/ o (vjMtVSRSlTY I Jht llotg of tht jvatiotui THE STORY OF 'TURKEY I BY y STANLEY LANE-POOLE ASSISTED BY E. J. W. GIBB AND ARTHUR OILMAN NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN 1897 ^ti copyright By G. p. Putnam's Sons 1888 Entered nt Stationers' Hall^ London By T. Fisher Unwin Press of G. P. Putnam's Sons New York PREFACE. The history of Turkey has yet to be written. The standard authority is Von Hammer's Gesdiichte des Osmanischen Reiches, of which there is a French trans- lation, and from which many books have been com- piled in many languages. In English, Von Hammer found an able condenser in Sir Edward Creasy, whose History of the Ottoman Turks is the best concise work we possess on the subject. Von Hammer, however, is not always accurate, despite his laborious research, and he is generally dull. A Turkish scholar, possessed of a sense of literary form, who would take the Aus- trian's facts, collate them with the native annalists and historiographers, and present them with all the advan- tages of skilful arrangement and charm of style, would render a real service to historical literature. The present volume, however, makes no pretensions to fill the gap. All that is here attempted is to draw the main outlines of Turkish history in bold strokes, and thus try to leave a connected impression on the reader's mind. In so small a compass it is impossible to be detailed. Those who desire more than can here be :9 VI 11 PREFACE. given should turn to Sir E. Creasy, or to the Vte. A. de la Jonquiere's Histoire de V Empire Ottoman, in Duruy's series ; and thence, if still ambitious, to Von Hammer. In these pages clearness and brevity have been the main considerations ; and, while striving to escape the charge of prolixity, I have carefully avoided the sin of moralizing. Many in- structive morals have been drawn from the past and present state of Turkey ; but these appear to depend so much for their point and application upon the political bias of the writer that, on the whole, they are best omitted. We have all heard about the " sick man " and the " armed camp : " but, if we are Con- servatives, we palliate the disease, and call the encamp- ment an innocent review ; if we are Radicals, we send for the undertaker for the one, and call for the expul- sion of the other, that it may no longer menace the peace of Europe. Between these extremes, the reader may take his choice. The naval history of Turkey, a subject of peculiar interest, has been barely touched upon here, because it is so closely interwoven with the exploits of the Barbary buccaneers, that it will be more satisfactorily traced in the Story of the Corsairs, \\h.\ch. I am writing for the same series. Another subject which has been omitted is the history of Egypt under Turkish rule : for this belongs to the special volume on Modern Egypt, now in preparation. I owe special thanks to Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, not only for the chapters on " Ottoman Literature," " Stambol," and " Ottoman Administration," for which he is almost PREFACE. IX entirely responsible, but also for many suggestions and additions in other parts of the book, the whole of which has had the advantage of his revision. Mr. Oilman has also contributed to a part of the subject which was less familiar to Mr. Gibb and myself ; and I am indebted for valuable assistance to Mr. H. H» Howorth, M.P., and to Mr. W. R. Morfill, whose advice has been followed in the systematic spelling of Russian names. STANLEY LANE-POOLE. BiRLiNG, Sussex, January 17, 1888. CONTENTS. The King's Front. 125 0-1326 1-24 The thirteenth century an epoch in European history, i — and in Asia, 2 — The Mongols, 2 — The Turks, 4 — The Seljuks, 5 — The Mongols again, 6 — The distribution of the Turks, 6 — Seljuks of Iconium, 8— Battle of Angora, 8 — Establishment of Ertoghriil and the Turks, 9 — Sultanoni, 10 — Birth of Olh- man, 13— His dream, 14, and marriage, 15 — Extension of the Ottoman dominion, 16 — War with the Eastern Empire, 19 ■ — Conquest of Brusa, 23— Death of Othman, 23. II. Across the Hellespont. 1326-1380 25-41 Orkhan, 25 — Conquest of Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Pergamon, 25 — Organization of the state and army, 26— The Janissaries, 27 — Sipahis, 31 — Causes of the success of the Ottomans, 32 — Relations with the Eastern Empire, 33 — The Turks land in Europe, 34 — Capture of Gallipoli, 34 — Murad I., 35 — The Slavs, 36 — War with Hungarians, Serbians, &c., 36 — Battle of the Marilza, 36 -Advance of the Ottoman dominion in Europe, 39— and in Asia, 40. III. Kosovo and Nicopolis. 1380-1402 . . . 42-59 War with the Serbians, &c., 42— Battle of Kosovo, 43— Xll CONTENTS. PAGB Assassination of Murad I., 45 — BayezTd I., 46 — Despina, 49 — Subjugation of Serbia and Wallachia, 49, 50 — Crusade against the Turks, 51 — Battle of Nicopolis, 55— Massacre of prisoners, 57. IV. TiMtTR THE Tartar. 1402 . , . . 60-73 Bayezid's power, 60 — Timur, 63— Siege of Slwas, 65 — Second battle of Angora, 66 — Captivity and death of Bayezld, 72 — Apparent destruction of the Ottoman power, 73, V. Mohammed the Restorer. 1402-142 i . . 74-84 Vitality of the Turkish rule, 74 — Causes, 75 — Organization and education, 76 — Mohammed I., 78 — Civil war, 79 — Re- storation of order and authority, 80 — Mohammed the "gen- tleman," 83— His death, 83. VI. Murad II. and Hunyady. 1421-1451 . . 85-98 Murad XL, 85 — Siege of Constantinople, 86 — Hunyady, 87 — Relief of Hermannstadt, 88 — Passage of the Balkan, 89 — Treaty of Szegedin, 89 — Abdication of Murad, 89— Perfidy of the Christians, 90 — Return of Murad, 91 — Battle of Varna, 92 — Second battle of Kosovo, 96 — Death of Murad, 96 — Siege of Belgrade, 97 — St. John Capistran, 97 — Death of Hunyady, 98. VII. • The Fall of Constantinople. 1451-1481 . 1 01-139 Mohammed II., loi — Quarrel with Constantine Palaeologus, 107 — Sieges of Constantinople, 108 — The final siege, 108 — CONTENTS, Xiii PAGE Death of Constantine, 125 — Capture of the city, 129 — War in the north, 133 — Scanderbeg, 133 — War with Venice, 135 — Negropont, Crimea, Rhodes, 136— Conquest of Otranto and death of Mohammed II., 139. VIII. Prince Jem. 1481-1512 .... 140-151 Bayezid II., 140 — H's inaction and deposition, 140-1 — Prince Jem, 141 — Takes refuge with the Knights of Rhodes, and is made prisoner, 142 — Transferred to Nice, 145, and Rome, 146, and is probably poisoned by the Pope, Alexander Borgia, 149-150. IX. The Conquest of Egypt. 1512-1520 . . 152-164 Sellm II., •• the Grim," 152— Murder of his kindred, 152 — His literary talent, 153 — His policy, 153 — Persian history, 154 — Shia?, 155 — Selim massacres the heretics, 155 — War with Shah Ismail, 156 — Battle of Chaldiran, 157 — The Mam- luk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, 158 — Their valour, 159 — Their mosques and palaces, 160 — Selim marches against them, 161 — Battles of Marj Dabik, Gaza, and Reydaniya, 161 — Conquest of Egypt, 162 — Selim becomes Khalif, 162, and dies, 163. X. SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. 1 5 20-1 5 66 . 1 65-204 A great epoch, 165 — Suleyman and his contemporaries, 166 —His character, 169— Capture of Belgrade, 169— Conquest of Rhodes, 170— Ibrahim the Grand Vezir, 173— Invasion of Hungary, 174— Battle of Mohacs, 179— Fall of Buda, Pesth, Gran, Comorn, Raab, and Altenburg, 180— Advance on Vienna, 183— The defence, 184— The siege, 187— The re- treat, 190— Peace of Constantinople, 191 — Siege of Sziget- var, 192— Nicholas Zriny, 192— Death of Sukyman, 192 — Roxelana, 195— Turkish admirals, Barbarossa, Dragut, Piali, 196 — Suleyman's Empire, 196. XIV CONTENTS. PAGE XI. The Downward Road. 15 66- 1640 . . 205-220 The turn of the tide, 205 — Causes of the decline, 206 — Selim the Sot, 208 — Sokolli Mohammed, 208 — Sinan Pasha, 208 — Expedition to Astrakhan, 208 — Conquest of Cyprus, 208-9 — Battle of Lepanto, 209 — Don John of Austria, 209 — Uluj All, 210 — Peace with Venice, 210 — Murad III. and Mohammed III., 213 — Safia, 213— Count Cicala, 213 — Battle of the Keresztes, 213 — Ahmed I., 214 — English em- bassy, 214— Mnrad IV., 217 — Conquest of Georgia, 217 — Mutiny of Sipahl>, 218 — Severity of the Sultan, 219 — Con- quest of Baghdad, 219 — Death of Murad IV., 220. XII. The Rule of the Vezirs. 1640-1757 . 221-242 The Koprili family, 221 — Koprili Mohammed, 221 — Koprili- zada Ahmed, 222— Battle of St. Gotthard, 222 — Montecuculi, 222 — Conquest of Candia, 225 — Morosini, 225 — War with Poland, 225 — John Sobieski, 225 — Battles of Choczim and Lemberg, 225— Kara Mustafa, Grand Vezir, 226 — Invasion of Austria, 227^ — Second siege of Vienna, 228 — Sobieski comes to the relief, 231 — Defeat of the Turks, 236 — Vienna saved, 237 — Mohammed IV., the sportsman, 237 — Treatment of am- bassadors, 238— Second battle of Mohacs, 239 — Buda retaken by the Christians, 239 — Morosini in Greece, 239 — Koprili-zada Mustafa, 240 — War with Austria, 240 -Battle of Slankamen, 240 — Mustafa II., 240— Battle of Zenta, 241 — Mediation of Lord Paget, 241 — Peace of Carlowitz, 241— Prince F^ugene takes Belgrade, 241 — Peace of Passarowitz, 241 — Turkey no longer a menace to Christendom, 242. XIII. The Rise of Russia. 1696- 1812 . . . 243-259 Traditional origin of the Russians, 243 — Novgorod, 244 — Rurik, 245 — Kiev, 245— Olga Ijecomes a Christian, 246 — Vladimir the Great, 246 — Moscow, 246 — Incursions of Tartars, 247— Batu at Liegnitz, 247— The Golden Horde, 248— Alex- ander Nevski, 248— Ivan the Great, 249 — Diplomatic inter- CONTENTS, XV PAGE course with Turkey, 248— Early attacks on the Bosphorus, 250 — Ivan the Terrible, 251 — The Astrakhan expedition, 251 — Peter the Great, 252 — The Sultan protects Charles II. of Sweden, 253 — Peter surrounded at the Pruth, 253 — Peace of Belgrade, 254 — Treaty of Kaynarji, 254 — Catherine the Great, 254, vis'ts the Crimea, 255 --Siege of Ochakov, 256 — Suvo- rov, 256— Treaty of Yassy, 256— Tilsit, 2S7— Sir Robert Adair, 258 — Stratford Canning, 258 Treaty of Bucharest, 259 — Its effect upon Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, 259. XIV. Stambol 260-301 Site, 260 — Christian suburbs, 265 — Palaces of the Sultan, 266 — The Old Seraglio, 267 — The treasury, 273 — Relics, 275 — The cage, 275— The harem, 276— Officers of the Seraglio, 276 — Ladies of the harem, 291 — Abdul-Aziz's privy purse, 293 — A medieval embassy, 294. XV. O'lTOMAN Literature 302-323 Characteristics, 302 — Monorhyme, 303 — Ghazel, 303 — Sej, 303 — GhazI Fazil, 304 — Sheykhl, 304 — Vaziji-oghlu's Moham- mediya — History of the Forty Vezirs — Mir All Shir Nevayi, 309— Ahmed Pasha, 309— Sinan Pasha, 309 — Nejati and ZatI, Zeyneb, Mihri, 310 — Poetry of Selim I., 310 — Ibn-Kenial, 311 — ^Joseph and Zuleykha, 311 — Mesihi, 311 — Fuzull, 312 — Baki, 314— Nef'!, 315— SabrI, 315 — NabI, 318 — Raghib Pasha and Sami, 318-NedIm, 318 — Prose since the conquest of Constantinople, 320 — Sa'd-ud-din. 320 — Na'ima, 320 — Evliya, 321 — Haji Khalifa, 321— Sheykh Ghalib, 321— Transition period, 321— Wasif, 322- Modern school, 322— Akif and Reshid Pasha, 323 — ShinasI, Kemal, Ekrem, and Hamid Beys, 323. XVI. The Ottoman Administration . . . 324-339 The Sultan, 324— State functionaries, 327— Companions of the Pen, 327— The Tughra, 329— Companions of the Sword, XVi CONTENTS. PAGE 330 — Ducal government, 331 — Men of Law, 333 — The Divan, or Council, 335 — The Kapudan Pasha, 336 — The Grand Vezir, 336 — Declaration of War, 336 — State robes, 339 — Modern innovations, 339. XVII. The Sick Man. 181 2- 1880 .... 340-365 Characteristics of the recent Turkish history, 340 — Turkish military strength, 340 — Changes in the present century, 341 — Mahmud II., 343 — The growth of local power, 343 — Mo- hammed AH in Egypt and All Pasha of Janina, 343 — Destruc- tion of the Janissaries, 344 — The Greek rebellion, 345 — Navarino, 346 — Russian war, 346 — Treaty of Adrianople, 349 — War with Egypt, 349 — Hunkiar Iskelesi, 349 — Treaty of 1841, 350 — Abd-ul-Mejid, 350 — Sit Stratford Canning, 350 — Reform in Turkey, 352 — The Hungarian refugees, 354 — The Holy Places, 355 — The Crimean war, 356 — Treaty of Paris, 358 — Repudiation by Russia of Black Sea clause, 359 — Rumania, 359 — Abd-ul-AzIz, 360 — Murad V., 360 — Abd-ul- Hamld II., 360 — The Bulgarian atrocities, 360 — The latest Russo-Turkish war, 361 — Plevna, 361 — The Treaty of Berlin, 362 — Shrunken dimensions of the Ottoman Empire, 363 — Conclusion, 364. Index 367 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE .... Frontispiece ROCK MONASTERY, ANATOLIA . . . . . II A TURKISH MERRY-MAKING \^ BRUSA 21 JANISSARIES AND MUSICIANS 29 GREEKS 37 TURKISH FUNERAL 47 NICOPOLIS o ... 53 MANUEL PALAEOLOGUS 61 A TURKISH MEAL ^1 A VENETIAN GALLEY 8 1 JANISSARY IN MUFTI ..93 BELGRADE 99 MEDAL OF MOHAMMED II I04 MEDAL OF MOHAMMED II. (REVERSE) . . . • I05 PLAN OF CONSTANTINOPLE . e . . . • I09 SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE I '5 SANTA SOPHIA 127 RHODES ' - '^yj BATTLE WITH PRINCE JEM 143 PALACE OF THE GRAND MASTERS, RHODES . . .147 XVlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT (IN YOUTH) . . . 167 SIEGE OF RHODES I7I COUNCIL HALL, RHODES I75 PRIORY OF FRANCE, RHODES . , • • . » 177 SULEYMAN ON THE WAR-PATH , ♦ • , , 18I VIENNA (1483) 185 SULTAN SULEYMAN .193 ROXELANA I97 GROWTH OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE . • • , 202 DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE . • • , 203 SULEYMANIYA MOSQUE, 1 556. . . . • , 211 THE GRAND SIGNIOR IN ROBES OF STATE . • .215 THE GRAND VEZiR , . 223 ST. STEPHEN'S CATHEDRAL, VIENNA .... 22g SERAGLIO POINT , . 263 GATE OF FELICITY IN THE SERAGLIO . . . . 27I GREEK TRADERS 289 ST. SOPHIA 307 MOSAIC IN ST. SOPHIA , , 325 TUGHRA OF ABD-UL-AZIZ 329 IN THE HAREM . . . . • . • . 337 BATTLE OF NAVARINO 347 Some of the above are copied from a curious work of P. Coeck, Les Moeurs, etc., des Turcz (1553), which vSir W. vStirling Maxwell ediietl in 1873 under the title of The Turks in 1533. The original is in the British Museum. Others are reproductions of some of the cuts in the Recueil de cent estampes ^iiravi'cs stir Ics tableaux pdnts ifaprcs nature en 1707 et 1708, par les ordres de M. de ferriol^ anibassadtur du rot a /a Forte (1714). GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE OTHMANLI SULTANS. I. 'Othman I., 1299 2. Orkhan, 1326 3. Murad I., 1360 4. Bayezid I., 1389 I \ —\ 410. Prince Suleyman, 1403. 5. Mohammed L, 1402. Prince Musa, 1 6. Murad II., 1421 7. Mohammed II., 1451 8. Bayezid II., 1481 9. Selim I., 1512 10. Suleyman I., 1520 II. Selim II., 1566 J 12. Murad III., 1574 13. Mohammed III., 1595 14. Ahmed I., 1603 15. Mustafa I., 1617. (2) 1623. 1 J ^1 16. 'Othman II., i6i8. 17. Murad IV., 1623. 18. Ibrahim, 1640 I I I 19. Mohammed IV., 1648. 20. Suleyman II., 1687 21. Ahmed II,, 1691. 22. Mustafa II., 1695. 23. Ahmed III., 1703 24. Mahmud I., 1730. 25. 'Othman III., 1754. 26, Mustafa III., 1757 27. 'Abd-ul-Hamid I., 1773 J. Selim III., 1789. 1 ~~~ I 29. Mu§tafa IV., 1807. 30. Mahmud II., 1808. 31. 'Abd-ul-Mejid, 1839. 32. 'Abd-ul-'Aziz, i86i. 33 Murad V., 1876. 34. 'Abd-ul-Hamid II. (regnant), 1876. THE STORY OF TURKEY. I. (1250-1326.) The thirteenth century was an eventful epoch for all Europe. The overshadowing power of the Empire was waning, separate states were springing up in Italy and Germany, and the growth of civil liberty was bringing its fruit in the enlargement of ideas and the founding of universities. In England, the Nor- man and Saxon were at last one people, and the business of the natior was to strengthen the bond which united them ; Magna Charta was signed, and the first Parliament was summoned. In the East the long struggle for the Holy City had ended in the dis- comfiture of the Christians, and the last of the Crusades was led by Saint Louis against the Mamluks of Egypt, where the king and his army were taken captive. What was lost in the East was gained in the West : Ferdinand of Castile was winning city after city from the Moors in Spain, who were now fortifying 2 THE KING'S FRONT, themselves in their last stronghold at Granada, where they held out for two centuries more. Sicily, which had once been a favourite province of the Saracens, was the scene of a series of tragedies : Manfred was killed by Count Charles of Anjou, whose tyranny led to the fatal " Vespers " and the foundation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. All Europe was heated with the strong wine of political change. In this same eventful century Asia was passing through a still more sudden and subversive revolu- tion. The Mongolian hordes of Chingiz Khan had been let loose from their plains of Central Asia, and, like the bursting of long pent up waters, had poured in a swift whirling flood over all the countries of the East, and carried ruin and devastation whithersoever they went. Chingiz himself died in the earlier part of the century, but his sons and grandsons proved themselves worthy disciples of their terrible sire. The famous Khalifate of Baghdad, which during half a millennium had been the inheritor of the most sacred traditions of Islam, now fell for ever before the on- slaught of Hulagu Khan. The fair provinces which had owned the victorious sway of Saladin and his house, and were now the appanage of those gallant Mamluk chiefs whose wealth and taste placed Cairo and Damascus on the pinnacle of renown, were menaced and partly overrun by the barbarian ; and the mountain passes of Anatolia, which for generations had suffered no sovereign tread save that of the Sel- juk Sultan of Iconium, now shook under the tramp of the Tartar's horse. A Mongol army even pene- trated Europe as far as Germany, ravaged Hungary, THE MONGOLS. 