The Press. — London, England, 1854-10-28 00:00:00

1026 dwell. And if the fruits of his labours have not been so extensive as might have been wished, it must be remembered that in India he had only the leisure snatched from the performance of a very responsible and labo rious office to devote to them ; while in Eng land the difficulties that lie in the path of the Oriental scholar are so vast as to render it a wonder that they ever should be surmounted. These difficulties, however, were, after the labour of many years, overcome in the compi lation of the present volumes, in which we think that every one acquainted with the sub ject must admit our author to have achieved a great success. The most indifferent reader will find his curiosity awakened by the details of a narrative so new and strange to him, while the student of Eastern history will be gratified with so valuable an addition to his stock of knowledge. He will find given, in clear and continuous detail, a mass of information which he could have only attained by the careful study of a large number of volumes and manuscripts, many of them in the Persian tongue. To be sure we had some account before in English of the reigns of Baber and Hoomayoon, to which these volumes of Ers kine are devoted, in the pages of Ferishta, translated by Briggs, in the valuable work of Elphinstone, in the memoirs of Baber, written by himself, and translated by Leyden and Erskine, and in the memoirs of Hoomayoon, written by his confidential servant Jouher, and translated by Stewart ; but all of these ac counts, save the memoirs of Baber, are comparatively meagre, and even the memoirs give a much less complete account of the reign of that monarch than that which Mr. Erskine's present volumes supply. Baber—descended, on the mother's side, from the great Tartar conqueror, Chengiz Khan, and, on the father's side, from the still more celebrated Timour, or Tamerlane, who himself was a collateral descendant of the great Chengiz—inherited only one of the numerous provinces, and that almost the smallest, into which, after the death of Timour, that con queror's vast empire had been divided. The province of Ferghana, now Kokan, which gave birth to Baber, is a lovely valley, sur rounded by mountains, lying about two de grees north of Bokhara and Samarcand. The men, the animals, and the products are those of the temperate zone. The people, possessing the colour and physical properties of the Englishman, have all the courage and energy which mark the mountaineer in every land ; while literature was cultivated with more than ordinary assiduity in a province bordering on the cities which were then and long afterwards the chief seats of Mahomedan learning, whi ther students flocked from all parts of the Mahomedan world. Brought up as the future chieftain of such a race, his time being di vided from his early boyhood between litera ture, athletic exercises, and the sports of the field, with the history of the conquests of his ancestors to stimulate him, and a Court filled with needy clansmen and adventurers whose only means of acquiring fortune was the sword, it is hardly to be supposed that, under any circumstances, Baber would be long inclined to rest content within the limits of the inheri tance to which he was born, and accordingly, from the age of twelve till a very short period preceding his death, we find him constantly involved in war. In the outset his assumption of arms was of a defensive rather than of an aggressive character. But the appetite for conquest is one which, once gratified, is never satiated; and when Baber had successfully repelled the attacks upon himself he turned his arms to the conquest of Samarcand. It speedily fell before him. But meantime revolt shook the foundations of his paternal throne. Marching to recover that, ho lost Samarcand, but again conquered it. After enduring a siege of five months he again lost it, and, wearied out with these alternations of ill fortune with successes, he quitted both it and his paternal domain, again, however, to reconquer both after the lapse of many years. By any other man or in any other country than that to which Baber belonged such a termination of his ambitious hopes would have closed his career for ever; but Baber, though a fugitive, was not without a following. lie had youth THE PRESS. and a stout heart to support him. Kingdoms were not so difficult to gain in Asia in those days for those who had the courage to seize them ; and before ho had attained the age of two and twenty he had recompensed himself and his soldiery for their losses by the conquest and seizure of the city and kingdom of Cabool. In the following year, A.D. 1505, ho descended by Jellalabad, through the Khyber Pass, to Peshawar and the Indus, and then, turning southward, conquered the whole of the terri tory on the right bank of that river down to the very borders of Scinde. He then returned by Gnuznee to Cabool, after a four months' most active and successful campaign. He shortly afterwards stormed and took Kelat, but decided on abandoning it for the reasons which similarly induced the British to resign it. more than three centuries afterwards. The cause in each case was its isolated position and its trifling value compared with the cost which its retention must, under such circum stances, necessarily involve. In the following year Baber made an extraordinary march of eight hundred miles to Khorassan to aid the chiefs of Herat in the reduction of Balkh, and, after reducing that city, returned by Herat to Cabool by a route through the mountains in volving extraordinary difficulties, it being the season when the snow was falling. The dangers of the passage were such as could have been overcome by none but a man of Baber's extraordinary energy, patience, and sagacity. They were, however, at last surmounted ; but he only arrived to find that a revolt had oc curred during his absence, and that Cabool was besieged. His attack of the rebels was rapid: they were soon vanquished, and order was once more restored. In 1507 Baber conquered Candahar, which, however, was soon retaken from him. In 1511 he reconquered his patrimonial estate of Ferg hana, and shortly afterwards Bokhara and Samarcand ; but, after a defeat, he abandoned the latter provinces and returned to Cabool. A short period was spent by him in putting down internal rebellions and repressing the lawlessness of the neighbouring hill tribes ; and then, in 1519, he turned his arms against the Punjaub. He had advanced as far as Sealkote, on the Chenab, when he was recalled by an invasion of his territories from Canda har. He, however, speedily ejected the inva ders, invaded their country in return, and, establishing a blockade on their capital, starved Candahar into a capitulation in the year 1522. The dynasty expelled from Caudahar turned its arms upon Scinde ; and thus the Arghun race was