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mans were brought up to a general and irresistible assault: the columns of janizaries, keeping up a continual fire during their advance, drove the enemy from the field by the weight of their planax; and the victory was completed by the rapid charges of the reserved cavalry from the wings, which frustrated any attempt on the part of the hostile leaders to rally the retreating and confused masses. Such had been the almost invariable event of every great action in which the Turks had heretofore encountered an Asiatic opponent: and it was by this system that the brilliant victories of Selim I. over Shah Ismael and the Mamluke sultans had been obtained: but the organization which we have described, calculated only to repel an attack in front, could with difficulty manœuvre to meet an unforeseen diversion on the flank or rear, which would at once deprive the main body of the support of the principal part of the cavalry and artillery, since these could not be withdrawn from the front without throwing the line into confusion; and of this defect Abbas determined to avail himself.

It is not easy to reconcile, in all points, the details of this great battle as given by the Turkish historians, who strive to conceal or extenuate their defeat, with the Persian narrative in the Zubd-al-Towarikh, followed by Sir John Malcolm.* It appears, however, that Abbas, who had less than 70,000 men to oppose to 100,000 Turks, detached a corps previously to the engagement under AliVerdi Khan, with orders to fall upon the rear of the enemy and attack their camp during the heat of the action; and the execution of this enterprise was facilitated by the inconsiderate ardour of Sefer-Pasha, who, rashly pursuing to a distance from the field the Persians opposed to him, left one flank of the Ottoman line uncovered. At this moment Ali-Verdi made his attack in the rear, and several odas of janizaries were detached by Cicala from the front to meet and repel it; but the movement of these troops and

of another corps directed to occupy the place in the line which the precipitation of Sefer-Pasha had left vacant, was mistaken for a retreat by the other divisions, who fell back in dis. order; and Abbas, seeing the hostile line wavering, led a general and furious charge against their embarrassed columns. The Turks instantly gave way, and, unable to retreat to their camp, which was already in the hands of Ali-Verdi, were driven from the field in inextricable confusion; and as the ground was favourable to pursuit by the Persian cavalry, a terrible carnage ensued. Five pashas were slain on the field, and as many more (among whom was Sefer) taken prisoners: the whole artillery and materiel of the routed army, with the horsetails and treasures of the seraskier, fell into the hands of the victors; and the number of heads which were laid at the feet of the Persian king as trophies of his arms, are said by De Govvea, who was an eye-witness, to have exceeded 20,000. The glory of Abbas was, however, tarnished by the cruel execution of the gallant Sefer-Pasha and other Turkish officers, who were decapitated in the royal presence, on their refusal to change their faith and allegiance by entering the service of Persia.

It is not improbable that the superior generalship displayed by the Persian commanders in this memorable action was due to the counsels of Sir Robert Shirley, who was in attendance on the Shah, and received three wounds in the melée; but the consequences of the conduct pursued by the Seraskier after his defeat, were more disastrous to the interests of the Porte than even the loss of the battle-the first great victory which the Persians had ever gained over the Osmanlis. Cicala had been suffering during the campaign from long-continued sickness, which incapacitated him from taking any personal share in the battle; and the Turkish historians seem to intimate that he purposely sacrificed Sefer-Pasha and his division, (which consisted chiefly of le

History of Persia, i. 355. 8vo edition. Malcolm appears not to have been aware of the history and parentage of Cicala, though they are mentioned by almost every cotemporary writer: he says that the harsh appellation of the Turkish general Jaghal-aghli" (son of Jaghala)" is softened into Cigala, by Antonio de Govvea." He also places his death in 1607, two years later than the true date.