3 routed the Teutonic knights at Liegnitz, and then con- tentedly returned to their Eastern deserts, as though contemptuous of the attractions of Europe. It was fortunate that the Mongols were possessedv by the migratory spirit too strongly to think of] settling in cities and founding empires ; the wave ofl barbarism flowed, but happily it also ebbed. In the( far East its influence was more enduring ; the descendants of Chingiz were for many generations Yuen emperors of China, Khans of Turkistan, chiefs of the Golden Horde, of the Crimea, and of Kazan, whence for centuries they dominated and curbed the rising power of Russia. All these dynasties reigned in the domain of barbarism : they left no lasting im- press on the civilized lands of the Khalifate, where Arab, Persian, and Turk had each in turn put forth the best of his genius, and had assimilated and de- veloped what elements of philosophy, art, and science, had come within his reach. To trace the pedigree of the Ottoman Turks we i^^ must look back into remote antiquity. In the early history of Central and Eastern Asia everything is more or less conjecture, but this at least is certain, that among the numerous nomad tribes who roamed the plains of Sungaria and the great desert of Gobi, and from time to time broke loose in one of those great waves of migration which paralyzed the peoples of\ Europe and of Western Asia, t here were two rac es 1 whichalternately filled the rS/e of '^ the scourges of God7~the Mongols anTlhe~Turks7 ' The Alongols first appear on the scene under the name of Hiong"^ Nu as dominating the nomad world in the days of 4 THE KING'S FRONT. the Chinese dynasty of the Han, and dominating especially tlie two great branches of the Turkish race known as Uighurs and Turks properly so called. The Uighurs eventually became free from this domi- nation, and under the names of Yueh chi and White Huns broke in pieces the Greek kingdom of Bactria, and founded a famous empire, with its capital at Balkh, which became the scourge of the Sassanians on the one hand, and filled a more re- markable place in Indian history than is generally suspected on the other. The power of the Hiong Nu was destroyed by the Chinese ; it revived again presently under the Jouan-Jouan, who were masters of all the steppes from the Volga eastwards. A revolt took place against the Jouan-Jouan in the beginning of \the sixth century when the Turks eo nomine are for the first time heard of in history. They founded an empire which stretched from the borders of Manchuria to the Carpathians, and commanded also Trans- oxiana and the country as far as the Indus Their power south of the Sihun or Jaxartes was sapped and eventually destroyed by the Arabs, who founded the Samani dynasty ; but the Turks remained masters of the steppes, and supplied the Samanis, and even the Khalifs, with mercenary troops whose leaders pre- sently supplanted their masters and founded a famous Turkish dynasty at Ghazni, while somewhat later fresh hordes under their own leaders planted them- selves in Khorasan and created the splendid empire of the Seljuks, who from the eleventh to the thirteenth century governed the greater part of the Khalifs' dominions in Asia, and advanced the Mohammedan THE SELJUKS. 5 rule into the mountain ranges of Anatolia, and thus prepared the way for the Ottomans, their successors. By this time the empire of the Khalifs was full of Turks. They were introduced first as captives, whose ^ fair beauty speedily commended itself to the Arab princes, and whose martial vigour marked them out as a fit body-guard for the Khalif against his unruly subjects in Persia. First as slaves, then as a military aristocracy, and theri as^eljul that however indolent and besotted a Turk may appear, you have but to put a sword in his hand, and * It is commonly stated that Bayezid was the first to adopt this title ; but coins still preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere, prove that both Orkhan and Murad I. styled themselves Sultan on their official currency. Of Othman there are no coins in existence, and it is probable that the right to coin was first assumed by Orkhan. Bayezid 's assumption of the title of Sultan was only so far novel that it re- ceived the sanction of the titular head of the Mohammedan reli- gion. THE CATHOLIC CRUSADE. 5 1 he will fire up and fight like a hero. The fighting spirit seems to be inherent in the race. The league that was gathering against him was indeed enough to dismay any sovereign. Sigismund of Hungary was not the man to sit still after defeat. He had been disgracefully routed in 1392, when he had invaded Bulgaria, and Kosovo and the humi- liation of Serbia were events too recent to be easily forgotten. The Hungarians were not, like some of the other adversaries of the Turks, members of what they considered the heretical, or as it styles itself the " Orthodox," Greek Church. So long as the Turks waged war upon such heretics, the Latin Church was content to let them alone. But Hungary was Catholic, \y' and at Sigismund's request the Pope took up the cause, and in 1394 proclaimed a crusade against the Moslems. All the Courts of Europe were besieged with demands for volunteers in the Holy War. France sent a body of men-at-arms under the Count of Nevers to the support of the King of Hungary, and many knights of renown came with their retainers to join in the crusade. They were to defeat the Turks, cross the Hellespont, and rescue the Holy Land from the infidels. Among them were the Count de la Marche, three cousins of the French king, Philippe of Artois, Count of Eu and Constable of France, and many more of the flower of the French chivalry. The Count of Hohenzollern and the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem came with their followers. The Elector Palatine brought a company of Bavarian knights ; Myrche with his Vlachs and Sisman with his Bulgarians joyfully threw off the 52 KOSOVO AND NICOPOLIS. Turkish yoke, broke all their vows, and joined the league. y The allies marched through Serbia, whose king alone remained true to his treaty with BayezTd, and his lands were therefore plundered ; they took Vidin and Orsova, and, mustering sixty thousand men, sat down before the strong city of Nicopolis, which, with Vidin, Sistova, and Silistria, formed the four great frontier fortresses on the Danube. They were held by Turkish garrisons, and to re-take them was now the ardent desire of the Christian army. ^ Vidin had already surrendered ; Nicopolis was the next to be attacked. Six days they pressed the siege by land and river, yet the Ottoman governor refused to surrender. The French knights, however, were not disturbed by this obstinacy, which was of the utmost value in detaining the invading army until the Sultan should come up with them ; they ridiculed the mere thought of Bayezid's advance, declared that he would not dare to cross the Hellespont, and, betaking them- selves to the wine and women that they had brought in shiploads down the Danube, they boasted in their cups that were the sky to fall they would hold it up with their spears. When scouts brought word that the Sultan was within six hours' march of Nicopolis, the jovial boon- fellows laughed them to scorn, and Marshal Boucicault threatened to have the bearers' ears cut off for raising a false alarm. Bayezld heard of these " brave words," and in return swore that he would stable his horse at the high altar of St. Peter's at Rome. He was upon the allies before they could credit their eyes. When the Turkish ll|||l|l!l!!IIIIIilllllfl!(ll(lllllll(l!H[|||ll(lll(ll(I| llllllllllllllilllllllillllllllll BATTLE OF NICOPOLIS. 55 troops were seen advancing in their usual perfect disci- pline, the young French nobles, full of wine and conceit* clamoured to begin the fight, and disregarding the coun- sel of Sigismund, who knew that the practice of the Turks was to put their worst troops in the van of battle, the hot-headed Frenchmen charged madly upon the foe, after first celebrating the occasion by a mas- sacre of Turkish prisoners who had vainly trusted to their word of honour. Down they charged upon the Turkish front, and falling like a whirlwind upon the luckless skirmishers, whom Bayezld had thrown for- ward, cut them in pieces. Hacking right and left; the chivalry of France rode over their bodies, till they reached the Janissaries who were drawn up behind them ; ten thousand of the flower of the Turkish army fell, before the Janissaries took refuge under cover of the cavalry. Still unchecked, the triumphant cavaliers rode pell-mell at the famous squadrons of the Sipahls, and five thousand horsemen went down before their stormy charge. Right through the third line of the enemy they rode, exulting in their victory; and ascend- ing the high ground beyond, where they expected to see but the flying ruck of the Ottomans — they suddenly found themselves confronted by a forest of forty thou- sand lances, the main body of the Turkish army. Then they remembered, too late, the counsel of Sigismund ; and seized with panic fear, the knighthood of France broke up and fled for its very life, pursued by the horsemen of Asia. Admiral Jean de Vienne, brave man, bethought him of the shame as he was hurrying away ; and gathering his twelve knights about him he ' See " The Story of Hungary," by Prof. Vambery, 183. 56 KOSOVO AND NICOPOLIS. cried, " God forbid that we should save our lives at the cost of our honour ; " so they plunged into the thick of the enemy, and died the death of the soldier. The Christian infantry could not witness this fearful flight without dismay ; the Hungarians and Vlachs on the right and left wings of the main body took to their heels. The centre alone stood firm, where the king's own Magyar followers, the Styrians under Hermann Count of Cilli, and the Bavarians under the Elector, covered the retreat of the French cavaliers, and advanced in serried ranks, twelve thousand strong, against the Turks. Despite their scanty numbers, they drove back the Janissaries and came to close combat with the Sipahls, whom they threatened to overthrow, when Stephen of Serbia, faithful to his oath, led his five thousand Slavs upon the Christians and won the day for his master the Sultan. The battle was at an end ; the remnant of the Christian army was cut down round the royal standard, and Sigismund was dragged away from the fatal field by the Count of Cilli and hurried into a boat by which he reached the Venetian fleet which was waiting to cooperate with the army at the mouth of the Danube. Instead of joining in attack, the task of the Venetians was narrowed to saving the few surviving leaders of a vanished host. BayczTd was left victorious on the hard won field. As he rode among the mountains of the slain he wept tears of rage to see how many of his bravest warriors had fallen before the furious onslaught of the French and the steady desperation of Sigismund's attack- He resolved to avenge their death by a fearful retri- MASSACRE OF PRISONERS, 57 bution upon the captives. Ten thousand prisoners of war were brought before him the next day, and, after summoning the Count of Nevers to witness his vengeance, and permitting him to select twenty-four knights for ransom, he gave orders that the rest of the captives should be slaughtered. Company after company, the stout knights and squires of France, the soldiers of Germany, of Bavaria, of Styria, of Hungary, were led before the Sultan, and there, in the sight of the Count of Nevers and his twenty- four companions, were pitilessly butchered. One Schildberger, who was himself present, saved by the intercession of Bayazld's son, and who lived to re- turn to his native Munich after thirty years of cap- tivity, tell us how he saw his comrades massacred in heaps by the Janissaries and the common executioners; from daybreak till four in the afternoon the Sultan sat watching the agonies of his enemies, till at last his own officers, moved perhaps by pity and disgust, or else by regret at the loss of so many marketable slaves, begged him to make an end of the butchery and send the remainder of the prisoners into captivity. Thousands however had already paid the penalty of death, and among them, as Froissart says— " ^{jen tf)e^ \^tvt all brougljt liefore ILamora-- baqtip naketi in tljeiu ^Ijprte^, anti Ijt beljeltie tljem a Iprell anti tljaix mrneti fco rljem toa^rtie, aati niatic a (S})^nt tljat tlje^ sJljultie lie all gdapne, aud 00 tljep Vnere tirouffljt tljrouglj tlje 0ara^^n0 tljat IjaD reti^ nalictJ 5\Dortie0 in tljeir Ijantieei, anti 00 0la^ne anti Ijevoen all to pecesf VDitljout mtttv. %W cruell 58 KOSOVO AND NICOPOLIS. iu0tpce tiiti ilamorabaqup tljat tia^e, bp t^e toljiclje mo t^an tljre liuntireD gentlemen of tipbet^f nacpon^ toere tourmenteD anti 0lapne for tbe lote of pH, on iD^og^e 0oule0 3]e0u Sate merc^/' In the following year the Count of Nevers and the surviving knights were ransomed. Froissart tells the story of their leavetaking with the Sultan. When the Count approached to thank him for his kindness and courtesy during their captivity, Bayezid said, through an interpreter — "3|oSan, 31 feno\x)e Voell tl)ou arte a peat lortie in tljp countre^, anti 0onne to a great lorue ; t^ou art ^onge, anti peratiuenture 0ljaU beare 0ome blame anti 0bame tbat tljfs atiuenture b^tti fallen to tlje in tbp f^r^te clj^balrp ; anti to e;rcu0e tljp^elfe of tt)i0 blame anti to recouer tljpne bonour, peratiuen-. ture tbou Voplt a^^emble a pup00aimce of men, anti come anti make Voarre agapn^t me ; if 3| \xiere in Doute or feare tberof, or tljou tieparteti 3 0bwltie tm0t tlje 07 ere bj) tb? laVoe anti faptbe tbat neuer tjou nor none of tij? compan)^ 0b«ltie beare armure or make loarre agapn^t me ; but 3| \dpII notbec make tbe nor none of tb^ company to make anp 0ucbe otbe or prome^^e, but 31 \^}>\l tbat \x^[)m tbou arte retourneti anb arte at tb? pleasure, raptfe \obttt pup00aunce tbou toplte, anb 0pare nat, but come agapn^t me •, tbou ^b^lt fpntie me alvoapetf rebp to rece^ue tbe anb tlj^ company in tbe felbe in plapne batajle ; anb tbi0 tbat J sap, 0bctoe it to Vobome tb? Ip^te, for 31 am able to bo tim^ of bayezid's defiance. n arrne^, anti euer retip to conquere furtJier into crp0teationu ^^e^se ^pfflj \j)ortie0 ttie tvlt of iPeuer^ bntier^totie Voell, and 00 tipti !)i0 companp ; tjep t^ougjt on it after a0 long a^ tlje? IjueD/' IV. TiMUR THE TARTAR. (1402.) The battle of Nicopolis had placed BayezTd at the summit of power. He issued boastful despatches to the chief potentates of the East announcing his triumph, and, in order to convince them of its verity by tangible evidence, he sent them by his mes- sengers presents of Christian slaves taken from the conquered nations. Nothing now could exceed the pride and arrogance of the Turkish Sultan. Lord of the lands of the Greek Empire as far as the Danube, and of Asia to the banks of the Euphrates, he dreamed of world-wide conquest, and even thought of realizing his threat of stabling his charger at the altar of St. Peter's at Rome. Not content while any part of the Eastern Empire remained unsubdued, he carried his arms southward through Thermopylae, which had no Leonidas to contest the pass, and with little opposition established his authority over the Pelo- ponnesus and set up the crescent upon the Acropolis of Athens. The Greek P^mperor was already his humble vassal, and had even consented to the building of a mosque in Constantinople, in order to appease the .