Evening Star Newspaper, June 2, 1929, Page 110

r 18 = gy After the Last Crusade Tamerlane’sMarch Through a World of Ice. THE LAME AND THE BLIND Legend has it that Timur wes playing chess with Shah Rukh when Bayazid was brought in. When he saw the bearded = Turk, still majestic in calamity, he rose and went to the entrance of the pavilion. A smile lighted his dark face. . “It is ill,” cried Bayazid, who lacked neither pride nor courage, “to mock one whom God hath afflicted.” «] smiled,” Timur answered slowly, “that God should have given the mastery of the world to a lame man like me, and a blind man like thee.” And he added gravely: “It is well known what would have becn my fate and the fate of my men, if thou hadst prevailed over ns." EDITOR'S NOTE—Tamerlane (Timur the Lame), one of the most colorful and awe-in=- spiring humans who ever altered the course of history, came from the obscurity of a Central Asian city to conquer Persia, India aend the Golden Horde of Mongols. Then the powers of Zslam, headed by the Turks, challenged him. He advanced with his Tatar army on Asia Minor, exterminating the populations in his path. By the dawn of the fifteenth century he thad taken all of the cities as far as Sivas. Other of his adventures are related in Mr. ZLamb’s back. “Tamerlane the Earth Shaker.” As a tribute to his past work, including the ook “Genghis Kahn,” and to the importance ‘of his next work—a book on the Crusades— r. Lamb has been granted a fellowship by the 'Guggenheim Foundation. He hopes to retrace §¥e actual route of the first Crusaders to Jeru- salem. BY HAROLD LAMB. O understand what now happened, it is necessary to look at Europe for a moment. For two generations the Greek emperors of Constantinople— 3 no more than the ghosts of the old Woman emperors—had seen their power pass t‘tho Turks who had emerged from Asia Minor, md were now overrunning the Balkans, and the ‘ghores of the Black Sea. At the field of Kossova, the new conquerors, ‘the Othman Turks, crushed the stalwart Berbians, and thereafter penetrated into Hun- igary. They were dour and disciplined fighters, ‘ull of fire and doglike in their devotion to their ‘emperors. Their cavalry, especially the sipahis, ‘was more than good, but their massed infantry, Formed around the janissaries, was superb. They had intermarried with all the Levant, ‘and out of their Christian slaves—Greeks and ‘Blavs—they were forming a new race. Bayazid, ‘surnamed the Thunder, Emperor of the Turks, the virtues and faults of his people. He was bulent and courageous, able and cruel. Upon : accession his first act had been to strangle brother. TBE march of Islam up from Mecca had gone t4 around the imperial city, Constantinople, ‘which was still protected by its lofty walls and the war galleys of the European powers. But Bayazid was about ready to take possession when the call to a crusade resounded through Hurope. It was to be a crusade against the ‘Turks. Sigismund of Hungary, being most menaced by the approach of the Thunder, was fts sponsor. The muster-roll sounds like the ‘genealogy of all Europe. Some 20,000 chevaliers, Ancluding their squires and men-at-arms, rode to the west and joined the host of Sigismund, ‘nearly a hundred thousand in all. So great was the multitude that the chevaliers boasted that if the sky were to fall they would hold it up by their spears. . The chevaliers themselves—the French, Eng- fish and German knights—seem to have had only a hazy idea as to what lay before them. Moving down the Danube at ease, they were Hoined by Venetian galleys that came up the river. They encamped in a fair country, to !besicge Nicopolis, and here they heard that ‘Bayazid with a formidable army was approach= ‘fhg rapidly. IT!{E battle line was drawn up, and Sigismund o —who knew the strength of the Turks— arged the chevaliers to form in the rear and ]_bt his sturdy infantry, the Hungarians, Wal- :achians and Croats, bear the shock of the ‘Moslem attack. This enraged the nobles, and the dispute 'grew violent when Bayazid's skirmishers ap- ;peared. It seemed to the French and Germans 'that Sigismund was tricking them into idleness while he himself gleaned the glory of the day. ‘Pgpally Philip of Artois, high constable of ‘France, cried out: _rhe King of Hungary would have the honor of the day. Whoever agrees with him, I shall not. We have the advance guard and the first battle belongs to us.” Whereupon he gave com=- mand to lift his banner. “Forward, in the name ‘of God and St. George!” In a mass the other lords followed him, with their squadrons of mailed riders. Streamers fluttering from their lance tips, shields erect, their heavy barded chargers thundering intq a gallop, the chivalry of Europe charged. Princes, knights and men-at-arms, they scattered the skirmishers, forced their way up a long slope, cut to pieces the ranks of foot archers they found there, and reformed to assail the regi- Yoents of sipahis who now appeared. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. €, JUNE 2, 19290—PART 7. e TE!Y smashed through the sipahis, the Turkish light cavalry, and broke them and pressed on again. It was a very gallant charge and it lost the battle. These first three lines had been no more than Bayazid’s advance. When they gained the next ridge the wearied chevaliers found themselves confronted by the flower of the Turkish army, 60,000 strong—by the white tur- bans of the janissaries and the armored regi- ments of cavalry drawn up in a half circle about them. Without wasting men in a coun- tercharge, the Turks began to shoot down the horses of the Christian knights with their arrows. Dismounted, hindered by their heavy armor, some of the crusaders fought on grimly —others turned and fled before their horses went down. But with the forces of the Turks closing up around them and their own allies outdistanced, mest of the chevaliers threw down their arms. So ended ingloriously the last crusade. 'Im unexpectedly out of the east the Tatars appeared, struck at Sivas and passed on. Bayazid hastened into Asia. It was the year 1402. Timur, the old gray wolf of the steppes, was on the march, and this pleased the Turks. Their main strength lay in the infantry, and the Turkish infantry was always best in a de- fensive action. The greater part of Asia Minor was broken, wooded country, ideal for them. Only one road ran west from Sivas, and upon this road they expected to meet Timur. Slowly Bayazid moved his host east, as far as Angora. Here he established his main camp and pushed on, crossing the River Halys and entering the hilly country beyond. His outposts brought him word that the Tatars were at Sivas, some 60 miles ahead of him. Bayazid halted his advance, placed his regi- ments on favorable ground and waited. He waited three days—a week. His scouts brought in people from Sivas with disconcert- ing tidings. Only the usual Tatar garrison was in that city. Timur and his army had departed long since, going toward the Turks. UT Timur was not between Sivas and the Turkish camp. The scouts galloped through all the hills, and returned, unable to find a trace of the Tatars. They had vanished somewhither, taking their elephants with them. The situation was something of a novelty to the Turks. They were quartered in battle for- mation in the wastes of broken country in the heart of the great bend of the Halys that rises beyond Sivas and sweeps far south, turn- ing north again almost within sight of Angora and emptying its waters into the Black Sea. Bayazid waited where he was, determined not to move until he had definite news of the Tatars. At dawn of the eighth day he heard from them. A regiment of scouts commanded by one of Timur’s amirs galloped in upon the out- posts of his far right wing, made prisoners and departed again., The Turks were certain now that Timur was to the south of them, and thither they moved accordingly. In two days they reached the river, but found no Tatars. Bayazid sent out cavalry columns of his own across the river under command of his son Suleiman, an able leader. ALMOBT at once Suleiman returned with in- formation. Timur had evaded the Turks entirely and was now marching rapidly toward Angora, behind them. Startled out of his apathy, the Sultan crossed SRR % . D T T T When Turk and Tartar Clashed. Before his eyes, his fairest women waited upon the conquerors. the river and set out upon the path his ene- mies had made, toward his own base. What Timur had done was amusingly sim- ple. When he had studied the hilly country west of Sivas, and found it unsuitable for his cavalry, he had turned off to the south and marched along the valley of the Halys, keep- ing the river between himself and the Turks. So he was moving around the outer bend of the river, while Bayazid walted in the center. Tatar scouts learned that Bayazid's camp was near Angora in their path. So Timur hastened his marches, covering the hundred miles to Angora in three days. Angora lay in the center of a wide plain, and Timur decided that the position Bayazid had picked out was as good as any other. So his Tatars made their quarters in the tents of the Turks. At the order of their amir, they dammed up the small river that flows into Angora, changing its course to run behind their new position. The only other water available to the oncom- ing Turks was a spring, and this Timur ordered destroyed, and the water polluted. TH:E Turks marched rapidly for a week, with little water, and less grain, along the devastated swath left by the Tatars; they were weary and suffering from thirst and the heat of the plain. They found the Tatars installed in their own base, with ample supplies. Worst of all, there was no water to be had anywhere except behind the Tatar line. They had only one alternative and that was to