself beyond the Caspian Sea, to the original seat of the Turkmans, against whom the first crusade was principally directed. One of the greatest of their princes, for whom the title of Sultan was first invented, was Mahmud the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia from A. D. 997 to A. D. 1028. His name is still venerable in the east, where he was very successful against the idolators of Hindostan. Ten millions sterling were offered him for the preservation of the idol of Sumnat by the Brahmins; but he refused it, saying, “Never in the eyes of posterity shall Mahmud appear as a merchant of idols.” The fame of his zeal reaching Bagdad, Mahmud was saluted by the Caliph with, the title of Guardian of the Fortune and Faith of Mohammed.
The Eastern Turkmans whom he had introduced into the heart of his Persian kingdom were a cause of grief to him in the latter years of his reign. He discerned the impolicy of his course in the replies of Ismael, a chief of the race of Seljuk, who dwelt in the territory of Bochara. The sultan had inquired what supply of men he could furnish for military service. “If you send,” replied Ismael, “one of these arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of your servants will mount on horseback.” “And if that number,” continued Mahmud, “should not be sufficient?” “Send this second arrow to the horde of Balik, and you will find fifty thousand more.” “But,” said the Gaznevide, dissembling his anxiety, “if I should stand in need of the whole force of your kindred tribes?” “Despatch p. 509 my bow,” was the last reply of Ismael, “and as it is circulated around, the summons will be obeyed by two hundred thousand horse.” The apprehension of such formidable friendship induced him to transport the most obnoxious tribes into the heart of Chorasan, where they would be separated from their brethren by the river Oxus, and enclosed on all sides by the walls of obedient cities. But on the death of Mahmud, these Turkman shepherds became robbers; the bands of robbers were collected into an army of conquerors; as far as Ispahan and the Tigris, Persia was afflicted by their predatory inroads; and the Turkmans were not ashamed or afraid to measure their courage and numbers with the proudest sovereigns of Asia.
Massoud, the son and successor of Mahmud, had neglected too long the advice of his ministers. “Your enemies,” they repeatedly urged, “were in their origin a swarm of ants; they are now little snakes; and unless they be instantly crushed, they will acquire the venom and magnitude of serpents.” This he essayed to do, but with ill success; for, though for a time alternating between victory and defeat, he at length lost his crown and life in battle; and in Persia, as the result of his overthrow, was founded the dynasty of the shepherd kings, A. D. 1038.
The victorious Turks immediately elected Togrul Beg, the grandson of Seljuk, for their king. His ambition was equal to his valor, and both were great. He extended his dominion eastward to the Indus. In the west, he annihilated the dynasty of the Bowides, the Persian protectors of the caliphs; and by the conquest of Media he approached the confines of the Roman earth, from whence he despatched a herald to demand the tribute and obedience of the emperor of Constantinople.
From the Oxus to the Euphrates the military colonies of the Turks were protected and propagated by their native princes, under the royalty of Togrul, who promoted the most deserving of the Persians and Arabians to the honors of the state; and the whole body of the Turkish nation embraced with fervor and sincerity the anti-idolatrous religion of Mohammed.
With the belief of the Koran, Togrul imbibed a lively reverence for the caliph, the now feeble successor of Mohammed. On the fall of the Gaznevide dynasty, the caliph named the Seljukian sultan his temporal vicegerent over the Moslem world. In the palace of Bagdad, the Commander of the Faithful still slumbered, a venerable phantom. The prince of the Bowides could no longer protect him from meaner tyrants; and the presence of a conqueror was therefore p. 510 implored as a blessing. Togrul obeyed the holy summons at the head of an irresistible force. As conqueror of the east, he entered Bagdad, where, seated upon a throne by the side of the caliph’s, his commission was publicly read, which declared him the temporal lieutenant of the Vicar of the Prophet. Two crowns were placed on his head; and two scymitars were girded to his side, as the symbols of a double reign over the east and west. The alliance of the Caliph, the spiritual, and of Togrul, the temporal, chief of all faithful Moslems, was cemented by the marriage of Togrul’s sister with the caliph, and the caliph’s daughter with Togrul. The preparation of the first angel was now complete. An anti-idolatrous power had been developed upon the old Mohammedan basis, whose dominion extended to the Euphrates, by which it was “bounded,” and divided from the dæmonial idol-worshipping peoples, on the west. The royal nuptials of Togrul, A. D. 1062, were soon followed by his death, A. D. 1063.
Since the fall of the Caliphs, the Saracens had respected the Asiatic provinces of Rome; which, by the victories of the Greeks, had been extended to Antioch and the eastern boundaries of Armenia. Twenty-five years after the death of Basil, A. D. 1050, myriads of Togrul’s horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to Erzeroum, and the blood of a hundred and fifty thousand worshippers of dæmonial relics, ghosts, and idols, was a grateful sacrifice by the children of the Arabian prophet. This, however, was not a loosing of the angel-power; for the arms of Togrul made no deep or lasting impression on the Greek empire. The torrent rolled away from the open country; and he retired without glory or success within his Euphratean boundary; beyond which he had found it impossible for him permanently to extend westward the territory of the Turks.
2.—The Loosing of the First Angel
Togrul, the Temporal Chief of the Mohammedan World, dying childless, was succeeded by his nephew Alp Arslan, “the Valiant Lion.” As soon as he was seated on the throne, he determined to continue the work of extending his dominion westward at the expense of “the third of the men,” whom he very correctly denounced as idolators. “He passed the Euphrates,” says Gibbon, “at the head of the Turkish cavalry,” A. D. 1063, “and entered Cæsarea, the metropolis of Cappadocia, to which he had been attracted by the fame and wealth of the temple of St. Basil.” He p. 511 carried away the doors of the shrine incrusted with gold and pearls, and profaned the relics of the guardian saint.
The final conquest of Armenia and Georgia, began by Togrul, was achieved by Alp Arslan, who by this success gave proof that the power of the Seljukian Turks was no longer “bound by the great river Euphrates,” but emphatically “loosed.” The loss of this important frontier was the news of a day; but as the idolators inhabiting the country were also heretics, the orthodox idolators of the capital were neither surprised nor displeased that they had been abandoned by their deities to the invader. The Turkish sultan and his son Malek were indefatigable in this “holy war;” their captives were compelled to promise both spiritual and temporal obedience; and to wear an iron horse-shoe, as a badge of ignominy, if they still adhered to the dæmonial and idol worship of their fathers.