vends or pardoned rebels,) by neglecting to advance to their support; but he exerted himself to the utmost to rally his flying troops, and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner in attempting to cover the retreat with a small corps which remained firm, issuing his orders from a camel-litter, as he was too weak to sit on horseback. When all was irretrievably lost, he mounted the foot soldiers who were still with him on the baggagedromedaries, and thus succeeded, with two thousand men, in reaching Wan, whither the wrecks of the routed army had preceded him. Among the other leaders here assembled, he found Janpoulad-Hassan, a powerful Koordish chief whom he had a short time before nominated to the pashalik† of Aleppo, and who, having heard of the defeat of the grand army when on his march at the head of the Syrian contingent to join it, had retrograded to Wan, and there waited the arrival of the commander-in-chief. Though warned of his danger from the wrath of the seraskier, exasperated by his recent overthrow-Jan-poulad replied, with the characteristic pride of a Koord, that so far from his having any punishment to apprehend, Cicala would not even dare to have him awakened if he heard that he was asleep! and in his first interview, he boldly claimed credit for having saved so large a force from sharing the fate of the rest of the army. But the fierce temper of Cicala, inflamed to fury by his misfortunes, could little endure to be further chafed by the haughty bearing of the Koord, who fearlessly retorted the vehement reproaches with which he was assailed for his delay in repairing to headquarters, till the seraskier, yielding to the impulse of his anger, ordered the head of Jan-poulad to be struck off in front of his tent; -a sentence which was immediately executed.

The consequences of this imprudent act of severity remain inscribed on the broad page of Ottoman history. The two brothers of the slaughtered chief, who succeeded to his authority over their native tribe, instantly quitted the army, and returning to Syria at the head of 30,000 men, openly threw off their allegiance to the Porte, and commenced the geat revolt of Syria, of which Cicala was singularly unfortunate in being thus the author, as his punishment of the firaris at the battle of Keresztes had previously led to the rebellion of Anatolia. The latter insurrection, indeed, had never been completely suppressed: though the removal of the two original leaders had for a time stifled its progress, it speedily revived under KalenderOghlu and his lieutenants, who were even at this time devastating the provinces along the shores of the Ægean; and the communication into which they speedily entered with the insur gents of Syria, kindled throughout the Asiatic dominions of the Porte the flames of a civil war which, after subsisting through nearly the whole reign of Ahmed, was at last only quenched. by the extermination of the vanquished party. But the history of this struggle does not belong to the life of Cicala, whose eventful career was now drawing to a close. The defeats which he had sustained, and the apprehension of the consequent downfal of his interest at the Porte, weighed heavily on his proud spirit, and aggravated the malady under which he had been previously suffering; and on the retreat from Wan to Diarbekir, which the proximity of the Persians and the insubordination of his remaining troops had rendered necessary, "he died," says Naima, "of a fever, which the thoughts of his misfortunes had occasioned." The Portuguese De Govvea, who was then present as an envoy in the Persian camp, states, less

"It is remarkable that those who fell in these actions were, for the most part, those who had been very lately engaged in rebellion against the Porte, but who were now, by the retributive justice of Providence, made to wash off their guilt in fountains of blood!"

+ The power of appointing and changing the governors exceeded the ordinary powers of a Seraskier, but it appears to have been specially conferred on Cicala. The nomination of Jan-poulad, the chief of a native tribe, to a government, was a direct violation of established usages, and is commented upon as such by Turkish writers.

Von Hammer places his death Dec. 5, A. D. 1605, corresponding to the 21st of Hajeb, Anno Hegira, 1014. Naima says that he died on the 21st of Dhul-Hajja in the same year, which would be in April, 1606; but this is probably an oversight, as he certainly died in the winter after his defeat.

probably, that having information of the disgrace which was about to overtake him from Constantinople, he anticipated the arrival of the Sultan's mandate by poisoning himself with the powder of diamonds; but suicide was neither in accordance with the character of Cicala, nor with the practice of the Moslems in any age; and there can be little doubt that the story originated in the reluctance of the monk to describe this dreaded enemy of both the Persians and the Christians as dying by a natural death.

