It will be perceived that they were at one time a very powerful and flourishing nation, and were the envy of all the neighboring tribes; facts well authenticated even by Roman historians.
In the reign of Tigranes, many unfortunate princes, who had fallen prisoners to the Armenian king, were obliged to stand in his presence in an attitude of Oriental deference, with arms folded on their breasts, in token of perfect submission. Four of these wretched monarchs had also to attend him constantly in their regal robes, and when he appeared in public on horseback, his royal captives preceded him on foot.
Mithridates, the uncle to the king Tigranes, rendered himself no less glorious. He extended his dominions even to the borders of Scythia. His subjects and tributaries comprised twenty-two nations; and it is related that this prince conversed with equal fluency in all the languages spoken by those peoples. Even Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, found an asylum in Armenia.
In the time of their greatest prosperity, they amounted to 30,000,000 of souls, but constant wars, with their attendant train of famine, disease, and death, have sadly diminished their numbers, and reduced them to less than five millions.
The depopulated condition of their provinces, and the internal dissension of their princes, favored the depredatory invasions of various nations, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Saracens, and Scythians, or Turks. These last finally crossing over the Caspian Mountains in hordes, subjugated them, and took possession of their immense territories, and have ever since held them in bondage.
The Armenians were the first Christians who were subjugated by the Mussulmans, and as they were the earliest Christian subjects, they became, in their mutual relations, the model or measure for all succeeding conquests; for the Turks, profiting by their first experience, ever after practised accordingly.
The conquerors, imbued with a spirit of Islamism, added to their barbarities a system of religious persecution. The cruelties which they committed on the inhabitants were horrible in the extreme. Aged men and women were often tied in pairs, and then together cut in halves. Pregnant women were frequently ripped open, and their unborn babes wantonly thrown into the air; infants sucking at the breast were torn from the arms, and massacred before the eyes of their distracted mothers, so that human blood flowed in torrents throughout the country, and well may the Osmanlis of the present day regard the very name of Turk opprobrious, as it reminds them of former barbarities.