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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 9

Section 5 Subsection 9

The Loosing of the Third Angel


 
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The sack of Aleppo and Damascus signalized the loosing of the Timour-Mogul power from its Euphratean boundary. In a peaceful conference with a doctor of Mohammedan law, he said: "You see me here a poor, lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arm has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Touran, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness, that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamities." During this peaceful utterance, the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, and the shrieks of violated females; and the cruelty of his Moguls was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids. After a period of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes; and in his return to the Euphrates, he delivered Aleppo to the flames. Bagdad shared the same fate, and upon its ruins he erected a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. He again visited Georgia; and proclaimed his resolution of marching against the Ottoman emperor, whom he styled, the Kaissar of Roum the Caesar of the Romans. Conscious of the importance of the war he collected his forces from every province -- "myriads of myriads" -- variously estimated at from 800,000 to 1,600,000 men.

During the diversion of the Mogul arms into Syria, Bajazet had two years to collect his "myriads" for the encounter. John, doubtless, in vision, saw the myriads of myriads, which the Moguls counted by tomans of ten thousand each, collected by these rival destroyers of mankind for the slaughter upon the field of Angora; but without "the fire hyacinth and sulphur," which had not been introduced into Asiatic field warfare. Timour himself fixes the Ottoman army at 400,000 men, horse and foot. He invested Angora, A.D. 1402, in the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, which became the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timour and the shame of Bajazet. For this signal victory, the Mogul was indebted to the rapid evolutions of his numerous "cavalry," skillfully worked by a master hand. The genius of Bajazet sank under a stronger ascendant, and the unfaithfulness of his troops. The fleetest of his horses could not place him in safety. He was pursued, and taken; and after his capture, and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to Timour. The Mogul squadrons were only stopped by the waves of the Propontis. Smyrna was taken by storm; and the trunkless heads of the daemonial worshippers were launched from the engines of assault.

From the Irtish and Volga to the Persian gulph, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hands of Timour; his armies were invincible, and his ambition boundless. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia; "and the lord of so many tomans, or ‘myriads,’ of horse, was not master of a single galley." He invested Soliman, the son of Bajazet, with the kingdom of Thrace. The Greek emperor paid the same tribute to him as he had to Bajazet, and took an oath of allegiance to "the king of the world." The Ottoman sultan died in captivity beyond the Euphrates. The Ottoman power seemed ruined, or fatally and finally merged in the third angel-power. It was in abeyance beyond "the great river Euphrates," where it was "bound" with but little prospect of being revived. Before it could reappear, the power of the Great Mogul must be broken, or rolled back within its natural limits. When released from this restraint, it would be no longer "bound by the great river Euphrates" but loosed for the work that still remained to be done in "the hour, day, month, and year."

Timour returned in triumph to Samarcand, where for two months he ceased to exercise his power. He considered these the only happy period of his life. But he was soon awakened to the career of government and war. But the angel of death met him on his march to China and terminated his career in the seventieth year of his age, A.D. 1405 and thirty-five years after ascending the throne of Zagatai. The race of Timour was perpetuated in the Great Moguls of Delhi, whose empire has been dissolved, and their kingdoms possessed by the "Empress of India" and "Queen" of the remote islands of the northern sea -- VICTORIA GUELPH.

 

 


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