\1A.\UEL I'ALAEOLOGUS. TIMUR OR TAMERLANE. 63 wrath of his imperious suzerain. Saladin the Great and others had extorted similar concessions ; but in the present instance to the mosque was added a Mohammedan college, and a Moslem judge or Kadi was appointed to administer the laws of Islam in a quarter specially set apart for Musulmans in the metro- polis of Orthodox Christianity. The Turks had indeed obtained a fatal hold upon the capital of the empire, and now Bayezld, not satisfied with the humiliations to which the emperor had submitted, demanded the surrender of the city itself. Manuel scoured Europe In search of allies, but in vain. Even when he descended so low as to beg the assistance of his immemorial rival the Pope, no aid was to be found ; and the Turkish armies, after \ beleaguering Constantinople for six years, seemed on ithe point of effecting the conquest, when a new and / terrible figure appeared upon the scene, and Bayezld ^ was forced to turn his forces elsewhere. Just at the moment when the Sultan seemed to ^ have attained the pinnacle of his ambition, when his authority was unquestioningly obeyed over the greater part of the Byzantine Empire in Europe and Asia, when the Christian states were regarding him with terror as the scourge of the world, another and a greater scourge came to quell him, and at one stroke all the vast fabric of empire which Bayezld had so triumphantly erected was shattered to the ground. This terrible conqueror was Tjmur the Tartar, or as we call him '* Tamerlane." Tlmur was of Turkish race, and was born near Samarkand in 1333 He was consequently an old 64 TIMUR THE TARTAR. man of nearly seventy when he came to encounter Bayezid in 1402. It had taken him many years to establish his authority over a portion of the numerous divisions into which the immense empire of Chingiz Khan had fallen after the death of that stupendous conqueror. Timur was but a petty chief among many others : but at last he won his way, and became ruler of Samarkand and the whole province of Transoxiana, or " Beyond the River " (Ma-wara-n-nahr), as the Arabs called the country north of the Oxus. Once fairly established in this province, Timur began to overrun the surrounding lands, and during thirty years his ruthless armies spread over the provinces of Asia, from Dehli to Damascus, and from the Sea of Aral to the Persian Gulf The sub-division of the Mohammedan Empire into numerous petty kingdoms rendered it powerless to meet the overwhelming hordes which Timur brought down from Central Asia. One and all, the kings and princes of Persia and Syria succumbed, and Tlmiir carried his banners triumphantly as far as the frontier of Egypt, where the brave Mamluk Sultans still dared to defy him. He had so far left Bayezid unmolested ; partly because he was too powerful to be rashly provoked, and partly because Timur respected the Sultan's valorous deeds against the Christians : for Timur, though a wholesale butcher, was very conscientious in matters of religion, and held that Bayezld's fighting for the Faith rightly covered a multitude of sins. But when two great empires march together, as did those of the Tartar and the Turk, and when each of them has been built up at the expense of a number of FALL OF SI WAS. 65 petty dynasties, every prince of which naturally sought an asylum at the Court of the rival emperor, the relations of the two Powers are apt to become strained. So it proved in the present case. Bayezld had sheltered some of the princes of Mesopotamia whom Timur had overthrown : Timur had welcomed to his Court the petty rulers of Asia Minor whom Bayezld had expelled. Of course the refugees on either side, in hope of restoration, lost no opportunity of exciting the jealousy and irritability of the rival tyrants. The result was that, after an interchange of embassies which only embittered the minds of both sovereigns, and in which the Turk displayed more than his wonted insolence, Timur advanced to Siwas, the ancient Sebaste, in Cappadocia, an important city which had recently acknowledged the authority of the Turk along with most of the towns of Asia Minor, and after a determined siege stormed the place and put the garrison to the sword. Among the rest, Prince Ertoghrul, a son of Bayezld was executed (1400). The Sultan was laying siege to Constantinople when he heard the news of the fall of Slwas and the death of his son. He hurried over to Asia, at the head of his veteran troops, who had for years borne the brunt of war against the chivalry of Serbia, Hungary, and France, on such fields as Kosovo and Nicopolis ; but when he arrived Timur was gone : he had marched south to menace the Mamluks of Egypt. It was not till the next year (1402) that the two forces met, and in the interval Bayezld had lost prestige with his soldiers. Timur's spies had been at w^ork, sowing 66 TIMUR THE TARTAR, disaffection among their ranks, and the Sultan's notorious meanness and avarice gave only too much colour to the insinuations of these emissaries; the Turkish troops became less hostile to Timur when they found how liberal he was to his followers. Still Bayezid did nothing to allay the growing murmurs of his men, and advanced to meet his adversary with an army estimated vaguely at 120,000. Timur, who is fabled to have commanded six times this number, outmanoeuvred him and secured an open field at Angora, where his superior force could be used to the best advantage. So far was Bayezid from manifesting even common caution in the presence of the enemy, that out of mere bravado he employed his army in a grand hunt in the neighbourhood of Angora. His hunting was ill chosen as to place as well as time, for there was no water, and it is said that no less than five thousand Turks perished from mere thirst, with never a Tartar arrow to speed them. When the infatuated Sultan returned to his camp, he found that Timur had seized it in his absence, and had poisoned the stream that would have refreshed the weary Turks. In this position the Ottoman led his dispirited men against the enemy. On the one side were men thirsty and exhausted, inferior in numbers, and discontented with their leader : on the other, a vast host, strongly posted, splendidly generalled, neglecting no precaution of war, and possessing every advantage of numbers, discipline, and physical condition. The result could not be doubtful. In the battle many of Bayezld's troops, among whom were forced contingents from the BATTLE OF ANGORA, 69 recently annexed states of Asia Minor, went over to the enemy, and only the Janissaries who formed the centre, and the Serbian auxiliaries under their king, Stephen Lazarevich, on the left, gave anything like a soldier's account of themselves on that memorable day. The valour of the Janissaries and the Serbs could avail little against Timur's numbers, and the end was utter rout. Old Knolles tells the story in his quaint and graphic style : " The next day the two armies drew near together and encamped within a league one of the other; where all the night long you might have heard such noise of horses as that it seemed the heavens were full of voices, the air did so resound ; and every man thought the night long, to come to the trial of his valour and the gaining of his desires. The Scythians talked of nothing but the spoil, the proud Parthians of their honour, and the poor Christians of their deliverance, all to be gained by the next day's victory: every man during the night speaking accord- ing to his own humour. All which Tamerlane, walking this night up and down in his camp, heard, and much rejoiced to see the hope that his soldiers had already in general conceived of the victory. Who, after the second watch, returning unto his pavilion, and there casting himself upon a carpet, had thought to have slept awhile : but his cares not suffering him to do so, he then, as his manner was, called for a book wherein was contained the lives of his fathers and ancestors and of other valiant worthies, the which he used ordinarily to read, as he then did ; not as therewith vainly to deceive the time, but to 7.0 TIMUR THE TARTAR. make use thereof by the imitation of that which was by them worthily done, and declining of such dangers as they by their rashness or oversight fell into. . . . " Now was Tamerlane by an espy advertised that Bajazet, having before given orders for the disposing of his army, was on foot in the midst of thirty thousand Janissaries, his principal men of war and greatest strength, wherein he meant that day to fight, and in whom he had reposed his greatest hope. . . . His army marching all in one front, in form of a half moon (but not so well knit together as was Tamerlane's whose squadrons directly followed one another) seemed almost as great as his ; and so with infinite numbers of most horrible outcries still advanced forward ; Tamerlane and his soldiers all the while standing fast with great silence. " There was not possible to be seen a more furious charge than was by the Turks given upon the Prince of Ciarcan, who had commandment not to fight before the enemy came up to him : neither could have been chosen a fairer plain, and where the skilful choice of the place was of less advantage for the one or the other ; but that Tamerlane had the river on the left hand of his army, serving him to some small advantage. Now this young Prince of Ciarcan with his forty thousand horse was in this first encounter almost wholly overthrown, yet having fought right valiantly and entered into them, even into the midst of the Janissaries (where the person of Bajazet was), putting them in disorder, was himself there slain. About which time Axalla set upon them with the avantguard, but not with like danger ; for having BATTLE OF ANGORA. yi overthrown one of the enemy's wings, and cut it all to pieces, and his footmen coming to join with him as they had been commanded, he faced the battalion of the Janissaries, who right valiantly behaved themselves for the safety of their prince. " This hard fight continued one hour, and yet you could not have seen any scattered, but the one still resolutely fighting against the other. You might there have seen the horsemen like mountains rush together, and infinite numbers of men die, cry, lament, and threaten, all in one instant. Tamerlane had patience all this while, to see the event of this so mortal a fight ; but perceiving his men at length to give ground, he sent ten thousand of his horse to join again with the ten thousand appointed for the rearward, and commanded them to assist him at such time as he should have need of them ; and at the very same time charged himself and made them to give him room, causing the footmen to charge also, who gave a furious onset upon the battalion of the Janissaries. Now Bajazet had in his army a great number of mercenary Tartars [of the Seljiakian States]. . . . These Tartarians and other soldiers, seeing some their friends, and other some their natural and loving princes in the army of Tamerlane, stricken with the terror of disloyalty and abhorring the cruelty of the proud tyrant, in the heat of the battle revolted from Bajazet to their own princes, which their revolt much weakened Bajazet's forces. Who, nevertheless, with his own men of war, and especially the Janissaries, and the help of the Christian soldiers brought to his aid from Serbia and other places of Europe, with 72 TIMUR THE TARTAR, great courage maintained the fight : but the multitude and not true valour prevailed ; for as much as might be done by valiant and courageous men was by the Janissaries and the rest performed, both for the preservation of the person of their prince and the gaining of the victory. But in the end, the horsemen, with whom Tamerlane himself was giving a fresh charge, and the avantguard wholly knit again to him reinforcing the charge, he with much ado obtained the victory." ^ So on the field of Angora, where the Ottomans had won their spurs in their first combat by the side of the Seljukian Turks a hundred and fifty years before, now was their empire shattered to the ground. Bayezld himself, with one of his sons, was taken prisoner, and the unfortunate Sultan became a part of his victor's pageant, and was condemned in fetters, to follow his captor about in his pomps and cam- paigns. The fact that he was carried in a barred litter gave rise to the well-known legend that he was kept in an iron cage.^ He died eight months later, and Timur survived his humbled prisoner but two years. In that time, however, he had overrun the Turkish Empire in Asia, had occupied Nicaea, Brusa, and the other chief cities of the * Knolles, i. 152. ' Racine, in his tragedy " Bajazet," made the story of this Sultan the means of familiarizing his generation with the history and habits of a people with whom they were little acc}iiainted ; and Bayezld appears also in Marlowe's " Tamburlaine the Cireat." In the latter he actually beats his brains out against the iron bars of his cage. The English Rowe and the French I'radon also based tragedies on the same fruitful theme. FALL OF BAYEZID. 73 coast, had wrested Smyrna from the valiant Knights of St. John, and had restored the various petty princes of Asia Minor to their former possessions. The empire of the Turks, built up with so much skill and 1 bravery, till it had become the terror of Europe, I crumbled to dust before the Asiatic despot, who well/ earned his title of "The Wrath of God." The history! of the Ottomans seemed to have suddenly come to',^ an end. Seldom has the world seen so complete, so \ terrible, a catastrophe as the fall of Bayezld from the \ summit of power to the shame of a chained captive. 1 MQHAMMED _THE RES T ORER. (1402-1421.) The Ottoman power seemed gone for ever. At one blow Timur, the "Noble Tartarian," had ap- parently swept it out of Asia, and there were too many foes waiting their opportunity in Europe to make the hold of the Turks upon their European provinces anything but precarious. Hungarians, Poles, Bulgarians, Albanians, Vlachs, and many more hovered on the brink of the Turkish provinces, or were ready to rise in revolt within their borders. Their enemy was fallen they thought for ever. The most astonishing characteristic of the rule of the Turks is its vitality. Again and again its doom has been pronounced by wise prophets, and still it survives. Province after province has been cut off the empire, yet still the Sultan sits supreme over wide dominions, and is reverenced or feared by sub- jects of many races. Considering how little of the great qualities of the ruler the Turk has often possessed, how little trouble he has taken to con- ciliate the subjects whom his sword has subdued, it is amazing how firm has been his authority, VITALITY OF TURKISH RULE. 75 how unshaken his power. At the moment when Timur's armies were ravaging the southern shores of the Bosphorus and the Greek Empire was almost rousing from its long sleep and retaking its lost provinces in Europe, the Turkish power might well be said to be annihilated ; yet within a dozen years the lost provinces were reunited under the strong and able rule of Mohammed I., and the Ottoman Empire, far from being weakened by the apparently crushing blow it had received in 1402, rose stronger and more vigorous after its fall, and, like a giant refreshed, prepared for new and bolder feats of conquest. Mr. Finlay, the gifted historian of medieval and modern Greece, has been to some pains to investigate the reason of the strange phenomenon presented by the progress of the Ottoman power. The same causes which produced their first success must account for their even more astonishing resurrection. "The establishment of the Ottoman Turks in Europe," he says, " is the last example of the conquest of a nu- merous Christian population by a small number of Musulman invaders, and of the colonization of civilized countries by a race ruder than the native population. The causes which produced these results were in some degree similar to those which had enabled small tribes of Goths and Germans to occupy and subdue the Western Roman Empire ; but three particular causes demand especial attention. First, the^ superiority