Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/143

 not succeed among a people fond of war, by any other means, but by giving them a minor for their king, who was by the law of the land under her direction, as the country was, during his minority, under her regency.

this, the ordinary state of the empress's politics, had hitherto answered well between the kingdoms, when no other parties were engaged, the introduction of a third power, and its influence, totally changed that system. The Turks, an enemy not yet known in any formidable line by the southern part of Africa, or Asia, now appeared under a form that made all those southern Hates tremble.

, emperor of Constantinople, had defeated Canso el Gauri, Soldan of Egypt, and slain him in the field. After a second battle he had taken Cairo, the capital of that country; and, under the specious pretence of a violation of the law of nations, by Tomum Bey, the successor, who was said to have put his ambassadors to death, he had hanged that prince upon one of the principal gates of his own capital; and, by this execution, had totally destroyed the succession of the Mamalukes. Sinan Basha, the great general and minister of Selim, in a very few months over-ran all the peninsula of Arabia, to the verge of the Indian Ocean.

people, trained to war, Mahomet had inspired with enthusiasm, and led them to the conquest of the East. Trade and luxury had, after that, disarmed and reduced them to much the fame situation as, in a former age, they had been found by Augustus Caesar. Sinan Basha, with a troop of veterans, had, by degrees extirpated the native princes of the country; those that refilled, by force; and those that