The Turks had penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; and their numerous detachments were scattered over Asia in the security of conquest. These were separately surprised and defeated by the Greeks under their emperor Romanus Diogenes; who, in three laborious campaigns, drove the Turks beyond the Euphrates; and then undertook the recovery of Armenia. The report of this bold invasion brought Alp Arslan again into the field. He flew to the scene of action at the head of forty thousand horse. His hopes of victory were in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry. After wasting the greater part of a summer’s day, fatigue compelled the Greeks and their Latin allies to retire to camp. At this crisis, the Turkish squadrons poured in a cloud of arrows. The destruction of the army followed; the emperor was taken prisoner, and the Asiatic provinces of Rome irretrievably lost. “The third of the men” inhabiting the provinces “were killed.” Their sovereignty was abolished, and they became the slaves of the victorious Turks, whose dominion was advanced from Antioch to the Black Sea—A. D. 1068-1071.
Alp Arslan fell by the hand of an assassin, A. D. 1072, and was succeeded by his son Malek Shah, who reigned prosperously twenty years: He was the first Turk who bore the title of “Commander of the Faithful.” By his personal merit and the extent of his empire, he was the greatest prince of his age. From the Chinese frontier, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction or feudatory sway to the west and south as far as the mountains of Georgia, the neighborhood of Constantinople, the holy city of Jerusalem, and the spicy groves of Arabia Felix. This dominion surpassed the Asiatic reign of Cyrus and the Caliphs. His hunting train consisted p. 512 of forty-seven thousand horses; a stud, surpassing that, doubtless, of Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord.”
But the greatness and union of the Seljukian angel-power expired in the person of Malek Shah, who died A. D. 1092. His vacant throne was disputed by his brother and his four sons. After a series of civil wars, the empire was divided into four dynasties—the Persian, and those of Kerman, of Syria, and of ROUM. The last invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, A. D. 1074, under the lead of the valiant Soliman, who extended the bounds of the Seljukian kingdom of Roum to the Bosphorus and Hellespont; which, instead of “the great river Euphrates,” became the eastern boundary of the Roman world:
“Since the first conquests of the caliphs,” says Gibbon, “the establishment of the Turks in Anatolia was the most deplorable loss which the church and empire had sustained.” Soliman’s new kingdom of the Romans, or Roum, is described as extending from the Euphrates to Constantinople, and from the Black Sea to the confines of Syria. Nice, the capital of Bithynia, was chosen for his fortress and palace; by which the throne of the Dynasty of Roum was planted one hundred miles from Constantinople. On the hard conditions of tribute and slavery, the Greek “worshippers of the dæmonials and idols” might enjoy the exercise of their superstition; but their most holy temples were profaned; their priests and bishops were insulted; many thousands of their children were circumcised; and many thousand captives were devoted to the service, or the pleasures of their masters. A fleet of two hundred ships made Alexius, the Greek emperor, tremble behind the walls of his capital; and caused him to supplicate the compassion of the Latins in succor for the defence of the city of Constantine.
3.—The Beginning of the 391 Years and 30 Days
Such is a brief sketch of the loosing of the first, or Seljukian, angel-power, that it might be no more “bound by the great river Euphrates.” The commencement of this loosing enterprise was the attempted separation of the Asiatic provinces of the Roman empire by Togrul, and perfected by Alp Arslan, A. D. 1071, by the capture of the emperor Romanus. Hence, the loosing covered a period of several years. The period of the symbolic time allotted to “the killing of the third of the men,” that is, of “the hour and day and month and year,” is no more to be calculated from the loosing of p. 513 the first angel, than from that of the last three. The calculation must be made from the perfected preparation of the first angel power—“having been prepared” for the work of killing. The tense of the participle passive proves this, indicating, not partial, but complete preparation before loosing.
We know the day and month and year in which the work of killing, with political death, “the third of the men” was accomplished. About this there can be no mistake. The Imperial Eastern Roman Third was “killed” with the slaying of its last emperor and the capture of the capital. This event came to pass, May 29, 1453. This was the last day of the 391 years and 30 days, which long period must consequently have commenced April 29, 1062, before the death of Togrul, and after, or at, his adoption by marriage into the domestic circle of the Caliph-Angel of the Abyss.
4.—The First Interval
The second Euphratean angel power did not immediately follow the first. At the close of the eleventh century, and not more than forty years from the inauguration of Togrul, Constantinople and its empire were on the verge of ruin by the power of the Seljukian kingdom of Roum; and nothing less than a superhuman intervention seemed capable of averting it. To have permitted “the killing of the third of the men” “worshipping the dæmonials and idols” at that epoch, would have falsified the vision. They were to be killed, not by bows and arrows, but “by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the sulphur bursting forth out of the mouths of the horses.” This was a power of destruction, not in operation in the days of Soliman, the Seljukian king of Roum. An intervention, therefore, was a divine necessity, that the word of the Deity might be established. Nor was the necessity unprovided for. The dæmonial superstition of the pope’s barbarians of western Europe finding vent in the “crusades,” though ultimately ineffective in Syria, was made the instrument of so crippling the Seljukian power, as for two hundred years to aid in upholding against it the Greek empire, which tottered on the verge of destruction. In the age of the crusades, the catholic idolators of the east and west, insisted upon their peculiar title to the Holy Land, then as now in the possession of the Turks; and that this title, which was inalienable, had been sealed by the blood of their divine saviour. On this assumption, they affirmed that it was their right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the Mohammedans, p. 514 its unjust possessors, who profaned his sepulchre, and oppressed the pilgrimage of his disciples.
But in this argument, which overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe, there were fatal errors; first, in the assumption that they, these worshippers of dæmonial ghosts, relics, and images, were christians; and secondly, that it is the right and duty of christians to possess themselves of the Holy Land. It is indeed true, that the true believers have an inalienable title to the land; and that that title was sealed by the blood of Christ, when by his death he brought the Abrahamic covenant into force; so that the land becomes their inheritance; but it is not true, that it is the right and duty of these heirs to become crusaders to wrest their inheritance from the enemy. They are heirs, indeed; but they are also “joint-heirs with Christ,” and have therefore no right, and consequently it is not their duty, to take possession of it in his absence, even if they were able. He must first return from the far country in which he has resided so long; and return, too, with power and authority from the Father-Deity to take possession jointly with his fellow-heirs of their inalienable inheritance.
