Connecticut western news., 1885-07-15
TAM ERlANE.
Ruler Who Swayed the DestInIea
 of India With an Iron Hand.

There IS probably no chapter of the worlds history so crammed with fighting as that which chronicles the doings in India from the tenth century to the four teenth, and to endeavor to condense any account of the numerous seiges suffered by Delhi and by many another city of Northern India during that period would be to produce picture of unceas- ing bloodshed and of wearisome same- ness. The character of Timur Beg, or Tamerlane, however, is SO extraordinary as to merit description. From him dates the famous Moghul empire, finally extin- guished in the present century by ab- sorption into the East India company.
 "His successors" says Gibbon, ex- tended their sway from the mountains of Kashmir to Cape Comorin, and from handahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe their empire has been dissolved, their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber (Nadir Shah) and the richest of their Kingdoms is now possessed by a com pany of Christian Merchants of a remote island in the Northern Ocean.
 It is said that Timur Beg was a grave man, of quiet manners, halt of one hand and one fecE, and delightinu in the game of chess, which he greatly com plicated by doubling the number of pieces from thirty-two to sixty-four. He IS described as ruling his household with calm equity, by no means sparing his sons from the observances of the law; temperate and regular in his life, and aiming ever at the establishment of an ideal kingdom where 6 child might If of the Asian continent. How a man of such character could at the same time be so emphatically the arch.destroyer of mankind is not clear. As for the au- fhority he exercised over his children, it is at least certain that when he invaded India, his grandson, Pir Mohammed, had made little war for himself at Multan, and would have perished miserably had his grandfather not come to his rescue. How young Pir went out to conquer India on his own account is not told, but it is certain that Timur was not provoked. to any act of sharp justice. Timur's sonfi seemed to have only waited for his death to tear each other to pieces at their leisure.
 Timur, the wild chess player, signal ized his successes in India by series of barbarousi massacres. At one time on one day alone he murdered one hundred thousand prisoners in cold blood, lest they should turn against him. Having conquered the weak Mahmoud III. be- fore Delhi, he entered the city, and had himseH proclaimed emperor in all the mosques on Friday (the Muslin Sunday), and immediately left the city to the mercy of his Moghul soldiers, who burned, plundered and slew till they welre weary. He afterward returned, and gave evidence of his taste for the beautiful by ordering the famous mosque of F erose, which had escaped the flames, to be- copied in Samarkand.
 These doings of Tmur appear the more barbarous when we remember that he was himself a mussulman sacking a mussu1man kings city, and staying by the hundred thousand his mussulman subjec ts. He had not the excuse which he sub equently alleged in support of his expedition against China, that he was carrying the faith of the prophet into a heather country. The kingdom found ed by Mohammad of Ghor was essen tially Muslin, and its invasion by Tanner lane was as purely arbitrary an act of plunder as was the conquest of his own successors by Nadir Shah, the Persian freebooter o1' the eighteenth century.
 Timur died of drinking too much iced water, on the march to China in 1405. As was to bp expected, his kingdom, or empire, fell to pieces, and for hundred and twenty years series of parvenu em- perors of all sorts reigned at Delhi, be- sieging it, taking it, and holding it as they were able.-F Marion Crdgford, fn Hdrper.