first established in that province. In 1527 Baber entered into possession of Moot tan, which had been ceded to him by Shah Hassan, the successor of the first Arghun conqueror of Scinde, and thus it became an appanage of the Crown of Delhi, which by this time Baber, now styled the Emperor, had conquered. To enter into the details of this magnificent military operation, the crowning labour of Baber's life, would occupy far more space than we can accord to it. Suffice it to say that, after four successive invasions of India, in which, taking advantage of the dissensions then prevailing, he had gradually extended his territories so as to include Lahore and the whole of the Punjaub, he finally met the Sultan of Delhi at Panniput, near the banks of the Jumna, at the head of twelve thousand men ; and, though the Sultan's army numbered a hundred thousand, and a.thousand elephants, the discipline and courage of Baber's veteran Tartars was so superior that they entirely routed the enormous masses opposed to them. He thus added one more instance to the nu merous others of the superiority of northern warriors to the effeminate soldiery of Hindoos tan ; for of these Ibrahim's army was chiefly composed, though the officers were mostly Affghans. The Sultan, with sixteen thousand of his men, fell on the battle-field, the rest fled in terror, and Delhi and Agra fell into the hands of the conqueror, with all the trea sures of the Crown. Baber thus became pos sessed of money and jewels to the amount of more millions than he had perhaps ever before possessed thousands; in fact, the quantity of treasure captured reached a figure almost fabulous. But Baber was as generous as he was brave, and knew well every avenue to the SATURDAY, soldier's heart. Out of all these magnificent spoils he reserved nothing for himself. To his sou Hoomayoon, to his chiefs, to his allies, and to his soldiery, by far the larger portion was at once given. His friends in Samarcand, Khorassan, Khasghar, and Persia received a considerable share, while the remainder was divided among men of letters and holy men in various parts of Asia, a large portion being sent to Mecca and Medina as a token of his - - gratitude to God. The wisdom and method shown by I3aber in bringing into order the vast empire which he had thus become master of was as conspicuous as the valour and sagacity by which he had gained it. Nor was his humanity and kindness towards the conquered a less marked feature in his character. Indeed, he seemed, like most of those great conquerors who have proved themselves the most terrible in war, to be a man who, when the sword was sheathed, was in all respects the most deserving of a people's reverence and love. He was not, however, destined long to rule over the land which he had won. In 1526 he had conquered at Panni put, and in 1530, at the early age of forty eight, he died. His death was accelerated by his anxiety for his favourite son, whom illness had brought to the very verge of the grave. And it is a mark of the affectionate nature of his disposition that, becoming possessed with a superstitious notion that the life of one of them was required by Providence, he prayed that his own might be taken and his son's be spared. Seeing his son recover, he died happy at the thought that his prayer had been heard. His last advice was worthy of so great and just a man. After formally declaring his eldest son Hoomayoon to be his lieutenant and successor, he recommended to his sons and officers " a conscientious discharge of " their duties to God and to man; above all honestly and assiduously to administer jus " tice to those over whom they were placed; " but, while they punished the guilty, to extend " their tenderness and mercy to the ignorant " and penitent, and their protection to the " poor and defenceless." In these words the Emperor summed up the principles by which he had himself been guided, and shortly after the utterance of them his soul departed. His body wits carried to his beloved Cabool, and there buried in the loveliest spot in all that lovely land, a spot beautifully described by the lamented Alexander Burnes. The following summing up by Erskine of Haber's character is so forcible and so just that we must extract it. It is one of the happiest specimens of Mr. Erskine's style : Bober was certainly one of the most illustrious sove reigns that ever filled an Eastern throne. His character was happily compounded of most of the qualities that go to form a great prince and a good man. He was bold, enter prising, full of ardour, and possessed of the commanding talents that sway and lead the minds of men. His temper was frank, confiding, and gay, and he maintained through life the freshness of youth. He had strong affections, the warmest domestic feelings, was devotedly attached to his relations and friends, and ready to sympathise with the pleasures and the sufferings of human beings of every class. Eeenly alive to whatever was grand or beautiful, he cultivated knowledge of every kind with unwearied assi• duity and with proportionate success. Glory in every shape inflamed his imagination, and he attained to a rare emi nence of power and renown. Yet no man's success could be more entirely his own. When, as a boy, he mounted the throne of Ferghana the neighbouring kingdoms were all held by sultans and sovereigns of his own race. While he was still only a youth not one of them was left : they had all either fallen by domestic treason, or been swept away by foreign inva.siou, the torrent of which overwhelmed bun also, and bore him into distant lands. But, by his native energy, he emerged from the sweeping inundation, and raised himself above it, the only remnant of the house of Taimonr. Before the age of twenty he had experienced every variety of fortune, having been by turns a petty prince, the conqueror of a renowned kingdom, and a house less and hunted fugitive ; but under no circumstances did his sanguine temper and his determined resolution forsake him ; and Iwhen in the lowest pitch of misery, expelled from his hereditary dominions, and wandering with a few ragged followers, the fame of his valour brought to his standard many thousand bold adventurers, aided by whom he conquered new and extensive kingdoms. In that age sob of confusion to he able to reign it was necessary to be a dier, and he became the first of his time. His fondness for war did not lead him to neglect the arts of peace. The few intervals of repose from military operations which he enjoyed in his troubled life he devoted with his habitual ardour to examining into and improving the state of his kingdom, and to bettering the condition of his subjects. His natural genius made him fond of all the fine arts, and, among others, of architecture and gardening._ He built palaces and laid ou t g ardens in several partB.o! ul his dominions ; he delighted in lo wers and in beautif