But what a monster evil the idolators of “Christendom” brought upon themselves by the false assumptions of the argument, by which they sought to justify their mad enterprises for the deliverance of the land and sepulchre of Christ. Their ignorance and fanaticism were made the means of the destruction of myriads. In the council of Clermont, Urban II. proclaimed a plenary indulgence to those who should enlist under the banner of the cross; the absolution of all their sins, and a full receipt for all that might be due of canonical penance. At the voice of the pope, the robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls, by repeating on the Moslems the same deeds they had practised against their papal brethren; and the terms of atonement were eagerly embraced by offenders of every rank and denomination. They set out for Asia, A. D. 1096, early in the spring, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless, a herd of nearly three hundred thousand of the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion to the cross a brutal licence of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness; while their genuine leaders were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and “to whom,” says Gibbon, “these worthy christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit.” In their march along the Rhine, they pillaged and massacred many thousands of the Jews, numbers of whom, with their families and wealth, perished in the rivers or the flames. As they p. 515 advanced their numbers increased; but in Hungary and Asia Minor, unrelenting vengeance retaliated upon them the punishment of their crimes. In the plain of Nice, they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows. Of these first crusaders 300,000 had already perished before a single city was taken from the kingdom of Roum; and a pyramid of bones became the memorial of their defeat.
This herd of savages was followed by the chivalry of the nations. Their principal force consisted in cavalry; and when mustered in the plains of Bithynia, the knights and their martial attendants on horseback amounted to one hundred thousand fighting men, completely armed with the helmet and coat of mail. Besides these, the promiscuous crowd was lost in its own disorder. The Greeks were astonished at the overwhelming inundation; and the Princess Anne, the daughter of the Emperor Alexius, exclaims, “That Europe was loosened from its foundations, and hurled against Asia.” Provoked by the loss of his capital, Soliman collected the Turkman hordes against them to the number of three hundred and sixty thousand horse. But the battle went against him, and he found it necessary to evacuate the kingdom of Roum. The crusaders at length obtained possession of Antioch, but with the annihilation of their splendid cavalry; and the loss of many thousands of every rank by famine, sickness, and desertion. In the month of May, A. D. 1099, the relics of their mighty host laid siege to Jerusalem, which they entered July 15. The capture of the city was followed by the foundation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Latins now reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only relics of the Mohammedan conquests.
The Latin Kingdom was conquered by Saladin, A. D. 1187; but the expulsion of the Latins from Syria was delayed till A. D. 1295; when the Sultan of Egypt, at the head of sixty thousand horse, and a hundred and forty thousand foot, closed the age of the crusades with the capture of Acre, the expulsion of these forces from the Holy Land, and the death or slavery of sixty thousand worshippers of the dæmonials and idols of the catholic aërial.
5.—Preparation of the Second Angel
The rise and progress of the Ottomans are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls and Tartars; whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe.
p. 516 The spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian sea, the ancient seats of the Huns and Turks, were occupied in the twelfth century by many pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and led to conquest by the formidable Zingis Khan. His private name was Temugin, but from a naked prophet, who claimed to be able to ascend to heaven on a white horse, he condescended to accept the title of ZINGIS, the Most Great; and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general diet, he was solemnly proclaimed Great Khan, or Emperor of the Moguls and Tartars. War was his delight, and his maxim was that peace should never be granted unless to a vanquished or suppliant enemy.
His religious system was that of pure theism and perfect toleration. He was in direct opposition to the impious fools of Europe, who believed nonsense and defended it by cruelty. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the author of all good, who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. Such a potentate was an appropriate scourge for the idolators of the Roman world.
In the west, his empire touched the dominions of the Sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian Gulph to the borders of India and Turkestan. It was his wish to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of the Moslem princes. But he was not met in the same spirit. In the vast plains north of the Jaxartes, 700,000 Moguls and Tartars, under Zingis and his four sons, encountered the Sultan with 400,000. In the first battle, 160,000 Carizmians were slain. The Sultan retired into his fortified cities. But, aided by his Chinese engineers, and informed of the secret of gunpowder, they were unable to withstand the attacks of Zingis. From the Caspian to the Indus, his Moguls ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labors of mankind; so that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four years.
Zingis died in the fulness of years, A. D. 1227, leaving his empire to successors of his own race and family. In the sixty-eight years of the first four of these, the Moguls subdued almost all Asia, and a large portion of Europe. Thus, a power was prepared eastward of the Euphrates, which, A. D. 1258, under Holagou, the grandson of Zingis, by the storm and capture of Bagdad, and the territory of its jurisdiction, extended to the Euphrates; the east of which the stream of Mogul hostility was driven back from the south by the Mamelucs of Egypt. Hence, it was a prepared power “bounded by the great river Euphrates.”
p. 5176.—Loosing of the Second Angel
When the Mogul-power suppressed the Caliphate, which had been held by the race of Abbas above five hundred years, it spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt would have been lost had it been only defended by natives. But the Mamelucs were now established there; and they were equal in valor and superior in discipline to the Moguls. These were heading in the wrong direction. Their mission was towards Constantinople and the west. It was necessary, therefore, that they should be turned thitherward. Hence, the Mamelucs were stirred up to withstand them by their invasion of the south. They met them in many a well fought field, and at length drove them to the east of the Euphrates.
But they could not be “bound” there, for the time had come for the second angel to be loosed. The Mogul inundation overflowed with resistless violence the Kingdom of Armenia, which was possessed by the dæmonial worshippers of idols; and then crossing westward into the upper region watered by “the great river Euphrates,” they flooded the Kingdom of Anatolia, which was possessed by the Turkish sultans of Iconium. These opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought refuge in Constantinople, and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the Mogul Khans of Persia, A. D. 1272.
