92 
LIVES OF THE MOGHUL EMPERORS. 
covite territories, he returned to Georgia laden with 
spoil, and distinguished by the destruction or misery 
of millions of his fellow-beings. Upon re-entering 
this conquered country, his thirst of blood was yet to 
be slaked by more carnage. He demolished town 
after town, caused the inhabitants to be massacred, 
and finally left this once flourishing kingdom a scene 
of merciless desolation. 
Unsated yet with slaughter, the ferocious con- 
queror marched to Kerman in Persia, capital of the 
ancient Caramania, at that time besieged by a large 
detachment of his army. The governor had sustained 
a three years’ siege, and upon his enemy’s arrival before 
the city only six of the garrison, besides the heroic 
noble who commanded them, remained alive. The 
place was soon after taken, and that brave officer’s 
obstinacy, as it was termed, punished with death. 
He merited a better fate. The Jagatay troops hav- 
ing subdued all the maritime towns on the shores of 
the Persian Gulf, Timur disbanded his army on the 
thirtieth of July 1396, and returned to Samerkund, 
after a career of conquest unparalleled in the histories 
of nations. 
Gibbon’s summary of Timur’s conquests, from his 
first battle with Toktamish, in 1391, to his final return 
to his capital in 1396, gives a brief but admirable view 
of his victorious career. Through the gates of Der- 
bend,” writes that admirable historian, ec Toctamish 
entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse ; 
with the innumerable forces of Kipzak, Bulgaria, Cir- 
cassia, and Russia, he passed the Sihoon, burnt the 
palaces of Timour, and compelled him amid the winter 
