[[Largest view.]]

one hundred and sixty years before.[615] He then went boldly forth to meet the Tartars, but, when he realized that his twenty thousand horsemen could not hold their own against Timur, he withdrew to the north-west, abandoning the city to its fate.[616]

It took Timur eighteen days of incessant attack to weaken the defences of Sivas. The walls were sapped, and piles driven under them, which were smeared with pitch and set on fire. Only after several of the towers had fallen did the garrison agree to surrender upon Timur’s promise that their lives should be spared and the whole city preserved. As far as the Moslems were concerned, this promise was partially fulfilled. They were allowed to pay for their freedom. The city, however, was pillaged and burned, and its Christian inhabitants were sold into slavery. Three or four thousand Armenian horsemen, who had been bravest and most stubborn in the defence, were buried alive in the moats.[617]

The destruction of Sivas was in August, 1400.[618] The conduct of Timur after this victory lends colour to the supposition that it was not at all in his mind to subdue Asia Minor and overthrow the Ottoman Empire. He had come not to conquer, but merely to give Bayezid a salutary lesson. Instead of continuing his westward march, Timur withdrew to the Euphrates, and spent the next eighteen months in the famous campaigns that ended in the destruction of Damascus and Bagdad.

XVI

In the winter of 1401-2, fresh from his triumphs in Syria and Mesopotamia, Timur paused for several months on the confines of Asia Minor. He had not yet made up his mind to attack Bayezid.

Through a Dominican friar, who had been trying to convert him, he wrote to Charles VI of France, whom he believed to be the most powerful king of the Occident, making to him a proposal for sharing the world, such as no European sovereign had put before him again until Alexander met Napoleon on the raft at Tilsit.[619] There was also an exchange of gifts and embassies with Genoa. The Genoese ambassador pointed out to Timur the necessity of destroying Bayezid. When the Tartar embassy went to Pera, the standard of Timur was flown in its honour from the Galata tower.[620] Even the distant king of Castile had two ambassadors in the camp of Timur, who were privileged to witness the battle of Angora from the Tartar side.[621]

The fall of Sivas was the first set-back of Bayezid’s career. It came to him as a heavy blow, if we are to believe the Ottoman chroniclers. But it did not result in spurring him on to immediate military and diplomatic effort, as such a calamity would certainly have done in the early days of his reign. He had become a voluptuary, debauched mentally and physically. His pride and self-confidence had increased in inverse ratio to his ability to make good his arrogant assumptions.

Negotiations were reopened between the two great sovereigns of Islam. The letters became more menacing on the part of Timur and more insulting on the part of Bayezid.[622] Timur’s earlier admiration for Bayezid as champion of the Prophet against the infidels, and his earlier reluctance to make war against a nation of his own faith, had disappeared in the course of his last conquests. The fire at Damascus was one indication of Timur’s religious indifference: his willingness to treat with Christian Europe was another. At last determined to humble Bayezid, Timur brought his huge army into camp near Sivas. He did not, however, definitely decide upon the invasion of Ottoman territory until he heard that Bayezid was starting for Tokat.