No sooner had Octai, one of the four sons of Zingis subverted the northern empire of China, than he resolved to visit with his arms the most remote countries of the west. Fifteen hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the military roll. A third of these were intrusted to his nephew, Batou, the son of Tuli, who reigned over his father’s conquests to the north of the Caspian; and such was the ardor of his innumerable cavalry, that in less than six years they had measured a line of ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth of the circumference of the globe. They ravaged with equal fury the countries they hoped to possess, and those they were hastening to leave. They reduced the Russians to a servitude of two hundred years; made a deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart of catholic Poland; and penetrated as far as the borders of Germany. They approached the shores of the Baltic; and in the battle of Lignitz, filled nine sacks with the right ears of the slain. From this extreme point of their march westward, they invaded Hungary with five hundred thousand horse. The whole country north of the Danube was lost in a day, and depopulated in a p. 518 summer. Of all the cities and fortresses of dæmonial and idol worshipping Hungary, three alone survived this Mogul-Tartar invasion.
The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of second-angel hostility to the idolators of the west; and the remote nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the noise of their approach. Since the invasion of the Arabs in the eighth century, Europe had never been exposed to a similar calamity. The Roman high priest of the dæmonials attempted to appease and convert to his idolatry these invincible pagans by a mission of Franciscan and Dominican friars; but “His Holiness” was astonished by the reply of the Khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were invested with a divine power to subdue and extirpate the nations; and that the pope would be involved in the universal destruction unless he visited in person, and as a suppliant, the royal horde. This was apocalyptically true; they were indeed so invested. Their mission was divine. They were one of the four Euphratean angel-powers, “invested with divine power” against the catholic world. Vengeance upon this “Sodom and Egypt, spiritually so called”—ch. xi. 8—was heaven’s decree; and the invincible sons of Zingis were the ministers of its wrath.
In this shipwreck of nations, Constantinople and the Greek empire, then divided between the Greeks and Latins, escaped surprisingly. Had the sons of Zingis undertaken the siege of the capital, it must have yielded to the common fate. In a second expedition, death arrested the Khan in full march to attack Constantinople. His brother Borga, however, was diverted from the Byzantine war which he had carried into Bulgaria and Thrace by an alliance with the Mamelukes against the Moguls of Persia.
In the reign of Michael Palæologus, the Seljukian sultan, who had fled to Constantinople, was released from his exile among the Greeks. The first terror of the arms of the Moguls secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of the Roman Asia. The Seljukian sultans of Iconium, were a barrier, which, when overthrown exposed the defencelessness of the Greeks. Holagou, the grandson of Zingis, threatened to march to Constantinople at the head of 400,000 men. The news of this spread terror among the idolators of Nice, where the doleful chant of a procession in honor of some of their saints, “from the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver us!” scattered the belief of an actual assault and massacre; and it was some hours before the city could be delivered from this imaginary foe. But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was diverted by war with the Moslems of Bagdad and Syria, which disposed them to unite with the Greeks and Franks. They offered p. 519 the Seljukian kingdom of Anatolia to an Armenian vassal, whose emirs all confessed the supremacy of the Mogul Khans of Persia. The death of Cazan, one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of Zingis, terminated their salutary control A. D. 1304; and the decline of the Moguls gave free scope to the rise and progress of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE, or Fourth Euphratean Angel-power.
7.—The Second Interval
On the dissolution of the Carizmian power by the Moguls, some of the Turkman chiefs engaged in the service of Aladdin, the sultan of Iconium; and among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They had formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the Oxus. At the head of a Carizmian force, Soliman Shah was drowned in the passage of the Euphrates. His son Orthogrul became a soldier of Aladdin. He was the father of Othman. The Seljukian dynasty was no more; and the decline of the Mogul Khans soon freed him from the control of a superior.
He was situate on the verge of the Greek empire, which he first invaded, A. D. 1299. The conquest of Prusa by his son Orchan, A. D. 1326, may be dated as the true æra of the Ottoman power. The Seljukian coin was changed for the name and impression of the new dynasty. Orchan subdued all Bithynia to the shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont; and A. D. 1341, crossed for the first time into Europe, where they established themselves in the province of Thrace, A. D. 1353. They soon subdued the whole province from the Hellespont to Mount Hæmus, and the verge of Constantinople. Adrianople was now their capital; and at this fatal hour, the Greeks were surrounded, both in Asia and Europe, by the arms of the same hostile monarchy. But Amurath I. postponed for a while this easy conquest; and turned his arms against the Sclavonians between the Danube and the Adriatic.
His son Bajazet I, subdued his brother emirs from the Euphrates to the Danube, and after the conquest of Iconium, the ancient kingdom of the Seljukians was revived in the Ottoman dynasty. He now accepted the patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamelukes: a last and frivolous homage yielded by force to opinion, by the Turkish conquerors to the Abbassides, and the successors of the Arabian prophet. Bajazet’s ambition was inflamed by the obligation of deserving the august title; and he turned his arms against; Hungary, the perpetual theatre of Turkish victories and defeats. In the battle of p. 520 Nicopolis, he defeated a confederate army of 100,000 catholic idol worshippers, who had proudly boasted that if the sky should fall, they could uphold it on their lances. In the pride of victory, Bajazet threatened to subdue Germany and Italy; and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome.
The Roman world was now contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth. At length the ambition of the victorious sultan pointed to the conquest of Constantinople, which he claimed as his own. A refusal to surrender caused it to be more closely pressed by war and famine; and the savage would have devoured his prey, if, in the fatal moment, he had not been overthrown by another savage stronger than himself, A. D. 1402; an event that delayed the fall of Constantinople about fifty years.
8.—Preparation of the Third Angel
The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the ambition of Timour or TAMERLANE. He was born forty miles to the south of Samarcand in the fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs, as well as of a myriad or toman of ten thousand horse.
In the twenty-fifth year of his age he stood forth as the deliverer of his country: but not being duly supported, he retreated from the hills of Samarcand to the desert with only sixty horsemen. They were overtaken by a thousand foes, whom he repulsed with incredible slaughter, and they were forced to exclaim, “Timour is a wonderful man; fortune and the divine favor are with him.”
At the age of thirty-four, after various adventures, he was invested in a general diet with imperial command over Zagatai and the East, a dominion five hundred miles in length and breadth. But this did not satisfy him; for Timour aspired to the dominion of the world; and before his death, Zagatai was only one of the twenty-seven crowns which he had placed upon his head.
