[340] [Turkish holders of military fiefs.]
The turbaned crowd of dusky hue
Whose march Morea's fields may rue.—[MS. G. erased.]
[341] {453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.
[342] [Compare The Giaour, line 639 (vide ante, [p. 116])—"The deathshot hissing from afar.">[
[343] {454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how "Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed (Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was assassinated by Yussuf Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khorassan." His epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan élevée jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en poussière."—Hammer-Purgstall, Histoire de l'Empire Othoman, i. 13-15.]
[oh] But now an exile——.—[MS. G.]
[344] {455} ["The Lions' Mouths, under the arcade at the summit of the Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal for the public welfare."—Sketches from Venetian History, 1832, ii. 380.]
[oi] To waste its future——.—[MS. G.]
[345] Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali Cumurgi (i.e. son of the charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August 16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."