Page:History of the Armenians in India.djvu/11

 PREFACE. The history of the Armenian nation, since the loss of its political independence in the fourteenth century, after the death at Paris in 1393 of Leo VI., the last Armenian king, is one of the darkest epochs in its national history and has perhaps no parallel in the annals of any nation. It presents one long series of barbarities and atrocities perpetrated on them by their inveterate foes — the Saracens, the Tartars, the Persians and the 'unspeakable Turk,* — who have in turn led their bloodthirsty hordes into Armenia, indiscriminately murdered its inhabitants, pillaged and devastated their flourishing cities, and (in the words of Byron) "desolated the region where God created man in His own image."

These invasions naturally served to scatter the Armenian nation ; and, leaving their homes in large numbers, they migrated to other countries where, in the enjoyment of security of life and property, they soon formed important colonies and distinguished themselves in their commercial pursuits. The interesting history of the various Armenian colonies in European and Asiatic countries, forms one of the brightest in the otherwise