[[10]] Baber's own memoirs, Memoirs of Zehir-ed-din Muhammed Baber, emperor of Hindustan, one of the priceless documents of history, show the manner in which he conceived his mission. Here is his account of the supreme incident in his spiritual life; "In January, 1527, messengers came from Mehdi Khwajeh to announce that Sanka, the Rana of Mewar, and Hassan Khan Mewati, were on their march from the west. On February 11th I went forth to the Holy War. On the 25th I mounted to survey my posts, and during the ride I was struck with the reflection that I had always resolved to make an effectual repentance at some period of my life. I now spoke with myself thus—'O my soul, how long wilt thou continue to take pleasure in sin? Not bitter is repentance: then taste it thou! Since the day wherein thou didst set forth on a Holy War, thou hast seen Death before thine eyes for thy salvation. And he who sacrificeth his life to save his soul shall attain that exalted state thou wottest of.' Then I sent for the gold and the silver goblets, and broke them, and drank wine no more, and purified my heart. And having thus heard from the Voice that errs not, the tidings of peace, and being now for the first time a Mussulman indeed, I commanded that the Holy War shall begin with the grand war against the evil in our hearts." Such was the mood in which, on the 24th of the first Jemadi, A.H. 933, Baber proceeded to found the Mogul Empire.
[[11]] The battle of Al-Kasr al Kebir, in Morocco, about fifty miles south of Tangiers, was fought on August 4th, 1578. The king, Dom Sebastian, and the flower of the Portuguese nobility died on the field. As in Scotland after Flodden, there was not a house of name in Portugal which had not its dead to mourn.
[[12]] The genius of this great thinker, patriot, scholar, and historian, along with the heroism of the war of Candia, "the longest and most memorable siege on record," as Voltaire designates it, throw a dying lustre over the Venice of the seventeenth century, which in painting has then but such names as those of Podovanino and the younger Cagliari. Sarpi's defence of Venice against Paul V, an attorney in the seat of Hildebrand, occurred in 1605. It consists of two works—the Tractate and the Considerations—and probably of a third drawn up for the secret use of the Council of Ten. Like Voltaire, Sarpi seems to have lived with a pen in his hand. His manuscripts in the Venice archives fill twenty-nine folio volumes. The first collected edition of his works was published, not unfitly, in the year of the fall of the Bastille.