of the Ottoman tribe over all contemporary ; nations in religious convictions and in moral and military conduct. Second, the number of different races which composed the population of the country 76 MOHAMMED THE RESTORER, between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, the Danube and the Aegean. Third, the depopulation of the Greek Empire, the degraded state of its judicial and civil administration, and the demoralization of the Hellenic race." ^ / As Mr. Finlay goes on to explain, the respect with ^ which Othman and his successors were regarded by the countless Mohammedan and Christian tribes, subjects who flocked to their standard and gladly submitted to their authority, is a sure proof of real superiority. Other barbarous races have risen to power and conquered rich provinces, only to succumb to the vices of luxury and demoralization. The Ottomans 1 long retained their pristine vigour and morality. The cause of this is to be sought to a great extent in the extraordinary skill with which Orkhan and his brother Ala-ud-dln organised their new state ; the admirable administration of justice; and the sys- tematic education in the household of the Sultan, both for civil and military purposes, of the Christian tribute-children who formed the nucleus of the Otto- man power, and who, deprived of the natural ties of country and family, became devoted to the Sultan to whom they owed their judicious training and subsequent advancement : " It was by their mental as well as physical power that a vast variety of races both Mohammedan and Christian were held together by as firm a grasp as that by which imperial Rome held her provinces ; and the standard of the Sultan was carried victoriously into the heart of Europe and Asia, and far along the shores of Africa. Never was * *• History of Greece," iii. 475. SUPERIORITY OF THE OTTOMANS, 77 SO durable a power reared up so rapidly from such scanty means as were possessed by Orkhan and his Vezir, when they conceived the bold idea of exter- minating Christianity by educating Christian children." The same sound education which was given to the tribute-children was shared by the Ottoman princes of the blood, and the result was that the early rulers of the Turkish Empire were men of sagacity and progressive views, always ready to improve the ad- ministration and the army, and to introduce new inventions and combinations. Sultans possessed of so wise a spirit were dangerous opponents of the shifty and unprincipled Greek emperors, and their ably organized and educated followers were infinitely the superiors of the disunited and corrupt subjects of the Palaeologi. These subjects, moreover, belonged to various hostile and jealous races ; they were Slavs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Albanians, and all degrees or*Ynixture, nor were the several races collected to- gether, but scattered in various quarters of the em- pire. And that empire itself was so degraded and corrupt in its government that it possessed no power of uniting its motley subjects or stemming the tide of demoralization that was swamping the whole population. The road was open to the Ottomans, and they were prepared to take it : they had served a worthy apprenticeship to the trade they were to follow. Such causes led to the success of the Turks against the empire, and though the temporary over- throw of the Ottoman power by Timur checked their progress for the moment, the elements of success yS MOHAMMED THE RESTORER, were not abolished. The Ottomans were still the trained, educated, disciplined force, civil and military, ^ they had ever been. The Greek Empire was not the less decrepit because its antagonist was for an instant laid low. It needed but a wise and patient sovereign to retrieve the disaster and restore the Ottoman power to its former supremacy and renown. Such a ruler was Mohammed I., the son of Baye- zld. The Greeks described him as " persevering as a camel," and to his prudence and sagacity the Otto- man Empire owed as rniich as it did to the fighting qualities of his predecessors and successors. No other dynasty can boast such a succession of brilliant sove- reigns as those who conducted the Ottomans to the height of renown in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six- teenth centuries. Orkhan, the taker of Nicaea and founder of the Janissaries ; Murad L, the conqueror at Kosovo ; BayezTd I., the victor of Nicopolis ; Mo- hammed I., the restorer of the shattered empire ; Murad II., the antagonist of Hunyady and of Skan- derbeg ; Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constanti- nople ; SelTm I., who annexed Kurdistan, Syria, and Egypt ; and Suleyman the Magnificent, the victor on the field of Mohdcs and the besieger of Vienna. Never did eight such sovereigns succeed one another (save for the feeble Bayezld II.) in unbroken succes- sion in any other country ; never was an empire founded and extended during two such splendid centuries by such a series of great rulers. In the hour of dismay, as well as in the moment of triumph, the Turkish Sultan was master of the situation. It was in the hour of dismay that Sultan Moham- RIVAL CLAIMANTS, 79 med^I. displayed his statesmanlike qualities. He began without an empire, and the least encouraging sign of the times was the jealousy which prompted his brothers, aided by the crowd of jealous Seljuk nobles and princes, to dispute with one another for the throne. Mohammed was the youngest son of Bayezld, and his elder brothers naturally asserted their prior right to the crown. While he set up a little shadow of a principality at Amasia, Prince Suleyman raised his standard at Adrianople and claimed the homage of the Turkish subjects in Europe ; Prince Isa established himself at Brusa, and seized part of the Asiatic provinces ; while Prince Musa, after bring- ing his father's body to Brusa to be buried, joined in the race for power. Suleyman, who had made him- self odious to his troops by his savage cruelty and debauchery, was deserted by his army and killed (1410). Musa, who reaped the advantages of his brother's death and emulated his brutality, waged a campaign against the Serbians, in which he ravaged the country with all the ruthlessness that a Turkish army can display, and is said to have feasted his officers upon tables constructed of the corpses of three Serb garrisons. He then laid siege to Constanti- nople, and the emperor called Mohammed to his aid. After several reverses Mohammed, assisted by Ste- phen, king of Serbia, the old ally of Bayezid, routed the besieging army, and in the flight Musa was killed. Prince Isa had meanwhile disappeared into obscurity, and Mohammed I. was now (141 3) sole Sultan over the undivided Turkish Empire, His reign as absolute Sultan lasted only eight 8o MOHAMMED THE RESTORER. years, but in that brief space he worked wonders. He did not indeed attempt the warlike achievements of his father, though he was prompt to resist any encroachment upon his dominions. He suffered I more than one defeat from the Christians of his ' northern frontier, and his fleet was severely beaten off Gallipoli by the Venetians under Admiral Lore- Idano. Mohammed had, however, clearly grasped his position, and had realized that his policy must be steady consolidation rather than extension ; and he did not allow a few trifling reverses to tempt him into dangerous campaigns. What he aimed at he accomplished : to maintain the boundaries of his em- ' pire and strengthen the ties between the sovereign j and his subjects, which the disaster at Angora must /have sorely strained. With this object his chief i y desire was for peace, and he made the Greek emperor his friend, first by supporting him against Musa, and then by surrendering to him certain places on the Black Sea and some fortresses in Thessaly. He received ambassadors from the rulers of Serbia, Wallachia, and Albania, with assurances of good- will, and concluded a treaty of amity with Venice. In Asia his authority was established with more diffi- culty, for the prince of Karaman, who had been reinstated by Timur, asserted his ancient indepen- dence and, not being an effete Greek, but a plucky Turk, seized the moment of anarchy to invade the chief cities of the Ottoman dominion in Asia. Mo- hammed defeated him, but wisely refrained, in the convalescent state of the empire, from endangering its complete recovery by any very stringent measures 83 against the petty dynasties of Asia Minor. He re- ceived their homage, but left it to his successor to reduce them once again to the position of Turkish provinces to which Bayezld had brought them shortly before his fall. A revolt of the dervishes, and the appearance of a pretender to the throne, further disturbed the Sultan's pacific designs ; but they were suppressed, and he was able to devote himself again to those measures of consolidation and to those cultivated tastes for poetry and literature for which he was distinguished. He was called Chelebi Mohammed, " Mohammed the Gentleman " ; and no name could better express the refinement and humanity of his character. It is recorded to his discredit that he caused his only surviving brother Kasim to be blinded, and killed the child of Suleyman ; but it must be remembered that Mohammed had experienced too terribly the evils of rival claimants to the throne to be prone to suffer the empire to be again plunged into the intes- tinal troubles which had marked the beginning of his own reign. It appears to be the rule that a Turkish prince is never satisfied with anything short of the Sultanate ; and it becomes a matter of sheer necessity, and not a question of jealous suspicion, to make it impossible for him to attain his ambition. In the present day this is done by imprisoning him in the seraglio till he becomes almost idiotic. The old, and perhaps the more merciful, way was to kill him outright. Mohammed I. died in the spring of the year 142 1, and was buried near the beautiful mosque which he had 84 MOHAMMED THE RESTORER. built at Brusa, known as the Green Mosque, from the colour of the tiles that adorned its domes. Brusa was no longer the capital of the Turks. Mohammed had taken an ominous step : he had transferred his capital to Europe. Adrianople was the metropolis of the Ottomans. VI. MURAD II. AND HUNYADY. (1421-1451.) The new Sultan, Murad II., who succeeded in; 142 1, possessed all the clemency and prudence that! characterized Mohammed the Gentleman ; but his/ temper was of that ambitious adventurous order which the state of the empire at that time demanded. Mohammed's conciliatory disposition, his peaceful and consolidating policy, had been of the utmost service to the State. The Turks were now ready to resume 1 the career of conquest which had been interrupted by / the thunderstorm of Angora, and Murad was the very leader they wanted. He lost no time in giving abundant proofs of his mettle. The Greek emperor, forgetful of his old ties with Mohammed, and con- temptuous of the stripling of eighteen years who now ascended the Ottoman throne, let loose a supposititious son of Bayezld, Mustafa, who had claimed the throne some years before, and had ever since been kept in close custody at Constantinople. Mustafa enjoyed a transitory gleam of triumph, and subdued the Euro- pean provinces for awhile ; but he was soon found wanting, and Murad had him hanged " to convince V S6 MURAD IL AND HUNYADY, the world that he was an impostor." Murad then resolved to punish the duplicity of Manuel, and laid siege to the imperial city. Already had Yildirim BayezTd sat down before the city of Constantine, but he had been recalled to Asia by the coming of Timur. In like manner Murad had made some progress in the siege ; he had drawn his lines from the "Golden to the Wooden Gate, and an assault had been attempted and vigorously repulsed by the defenders, when a revolt in Asia Minor put an end to the attack, and Murad hastily crossed the Bosphorus to put down a brother's insurrection. On his return he did not recommence the siege, but accepted a heavy tribute from the emperor, and left him in possession of Thessalonica (until 1436), and some forts in Thrace and Thessaly. To prevent any further opportunities for the disaffected in Asia, Murad finally annexed most of the various petty states which Timur had resuscitated, and henceforth we hear little of wars with the dynasties that had once been the rivals of the Ottomans in the suc- cession to the kingdom of the Seljuks. Murad's fighting qualities were soon to be put to such a test as no Asiatic prince could offer him. The Christian states were again in arms, and they had found a leader whose name is famous in the front rank of European generals. So long as Stephen Lazarevich lived, the treaty which bound Serbia to alliance with the Turks was faithfully observed ; but on his death in 1427 a new king arose, George Brankovich, who knew not Murad, and who began to collect the forces of Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary, J THE WHITE KNIGHT, J 8y Poland, Wallachia, and Albania, against the common enemy. Hunyady was the name the Christians conjured with. When King Sigismund of Hungary was flying from one of his unsuccessful engagements with the Ottoman armies, he met and loved the beautiful Elizabeth Morsiney, at the village of Hunyade, and John Hunyady was believed to be the fruit of this consolatory affection. " Whatsoever his parents were," says KnoUes, " he himself was a politic, valiant, fortunate, and famous captain, his victories so great as the like was never before by any Christian prince obtained against the Turks ; so that his name became unto them so- dreadful that they used the same to fear their crying children withal." Hunyady had won his spurs in the wars in Italy, where his silver armour had gained him the sobriquet by which De Commines styles him, " the White Knight of Wallachia." Returning to his own country, he- was chosen Ban of Szoreny and Voyvode of Transyl- vania, and soon displayed his prOwess. " This worthy captain," again to quote Knolles, " began to keep the Turks short by cutting them off whensoever they pre- sumed to enter into his country, and also by shutting up the passages whereby they were wont to forage the country of Transylvania ; and when he had put his own charge into good safety, he entered into Moldavia,- and never rested till he had won it quite out of the Turks' hands. And not contented with this, passed many times over Danubius into the Turks' dominions, making havoc of the Turks, and carrying away with him great booty, with many captives." For twenty 88 MURAD II. AND HUNYADY, years he was the terror of the Ottomans and the saviour of the kingdom of Hungary, of which, during the minority of Vladislaus V., he was chosen governor. The great events in his career were the battles of Hermannstadt and Nissa, the passage of the Balkan, the defeat at Varna, and the storming of Belgrade.