In the year 1380, he invaded the kingdoms of Persia; and the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of these rivers, was reduced to his obedience. He extended his conquests eastward into Hindostan, and made his triumphal entry into Delhi, the capital. While on the banks of the Ganges he was informed of the revolt of the catholics in Georgia and Anatolia, and of the ambitious designs of Bajazet, the Ottoman sultan. He p. 521 was now sixty-three years of age, and unimpaired by his innumerable fatigues, which had subjected the greatest part of Asia to his laws. The Mogul and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the neighborhood of Erzeroum and the Euphrates, by which Timour’s dominion was “bound.” Of these ambitious monarchs, Timour was impatient of an equal, and Bajazet was ignorant of a superior. A quarrel was soon excited between them that could only be composed by blood. “Dost thou not know,” said Timour to the sultan, “that the greatest part of Asia is subject to our arms and laws? That our invincible forces extend from one sea to the other? That the potentates of the earth form a line before our gate? And that we have compelled fortune herself to watch over the prosperity of our empire? What is the foundation of thine insolence and folly? Thou hast fought some battles in the woods of Anatolia; contemptible trophies! Thou hast obtained some victories over the christians of Europe; thy sword was blessed by the apostle of God; and thy obedience to the precept of the Koran, in waging war against the infidels, is the sole consideration that prevents us from destroying thy country, the frontier and bulwark of the Moslem world. Be wise in time; reflect; repent, and avert the thunder of our vengeance, which is yet suspended over thy head. Thou art no more than a pismire; why wilt thou seek to provoke the elephants? Alas! they will trample thee under their feet.”
Bajazet was deeply stung, and in his replies poured forth the indignation of his soul. His rage was ungovernable. He reproached TIMOUR as the thief and rebel of the desert, and declared that he had never triumphed unless by his own perfidy and the vices of his foe. “Thine armies are innumerable;” said he, “be they so: but what are the arrows of the flying Tartar against the scymitar and battle-axes of my firm and invincible janizaries? I will guard the princes that have implored my protection: seek them in my tents. The cities of Arzingan and Erzeroum are mine; and unless the tribute be duly paid, I will demand the arrears under the walls of Tauris and Sultania.”
After enjoying some tranquil months at Samarcand, Timour proclaimed a new expedition of seven years into the western countries of Asia. Complaints and menaces fermented two years before the final explosion; and though the political quarrel was embittered by private and personal resentment, yet in his first expedition, Timour was satisfied with the destruction of Sebaste, a strong city on the borders of Anatolia; and revenged the indiscretion of Bajazet on the garrison of four thousand Armenians, who were p. 522 buried alive for their fidelity. As a mussulman, he seemed to respect the pious occupation of the Ottoman, who was still engaged in the blockade of Constantinople; and after this salutary lesson, the Mogul conqueror checked his pursuit, and turned aside to the invasion of Syria and Egypt, A. D. 1400.
Thus was prepared the third Euphratean angel-power. The time was fast approaching for it to be loosed, that it might superadd its vengeance upon “the worshippers of the dæmonials and idols” of the catholic church, and prevent the fall of their eastern empire by the arms of the Ottoman sultan, until the full expiration of the 391 years and 30 days.
9.—The Loosing of the Third Angel
The sack of Aleppo and Damascus signalized the loosing of the Timour-Mogul power from its Euphratean boundary. In a peaceful conference with a doctor of Mohammedan law, he said: “You see me here a poor, lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arm has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Touran, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness, that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamities.” During this peaceful utterance, the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, and the shrieks of violated females; and the cruelty of his Moguls was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids. After a period of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes; and in his return to the Euphrates, he delivered Aleppo to the flames. Bagdad shared the same fate, and upon its ruins he erected a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. He again visited Georgia; and proclaimed his resolution of marching against the Ottoman emperor, whom he styled, the Kaissar of Roum, the Cæsar of the Romans. Conscious of the importance of the war, he collected his forces from every province—“myriads of myriads”—variously estimated at from 800,000 to 1,600,000 men.
During the diversion of the Mogul arms into Syria, Bajazet had two years to collect his “myriads” for the encounter. John, doubtless, in vision, saw the myriads of myriads, which the Moguls counted by tomans of ten thousand each, collected by these rival destroyers of mankind for the slaughter upon the field of Angora; but without “the fire hyacinth and sulphur,” which had not then been introduced p. 523 into Asiatic field warfare. Timour himself fixes the Ottoman army at 400,000 men, horse and foot. He invested Angora, A. D. 1402, in the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, which became the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timour and the shame of Bajazet. For this signal victory, the Mogul was indebted to the rapid evolutions of his numerous “cavalry,” skillfully worked by a master hand. The genius of Bajazet sank under a stronger ascendant, and the unfaithfulness of his troops. The fleetest of his horses could not place him in safety. He was pursued, and taken; and after his capture, and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to Timour. The Mogul squadrons were only stopped by the waves of the Propontis. Smyrna was taken by storm; and the trunkless heads of the dæmonial worshippers were launched from the engines of assault.
From the Irtish and Volga to the Persian gulph, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hands of Timour; his armies were invincible, and his ambition boundless. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia; “and the lord of so many tomans, or ‘myriads,’ of horse, was not master of a single galley.” He invested Soliman, the son of Bajazet, with the kingdom of Thrace. The Greek emperor paid the same tribute to him as he had to Bajazet, and took an oath of allegiance to “the king of the world.” The Ottoman sultan died in captivity beyond the Euphrates. The Ottoman power seemed ruined, or fatally and finally merged in the third angel-power. It was in abeyance beyond “the great river Euphrates,” where it was “bound” with but little prospect of being revived. Before it could reappear, the power of the Great Mogul must be broken, or rolled back within its natural limits. When released from this restraint, it would be no longer “bound by the great river Euphrates” but loosed for the work that still remained to be done in “the hour, day, month, and year.”
Timour returned in triumph to Samarcand, where for two months he ceased to exercise his power. He considered these the only happy period of his life. But he was soon awakened to the carec of government and war. But the angel of death. met him on his march to China, and terminated his career in the seventieth year of his age, A. D. 1405; and thirty-five years after ascending the throne of Zagatai. The race of Timour was perpetuated in the Great Moguls of Delhi, whose empire has been dissolved, and their kingdoms p. 524 possessed by the “Empress of India” and “Queen” of the remote islands of the northern sea—VICTORIA GUELPH.
