Tiphaïne

“ Tinteniac started, but restrained any show of feeling. He had caught the shocked pity in Tiphaïne’s eyes, and, though the poor lads were dead, he remembered for Tiphaïne’s sake the need for dissembling.
“Thanks, Messire Croquart,” he said, vowing many solemn things in his heart.
“The lads fought well, sire. It was a pity.”
“A pity, most certainly a pity. Poor Gilbert!—poor Gilles! We cannot have war, sir, without death. Madame—wife, you look troubled; leave us awhile. Messire Croquart will feel for you over these poor lads’ death.” ”

“ Tiphaïne was silent when he had ended, watching the winding woodways of the forest. She was thinking of her brother Robin, and how Tinteniac’s trial compared with his. The one man had failed in the ordeal, the other risen to greater strength above the sense of his own self-shame. ”

“ He had spoken rapidly, almost with fierceness, feeling the inevitable destiny beating within his heart. At the end he drew breath and leaned against the wall, still watching Tiphaïne at the prie-dieu.
“Yes, you are right,” she said; “one cannot mend life with a make-believe. And then—”
“There is her home at Ancenis.” ”

“ It was soon known in Dinan that a terrible combat would take place between the two knights, and the people feared that Du Guesclin would fall, because the Englishman was possessed of such extraordinary strength and skill. But a very beautiful young lady of noble family in Dinan, named Tiphaine de Raguenel, whom Bertrand married soon after the siege was raised, predicted that he would triumph over his foe. Tiphaine was called an astrologer, because she professed to foretell by observing the stars in the heavens, whether people were to be prosperous in their lives or unfortunate ”

“ On the 17th day Isis and Nephthys made great lamentation for their brother Un-nefer at Sais; on the 19th no man should leave the house; and the man born on the 20th would die of the plague.
[Sec. XL. Though Typhon was conquered by Horus, Isis would not allow him to be destroyed. Typhon was once master of all Egypt, i.e., Egypt was once covered by the sea, which is proved by the sea-shells which are dug out of the mines, and are found on the tops of the hills. The Nile year by year creates new land, and thus drives away the sea further and further, i.e., Osiris triumphs over Typhon.] ”

“ Tiflis, even by starlight, after a long, dull journey, and seen from a droshky, is a sight not to be forgotten. You feel in a moment that the town you are now in is as distinct from any you have ever seen before as anything well can be. In spite of the Grand Duke’s presence and the sober little German colony, European civilisation is still only a resident stranger in the streets of Tiflis. The Tartar, Georgian, and Persian are all natural, and in keeping with the place, but the occasional high hat of Bond Street persuasion or Russian uniform is entirely out of harmony with the surroundings. ”

“ It was more probable that they would, from the very first, endeavour to throw off the suzerainty of Nineveh. Tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to settle itself firmly on the throne: the year after his return from Syria he got together an army and marched against it. He first cleared the right bank of the Tigris, where the Pukudu (Pekod) offered but a feeble resistance; he annexed their territory to the ancient province of Arrapkha, then crossed the river and attacked the Kaldi scattered among the plains and marshes of the Shatt el-Haî. ”

“ In Tiflis, in Baku, Batum, Kutais, the Persian, clad in vermilion or crimson or slate-blue, is a familiar figure in the streets. Their wares, their inlaid guns and swords and belts, their rugs and cloaks, are the glory of all the bazaars of Trans-Caucasia. One’s eye rests with pleasure on their leisurely movements, their gentle forms and open, courteous gait; and they give an atmosphere of peace and serenity to streets where otherwise the knives of hillmen, and the sullen accoutrements of Cossacks, would continually impress one with the notion of impending storm. ”

“ The effect of my late journies has tended to increase the preponderance of Tigré: and it appears to me that the only plan, which offers a hope of restoring any thing like a regular form of government into the distracted country of Abyssinia, would be to promote still further the welfare of that province, by removing the obstructions which interrupt her communications with the coast, and by establishing thence a free intercourse with the British settlements in the East. ”