^ The first of these encounters took place during the siege of Hermannstadt, in Transylvania, which Murad's general, Mezld, was pressing as some compen- sation for a repulse which the Ottoman troops had recently received at Belgrade. Hunyady came to the rescue of the beleaguered city with a small force in 1442, and aided by a sally of the garrison totally routed the Turkish army, killed 20,000 of the enemy, and having taken their general prisoner had him publicly hacked to pieces. Hunyady was as cruel and bloodthirsty as even the traditional Bashibozuk. It was his delight to have his banquets accompanied by the sight of the slaughtering of his enemies, just as other princes prefer to eat their dinner to the sound of music ; but Hunyady's music was the shriek of a dying prisoner. Soon after his success at Her- mannstadt, he heavily defeated the Turks at Vasag, or Vaskapu, and in 1443 commanded a magnificent army, composed of the flower of Hungary, Serbia, and Wallachia, together with a band of crusaders from Italy whom the Pope had excited to the holy war. King Vladislaus of Hungary was present, and Cardinal Julian brought the weight of papal authority. They met the Ottoman troops on the * For some account of tlie career of the Hungarian hero see " The Story of Hungary," chap. ix. THE PASSAGE OF THE BALKAN, 89 banks of the Morava, near Nissa, and routed them completely. The Turks fled over the Balkan, and Hunyady pursued them. To cross the Balkan in winter from north to south against armed opposition is a feat rarely accom- plished. Diebitsch and Gourko are the only generals besides Hunyady who have achieved it. The Turks had skilfully barricaded the passes, and poured water down the approaches, which froze into an icy wall during the night. The passage seemed impracticable. Yet nothing daunted, and braving the weapons of the Turks with the same inflexibility as the rigours of the cold, the Hungarians forced the pass of Isladi, and kept Christmas on the southern slope of the famous range. In the plain below they once again inflicted a defeat upon the discomfited Ottomans. It seemed as though the Turkish Empire in Europe was at the feet of the intrepid general, and we read with amazement that instead of advancing upon Adrianople Hunyady abandoned the fruits of his triumphant cam- paign and returned to Buda, there to display his booty and his captives to his admiring countrymen. Murad seized the opportunity to offer terms of peace, and the Treaty of Szegedin, by which Serbia regained her in- dependence and Wallachia was annexed to Hungary, was solemnly sworn upon the Gospel and the Koran, and peace was concluded for ten years. Murad, like Charles V., had already tasted enough of the joys and the sorrows of empire, and the death of his eldest son so sorely afflicted him that he longed for the peace and retirement which he could never attain upon the throne. He abdicated 90 MURAD IT. AND HUNYADY, in 1444, soon after the conclusion of the Treaty of Szegedin, and his son Mohammed II. reigned in his stead. Murad contentedly retired to Magnesia, where he intended to enjoy what remained of his life in cultivated leisure. No sooner were the Christians aware of the abdi- cation of the famous Sultan, whose generalship, despite the reverses his Pashas had received at the hands of Hunyady, was still an article of faith with his foes, than they resolved to forsake their treaty. The Pope and the Greek Emperor used their spiritual influence to induce Hunyady to break his oath, and Cardinal Julian employed the celebrated and in- famous argument which Cardinal Ximenes with equal success urged upon the conscience of Isabella of Castile — that oaths are not to be kept with infidels. Hun- yady was with difficulty persuaded, but the promise of ithe kingship of Bulgaria was too much for his honour, and he agreed to perjure himself. The treaty had hardly been sworn a month when this perfidy was afoot ; but the conspirators waited till the Turks had loyally carried out their part of the bond and had evacuated the forts of Serbia, before they began to disclose their plans. Nothing more derogatory to the chivalry of Europe and the fame of a great general could be imagined than the manner in which this treachery was carried out. As soon as they had obtained the full advan- tages of the treaty they were about to disown, by the retirement of the Ottoman garrisons, Hunyady, with the King of Hungary, and Cardinal Julian, marched upon the unsuspecting Turks, and with only 20,000 THE EVE OF ST. MATHURIN. 9I men began to invade the Ottoman dominions. They took many strong places, and massacred the garri- sons or threw them over precipices. Reaching the Black Sea, they turned south, and had advanced as far as Varna, which surrendered to their siege, when they learned that Murad had been roused from his retreat, had resumed the sceptre, and collected an army of 40,000 veterans, who were then being con- veyed across the Bosphorus for a ducat a man in Genoese vessels. By forced marches the Sultan pressed forward, and soon the news was brought that he was close at hand. Hunyady, notwithstanding the smallness of his force, and the awe which the Sultan's name inspired, was not dismayed. He was confident of victory, and, refusing to entrench his camp, declared he would fight in the open field. " On the eve of the feast of St. Mathurin," says Sir Edward Creasy, "the loth of November, 1444, the two armies stood arrayed for battle. The left wing of the Christian army consisted chiefly of Wallachian troops. The best part of the Hungarian soldiery was in the right wing, where also stood> the Prankish crusaders under Cardinal Julian. The king was in the centre, with the royal guard and the young nobility of his realms. The rearguard of Polish troops was under the Bishop of Peterwaradin. Hunyady acted as commander-in-chief of the whole army. On the Turkish side the two first lines were composed of cavalry and irregular infantry, the Beg- lerbeg of Rumelia commanding on the right, and the Beglerbeg of Anatolia on the left. In the centre, 92 MURAD II. AND HUNYADY. behind their h'nes, the Sultan took his post, with his Janissaries and the regular cavalry of his bodyguard. A copy of the violated treaty was placed on a lance- head and raised on high among the Turks as a standard in the battle and a visible appeal to the God of Truth, who punishes perjury among man- kind. "At the very instant when the armies were about to encounter, an evil omen troubled the Christians. A strong and sudden blast of wind swept through their ranks, and blew all their banners to the ground, save only that of the king. Yet the commencement of the battle seemed to promise them a complete and glorious victory. Hunyady placed himself at the head of the right wing, and charged the Asiatic troops with such vigour that he broke them and chased them from the field. On the other wing, the Wallachians were equally successful against the cavalry and Azabs of Rumelia. King Vladislaus advanced boldly with the Christian centre, and Murad, seeing the rout of his two first lines and the disorder that was spreading itself in the ranks round him, des- paired of the fate of the day, and turned his horse for flight. " Fortunately for the house of Othman, Karaja, the Beglerbeg of Anatolia, who had fallen back on the centre with the remnant of his defeated wing, was near the Sultan at this critical moment. He seized his master's bridle, and implored him to fight the battle out. The commandant of the Janissaries, indignant at such a breach of etiquette, raised his sword to smite the unceremonious Beglerbeg, when JANISSARY IN MUFTI, 'as^^^ BATTLE OF VARl^^ C^)^^ 95 he was himself cut down by a Hungarian sabre. Murad's presence of mind had failed him only for a moment, and he now encouraged his Janissaries to stand firm against the Christian charge. King Vladis- laus, on the other side, fought gallantly in the thickest of the strife ; but his horse was killed under him, and he was then surrounded and overpowered. He wished to yield himself a prisoner, but the Ottomans, indig- nant at the breach of the treaty, had sworn to give no quarter. An old Janissary cut off the king's head, and placed it, helmeted in silver, on a pike — a fearful companion to the lance on which the violated treaty was still reared on high. " The Hungarian nobles were appalled at the sight, and their centre fled in utter dismay from the field. Hunyady, on returning with his victorious right wing vainly charged the Janissaries, and strove at least to rescue from them the ghastly trophy of their victory. At last he fled in despair with the wreck of the troops that he had personally commanded and with the Wallachians who collected round him. The Hun- garian rearguard, abandoned by their commanders, was attacked by the Turks the next morning, and massacred almost to a man. Besides the Hungarian king. Cardinal Julian, the author of the breach of the treaty and the cause of this calamitous campaign, perished at Varna beneath the Turkish scimitar, together with Stephen Bahory, and the bishops of Eilau and Grosswardein." ^ The result of this decisive victory was the complete subjugation of Serbia and Bosnia, which were the more ^ Creasy, 69-70. g6 MURAD II, AND HUNYADY, willing to re-enter the Moslem dominion as they had been threatened with persecution and forcible conver- sion to the Latin faith in the event of the triumph of Hunyady. Murad again retired to Magnesia; but his son was still too young to manage the empire, and a revolt of the Janissaries recalled the father to his responsibilities. He did not retire a third time, but reigned for six years in undiminished glory, and ionce more defeated his old enemy Hoayady at a 'second long contested battle at Kosovo. Atlasthedied in 1451. "Thus lieth great Amurath," writes Knolles, compelled into a sort of enthusiasm as he contemplates the death of the mighty Sultan, " erst not inferior unto the greatest monarchs of that age. • . . Who had fought greater battles ? who had gained greater victories, or obtained more glorious triumphs than had Amurath ? who by the spoils of so many mighty kings and princes, and by the conquest of so many proud and warlike nations, again restored and embellished the Turks' kingdom, before by Tamerlane and the Tartars in a manner clean defaced ? He it was that burst the heart of the proud Grecians, establishing his empire at Hadrianople, even in the centre of their bowels : from whence have proceeded so many miseries and calamities unto the greatest part of Christendom as no tongue is able to express. He it was that subdued unto the Turks so many great countries and provinces in Asia ; that in plain field and set battle overthrew many puissant kings and princes, and brought them under his subjection ; who, having slain Vladislaus, the King of Polonia and Hungary, and more than once chased out of the field ST. JOHN CAPISTRAN, 97 Hunyady that famous and redoubted warrior, had in his proud and ambitious heart promised unto himself the conquest of a great part of Christendom. . . . Where is that victorious hand that swayed so many sceptres ? where is the majesty of his power and strength that commanded over so many nations and kingdoms ? He Heth now dead, a ghastly carcase, a clod of clay unregarded, his hands closed, his eyes shut, his feet stretched out, which erst proudly traced the countries by him subdued and conquered." But the clod of clay was not quite unregarded : it was buried with great solemnity at Brusa, where " he now lieth in a chapel without any roof, his grave nothing differing from the manner of the common Turks : which they say he commanded to be done in his last will, that the mercy and blessing of God might come unto him with the shining of the sun and moon and falling of the rain and dew upon his grave." ^ Hunyady survived the Sultan whose armies he had so often met. Five years after Murad had gone to sleep with his fathers at Brusa, his son Mohammed laid siege to Belgrade — the Gate of Hungary. Then came the crowning triumph of Hunyady's career. He stirred up th<3 garrison to a valiant defence, at first by his single efforts ; but soon with the aid of a no less heroic spirit. John Capistran came to his aid, followed by a fiery band of 60,000 Cru- saders, whom the monk's martial ardour and zeal for the faith had gathered together to fight for Chris- tendom in this hour of its sore distress. At the * Knolles, i. 227. 98 MURAD 11. AND HUNYADY, moment when the Janissaries had forced their way into the devoted city, Hunyady and the gallant old priest fell upon them with the fury of despair ; and so fierce was the charge that the Turks fell back.^ Then the holy man, leading his Crusaders with a glorious recklessness straight to the tent of the $ultan, and followed by Hunyady and the inspirited garrison, routed the Ottomans so utterly, that they pven abandoned their camp and artillery to the Christians and fled for dear life. Mohammed himself was wounded, and 25,000 Turks lay stretched upon the field. Twenty days after this, Hunyady, the hero of many fields, died, and two months later was fol- lowed to the grave by John Capistran, who had :^een his threescore years and ten, and had ended them in a flash of glory. He was canonized at Rome, and all Christians must agree that the noble old monk had well earned the veneration of all the churches of Europe. * See Vambery, "TheStoryof Hungary," for the Hungarian account of the siege. lif liliillliiilliiilili VIL THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. (1451-I48L) Murad's long reign of thirty years was soiled by no breath of dishonour ; his character was as noble as It was commanding. His son and successor Moham- med II., reigned also thirty years, but his rule was marked by violence and treachery, and the new Sultan, though possessed of surpassing ability and intelligence, had none of the high moral qualities that distinguished his father. Again and again he emulated the perfidy of the Hungarians and broke a solemn pledge ; again and again garrisons confided in his honour only to meet with ruthless slaughter. His first act was to murder his baby brother, whose powers of hostility could hardly yet be ^langerous ; and it is difficult to imagine the state of mind of a sovereign who, granting the wisdom of removing possible pretenders to the throne, could consistently carry out the principle on the person of an infant at the breast. Cruel, perfidious, and sensual, the new Sultan was yet, as is not uncommon with Eastern tyrants, a 102 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. very cultivated man, devoted to the making of verse and the society of men of learning. Thirty Otto- man poets received pensions from this Turkish Maece- nas, and he even sent handsome presents every year to the Indian Khoja-i-jihan and the Persian Jam!; while his liberality towards colleges and pious foundations was so great that he was given the surname " Father of Good Works" as well as "Sire of Victory." His bounty and poetic talent were emulated by his great officers ; and Mahmud Pasha, the conqueror of Negro- pont, was a founder of colleges and a writer of verse. It was natural that the source of all this poetic culti- vation should be praised in song ; and we learn from panegyrists that the countenance of Mohammed 11. was decorated with a pair of red and white cheeks, full and round, a hooked nose, and a resolute mouth — as we see in the medal (p. 104) ; his moustachios were " like leaves over two rosebuds, and every hair of his beard was as a thread of gold ! " ^ Such encomiums sound oddly in European ears ; but when the poets extolled Moham- med's military genius they were on firmer ground. As a general he was superior even to his father ; and his famous reply to one who asked him on a campaign what were his plans — " If a hair of my beard knew them I would pluck it out " — gives the key-note of his success : absolute secrecy and lightning rapidity ot action. Mohammed II. fought many battles and laid siege to many cities, but the siege which procured him the name of " the Conqueror " was that of Constantinople in 1453. It seemed as if the Greek Empire were ' E. J. W. Gil)b, " Ott. Poems," 171-2. MEDAL OF MOHAMMED II. MEDAL OF MOHAMMED 11. (rEVERSE). THE BYZANTINE EMPEkORS. I07 doomed to precipitate its end by signal acts of folly whenever a new Sultan came to the throne. The Christians had lost their opportunity when the Turks lay prostrate under the heel of Timur, and Europe might have expelled the invaders once and for ever. Europe preferred to wait till the Ottomans had re- covered all their pristine vigour, and then, on the accession of Murad II., Manuel the Emperor, com- mitted the folly of setting up Mustafa as a claimant to the throne. But for disturbances in his Asiatic provinces, Murad would probably have taken Con- stantinople then and there. As it was the Emperor received a lesson that should hardly have needed repetition. Nevertheless, after thirty years, during which the Turks were continually growing in power and military prestige, the new Emperor Constantine Palaeologus, last of his line, impelled by some fatal frenzy, seized the occasion of Murad's death to emu- late the insanity of Manuel. He threatened to establish on the throne of Adrianople a grandson-of that Prince Suleyman who had once reigned there so gaily among his wine-cups. Constantine was a brave man, as we shall see, but he was not a wise one, and in this instance he had laid too much stress upon the fact that, when Murad had abdicated, the lad Moham- med had shown himself unequal to the task of ruling the wide empire of the Ottomans. Six or seven years, however, had made a great difference in the spirit and resolution of the young Sultan, as Constantine was soon made to understand. The Turks had longed for the possession of the imperial city ever since Othman had dreamed that he Io8 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. grasped