Amidst the tumult, a son of Aibek, fifteen years of age, was raised to the throne; but the approach of a war soon caused a new revolution to break out, and precipitated the youth from his giddy eminence: great events were ripening in Asia, and a storm was brewing in Persia, which was soon to burst over both Syria and Egypt.[3]
The Moguls, under the command of Oulagon, had laid siege to Bagdad, at a moment when the city was divided into several sects, all more earnest in their conflicts with each other than in their preparations to repulse a formidable enemy. The caliph, as well as his people, was sunk deep in voluptuous effeminacy, and the pride created by the vain adulation of the Mussulmans, made him neglect true and available means of defence. The Tartars took the city by storm, and gave it up to all the horrors of war. The last and thirty-seventh of the successors of Abbas, dragged away like the vilest captive, lost his life in the midst of such tumult and disorder, that history[4] is unable to say whether he died of despair, or whether he fell beneath the sword of his enemies.
This violence, committed upon the head of the Mussulman religion, with the march of the Moguls towards Syria, threw the Mamelukes into the greatest consternation. They then deemed it necessary to displace the son of Aibek, and elect a leader able to guide them amidst the perils that threatened them, and their choice fell upon Koutouz, the bravest and most able of the emirs.
Whilst Egypt was earnestly engaged in preparations to resist the Moguls, the Christians appeared to expect their deliverance from this war against the Mussulmans; the khan of Tartary had promised the king of Armenia to carry his conquests as far as the banks of the Nile; and oriental chronicles relate that the Armenian troops were united with those of the Moguls.[5] The latter, after having crossed the Euphrates, took possession of Aleppo, Damascus, and the principal cities of Syria. On all sides, the Mussulmans fled before the Tartars, and the disciples of Christ were protected by the victorious hordes; from that time the Christians only beheld liberators in these redoubtable conquerors. In the churches, and even upon the tomb of Christ, prayers were put up for the triumph of the Moguls, and in the excess of their joy, the Christians of Palestine abandoned their general practice of imploring aid from the powers of Europe.
In the mean time Europe itself entertained a very different idea of this war; the progress of the Moguls created the greatest terror in all the nations of the West; they not only dreaded the Mogul arms on account of the Christian colonies of the East; they trembled for themselves;[6] for whilst the hordes of Oulagon were ravaging Syria, other armies of the same nation were desolating the banks of the Dniester and the Danube. Pope Alexander, addressing the princes, prelates, and all the faithful, exhorted them to unite against the barbarians. Councils were assembled in France, England, Italy, and Germany, to deliberate upon the dangers of Christendom; the head of the Church ordered prayers to be offered up and processions to be made, blasphemies to be punished, and luxury to be suppressed at the table and in dress,—measures which might be conceived proper to mitigate the anger of Heaven, but very insufficient to stop the invasion of the Moguls.
The hordes, however, which ravaged Hungary and Poland were dispersed, and terror again took possession of the Christians of the East, whose hopes had been so sanguine. Oulagon, recalled into Persia by civil wars, left his lieutenant, Ketboga, in Syria, with directions to follow up his conquests. The Christians were still applauding the victories of the Moguls, when a quarrel, provoked by some German Crusaders, all at once changed the state of things, and made enemies of those who had been considered as auxiliaries. Some Mussulman villages which paid tribute to the Tartars, having been pillaged, Ketboga sent to demand a reparation of the Christians, which they refused. In the course of the dispute raised on this subject, the nephew of the Mogul commander was killed. From that time the Tartar leader declared open war against the Christians, ravaged the territory of Sidon, and menaced that of Ptolemaïs. At the aspect of their desolated plains, all the hopes of the Christians vanished; they had had no bounds to their hopes and their joy, they had now none to their grief or their fears. The alarm created in them by a barbarous people, made them forget that most of their misfortunes came from Egypt, and as they had given over all idea of succours from the West, many of them now placed all their confidence in the arms of the Mamelukes.
A great portion of Palestine had already been invaded by the Moguls, when the sultan of Cairo set out on his march to meet them at the head of his army; he remained three days in the neighbourhood of Ptolemaïs, where he renewed a truce with the Christians. Soon after, a battle was fought in the plain of Tiberias; Ketboga lost his life in the middle of the conflict, and the army of the Tartars, beaten and scattered, abandoned Syria.
To whichever side victory might have inclined, the Christians had nothing to hope from the conqueror; the Mussulmans could not pardon them for having sought the support of the victorious Moguls, and having taken advantage of the desolation of Syria, to insult the disciples of Mahomet. The churches were demolished at Damascus; the Christians were persecuted in all the Mussulman cities, and these persecutions were the presage of a war in which fanaticism exercised all its furies. On all sides complaints and menaces arose against the Franks of Palestine; the cry of war with the Christians resounded through all the provinces in the power of the Mamelukes; the animosity was so great, that the sultan of Cairo, who had just triumphed over the Tartars, was the victim to his fidelity in observing the last truce concluded with the Franks. Bibars, who had killed the last sultan of the family of Saladin, took advantage of this effervescence of the public mind to endeavour to raise a party against Koutouz, by affecting great hatred for the Christians, and by reproaching the sultan with a criminal moderation towards the enemies of Islamism.
When the fermentation had been worked up to the highest point, Bibars, having assembled his accomplices, surprised the sultan whilst hunting, struck him several mortal blows, then, all stained as he was with the blood of his master, he hastened to the Mameluke army, at that time collected at Sallhie; he presented himself to the atabek or lieutenant of the prince, announcing the death of Koutouz. Upon being asked who killed the sultan. “It was I,” answered he. “In that case,” said the atabek, “reign in his place.”[7] Strange words, which characterize at a single stroke the spirit of the Mamelukes, as well as of the government they had founded! The army proclaimed Bibars sultan of Egypt, and the ceremonies prepared at Cairo for the reception of the conqueror of the Tartars, served to celebrate the coronation of his murderer.
This revolution gave the Mussulmans the sovereign most to be dreaded by the Christians. Bibars was named the pillar of the Mussulman religion and the father of victories; and he was destined to merit these titles by completing the ruin of the Franks. He had scarcely mounted the throne before he gave the signal for war.