“ Ten years later the final blow was struck; the army declared itself against their monarch, and he and his dynasty fell together. On the 30th of Iyyar of the year b.c. 745, a military adventurer, Pul, seized the vacant crown, and assumed the venerable name of Tiglath-Pileser.
If we may believe Greek tradition, Tiglath-Pileser II began life as a gardener. Whatever might have been his origin, however, he proved to be a capable ruler, a good general, and a far-sighted administrator. He was the founder of the second Assyrian Empire, which differed essentially from the first. ”

“ My route beyond that city was, perforce, left to chance, and the information I hoped to gain in the Shah's capital.
Tiflis, capital of the Caucasus, is about midway between the Black and Caspian seas, and lies in a valley between two ranges of low but precipitous hills. The river Kúr, a narrow but swift and picturesque stream spanned by three bridges, bisects the city, which is divided in three parts: the Russian town, European colony, and Asiatic quarter. The population of over a hundred thousand is indeed a mixed one. ”

“ All these princes, when they found that the ambition of Tiglath-pileser threatened to interfere with their own intrigues, were naturally tempted to combine against him, and were willing to postpone to a more convenient season the settlement of their own domestic quarrrels. But Tiglath-pileser did not give them time for this; he routed Azriyahu, and laid waste Kullani,* the chief centre of revolt, ravaged the valley of the Orontes, and carried off the inhabitants of several towns, replacing them with prisoners taken the year before during his campaign in Naîri. ”

“ The uprising of the Asiatic peoples is a fact to which we cannot be other than wilfully blind. A beginning of the trouble may be upon us at any minute.
Timgad was built by the soldiers of the Third Legion, then stationed at Tebessa. Its head-quarters were shortly afterwards moved to Lambessa, and during the second and third centuries the frontier outposts were gradually pushed forward. They occupied a line on the south side of the Aurès range, extending to the south and south-east of Biskra and then branching north-west to Bou-Saida. ”

“ I am a slave till I free my sister Matike; but soon I will show your warriors that they are women, for they fought women!’ And Te-marama spoke: ‘If you are Tihi-o-te-Rangi, truly then you are the best of all warriors, for you lower yourself to a slave to free a woman; but listen, Tihi: Matike is a slave no longer—for her beauty she is taken by the chief Takerangi to share his resting-place and his mana.’ When Tihi heard Te-marama speaking thus, joy entered in his heart and he said: ‘Sweet is it for the eyes to rest upon the Flower of the North, and her words give gladness to my heart! ”

“ Let us take for example the wonderful inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser II (950 B.C.) which refer to his various conquests, and which were discovered by George Smith at Nimrûd in the temple of Nebo.
Tiglath commences with the usual Oriental flourish of trumpets. He styles himself the powerful warrior who, in the service of Asshur, has trampled upon his haters, swept over them like a flood, and reduced them to shadows. He has marched, he says, from the sea to the land of the rising sun, and from the sea of the setting sun to Egypt. He enumerates the countless lands that he has conquered. ”

“ Here, again, Tiglath-pileser had merely to show himself in order to re-establish the supremacy of Assyria: the races of the plain, for many years familiar with defeat, made no pretence of serious resistance, but bowed their necks beneath a fresh yoke almost without protest. ”

“ And experience proves to us in the everyday working of human affairs that in one way or another order has to be preserved. It was the existence of disorder that drew us into both India and Egypt, and it is fear of disorder recurring if we leave that keeps us there. It was the anticipation of disorder which Russian influence might cause which drew us into Tibet in 1904. It is a similar anticipation of the disorder which Chinese action may bring about that is causing even the pacific Lord Morley to sanction the assembly of troops on the Tibet frontier in 1910. ”

“ Occupation and not plunder was the object of its wars. The ancient empire of Babylonia in western Asia was to be restored, and the commerce of the Mediterranean to be diverted into Assyrian hands. The campaigns of Tiglath-pileser and his successors were thus carried on in accordance with a deliberate line of policy. They aimed at the conquest of the whole civilised world, and the building up of a great organisation of which Nineveh and its ruler were the head. ”