it in his hand. " Thunderbolt " BayezTd • had besieged it ; Musa had pressed it hard ; Murad II. had patiently planned its conquest There was ^little to be won beside the city itself, for all the province round about had long been subdued by the - Ottomans ; but the wealth and beauty, the strength and position, of the capital itself were quite enough to make its capture the crowning ambition of the Turks. Mohammed eagerly seized the opportunity offered him by the hostility of the unwary emperor, and immediately began to build a fortress outside the gates of Constantinople, as the manner of the Turks was. Mohammed I. had already erected the fortress known as Anadolu Hisar, "The Castle of Anatolia," on the Asiatic shore, to overawe the Emperor Manuel. Mohammed II. set up the Rumeli Hisar, " Castle of Rumelia," on the opposite side, as a preparation for the conquest of Constantinople, and tothcgreat terr or of th e emperor. A thousand masons and a thousand labourers were devoted to the work ; altars and pillars of Chris- tiaTncTfiiTches 'were used for the walls, which were lliirty feet thick ; and the castle was finished in three months. O n the chief tow er heavy ordnance wa s placed in ^^ position, which cast stone balls of six hundredweight, a n3"a"g arfison_of four hundred men was establish ed with orders to take toll from all passing vessels. The CasHc~orRunnielia stands to this da}-, facing its fellow across the l^osphorus, and lax-pini;- qiiardo\cr thestrait. The Turkish annalist Sa'd-ud-din describes the approach of the besieging army in his turgid rhymed prose, the effect of which is preserved in the following translation by Mr. Gibb : — SA'd-UD-DIN, III " One morn, of fortune bright, when the van of the King of the skies ^ had appeared with the hosts of light, from forth the horizon tower, from behind the orient veil, the castle of night to assail, did the victory- shaded avant-guard of the high and lofty Lord ^ like- wise attain to the foot of the city-wall. And behind, like a boundless sea, like a hurrying stream, the Im- perial host, the victory-tended army, rolled, and did the city on the land-side enfold. With such sternness and such firmness did they that defended burgh, which of burghs is the mightiest, affray, that the footsteps of the courage of the burghers went astray, and the wit and understanding of the wardens passed away." The^greatest of English historians] has told the story of the conquest of Constantinople in such a manner, that subsequent research has succeeded in modifying almost nothing of his famous narrative. After careful and detailed preparations, the siege of the Eastern metropolis began on April 6, 1453. We quote from Gibbon;^ "Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides along the sea were made inaccessible to an enemy ; the Propontis by nature, and the harbour by art. Between the two waters, the basis of the triangle, the land side was protected by a double wall and a deep ditch of the depth of one hundred feet. Against this line of fortification, which Phranza, an eye-witness, prolongs to the measure of six miles, the Ottomans directed their principal attack ; and the emperor, after distri- buting the service and command of the most perilous * The sun. = The Sultan. 3 Milman's ed. viii. 159 ff. 112 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. stations, undertook the defence of the external wall. In the first days of the siege, the Greek soldiers de- scended into the ditch or sallied into the field; but they soon discovered that in the proportion of their numbers, one Christian was of more value than twenty Turks ; and after these bold preludes, they were prudently content to maintain the rampart with their missile weapons. Nor should this prudence be accused of pusillanimity. The nation was indeed pusillanimous and base ; but the last Constantine deserves the name of a hero ; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue ; and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the Western chivalry. The incessant volleys of lances and arrows were accom- panied with the smoke, the sound, and the fire of their musketry and cannon. Their small arms discharged at the same time either five or even ten balls of lead, of the size of a walnut ; and, according to the closeness of the ranks and the force of the powder, several breastplates and bodies were transpierced by the same shot. But the Turkish approaches were soon sunk in trenches or covered with ruins. Each day added to the scene of the Christians ; but their inade- quate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operation of each day. 'Their ordnance was not powerful, either in size or number ; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lesTth'e~aged stnJcfu re" should be shaken and over- fhrown by the explosion. The same destructive secreThad been revealed to the Moslems, by whom it was employed with the superior energy of zeal, riches, and despotism. The great cannon of Mahomet — an BEGINNING OF THE SIEGE. II3 important and visible object in the history of the times — was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude ; the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls ; fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places. " The first random shots were productive of more sound than effect ; and it was by the advice of a Christian that the engineers were taught to level their aim against the two opposite sides of the salient angles of a bastion. However imperfect, the weight and repetition of the fire made some impression on the walls ; and the Turks, pushing their approaches to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm, and to build a road to the assault. Innumer- able fascines, and hogsheads, and trunks of trees were heaped on each other ; and such was the impetuosity of the throng, that the foremost and the weakest were pushed headlong down the precipice, or instantly buried under the accumulated mass. To fill the ditch was the toil of the besiegers ; to clear away the rubbish was the safety of the besieged ; and, after a long and bloody conflict, the web that had been woven iA the day was still unravelled in the night. The next resource of Mahomet was the practice of min~es :~5ut tlTe soil was rocky ; in every attempt he was stopped and undermined by the Christian engineers ; nor had the art been yet invented of replenishing those sub- terraneous passages with gunpowder, and blowing whole towers and cities into the air. A circumstance that distinguishes the siege of Constantinople is the reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines 114 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. for casting stones and darts ; the bullet and the battering-ram were directed against the walls. Nor had the discovery of gunpowder superseded the use of the liquid and unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the largest size was advanced on rollers ; this portable magazine of ammunition and fascines was protected by a threefold covering of bulls' hides ; incessant volleys were securely discharged from the loopholes ; in front, three doors were converted for the sally and retreat of the soldiers and workmen. They ascended by a staircase to the upper platform ; and, as high as the level of that platform, a scaling- ladder could be raised by pulleys to form a bridge, and grapple with the adverse rampart. By these various arts of annoyance, some as new as they were pernicious to the Greeks, the tower of St. Romanus was at length overturned ; after a severe struggle, the Turks were repulsed from the breach, and interrupted by darkness ; but they trusted that with the return of light, they should renew the attack with fresh vigour and decisive success. Of this pause of action, this interval of hope, each moment was improved by the activity of the Emperor and Justiniani, whoj>assed the nii;ht on the spot, and urged the labours, which involved the safety of the church and city. At the dawn of day, the impatient Sultan perceived with astonishment and grief, that his wooden turret liad been reduced to ashes ; the ditch was cleared and restored^; and the tower of St. Romanus was again srfong and entire. He deplored the failure ot his design, and uttered a profane exclamation, that the word of the thirty-seven thousand prophets should . PROGRESS OF THE SIEGE. II7 not have compelled him to believe that such a work in so short a time could have been accomplished by the infidels." At thj s point five Genoese ships forced the Turkish blockade, and brought provisions and relief to the garrison. " The introduction of this supply revived the hopes of the Greeks, and accused the suspicions of their Western allies. Amidst the deserts of Anatolia and tlie rocks of Palestine, the millions of the Crusades had buried themselves in a voluntary and inevitable grave ; but the situation of the imperial city was strong against her enemies and accessible to her friends ; and a rational and moderate armament of the maritime states might have saved the relics of the Roman name, and maintained a Christian fortress in the heart of the Ottoman Empire. Yet this was the sole and feeble attempt for the deliverance of Con-j stantinople. The more distant powers were insensible of its danger ; and the Ambassador of Hungary, or at least of Huniades, resided in the Turkish camp, to remove the fears, and to direct the operations of the Sultan. " The reduction of the city appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made from the har- bour as well as from the land ; but the harbour was inaccessible ; an impenetrable chain was now de- fended by eight large ships, more than twenty of a smaller size, with several galleys and sloops ; and instead of facing this barrier, the Turks might appre- hend a naval sally, and a second encounter in the open seas. In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet Il8 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE* conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvel lous cast, oT transporting- by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosphorus into the Higher parFonKe* harbour. The distance is about ten miles ; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with thickets, and as the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, this free passage or total destruction must de- pend on the option of the Genoese. But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favour of being the last devoured ; and the deficiency of art was supplied by the strength of the obedient myriads. A level way was covered with a broad platform of strong and solid planks ; and to render them more slippery and smooth, they were anointed with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore eight galleys and brigantines of fifty and thirty oars were disembarked on the Bosphorus shore, arranged successively on rollers, and drawn forwards by the power of men and pulleys. Two guides or [)ilots were stationed at the helm and the prow of each vessel; the sails were unfurled to the winds ; and theTabour was cheered by song and acclamation. In the course of a single night, this Turkish fleet painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, Tar above the molestations of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real importance of this operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired ; but the notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of two nations. A similar stratagem has been re- peatedly practised by the ancients. The Ottoman galleys (1 must again repeat) should be considered as 7 VJS FLEET CARRIED OVER. Iig large boats, and if we compare the magnitude and the distance, the obstacles, and the means, the boasted miracle has perhaps been equalled by the industry of our own times. As soon as Mahomet had occupied the upper harbour with a fleet and army, he con- structed, in the narrowest part, a bridge, or rather mole, of fifty cubits in breadth, and one hundred in length ; it was formed of casks and hogsheads, joined with rafters, linked with iron, and covered with a solid floor. On this floating battery he planted one of his largest cannon, whilst the fourscore galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most ac- cessible side, which had formerly been stormed by the Latin conquerors. The indolence of the Christians has been accused for not destroying those unfinished works ; but their fire, by a superior fire, was controlled and silenced ; nor were they wanting in an nocturnal attempt to burn the vessels as well as the bridge of the Sultan. His vigilance prevented their approach, their foremost galliots were sunk or taken ; forty youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece, were inhumanly mas- sacred at his command, nor could the emperor's grief be assuaged by the just though cruel retaliation of exposing from the walls the heads of 260 Musul- mahcaptives. After a siege of forty days the fate of Constantinople could no longer be averted. The diminutive garrison was exhausted by a double attacF: the fortifications, which had stood for ages against hostile violence, were dismantled on all sides by the Ottoman cannon. Many breaches were opened, and near the gate of St. Romanus four towers had been levelled with the ground. For the payment 120 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. of his feeble ajid mutinous troops, Constantine was compelled to despoil the churches with the promise of a fourfold restitution ; and his sacrilege offereTa new reproach to the enemies of the union. A spirit of discord impaired the remnant of the Christian strength ; the Genoese and Venetian auxiliaries asserted the preeminence of their respective service, and Justiniani and the great duke, whose ambition was not extin- guished by the common danger, accused each other of treachery and cowardice." . . . Such ''was the state of the Christians, who, with loud and impotent complaints, deplored the guilt, or the punishment of their sins. The celestial image of the Virgin had been exposed in solemn pro- cession ; but their divine patroness was deaf to their entreaties. They accused the obstinacy of the em- peror for refusing a timely surrender ; anticipated the horrors of their fate, and sighed for the repose and security of Turkish servitude. The noblest of the Greeks and the bravest of the allies were summoned to the palace, to prepare them on the evening of the 28th for the duties and dangers of the general assault. The last speech of Palaeologus was the funeral o^ration of the Roman Empire: he promised, he conjured, and he vainly attempted to infuse the hope which was ex- tinguished in his own mind. In this world all was comfortless and gloomy, and neither the gospel nor the Church have proposed any conspicuous recompense to the heroes who fall in the service of their country. But the example of their prince and the confinement of a siege had armed their warriors with the courage of despair, and the pathetic scene is described by the DISTRESS OF THE BESIEGED. 