10.—Third Interval, in which the Preparation of the Fourth Angel is Completed
It would be well for the fame of fortunate destroyers of their species, if they would remember and be admonished by the remark of Ahab to Benhadad, king of Syria: “Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.” The sultan Bajazet belonged to the numerous class of military vain boasters, which is not, while we write, even now extinct. We have seen, that A. D. 1402, Constantinople and the Greek empire, were on the verge of destruction at his hand. The really formidable chivalry of the west had intervened to save them, but had been broken in the battle of Nicopolis. The Ottoman sultan saw no power to make him afraid; and supposing himself master of the situation, he thus addressed the Dragon-emperor: “Our invincible scymitar has. reduced almost all Asia (Minor) and many and large countries in Europe (“the Rest of the Men”) excepting only the city of Constantinople; resign that city, or tremble for thyself and thine unhappy people.” The killing of “the third of the men” thus seemed imminent full half a century before the prophetic period of 391 years and 30 days had elapsed that fixed it. But the eyes of the Eternal Spirit are always upon the truth. He never slumbers nor sleeps; so that all the boastful Bajazets in creation can neither expedite nor delay what he has decreed. As we have seen, he prepared the TIMOUR-MOGUL angel-power to make vain the boasts of the Ottoman sultan, and to delay the catastrophe of the vision until the expiration of the period of the time appointed. Thus, “the savage,” as Gibbon says, “was forced to relinquish his prey by a stronger savage than himself; and by the victory of Tamerlane the fall of Constantinople was delayed about fifty years.”
Bajazet died in captivity, A. D. 1403; but the Ottoman Dynasty did not expire with him. “The massy trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away, than it again rose with fresh vigor and more lively vegetation.” When Timour, in every sense, had evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a king. The open country was overspread with hordes of shepherds and robbers of Tartar and Turkman origin; the recent conquests of Bajazet were restored to the emirs; and his five sons seemed eager, by their civil discord, to consume p. 525 the remnant of their patrimony. There was as yet no fourth angel-power to be loosed. Its preparation, so far as it had progressed during the second interval, was interrupted, with little prospect of renewal and completion.
But the events of the ensuing eighteen years changed the face of affairs. This was a period of preparation, in which was completed the development of the fourth Euphratean angel-power. It was a period of war between the sons of Bajazet, which resulted in the destruction of them all, except Mohammed I. This prince, before his father’s captivity, had been intrusted with the government of Amasia, and the Turkish frontier. In his rapid career, Timour overlooked this obscure angle of Anatolia, “bounded by” Georgia on the east, the Greek kingdom of Trebisond on the west, and the “great river Euphrates” on the southwest; where Mohammed, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his silent independence. He obtained Anatolia by treaty, and Thrace by arms The last eight years of his reign were employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and restoring on a firmer basis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy.
He was succeeded by his son Amurath II., who, by the aid of the Genoese, captured Adrianople, and so reunited the Ottoman empire, A. D. 1421.
11.—Loosing of the Fourth Angel
The conquest of Adrianople was followed in the ensuing spring, A. D. 1422, by the siege of Constantinople. The religious merit of subduing the City of the Cæsars, attracted from Asia a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom. It was besieged over two months by 200,000 Turks; and “the old resources of defence,” says Gibbon, “were opposed to the new engines of attack”—“the horses in the vision.” The credulity of “the worshippers of the dæmonials and idols” beheld the Virgin Mary, in a violet garment walking on the rampart, and animating their courage. But their time for political death (“when Ephraim offended in Baal, he died,” i. e., a political death) had not quite arrived. It was not to their Dæmonial Mother of God, nor to their own courage, that they owed their deliverance, at this time; but to the recall of Amurath by a domestic revolt, which demanded the presence of his arms for its suppression. When this was extinguished, he led his janizaries to new conquests in Europe and Asia; a diversion which obtained for the Byzantine empire a servile and precarious respite of thirty years.
p. 52612.—“The Fire, the Smoke, and the Sulphur”
“By these three,” says John, “was the third of the men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the sulphur, which burst forth out of the mouths of” the horses. The time had now arrived, which John saw illustrated in the vision by what Gibbon styles, “the new engines of attack.” When John was in Patmos, there was no name in any of the languages of mankind by which to designate these “new engines.” They were represented to John by appearances and effects; as Mexicans might have done to Montezuma when they first saw a horse with a rider and a gun trailing after him, suddenly wheeling into position with their tails towards him, and fire, smoke, and sulphur bursting forth from the gun’s mouth, with a roaring noise, and hurling a ball into their midst. John was taught to call these new engines “horses;” a name analogous to what would be afterwards bestowed upon them when they should come into use—horse-artillery. I would here add to what I have already said on the breasts of the riders. These had “fiery hyacinthine, and sulphurous breasts.” Not only do the “breasts” represent the breast-works upon which exploding horses would be mounted, but also the breasts of the riders themselves, before which would be planted carbines, which when fired by cavalry in line, would give a fiery hyacinthine, and sulphurous smell and appearance to their breasts.
Having narrated the failure of Amurath’s attack upon Constantinople, Mr. Gibbon calls the attention of the reader to the invention of gunpowder and balls as “the powers” by which “the new engines” became effective. He remarks, that the only hope of salvation for the Greek empire, and the adjacent kingdoms, would have been some more powerful weapon, some discovery in the art of war, that would give them a decisive superiority over their Turkish foes. Such a weapon was in their hands, and such a discovery had been made at this critical period of their fate. The chemists of China or Europe, had found that a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, produces, with a spark of fire, a tremendous explosion or bursting forth—εκπορευσις. It was soon observed, that if the expansive force were compressed in a strong tube, a ball of stone or iron “heads,” might be expelled with irresistible and destructive velocity. The precise æra of the invention and application of gunpowder is involved in doubtful traditions and equivocal language; yet we may clearly discern, that it was known before the middle of the fourteenth century; and that before the end of the same, the use of artillery in battles and sieges, by sea and land, was familiar to several states. But it was found impossible to circumscribe p. 527 the secret within the pale of catholic idolatry; it was disclosed to the Turks by the treachery of apostates to Moslemism and the selfish policy of rivals; and the sultans of the fourth angel-power had the sense to adopt, and wealth to reward; the talents of a catholic engineer. It was probably by the hands of the Genoese that Amurath’s cannon was cast and directed at the siege of Constantinople. The first attempt was indeed unsuccessful; it could not be otherwise, the time appointed for “killing the third” being yet distant upwards of thirty years.