“ Despite the tendency of the Tibetans in the eastern provinces to indulge in pillage and highway robbery, the central Tibetan dislikes to make war; he is much more peace loving and more inclined toward peaceful labors, on account of which he regards military duty as superfluous and interfering with domestic pursuits. ”

“ Battle of Tippecanoe.--This determined attitude of the Indians seemed to the American leaders to be very dangerous. Governor William Henry Harrison of Indiana Territory gathered a small army of regular soldiers and volunteers from Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. He marched to the Indian settlements. The Indians attacked him at Tippecanoe. He beat them off and, attacking in his turn, routed them. Tecumthe was not at the battle. But he immediately fled to the British in Canada. The Americans had suspected that the British were stirring up the Indians to resist the United States. ”

“ They despised commerce and disliked strangers. War was their trade, and their aggressions soon disturbed conditions along the whole Himalaya range. The flourishing trade which had once existed between India and Thibet by way of [Pg 301] Nepal was brought to an end, while the raids of the dominant clan on neighboring powers excited general apprehension. Twenty years after their conquest of Nepal the incursions of the Goorkhas into Thibet became so serious as to demand the attention of the Chinese emperor, though no decided action was taken for their suppression. ”

“ On the east he annexed Lesser Armenia, and entered into the closest alliance with Tigranes, King of Greater Armenia, which had lately become a powerful kingdom, giving him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage. If the allies had any defined scheme of conquest, it was that Mithridates should occupy Asia Minor and the coast of the Black Sea, and Tigranes the interior and Syria. How the King intrigued and meddled in Cappadocia and Bithynia has been previously related; and when he had marched into Cappadocia it was at the head of 80,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and 600 scythed chariots. ”

“ This has, as in China, become a custom in Tibet.
The Ambans are the terror of the Tibetans, who abhor them from [179] the depth of their hearts.19 Whenever they leave the capital on pleasure excursions, or on inspection tours, provisions, conveyances, and all sorts of labour are forcibly exacted from the poor villagers, who are deprived of their ponies and yaks, which, owing to the merciless treatment of the Ambans’ numerous retainers, die in numbers on the road. ”

“ All Tigré hastened to join this impostor as their true sovereign; who, finding himself now at the head of an army, came down from the mountains of Bisan, and encamped in the neighbourhood of Dobarwa upon the Mareb, where he had a new accession of strength.
The shape of the crown in Abyssinia is that of the hood, or capa, which the priests wear when facing mass. It is composed of silver, sometimes of gold, sometimes of both metals, mixed and lined with blue silk. It is made to cover part of the forehead, both checks, and the hind-part of the neck likewise to the joining of the shoulders. ”

“ Midchoukoung is a stage where you change your oulah, that is, the horses, beasts of burden, and guides. These services are kept up by the Thibetian government, all the way from Lha-Ssa to the frontiers of China. The Chinese or Thibetian public officers, who make official inspections of the roads, are alone allowed to avail themselves of these sources. The government of Lha-Ssa gives them a passport, upon which is stated the number of men and animals that the villages, subject to the contribution of the oulah, must furnish. ”

“ In any case they are the least mixed, the inhabitants of Tibesti being perfectly homogeneous, and entirely free from intermixture with Arab or Berber immigrants, But this remarkable race, one of the most important in North Africa, at least for the extent of its domain, and altogether one of the most characteristic groups in the human family, is numerically one of the most insignificant on the continent. According to Nachtigal, the whole nation can scarcely comprise more than twenty-eight thousand souls, of whom not more than twelve thousand are scattered over the extensive Tibesti uplands. ”

“ All the semi-nomadic tribes which densely peopled the banks of the Tigris, and whose advance towards the north had been temporarily favoured by the weakness of Assyria—the Gambulu, the Pukudu, the Eutu, and the Itua—had a natural tendency to join forces with Elam for the purpose of raiding the wealthy cities of Chaldæa, and this alliance, or subjection, as it might be more properly termed, always insured them against any reprisals on the part of their victims. The unknown king who dwelt at Susa in 745 B.C. committed the error of allowing Tiglath-pileser to crush these allies. ”