Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/613

 EASTERN EUROPE IN LATER MIDDLE AGES 557 conducted all his conquests in person and with great cruelty, leaving a trail of blood and ruins behind him. He built towers of the skulls of those whom he had slain or embedded the bodies of the living in walls with stones and mortar. His oldest son, however, went him one worse when he began to tear down all the famous buildings that he could lay hands on in order "that men might say, ' Miran Mirza did nothing himself, but he commanded the destruction of the world's noblest works.' " This morbid craving for ill-fame his father discouraged by deposing him. Timur himself maintained a j showy court at Samarkand, and, when he sacked other cities, transferred their treasures, artisans, and scholars thither to adorn his new capital. In 1400 he defeated the Mameluke Sultan of Syria and Egypt, burned the city of Damascus which had surrendered without resistance, and massacred many of its inhabitants. The next year he took Bagdad and is said to have reared a trophy of ninety thousand human heads. In 1402 at Angora he crushed the army of the hith- I erto victorious Bajazet, who died in captivity the next year. ) Timur returned to Samarkand and prepared a great expedi- I tion to conquer China, but died on the march. His vast empire quickly dissolved. An interesting account has come I down to us of thirty-two years of travel and adventure as a I slave in all sorts of lands, including Siberia, by Hans Schelt- j berger, a German boy of sixteen who was captured by the j Turks at Nicopolis. They spared his life because of his I youth; then he was captured from Bajazet by Timur, and I thereafter was tossed to and fro for years among the wan- ! dering Tartars. For some years after their defeat at Angora, the Turks I were too weak to renew their attacks upon Christendom, over his dominions. But under Murad II (142 1- Turkish 1451), Constantinople was again unsuccessfully I besieged, and Saloniki was captured from Venice only after a siege of seven years. In 1439 the Turks overran Serbia, but failed to take Belgrade, and then had several successive icjefeats administered to them by the Hungarian general,
 * and Bajazet 's sons were occupied in quarreling Re ,