13.—The Killing of the Third
Amurath II. was succeeded, A. D. 1451, by his son Mohammed II., styled by Gibbon, “the Great Destroyer.” His passions were at once furious and inexorable. In the palace, as in the field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest provocation. Constantinople has sealed his glory, and placed him among “the basest of men” whom the Eternal Spirit “sets up” to fulfil his will. Under his command the Ottoman “myriads” were always more numerous than their enemies; “yet,” says the historian, “their progress was bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic.”
Mohammed II., though the proudest of men, could stoop from ambition to the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit. Peace was on his lips, while war was in his heart; and he incessantly sighed for the possession of Constantinople. The indiscretion of the Greeks afforded the first pretence of a fatal rupture. Instead of laboring to be forgotten, they continually annoyed him with their demands, until patience being exhausted, his vizir addressed them in the following strain: “Ye foolish and miserable Romans, we know your devices; and ye are ignorant of your own danger. The scrupulous Amurath is no more; his throne is occupied by a young conqueror, whom no laws can bind and no obstacles can resist; and, if you escape from his hands, give praise to the divine clemency which yet delays the chastisement of your sins. Why do you seek to affright us by vain and indirect menaces? Release the fugitive, Orchan; crown him sultan of Romania; call the Hungarians from beyond the Danube; arm against us the nations of the west; and be assured that you will only provoke and precipitate your ruin.”
Hostile in mind, Mohammed proceeded to build a fortress on the Bosphorus, about five miles from the city, to command the strait and close the Black Sea. This was, in effect, commencing the siege. He began this work A. D. 1452, which he pressed and directed with p. 528 indefatigable ardor, and quickening the diligence of the workmen with the eye of a despot, whose smile was the hope of fortune, and his frown the messenger of death. In vain did Constantine, the last of the Greek emperors of the Dragon-power, try to divert him from the work. The sultan was implacable, and listened with joy to all complaints, which only afforded him occasions for treachery and violence. At length the gates of the city were closed, and a last message forwarded to the sultan: “Since neither oaths, nor treaty, nor submission, can secure peace, pursue,” said the emperor, “your impious warfare. My trust is in God alone: if it should please him to mollify your heart, I shall rejoice in the happy change; if he delivers the city into your hands, I submit without a murmur to his holy will. But, until the Judge of the earth shall pronounce between us, it is my duty to live and die in the defence of my people.” Constantine did not know, and there was no one able to show him, that the Judge of the earth had recorded the decree against him over thirteen hundred and fifty years, and that that decree was death to “the third” of which he was the imperial head. The sultan’s answer was hostile and decisive; and, having finished his fortress, he prepared to besiege the city in the ensuing spring of A. D. 1453.
The conquest of the City of Cæsar seemed to haunt him day and night. About the second watch, he started from his bed, and commanded the instant attendance of his prime vizir. This secret friend of the idolators, surnamed Gabour Ortachi, or foster-brother of the infidels, alarmed at the summons, hastened with a guilty conscience to the palace with a slight tribute of gold. “It is not my wish,” said the sultan, “to resume my gifts, but rather to heap and multiply them upon thy head. In my turn, I ask a present far more valuable and important—CONSTANTINOPLE.” As soon as the vizir had recovered from his surprise, “The same God,” said he, “who has already given thee so large a portion of the Roman empire, will not deny the remnant and the capital. His providence and thy power assure thy success; and myself, with the rest of thy faithful slaves, will sacrifice our lives and fortunes.” “Lala,” continued the Sultan, “do you see this pillow? All the night, in my agitation, I have pulled it on one side and on the other; I have risen from my bed; again have I lain down, yet sleep has not visited these weary eyes. Beware of the gold and silver of the Romans. In arms we are superior; and, with the aid of God, and the prayers of the prophet, we shall speedily become masters of Constantinople.”
His artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the world. p. 529 “Am I,” said the sultan to a founder of cannon, who had deserted from the Greeks, “able to cast a cannon capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient size to batter the walls of Constantinople?” “I am not ignorant of their strength,” replied the artist; “but were they more solid than those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine of superior power: the position and management of that engine must be left to your engineers.” At the end of three months, Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of stupendous and almost incredible magnitude, capable of projecting a stone bullet weighing six hundred pounds. The explosion was felt or heard in a circuit of a hundred furlongs; the ball, by the force of gunpowder—“the fire, the smoke, and the sulphur”—was driven above a mile; and, on the spot where it fell, it buried itself a fathom deep in the ground. For the conveyance of this destructive engine, a carriage-frame of thirty waggons, linked together, was drawn by a team of sixty oxen; two hundred men on both sides were stationed to poise or support the rolling weight; two hundred and fifty pioneers marched before to smooth the way and repair the bridges; and near two months were employed in transporting it one hundred and fifty miles.
In the beginning of the spring, the Turkish vanguard swept the towns and villages as far as the gates of the capital: all who submitted were spared and protected; whatever presumed to resist was exterminated with fire and sword. The whole mass of the Turkish “myriads” are estimated at two hundred and fifty-eight thousand. Constantinople was still peopled with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants: but, of all these, only four thousand nine hundred and seventy were found able and willing to defend the city. These were increased by two thousand foreigners, under John Justiniani, a Genoese. These seven or eight thousand soldiers were all that could be mustered to defend Constantinople, a city of thirteen or sixteen miles circuit, against the fourth angel-power, to which Europe and Asia were open, but closed against the Greeks.