121 feelings of the historian Phranza, who was himself present at this mournful assembly. They wept, they embraced each other ; regardless of their families and fortunes they devoted their lives ; and each commander, departing to his station, maintained all night a vigilant and anxious watch on the rampart. The emperor, and some faithful companions, entered the dome of St. Sophia, which in a few hours was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received with tears and prayers the sacrament of the holy communion. He re- posed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations, solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured, and mounted on horse- back to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Caesars. " In the confusion of darkness an assailant may sometimes succeed, but in this great and general attack the military judgment and astrological know- ledge of Mahomet advised him to expect the morning, the memorable 29th May, in the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the Christian era. The pre- ceding night had been strenuously employed ; the troops, the cannon, and the fascines were advanced to the edge of the ditch, which in many parts presented a smooth and level passage to the breach, and his fourscore galleys almost touched with the prows and their scaling-ladders the less defensible walls of their harbour. Under pain of death silence was enjoined, but the physical laws of motion and sound are not obedient to discipline or fear, each individual 122 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, might suppress his voice and measure his footsteps, but the march and labour of thousands must in- evitably produce a strange confusion of dissonant clamours, which reached the ears of the watchmen of the towers. "At daybreak, without the customary signal of the morning gun, the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land, and the similitude of a twined or twisted thread has been applied to the closeness and continuity of their line of attack. The foremost host consisted of the refuse of the ranks, a voluntary crowd who fought without order or command, of the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse drove them on- wards to the walls. The most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated ; and not a dart, not a bullet, of the Christians was idly wasted on the accu- mulated throngs. But their strength and ammunition were exhausted in this laborious defence. The ditch was filled with the bodies of the slain ; they supported the footsteps of their companions, and of this devoted vanguard the death was more serviceable than the life. Under their respective pashas and sanjak-begs the troops of Anatolia and Rumelia were successively led to the charge : their progress was various and doubtful, but after a conflict of two hours the Greeks still maintained and improved their advantages, and the voice of the emperor was heard encouraging his soldiers to achieve, by a last effort, the deliverance of their country. In that fatal moment the Janissaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The Sultan him- THE ASSAULT, 123 self on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator or judge of their valour. He was sur- rounded by 10,000 of his domestic troops, whom he re- served for the decisive occasions, and the tide of battle was directed and impelled by his voice and eye. His numerous ministers of justice were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, and to punish ; and if danger was in the front, shame and inevitable death were in the rear of the fugitives. The cries of fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and attaballs, and experience has proved that the mecha- nical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour. From the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides ; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke, which could only be dispelled by the final de- liverance or destruction of the Roman Empire. The signal combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections ; the skilful evo- lutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary though pernicious science ; but in the uni- form and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion ; nor shall I strive, at the distance of three centuries and 1000 miles, to delineate a scene of which there could be no spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable of forming any just or adequate idea. "The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed to the bullet, or arrow, which pierced the gaunflet'dfjohn Justiniani. The sight of his blood, 124 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. and the exquisite pain, appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsels were the firmest ramparts of the city." Sa'd-ud-dln glories over the overthrow of this brave captain in his flowery manner : — " When the Bicorned Lord i of the fourth throne, having risen from the glooms of the west, had himself addressed to subdue the castle of the sphere, and had routed the cohorts of the stars with his sabre and his spear, did the chief of the losel Franks, who, charged with the guard of that rampart rent, thought to war and to fight with the holy ranks, mount on the city- wall, meaning the holy legions to repel. Thereon did a youth nimble and brave, letting his ne'er oppressing glaive hang like the new moon in the sky, climb spider-wise, by the rope of emprize, the city-rampart high. Then he raised his remorseless brand, and made that awful flame the doom of yon infernal's fearful frame ; thus making the gates of death, before his hapless face, gape wide, even as the rents in the city's side ; and putting to flight with only one blow, the owl, his soul, from its nest of woe ; and cutting short, with his life, the thread of his thought, and making his unseemly visage black as his disastrous lot. Soon as the Prankish crew saw their chief assume this hue, did the fray tea:* its skirt from their clutch away ; and each sped along upon flight's highway, and turned his face to face dismay ; and they sought 'Alexander the Great, so called on account of the two horns on his coins. Here the Sun is meant, as being tiie Ruler of the Fourth Sphere, in the old Ptolemaic astronomy. DEATH OF CONSTANTINE. 125 their ships in woe, running toward the sea, like a river swift of flow." " The number of the Ottomans," continues Gibbon, " was fifty, perhaps a hundred, times superior to that of the Christians ; the double walls were reduced by the cannon to a heap of ruins ; in a circuit of several miles some places must be found more easy of access or more feebly guarded ; and, if the besiegers could penetrate in a single point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. The first who deserved the Sultan's reward was Hasan the Janissary, of gigantic stature and strength. With his scimitar in one hand and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortifications ; of the thirty Janissaries who were emulous of his valour eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hasan and his twelve companions had reached the summit ; the giant was precipitated from the ramparts ; he rose on one knee, and was again oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the achievement was possible ; the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks ; and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage ground were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. Amidst these multitudes the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general, and a soldier, was long seen, and finally lost. The nobles who fought round his person sustained till their last breath the honourable names of Palaeologus and Cantacuzene ; his mournful exclamation was heard, ' Cannot there be found a Christran to cut off my head ? ' and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple ; 126 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a monument of the slain. After his death resistance and order were no more ; the Greeks fled towards the city, and many were pressed or stifled in the narrow pass of the Gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner walls ; and, as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined by their brethren, who had fought and forced the gate of Phenar on the side of the harbour. In the first heat of the pursuit about 2,000 Christians were put to the sword, but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty ; the victors acknowledged that they should immediately have given quarter if the valour of the emperor and his chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of the capital. It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chakan, and the Caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet II. Her empire had been sub- verted by the Latins; her reflgion was trampled in the dust by her Moslem conquerors. . . . " On the assurance of this public calamity the houses and convents were instantly deserted, and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets like a herd of timid animals, as if accumulated weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope that amid the crowd each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the capital they flowed into the church of St. Sophia ; in the space of an hour the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with a mul- A CAPTIVE CITY, I29 titude of fathers and husbands, of women and children, priests, monks, reh'gious virgins ; the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection in the sacred dome. *' While they expected the descent of the tardy angel the doors were broken with axes, and, as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, the appearance of wealth, attracted their choice ; and the right of property was decided among them by a prior seizure, by per- sonal strength, and by the authority of command in the space of an hour. Male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles ; the senators were linked with their slaves ; the prelates with the porters of the church ; and young men of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred, and in this common captivity the ranks of society were confounded, the ties of nature were cut asunder, and the inexorable soldier was careless of the father's groans, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar, with naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair ; and we should piously believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils of the harem to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through the streets ; and, as the conqueror was eager to return for more prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows. At the same 130 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, hour a similar rapine was exercised in all the churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations of the capital ; nor could any place, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above 60,000 of this devoted people were transported from the city to the camp or the fleet; exchanged or sold, according to the interest or caprice of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude through the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. " From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the Sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vezTrs, pashas, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Ottoman architecture. In the hippodrome, or At-Meydan, his eyes were attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents, and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace or battle- axe the under jaw of one of those monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia he alighted from his horse and entered the dome ; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory that, on observing a zealous Moslem in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scimitar that if the spoil and captives were ST. SOPHIA : A MOSQUE. I3I granted to the soldiers, the public and private build- ings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque ; the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed ; the crosses were thrown down low ; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the azan or public invitation in the name of God and His Prophet, the Imam preached, and Mahomet II. performed the 7iamdz thanksgiving on the first altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been cele- brated before the last of the Caesars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of one hundred successors of the great Constantine, but which in a few hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissi- tudes of human greatness forced itself upon his mind, and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry : " — ^ " Now the spider draws the curtain in the Caesars' palace hall, And the owl proclaims the watch beneath Afrasiab's vaulted dome." The Turkish historian's 2 account of the fall of Con- stantinople has been faithfully rendered by Mr. Gibb. A few extracts will suffice : — " When by the aidance of the One beyond gainsay * " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. Ixviii. ' Sa'd-ud-din, "The Capture of Constantinople," Glasgow, 1879 (revised by the translator). 132 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. the strength of the defenders of the burgh was passed away, and the happy tidings : * Verily, our hosts, the conquerors are they ! ' ^ were become the stock of the support of the victory- crowned array, the gladness- fraught address, * Enter ye in peace ! ' ^ sounded in the ear of the army of the Fay. With leave from the threshold of the world-conquering King to plunder and to spoil, did those eager after booty into the city sweep, where, laying hands on their families and their wealth, they made the worthless misbelievers weep. They acted by the order : ' Slaughter their elders and capture their youth ; ' and those profitful properties, which in the days of old, the years that are told, had been unstrick^n of the hand of profligacy, became the portion of the champions of the Truth. And that fair and fruitful site, through the advent, twin of delight, of the Sovereign, just of spright, became the home of flashing light, of the stead of the Faith of Right. . . . " And so that spacious land, that city strong and grand, from being the seat of hostility, became the scat of the currency ; and from being the nest of the owl of shame, became the threshold of glory and of fame. Through the fair efforts of the Moslem King, in the place of the ill-toned voice of the graceless paynim's bell, were heard the Mohammedan screed, and the five-fold chant of the Ahmed! creed, noble of rite ; and the harmony fair of the call to prayer on the ears of all men fell. . . . The temples of the paynims were made the mosques of the pious ; and the rays of the radiance of Islam drave the hordes of gloom forth from that ancient home of the heathen * Koran, xxxvii. 173. ' Ibid. xv. 46, and 1. ^^. SKANDERBEG. I33 reprobate, and the gleaming of the dawn of the Faith did the darkness of the tyranny of the accursed dissi- pate ; and the mandate, strong as fate, of the Sultan fortunate, was supreme in the ordinance of that new estate." The conquest of Constantinople is the great event of Mohammed's reign. Yet it was by no means his sole achievement. He overthrew the Wallachian tyrant, Ylaj^^h e Impale r, and completed the final annexation of Serbia and Bosnia. The king of Bosnia and his sons capitulated on promise of their lives being spared ; but Mohammed had this promise annulled by the chief Mufti or Mohammedan judge ; and this spiritual magistrate actually hacked the king down in the Sultan's presence, with the treaty of capitulation in his hand. It was the violation of the Szegedin Treaty re- versed. Mohammed, however, did not greatly ad- vance the Ottoman frontier in the north. He laid siege to Belgrade, but was ignominiously repulsed by Hunyady and St. John Capistran, as has been already related, and after Hunyady 's death his son Matthias Corvinus, at the head of his famous " Black Troop,' was strong enough to hold the Turks at bay. In Albania, too, the Sultan met opposition which neither his father nor he was able to overcome. For in Epirus had risen a patriot warrior, no less famous and valiant than Hunyady. This was Skanderbeg, the national hero of the Epirots. His proper name was George of Castriota, and he belonged to a princely family of Epirus. As a boy he had been sent as a hostage to the court of Murad II., where his high bearing and 134 ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ CONSTANTINOPLE, courage soon won him the Sultan's favour. He was converted to Islam, and Murad treated him like his own son and advanced him to high rank in the army, where he acquired the name of Skanderbeg (properly Iskender Beg), or " Prince Alexander." Skanderbeg, however, though petted by the Sultan, was not satisfied with being sent in chief command of an army into Asia, or with holding high posts in the wars with Hungary : he wished to rule his own country, and he ungratefully seized an opportunity to desert from the Sultan's forces, and to obtain by stratagem possession of Croia, the chief city of Epirus. He privily seized the Sultan's secretary, made him write in his master's name an order to the governor of Croia to surrender the place, and then ran the luckless scribe through the body. The governor suspected nothing and surrendered the keys, and Skanderbeg, once in command of the town, massacred the Turks, renounced Mohammedanism, and called the Epirots to arms. During the rest of the reign of Murad, and most of his successor's, Skanderbeg held