Heg.1123.

their grave.* The Tartars, their fubjects, are J.C. 1711. the most thievish people upon earth, and, what is hardly to be credited, are, at the fame time, the most hospitable. They will go fifty leagues from home to attack a caravan, or pillage a town; and yet when any stranger happens to travel through their country, he is not only received, lodged, and maintained every where, but through whatever place he paffes, the inhabitants difpute with each other the honor of having him for their gueft; and the master of the house, his wife, and daughters, are ambitious to ferve him. This inviolable regard to hofpitality they have derived from their ancestors the Scythians; and they ftill preferve it, because the small number of ftrangers that travel among them, and the low price of all forts of provifions, render the practice of such a virtue no way burthenfome.

When the Tartars go to war, in conjunction with the Ottoman army, they are maintained by the grand feignior, but the booty they get is their forbonly

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* The khans of Crimea are all called Gerai. There is a tradition among the Tartars, which gives the reafon of this hereditary name. name. Towards the year 1400, a general infurrection broke out in Little Tartary. Not only the reigning prince was put to death, but all his pofterity, and all thofe that bore his name. A peafant, called Gerai, touched with pity, faved one of these princes, a child, and brought him up obfcurely in his cottage. The rebels did not agree on the divifion of Crimea, and the people, oppreffed by intestine wars, foon regretted the race of their mafters. On this, Gerai produced the young prince that he had saved, and got him acknowledged by inconteftable marks. This prince was unanimously placed on the throne of his ancestors, and he granted to the Tartar who had preferved him his fceptre and life, that, for the future, all the khans of Crimea fhould add the name of Gerai to theirs. AUTHOR.

Heg.1123.

J.C. 1711. only pay; and hence it is that they are much fitter for plundering than fighting.

The czar near being taken.

The khan, gained over to the king of Sweden's intereft by prefents and promises, at first obtained leave to appoint the general rendezvous of the troops at Bender under the eyes of Charles XII. in order the more effectually to convince that monarch that the war was undertaken folely for his fake. The new vizier Baltagi Mehemet, who did not lie under the fame engagements, would not flatter a foreign prince fo highly. He changed the order; and Adrianople was the place where this great army affembled. 'Tis always in the vast and fertile plains of Adrianople that the Turks affemble their armies, when they are going to make war against the Chriftians: there, the troops that arrive from Afia and Africarepofe and refresh themselves for a few weeks; but the grand vizier, in order to anticipate the preparations of the czar, allowed the army but three days reft, and then marched to the Danube, from whence he advanced into Beffarabia.

The czar, in all appearance, must have vanquished Baltagi Mehemet; but was guilty of the fame fault with regard to the Turks, as the king of Sweden had committed with regard to him; he despised his enemy two much. Upon the first news of the Turkish preparations, he left Mofcow; and, having given orders for turning the fiege of Riga into a blockade, he affembled a body of eighty thousand men on the frontiers of

Poland,

Heg.1123.

Poland.* With this army he took the road .C.1711. through Moldavia and Walachia, formerly the country of the Daci, but now inhabited by Greek Christians, who are tributaries to the grand feignior. Moldavia was, at that time, governed by prince Cantimir, a Greek by birth, and who united in his person the talents of the ancient Greeks, the knowledge of letters and of arms. He was supposed to have fprung from the famous Timur, known by the name of Tamerlane. This extraction appeared more honorable than a Greek origin; and the reality of the defcent is proved by the name of the conqueror. Timur, it is faid, refembles Timir: the title of khan, or can, which Timur poffeffed before he conquered Afia, is included in the word Cantimir: therefore prince Cantimir is defcended from Tamerlane. are the foundations of moft genealogies!

Such

From whatever family Cantimir was fprung, he owed all his fortune to the Ottoman Porte. Hardly had he received the inveftiture of his principality, when he betrayed his benefactor, the Turkish emperor, to the czar, from whom he expected greater advantages. He fondly imagined that the vanquisher of Charles XII. would easily triumph over a vizier of fo little reputation, who had never made a campaign, and who had chosen

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* The chaplain Norberg alledges, that the czar compelled every fourth man in his dominions, able to bear arms, to follow him to the field. Had this been the cafe, his army would have amounted, at least, to two millions of men. VOLTAIRE.

J.C.1711. for his kiaia, or lieutenant, the fuperintendent of Heg.1123. the customs in Turkey. He did not doubt that all his fubjects would readily follow his standard, as the Greek patriarchs encouraged him in his revolt. The czar, therefore, having made a sécret treaty with this prince, and received him into his army, advanced further into the country; and, in June, 1711, arrived on the northern banks of the river Hierafus, now Pruth, near Jazy, the capital of Moldavia. As foon as the grand vizier heard that Peter Alexiowitz was advancing on that fide, he immediately decamped, and, following the courfe of the Danube, refolved to cross the river on a bridge of boats, near a town called Saccia, at the fame place where Darius formerly built the bridge that long went by his name. The Turkish army proceeded with so much expedition, that it foon came in fight of the Ruffians, the river Pruth being between them.

The czar, fure of the prince of Moldavia, never dreamed that the Moldavians would defert him. But it frequently happens, that the interest of the prince and that of the subjects are extremely different. The Moldavians liked the Turkish government, which is never fatal to any but the grandees, and affects great lenity and mildness to its tributary states. They dreaded the Chriftians, and especially the Ruffians, who had always treated them with inhumanity. They carried all their provifions to the Ottoman army. The perfons who had engaged to furnish the Ruffians

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with provifions, performed that contract with the J.C.1711. Heg.1123. grand vizier which they had made with the czarn The Walachians, who border upon the Moldavians, discovered the fame attachment to the Turks; fo much had the remembrance of the Ruffian cruelty alienated all their affections.

The czar, thus baulked of his hopes, which perhaps he had too rafhly entertained, faw his army on a fudden deftitute of forage and provifions. The foldiers deferted in troops; and the army was foon reduced to lefs than thirty thousand men, ready to die with hunger.

Meanwhile, the Turks paffed the river, hemmed in the Ruffians, and formed an intrenched camp before them. It is fomewhat furprising that the czar did not dispute the paffage of the river, or, at least, repair this error by attacking the Turks immediately after the paffage, instead of giving them time to destroy his army by hunger and fatigue. It would feem indeed that this prince did every thing in this campaign to haften his own ruin. He found himself without provifions; the river Pruth in his rear; a hundred and fifty thousand Turks before him; whilft forty thousand Tartars were continually harraffing his army on the right and left. In this extremity he made no scruple of acknowledging in public, that he was at least reduced to as bad a condition as his brother Charles had been at Pultoway.

• Count Poniatowski, an indefatigable agent of the king of Sweden, was in the grand vizier's

army,