with horsemen, and with many ships."] A. D. 1084, the Seljukian kingdom of Roum, " pregnant with mines of silver and iron *, of alum and copper," extended" from the Black Sea to the confines of Syria, from the Euphrates to Constantinople." This seat of empire was still safe behind the waters of the Bosphorus; but already the victorious Soliman was bent on its subver sion. Ships must be provided to effect the conquest: and that part of the prophecy which makes mention of them, had, accordingly, its first fulfilment, in the strenuous efforts of the Turkish sultan to erect a naval power. "The Turkish ignorance of navigation protected, for a while, the inglorious safety of the emperor; but no sooner had a fleet of two hundred ships been constructed by the hands of the captive Greeks, than Alexius trembled behind the walls of his capital." +

The prophetic career run by the princes of the house of Seljuk was re-enacted by the Ottoman sultans. The design, under both dynasties, was, throughout, the same; the difference lay only in the success. The conquest of Greece, and capture of Constantinople, which had been aimed at by the former, were effected by the latter. When Greece had fallen a prey to the destroying armies of the Amuraths and Bajazets,

* Compare Daniel, xi. 43.

+ Gibbon.

1

and when the limits of the empire had been thus reduced, on all sides, to the walls of the capital *, the prophecy of Daniel concerning the king of the North too plainly drew near to its fatal accomplishment; when the last of the Constantines resigned his sceptre with his life, in the breach, which, to use the words of an eye-witness, "Heaven had opened for the passage of the Turks."

The end proposed in this prophecy, the overthrow of the Greek empire, requires to be held specially in view in the interpretation of an apparently obscure part of it: " But tidings out of the East and out of the North shall trouble him therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many."

The subversion of the eastern empire being the appointed work of the king of the North, the tidings out of the East and out of the North which were to trouble him, must have reference to providential interpositions from those quarters, operating directly to interrupt his for yet a little season to avert its fall.

progress, and

* The imperious mandate of Bajazet I., surnamed Ilderim, to the Emperor Manuel, marks out, as the last boundary of the Greek empire, the walls of this devoted city, already nodding to their fall: “Our invincible scymitar has reduced Asia with many and large countries in Europe, excepting only the city of Constantinople; for beyond the walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that city or tremble for thyself and thy unhappy people." Decline and Fall, vol. xi. p. 458.

Now, two extraordinary interpositions, and two only, are to be met with in the history of this eventful period: on the side of the East, the invasions of the Turkish empire by the Tartars; and on the side of the North, the Crusades. For the Moguls penetrated into Asia Minor from the side of Persia and India; and the Crusaders poured their successive myriads into Syria and Palestine, through the northern frontier of the Turkish kingdom of Roum.*

It remains that we identify these interposing powers, by historical evidences, with the prophetic tidings out of the East and out of the North, which should trouble the king of the North.

Now, with respect to the holy wars, the historian of the Roman empire informs us, that "the first crusade was principally directed against the Turks." The epistles of the Greek emperor, addressed to the Catholic princes, were written expressly to supplicate deliverance from the victorious arms of Soliman, the Turkish sul

* For full proof of the agreement of the crusades, with Daniel's "tidings out of the North," see Appendix, No. IV.

+ The crusades, in their providential aspect, require no further vindication than may be drawn from their effects in repressing the Turkish power. It was by the arms of the crusaders, that the Turks of the four Sultanies (described by Saint John, Rev. ix., as the four angels bound in the great river) were driven back on the Euphrates. See Mede's Works, pp. 585, 586. History contains few more striking fulfilments of prophecy. Compare sections iii. xi.

tan of Roum; and the zeal of Christian Europe was in these letters doubly awakened, by the announcement of the capture of Jerusalem, and of the impending fall of Constantinople. The succeeding crusades were all directed alike exclusively against the Turkish powers; and all operated immediately to divert the king of the North from the accomplishment of his first and last aim, the conquest of Constantinople. The unparalleled waste of human life in the holy wars, and the implacable fury, on both sides, with which they were carried on, are also strongly marked in the prophecy. There would seem, therefore, no reasonable ground for doubt, the prediction at large being admitted to belong to the Turks, that the crusades are designed by the tidings out of the North, which were to trouble the Turkish powers.

On precisely similar grounds, the tidings out of the East become identified with the desolating invasions of the Turkish empire by the Moguls, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

At the former period, the downfall of the Greek empire was providentially postponed, by the successful inroad of the Tartar hordes, who, under the famous Holaghou Khan, the grandson of Genghiz, altogether broke, for a time, the power of the Turks in Asia Minor; "spread,

from the East, beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerusalem!" *

At the latter period, the ferocious Bajazet was summoned from before the walls of Constantinople, by a second irruption of the Moguls, under the celebrated Tamerlane. "The savage," says Mr. Gibbon, "would have devoured his prey, if, in the critical moment, he had not been overthrown by another savage stronger than himself. By the victory of Tamerlane," proceeds the historian, "the fall of Constantinople was delayed about fifty years.'

Timour was encamped on the banks of the Ganges, when the intelligence reached him which provoked his march against the Turkish Sultan. Bajazet broke up from the siege of the Greek capital, and hastened to encounter him with the fury of insulted pride. † It is needless to

* Gibbon.

" In

† The temper in which the imperious Ottoman received the insulting epistle of Tamerlane, has been forcibly depicted by Mr. Gibbon. his replies, Bajazet poured forth the indignation of a soul which was deeply stung by such unusual contempt -retorting the basest reproaches on the thief and rebel of the desert. - The ungovernable rage of the Sultan at length betrayed him to an insult of a more domestic kind; — and the political quarrel of the two monarchs was embittered by private and personal resentment." - Decline and Fall, chap. lxv. vol. xii. pp. 16—19. Compare the historical fact, in this instance, with the declaration of the