Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/106

 8G THE DECLINE AND FALL [Kha«iQja] Ant. Chrlit 51 [BbuiTl] [A.D. 87] AD. 93 r£iid of the ungdom of theNorthem Zengbis] tion of his subjects, and the pei-plexity of a civil war, at length compelled the Tanjou himself to renounce the dignity of an independent sovereign and the freedom of a warlike and high- spirited nation. He was received at Sigan, the capital of the monarchy, by the troops, the Mandarins, and the emperor him- self, with all the honours that could adorn and disguise the triumph of Chinese vanity.""^ A magnificent palace was pre- pared for his reception ; his place was assigned above all the princes of the royal family ; and the patience of the Barbarian king was exhausted by the ceremonies of a banquet, which con- sisted of eight courses of meat, and of nine solemn pieces of music. But he performed, on his knees, the duty of a respect- ful homage to the emperor of China ; pronounced, in his own name, and in the name of his successors, a perpetual oath of fidelity ; and gratefully accepted a seal, which was bestowed as the emblem of his regal dependence. After this humiliating submission, the Tanjous sometimes departed from their alle- giance, and seized the favourable moments of war and rapine ; but the monarchy of the Huns gradually declined, till it was broken, by civil dissension, into two hostile and separate king- doms. One of the princes of the nation was urged, by fear and ambition, to retire towards the South with eight hords, which composed between forty and fifty thousand families. He obtained, with the title of Tanjou, a convenient territory on the verge of the Chinese provinces ; and his constant attachment to the service of the empire was secured by weakness and the desire of revenge. From the time of this fatal schism, the Huns of the North continued to languish about fifty years ; till they were oppressed on every side by their foreign and domestic enemies. The proud inscription ^^ of a column, erected on a lofty mountain, announced to posterity that a Chinese army had marched seven hundred miles into the heart of their country. The Sienpi,^- a tribe of Oriental Tartars, retaliated the injuries which they had formerly sustained ; and the power of the Tanjous, after a reign of thirteen hundred years, was ^'See the Kang-Mou, torn. iii. p. 150, and the subsequent events under the proper years. This memorable festival is celebrated in the Eloge de Moukden, and explained in a note by the P. Gaubil, p. 89, 90. <iThis inscription was composed on the spot by Pankou, President of the Tribunal of History (Kang-Mou, torn. iii. p. 392). Similar monuments have been discovtred in many pans of Tartary (Histoire des Huns, tom. ii. p. 122). [Parker, p. 100.]
 * -M. de Guignes (torn. i. p. 189) has inserted a short account of the Sienpi,