attack. Bayazid was forced to do what he least de- sired—to launch his inferior cavalry against the masses of horsemen from Central Asia. His men went into battle weakened by thirst. He had been outmaneuvered and finally led back to Angora as if on a string. And the battle was lost before the first sword flished in the sun. At ten o'clock in the morning under a burn- ing sun the Turks moved forward with the stubborn courage that has so often proved in- vincible. The front of the two armies extended far more than 15 miles over the plain, one wing of the Tatars resting upon the small river, the other—invisible in the distance—upon a forti- fied height. The chronicle adds that the Turks came on with a thunder of drums and a clamor of cymbals while the squadrons of Tatars waited in a great silence, TIMUR did not mount his horse until the last moment. The battle for the present was in the hands of his generals. He had with him no more than 40 troops of cavalry, upon a ridge, with the infantry in the rear of the massed horsemen. Prince Muhammad, his grandson, commanded the center, with the host of Samarkand and 80 regiments with colonels from most of Asia. Here, too, were the elephants in their armor of painted leather—more for moral effect, it seems, than for any tactical purpose. Upon the far right of the Tatars, Suleiman, Bayazid's son, launched a cavalry charge, lead- ing himself the horsemen of Asia Minor. They were met by a devastating fire of arrows and flaming naphtha—horses and men going down in masses under the rising curtain of dust and smoke. While the Turks were in disorder, the first line of the Tatar right charged, and Nur ad-Din, the ablest of Timur’s amirs, followed with the main body of that wing. In the first hour the advance of the Turks was checked, and the Tatars took the offensive. Nur ad-Din broke up Suleiman’s wing so thor- oughly that some divisions of the Turks with- drew from the field. A contingent of Tatars from Asia Minor, impressed into service by Bayazid, discovered that their own lords were with Timur, and took advantage of the con- fusion to desert the Turks. Nur ad-Din had things well in hand Ly upon the right, the left wing of the Tatar cavalry advanced in three waves, breaking through the Turkish skirmishers, and over- throwing the poorly mounted Turkish cavalry at this point. They went so far that Timur could no longer see them. It was then that Prince Muhammad galloped back to his grandfather and dismounted. Throwing himself on his knees he begged per- mission to advance with the Tatar center upon the masses of Bayazid's infantry. This consent Timur would not give. Instead he ordered Muhammad to take the Samarkand corps and a division of the bahaturs —the picked men of the Tatars—and go at once tp support the left wing that had over- reached itself. So the favorite grandson of the old conqueror lifted his red standard and galloped off, followed by the flower of Timur’s army. And at a gallop he struck into the most serious fighting of the day—where the mailed Serbian cavalry, caught motionless by the Tatars, struggled for life, and . the groups of stalwart European infantry held every hillock. Here fell King Peter of Serbia and here the gallant Muhammad was so injured that he had to dismount. But Bayazid's right wing was crumpled up. BAYAZ!D was left with the mass of his in- fantry, without intrenchment of any kind, while the Tatar horsemen closed in upon the right and left. Then Timur took command of the Tatar center and advanced. The splendid Othmanli infantry—the corps d’elite, the panissaries—had not struck a blow. They were pre-doomed, their situation hopeless, their emperor helpless before the maneuvering of the great chess player of Asia. Regiments in the rear fled while the way to safety was still spen. Others, broken by successive charges, took their stand wherever they found any rising ground. Through them moved the armored elephants, liquid fire descending from the castles on the giant beasts. In a wrack of dust and din on the sun-tortured plain the weary Turks died. Even many who fled fell dead from exhaustion. : Bayazid, with a thousand of his janissaries, drove the Tatar horsemen from a hill and fought there grimly throughout the afternoon, taking an ax himself and standing with his men. As one battalion of the Old Guard held its ground on the field of Waterloo when Napoleon’s army had become a rout of fugitives, these houschold soldiers of the Sultan died weapon in hand. LA'I‘E in the afternoon Bayazid took to horse and with a few mounted followers tried to escape through the Tatars. He was pursued, his companions shot down and his own horse brought to earth with arrows. Then he was bound and escorted back to Timur’s pavilion at the hour of sunset. Legend has it that Timur was then playing chess with Shah Rukh. When he saw the bearded Turk, still majestic in calamity, he rose