relaxed; and I am taught to read in the history of the times, that they mowed down their patient enemies like hemp or grass; and that the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an emperor who repulsed these Barbarians with golden lances. This extent of savage empire compelled the Turkish monarch to establish three subordinate princes of his own blood, who soon forgot their gratitude and allegiance. The conquerors were enervated by luxury, which is always fatal except to an industrious people; the policy of China solicited the vanquished nations to resume their independence; and the power of the Turks was limited to a period of two hundred years. The revival of their name and dominion in the southern countries of Asia are the events of a later age; and the dynasties which succeeded to their native realms may sleep in oblivion, since their history bears no relation to the decline and fall of the Roman empire.[1]
The Avars fly before the Turks, and approach the empire In the rapid career of conquest, the Turks attacked and subdued the nation of the Ogors, or Varchonites,[2] on the banks of the river Til, which derived the epithet of black from its dark water or gloomy forests.[3] The khan of the Ogors was slain with three hundred thousand of his subjects, and their bodies were scattered over the space of four days' journey: their surviving countrymen acknowledged the strength and mercy of the Turks; and a small portion, about twenty thousand warriors, preferred exile to servitude. They followed the well-known road of the Volga, cherished the error of the nations who confounded them with the Avars, and spread the terror of that false though famous appellation, which had not, however, saved- ↑ For the origin and revolutions of the first Turkish empire, the Chinese details are borrowed from De Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. P. ii. p. 367-462) and Visdelou (Supplement à la Bibliothèque Orient. d'Herbelot, p. 82-114). The Greek or Roman hints are gathered in Menander (p. 108-164) and Theophylact Simocatta (l. vii. c. 7, 8).
- ↑ [Theophylactus (vii. 7, 14) says that the race called Ogor (οἱ Ὀγώρ) were afterwards called Var-and-Chunni (Οὐὰρ καὶ Χουννί); and these are clearly Menander's "Varchonites". The word var meant "river" and was used by the Huns for the Dnieper (Jordanes, p. 127, ed. Momms.). The Chinese sources mention Ouigours near the Tula (see next note), who seem to correspond to the Ogor of Theophylactus near the Til.]
- ↑ The river Til, or Tula, according to the geography of De Guignes (tom. i. part ii. p. lviii. and 352), is a small though grateful stream of the desert, that falls into the Orchon, Selinga, &c. See Bell, Journey from Petersburg to Pekin (vol. ii. p. 124); yet his own description of the Keat, down which he sailed into the Oby, represents the name and attributes of the black river (p. 139). [The identification of this river is quite uncertain.]