The character of this famous renegade is sufficiently pourtrayed in his actions. On the fiery temperament and enterprising genius of an Italian, he had engrafted the obstinacy of purpose and disregard of bloodshed in the execution of his designs which distinguish his adopted country; but the excess to which he carried this inflexibility was better adapted to the preceding age than to that in which he lived, and occasioned many misfor. tunes both to himself and the empire. Accustomed in his early youth to see military subordination enforced upon both soldiers and officers by the commanding genius of the great Soliman, he refused to adapt himself to the refractory and tumultuous spirit which crept in among the spahis and janizaries during the succeeding reigns, and which required rather to be guided by tact and soothed by concession, than curbed by rigid severity. His

life, in fact, is an epitome of the period of transition between the palmy state in which his first entrance on the page of history finds the Ottoman power, and the scene of division and gradual decay which was commencing at his death; and in the events which introduced this change, the actions of no individual fill a more prominent part than his. In military capacity and undaunted personal courage he was surpassed by no Turkish general of his time; but the bad fortune which marked the close of his career, has drawn upon him the severe animadversions of the Ottoman historians; and Naima, whose work has been so often quoted, sums up his character by declaring, "that his avarice knew no bounds, and that his continually changing governors from one place to another, as in the case of Jan-poulad, whom he made governor of Aleppo contrary to the usages of the empire, was productive of more evils than he can mention." De Govvea, on the contrary, declares that the death of this great general, who was dreaded alike for his prowess and for his inveterate hostility to those of a different faith, was hailed as a joyful event both by the Christians in Turkey, and by the foreign enemies of the Porte ;"but," adds the monk, "God is like a merciful father to his children, and is ever wont to break and destroy the instruments of punishment which he has used to correct them!"

CARMEN TRIUMPHALE.

[STANZAS SUGGESTED UNDER THE FLAG OF THE MARBLE ARCH OF THE QUEEN'S PALACE, THE EVENING OF WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1840.]

BY B. SIMMONS.

1.

THOU Standard of Kings !-in the blue evening light
The wave of thy folds never flash'd on my sight
With a pomp more majestic-thy Lion his brow
Never lifted in thunder more fulgent than now ;-

2.

Than now, when, beneath the sweet June-scented wind

That flings thy wide purple abroad unconfined,

I can shout to the skies, while up-gazing at thee,

"STILL IN TREASON'S DESPITE THOU'RT THE FLAG OF THE FREE!"

NO. CCXCVII, VOL. XLVIII.

C

*

3.

Wave on, then, in triumph!-Red Murder display'd
His hand bared for slaughter in vain in thy shade;
The God in whose cause through the battle thou'st been
A war-star for ages, protected thy Queen.

4.

In vain to the vultures of treason she wore

Her empire's pure ermine all guiltless of gore;

In vain, 'neath the sway of their cloudless-eyed child,
In peace the blue seas of the universe smiled.

5.

Nor to her did the rose and the bridal avail,

Nor that cheek with Love's coming solicitude pale,
Nor the watch kept by freemen, wherever she moved,

Round the Hope of the Islands-the Crown'd and the Loved!

6.

By that porch rear'd by Triumph to Peace, 'twas decreed
That the Dove of the crime-deluged nations should bleed;
And once more, in its terrible shadow, Whitehall,
Where the tyrant once fell, see the Merciful fall.

7.

Sharp and clear the bolt flashes!-Ha! well may the blood
To thy brow, young Saxe-Coburg, flush out in a flood-
Up!-another Fieschi sheds life like a river-

Thy Bride's with Navarre and De Berri for ever.*

8.

Go, Freedom, bereaved, o'er the West's mighty water;
Shriek out to the winds for thy sceptreless daughter;
Back the wheels of decrepit Oppression are whirl'd,
To rivet his shackles again on the world!

9.

No!false as the heart was the hand,-and if on
In safety the righteous, though regal, has gone,
To thee be the praise and the gratitude solely,
Lord God of Sabaoth, the Holy, the Holy!—

10.