The siege began April 6, A. D. 1453, and lasted fifty-three days. The Propontis and the Harbor protected it on two sides, while the land side was defended by a double wall, and a ditch one hundred feet deep and four English miles in length. Against this the fourth angel-power directed its chief attack. “The incessant volleys of lances and arrows were accompanied,” says Gibbon, “with the smoke, and the sound, and the fire, of musketry and cannon. Their small arms discharged at the same time either five, or even ten, balls of lead, of the size of a walnut; and, according to the closeness of the ranks and the force of the powder, several breastplates and bodies were p. 530 transpierced by the same shot.” This is quite apocalyptic. John, in vision, saw this described by Gibbon. John also speaks of “the smoke,” and “the fire,” and “the sound,” or “bursting forth” roaringly; for “the horses had heads of lions, and out of their mouths burst forth fire, and smoke, and sulphur.” Gibbon likewise calls our attention to the breasts of them who handled “the horses of the vision,” or “sat upon them,” in speaking of the musketry as well as the cannon. He connects the smoke, and the fire, and the sound, with their breasts, in speaking of their musketry; for it need not be proved that, in a line of musketry discharging its pieces, a breast-line or work of small arms is presented to the observer, which, in activity, are, as John says, “fiery, and hyacinthine, and sulphurous breasts.” Gibbon also calls our attention to the apocalyptic “heads.” “They had heads” says John, “and with them they do hurt.” A dull, stupid, round-headed fellow is often styled a bullet-head. The Spirit termed balls and bullets in the vision “heads,” hissing like serpents from the lion-mouths of the pieces; and as Gibbon says, illustratively of the “hurt,” that “they transpierced breastplates and bodies” of the Dæmonial Virgin’s troops, the idolatrous Greeks. Lastly, Gibbon is particular to explain to us what John terms “their powers.” Projectiles were not new things at this siege; but the powers by which they were made to hurt were new. He says it was by “the force of the powder” that the bullet-heads, or shot, transpierced the bodies. Here were two powers or forces—the force of the powder, and the force of the shot; the one the propelling power, and the other the striking power; and both these powers, Gibbon says, were in the musketry and the cannon; and John says the same thing in other words—“their powers,” says he, “are in their mouths and in their tails; FOR their tails are like to serpents, having heads, and with them (the heads) they do hurt.” The serpent hiss of these heads is distinctly heard while they are whizzing through the air in their course from the mouth of the piece to their destination.
Now, if Gibbon was so particular to narrate these details to his contemporaries, who were as familiar with them in every day practice as himself, need we wonder that the Spirit should give them great prominence in the vision? Gibbon could no more dispense with his dissertation on gunpowder, musketry, and cannon, in treating of the fall of the Roman empire, than could the Spirit in representing the same event. And for this reason: what Gibbon styles “the new engines of attack” were the instrumental cause of that fall; and it was the indispensable duty of an accurate and faithful p. 531 historian to dwell upon the remarkable fact, that Constantinople was the chief city taken, and the Roman the first empire subverted by the smoke, and the sound, and the fire, and the balls, of musketry and cannon. This testimony of history is in harmony with the testimony of the Omniscient Spirit, who, “by his servant John,” says: “By these three was the third of the men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the sulphur, which burst forth out of their mouths.” If it had not been for this “force of powder,” “the third of the men” would not have been killed at the time appointed—the end of “the hour and day and month and year.” By the aid of “the powers” of powder and shot, it took the Ottoman angel-power fifty-three days to take the city and overthrow the empire, so as to execute the work in the appointed limit; but without these it would have taken a much longer time, or have resulted in failure as before. The third of the men, then, was emphatically “killed” by gunpowder—“by the fire, by the smoke, and by the sulphur bursting forth out of” the cannons’ “mouths;” for, without this “force of powder,” shot, cannon, and musketry, would have been perfectly harmless. Such is the strict accord between prophecy and history. Hence, “the vision is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.”
“The great cannon of Mohammed,” says Gibbon, “has been separately noticed—an important and visible object in the history of the times; but that enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude. The long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was mounted with one hundred and fifty guns, or that it discharged one hundred and fifty bullets, or “heads.” The great cannon could only be loaded and fired seven times in one day, and at length burst, destroying several engaged in working it.
The resistance of the idolators was so obstinate and surprising that the perseverance of Mohammed was fatigued, and he began to meditate a retreat. The reduction of the city appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made from the harbor as well as from the land. This he at length effected. He constructed a floating battery, upon which he planted one of his largest cannon. The fire of the Greeks was controlled and silenced by the superior fire of the Turks; and, after a siege of forty days, the fate of Constantinople could no longer be averted. The fortifications, which had stood for ages against hostile violence, were dismantled on all sides by the Ottoman cannon; many breaches were opened, and four p. 532 towers had been levelled with the ground. The crisis for the assault had arrived; but, wishing to spare the blood of his soldiers, he invited the worshippers of canonized immortal souls and idols to submission with circumcision or tribute; but if they preferred still to resist, death was to be their fate. It was heaven’s decree that they should be killed. The emperor of the Greeks determined to abide the last extremities of war. Several days were employed in preparations for the assault; but, singularly enough, Mohammed did not trust himself to appoint the day when it should be made. He had recourse to his favorite science of astrology, that it might fix for him the day. He thus surrendered himself to “fate;” and that fate had already decreed that the Roman empire of the East should fall at the end of 391 years and 30 days. However he might arrive at the conclusion by the principles of his science, I am not astrologer enough to tell. I doubt not but that, as in the case of Saul and the witch of Endor, the Spirit made use of his infatuation to determine him to do at the right moment what he had, over thirteen centuries before, marked out for the fourth Euphratean angel-power to accomplish. Be this as it may, Mohammed’s astrology ordered him to make the assault on the twenty-ninth of May, as the fortunate and fatal day.
All was depression and abject superstition within the city. The “celestial image of the Virgin” was paraded in solemn procession; but their “divine patroness” was deaf to their entreaties. This, their dæmonialism and idolatry, had brought upon them the calamities they endured. The shouts of the myriads without their walls proclaimed the truth by which they were condemned—“God is God! there is but one God!” and this one God it was, who, by all the four Euphratean angel-powers, was vindicating his Unity against the more than pagan multitude of the gods and goddesses of the catholic aërial. The morning of May 29, 1453, at length dawned. The myriads pressed forward to the breach, while the Ottoman artillery thundered from all sides; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke, which could only be dispelled by the deliverance or destruction of the Roman empire. The Turks were a hundred times more numerous than the idolators. The double walls were reduced by cannon to a heap of ruins; and their valiant emperor had fallen in the fight, and lay buried under a mountain of the slain. After his death, resistance and order vanished; the Greeks fled towards the city; and, in the heat of the pursuit, two thousand worshippers of the Virgin fell beneath the scymitars of the victorious Turks; and, thenceforth, p. 533 Constantinople became the capital of the fourth Euphratean angel-power. Thus was killed the Eastern Roman Third of the men, at the full end of “the hour, and day, and month and year,” or 391 years and 30 days from the perfected preparation of the first angel-power.