Let not Councils confine to one day our emotion :
Oh, long as her kingdoms are bulwark'd by ocean,
Her people shall hymn the puissance divine
That spared their land's Lily, the last of her line!

11.

Proud Banner-ay, well may thy blazonry shake!
That shout would the marble magnificence break
Of yon sleepers whose lances were lightning of old
When thy blaze over Cressy and Agincourt roll'd!

12.

And now with that shout while the green earth is ringing,
And unharmed the knightly and noble are bringing

The Sea-Kings' descendant exultingly back,

With no trumpets but those of the heart in her track,—

13.

The Minstrel, retouching the harp left unstrung

Since its chords with her bridal's high brilliancy rung,t
Joins the peans to thee raised by lofty and lowly,
Lord God of Sabaöth-the Holy, the Holy!

Henry the Great (of Navarre), like his unfortunate descendant, fell by the stroke of the assassin,

† Vide Blackwood's Magazine for March 1840.

ON PERSONIFICATION.

PART II.

HAVING, in a former article, attempted to explain, and illustrate by familiar or forcible examples, the feelings by which personification is prompted, we proceed to consider some of the principal objects on which it may be most successfully employed.

It was impossible that the eye either of poetry or of superstition could be turned to the heavens, and could behold the brightest corporeal reflections of the. Divine effulgence, without conveying to the heart those feelings of awe, admiration, and love, which so strongly tend to invest their objects with personality. Accordingly, in most systems of mythological religion, the sun and moon appear to have held an eminent place under various and manifold forms of deification. In the Greek and Roman pantheons we meet not only with Helios and Selené, Sol and Luna, as the avowed impersonations of the great lights of heaven, but with many other divinities who are types of the same luminaries, or of the principles involved in their essence. Apollo and Artemis, Janus and Diana, Bacchus and Ceres, have been respectively united together, as representing those glorious powers which are set on high to rule over the day, the night, and the year, and to diffuse life, and plenty, and gladness through the habitations of men. A tendency of a similar kind seems, at least latterly, to have converted the heroic Hercules, with his twelve labours, into a shadow of the god of day in his progress through the twelve divisions of the zodiac. The ancient Persians paid homage to the sun under the name of Mithras, interpreted we believe to mean, the Great One-as appearing to the vulgar to be the manifested form, and to the intelligent to be the most impressive image, of the true Godhead. The Egyptian and Syrian systems, were in a great degree founded upon the same basis;

and those of the Indian and Teutonic nations give it also a place, though a place, perhaps, of less prominence and importance.

It is worth while to notice some of the more curious fables, by which the natural phenomena of these heavenly bodies have been arrayed in a palpable and living shape.

That Osiris, though also, perhaps, embodying other and profounder imaginations, was, partially at least, a personification of the sun, as Isis probably was of the moon, seems to admit of little doubt; and the Egyptian festival which celebrated the supposed loss and recovery of their god, referred, as it is thought, to the retreat and return of the sun before and after the winter solstice. The same religious rite, with the same meaning, extended into Phoenicia, and ultimately into Greece.

Thammuz, or Adonis, was the altered name under which the great source of light and joy was lamented by the Phoenician maidens, as annually suffering an apparent decline of his power that seemed to threaten dissolution, though soon succeeded by a glad revival and restoration. We all remember Milton's allusion to that ceremony, of which the licentious and idolatrous perversions had infected even the house of Judah :

"Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate, In amorous ditties all a summer's day: While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love tale

Infected Sion's daughters with like heat; Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch

Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye survey'd the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah."

Vos, O'clarissima mundi Lumina, labentem cœlo quæ ducitis annum, Liber et alma Ceres."-Virgil, Georgic. i. 5. "Ye glorious lights of life! that guide on high The gliding year's glad progress through the sky, Bacchus and bounteous Ceres!"

† Ezek, viii. 14, et seq.

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