the mountains of Epirus against all comers. Murad sent three Turkish armies against him, and all three were disgracefully routed. The old Sultan himself had experienced the like misfortune when his mortal illness seized him at Adrianople. Mohammed was no more successful than his father ; but personal admiration and perhaps old ties of friendship may have made the attacks of both Sultans somewhat half-hearted. It is certain that they would willingly have left Skanderbeg alone in consider- ation of a payment of tribute. The Epirot, however, declined to pay tribute ; on the contrary, he exacted a WAR WITH VENICE. I35 handsome revenue out of the terrified towns of Mace- donia and Thessaly. Eventually Mohammed, after fruitless endeavours to oust the rebel from the fast- nesses he knew so well how to defend, was forced to make a treaty by which he acknowledged Skanderbeg as prince of Epirus and Albania. This was in 1461 ; and six years later the gallant condottiere died, worA out with a quarter of a century of perpetual warfare He died game ; for his last act was to defeat an army which Mohammed had sent out against him with positive instructions to conquer the land. After Skanderbeg's death, the Sultan easily subdued Albania, though the lawless character of the people has made it a difficult country to rule to this present day. The work of Skanderbeg was important, not so much in its local influence, as in the bulwark it set up against Ottoman advance in the direction of Italy. Just as Hunyady and St. John Capistran set a northern limit to the Turks for a while, so Skanderbeg fixed their boundary on the west. No sooner was the barrier removed than we find them contemplating the invasion of Venice. The maritime Republic had long cringed before the Turkish Sultan, and had signed a humble peace in 1454 ; but the successes of Skanderbeg had roused its spirit, and after his death it was punished for its temerity. After six years' war the Ottoman troops in 1477 pushed so far west that they crossed the Tagliomento and reached the banks of the Piave. The smoking ruins that marked their progress could be seen from the palaces of the Queen of the Adriatic. Venice hastily concluded a treaty offensive 136 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. and defensive with Mohammed in 1479, but he had already taken from her the island of Euboea or Negro- pont, the governor of which surrendered the citadel after a long and desperate siege by Mahmud Pasha in 1470, on condition of safety to the garrison ; whereupon Mohammed, after his treacherous manner,had marched the garrison out and put them to death, sawed the governor in two, and murdered his daughter because she refused dishonour. Greece and the islands of the Aegean were now mainly in the power of the Turks ; on the Black Sea, Sinope and Trebizond had been Iconquered, and David Comnenus, who reigned in the latter city, had been treacherously executed ; iand in 1475 the Crimea was taken from the descend- ants of Chingiz Khan, by Mohammed's admiral, the Grand VezTr Gedik Ahmed. Rhodes was besieged in 1480, but the Knights were better prepared than they had been when Timur expelled them from Smyrna. After a tedious siege the Turks made their great assault ; but, either discouraged by the obstinacy of the Knights, or irritated by the pro- clamation that the spoils of the city were to be reserved for the Sultan himself, the soldiery wavered, and the Knights, driving them furiously back, forced Ithem to raise the siege. Nevertheless, the command lof the seas rested to a large extent with the Turks. They had most of the Levantine islands ; their castles commanded the Hellespont and the Bos- phorus, so that Loredano vainly sought to force a passage. The Sea of Marmora was closed to European vessels, and the Genoese ports in the Crimea and Sea of Azov were of little value now that their communi- ;' OTRANTO. 139 cations were severed ; and, as Admiral Jurien de la Graviere observes,^ it was hardly necessary for Mo- hammed to send a fleet of three hundred sail to eject them in 1475. With such advantages, the Turks were able to contest the seas with the galleys of Venice and Rhodes. The day that saw the failure of the storming of Rhodes was rnarked by a notable event further west. Gedik Ahmed, on the 28th of July, 1480, landed on the southern coast of Italy and stormed the castle of Otranto, near Brindisi, a fortnight later. Most of the inhabitants were massacred, and the Ottoman foot was planted in the Western Empire. Next year Moham- med was preparing an immense expedition, whither destined no man knew but he, when he suddenly died. It is hard to say what might have happened had he lived another year. The capture of Otranto might have been followed by the sack of Rome. Sed Dis aliter visum. The death of the Conqueror saved Europe. * " Doria et Barberousse," 32. VIII. PRINCE JEM. (1481-1512.) The long reign of BayezTd II. (1481-1512) which surpassed that of his father and grandfather, so that the three together nearly completed a century, was marked by a general lethargy and incapacity on the part of the Turkish Government. Bayezld himself possessed none of the energy and ambition of Mohammed, and was not only unequal to the task of carrying on his father's plans, but had enough to do to keep what he had inherited. His authority was weakened by the attacks of the Mamluks of Egypt, who for fiv^e years waged successful war upon the Turks in Asia ; and by insurrections in Karaman and other parts, where the Shia doctrines of the new Sufi dynasty of Persia found adherents in the dis- contented descendants of the Seljuk princes. BayezTd made no attempt to extend his boundary in the direction of Hungary ; and though Lepanto and Modon, in Greece, were added (in 1500) to the Turkish Empire, and two castles were built to com- mand the Gulf of Patras, the bold adventure that had planted the Turkish flag on Italian soil was rendered BAYEZID II, 141 nugatory by the recall of Gedik Ahmed and the loss of Otranto. The Sultan's later years were disturbed by the rivalries and insubordination of his three sons, of whom the most unscrupulous managed to induce his incompetent old father to abdicate in his favour, and the victorious Sellm accordingly ascended the throne I in 1 5 12. Family dissensions were indeed the leading incidents of Bayezld's reign, and for many years he was kept in a state of anxious uncertainty by the ingenious intrigues of the Christian Powers concern- ing the custody of his brother, the unfortunate Prince Jem. The adventures of Prince Jem (the name is short for Jemshid, but in Europe it has been written Zizim) cast a very unpleasant light upon the honour of the Christians of his time, and especially upon the Knights of Rhodes. Of the two sons of Mohammed II. Jem was undoubtedly the one who was by nature fitted to be his successor. Instead of the melancholy dreamy mystic who was incapable of walking in the proud steps of his father, this other son had all Mohammed's energy and vigour, his grace and cul- ture, his ambition and imperious pride ; and but for the accident that Bayezld was the first to reach Constantinople after the death of the Conqueror, and ; was thus able to secure the support of the Janissaries \ with the customary largesse, it might have been that \ in the hands of Jem the Ottoman Empire would have continued on its triumphant course and pushed its conquests in Europe in the same spirit that had animated his ancestors. Jem, however, was not the first to hear of his father's death, and a year's warfare 142 PRINCE JEM. against his brother ended in his own defeat. The younger prince then sought refuge with the Knights of Rhodes, who promised to receive him hospitably and to find him a way to Europe, where he intended to renew his opposition to his brother's authority. D'Aubusson, the Grand Master of Rhodes, however, was too astute a diplomatist to sacrifice the solid gains that he perceived would accrue to his Order for the sake of a few paltry twinges of conscience ; and he had no sooner made sure of Prince Jem's person, and induced him to sign a treaty, by which, in the event of his coming to the throne, the Order was to reap many sterling advantages, than he ingen- iously opened negotiations with Sultan BayezTd, with a view to ascertain how much gold- that sovereign was '.willing to pay for the safe custody of his refractory brother. It is only fair to say that Bayezld, who had no particle of cruelty in his nature, did all he could to come to terms with Jem. He had indeed been stern and uncompromising while his brother was in open hostility, and to the entreaty of their grand- aunt that he would be gentle and accommodating to his own flesh and blood, he had replied that " there is no kinship among princes ; " yet had he offered to restore to his brother the profits, though not the power, of the province of Karaman, whi^h Jem had formerly governed, on condition that he should retire and live peaceably at Jerusalem. Jem, hcwcver, would have nothing less than independent authority^ and this the Sultan could not be expected to allow. " Empire," said he, " is a bride whose favours r.annot be shared." Ail negotiation and compromise having BATTLE WITH PRINCE JEM. THE GRAND MASTER OF RHODES, 145 proved ineffectual, he listened to the proposals of the crafty Grand Master, and finally agreed to pay him 45,000 ducats a year, so long as he kept Jem under his surveillance. The Knights of St John possessed many com- manderies, and the one they now selected for Jem's entertainment was at Nice, in the south of France. In 1482 he arrived there, wholly unconscious of the plots that were being woven about him. Here, | being something of a poet, he wrote his famous ode beginning — *' Quaff, O Jem, thy Jemshid beaker ; lo, the land of Frankistan ! This is fate j and what is written on his brow shall 'tide to man." * He desired to start at once for Hungary, whence he proposed to raise his adherents in Turkey. But/ he was gently restrained from his purpose. On one pretext or another the knights contrived to keep their prisoner at Nice for several months, and then trans- ferred him to Rousillon, thence to Puy, and next to Sassenage, where the monotonies of captivity were relieved by the delights of love, which he shared with the daughter of the commandant, the beautiful Phili- pine Helene, his lawful spouse being fortunately away in Egypt. The last device of the knights, when such friendships made captivity precarious, was to build a lofty tower for their valuable prey, of which the seven * E. J. W. Gibb, " Ottoman Poems," 175 (revised). The reader may be interested to see the original — ** Jam-i-Jem nush eyle, ey Jem, bu Firankistan dir ; Her kulun bashina yazilan gelir, devran dir." 146 PRINCE JEM, Stories were entirely arranged with the object of the prisoner's safe custody. Meanwhile, Grand Master D'Aubusson was driving a handsome trade in his capacity of jailor. All the potentates of Europe were anxious to obtain possession of the claimant to the Ottoman throne, and were ready to pay large sums in hard cash to enjoy the privilege of using this specially dangerous instrument against the Sultan's peace. D'Aubusson was not averse to taking the money, but he did not wish to give up his captive ; and his knightly honour felt no smirch in taking 20,000 ducats from Jem's desolate wife (who probably had not heard of the fair Helene) as the price of her husband's release, while he held him all the tighter. Of such chivalrous stuff were made the famous knights of Rhodes : and of such men as D'Aubusson the Church made cardinals ! A new influence now appeared upon the scene of Jem's captivity. Charles VIII. of France considered that the Grand Master had made enough profit out of the unlucky prince, and the king resolved to work the oracle himself His plan was to restore Jem to a nominal sultanate by the aid of Matthias Corvinus^ Ferdinand of Naples, and the Pope. He took Jem out of the hands of the knights and transferred him to the custody of Innocent VIII., who kindly i consented to take care of the prince for the sum of 40,000 ducats a year, to be paid by his grateful brother at Constantinople. Bayezld was greatly im- pressed by the Pope's friendly feeling, and received his ambassador with enthusiasm. All the time these ^^^^i mm^mmmm ^-^ INNOCENT VIII, 149 negotiations were proceeding the good Pope, like many worthy knights and holy prelates before, had condoled with Prince Jem on his unhappy fate, and had drawn him bright pictures of the future, when he should stand side by side with Matthias Corvinus, the gallant king of Hungary, in the great campaign that was to be made against the Turks in order to set the injured prince upon his father's throne at Constantinople. Nothing could be more consolatory than the promises and hopes of all the kindly Chris- tian kings and princes who visited Jem in his thirteen long years of captivity ; but none of them reaped, though all sought, so rich a reward as the large- minded and large-pocketed Grand Master of Rhodes and the solicitous and amiable Pope. Unfortunately Innocent did not live long enough to turn Jem to all the account he had anticipated ; but his successor, Alexander Borgia, was not the man to be cheated out of his bargain by such an accident as death. He began negotiations at Constantinople, whither he sent a special ambassador, to extract a capital sum in return for Prince Jem's proposed removal to a world more congenial to his many virtues ; he en- deavoured, in short, to get the lump sum of 300,000 ducats for the assassination of his prisoner. Just at this point of the negotiations, Charles, the king of France, invaded Italy, entered Rome, and, among other terms, demanded the cession of Jem, who( was accordingly, with a very wry face, given up to him. But poor Jem was not destined much longer to be tossed about from jailor to jailor. The Pope, either in pursuance of an agreement with 150 PRINCE JEM. BayezTd, or more probably because a Borgia could not help it, had the unfortunate Turk poisoned be- fore he left the country. How it was done is not certain — the scratch of a poisoned razor, or a harm- less white powder introduced into his sherbet, are two of the theories ; but some there are who say that he died of mere misery and weariness of life — such weariness as he expresses in his melancholy verse : — *' Lo ! there the torrent, dashing 'gainst the rocks, cloth wildly roll ; See how all nature rueth on my worn and wearied soul ! Through bitterness of grief and woe the morn hath rent its robe ; liehold, in dawning's stead, the sky weeps blood beyond control ! Tears shedding, o'er the mountain tops the clouds of heaven pass ; List, deep the bursting thunder sobs and moans through stress of dole ! " » The balance of probability, however, inclines towards poison, and Alexander Borgia has so many crimes on the place where his conscience should have been, that it can do him no harm to bear one murder more. The curious conclusion one draws from the whole melancholy tale is that there was not apparently a single honest prince in Christendom to take compas- sion upon the captive ; nor one to reprobate the un- generous and venal intrigues of the Grand Master, the Pope, and Charles VIII. Each contended with the other for the prize of perfidy and shame. BayezTd may be excused for his desire to see his brother in safe keeping ; but what can be said for the head of the Christian Church, and the leader of an Order of ! religious knights, who eagerly betrayed a helpless 1 » E. J. W. Gibb, " Ott. Poems," 20 (revised). CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY? 151 refugee for the sake of the infidel's gold ? When we come to read of the heroism of the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, it may be well to recall the history of Prince Jem, and to weigh well the chivalry that could fatten upon such treason. IX. THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT. (1 5 1 2-1 520.} When Sellm I. had deposed his father BayezTd, who did not long survive his humiliation, he re- solved that the trouble and anxiety of another Prince Jem should not disturb his own reign. His father had had eight sons, of whom two, besides himself, were still alive, and, including grandsons, there were no less than eleven dangerous persons to be made away with. " Sellm the Grim," as the Turks still call him, did not shrink from the task ; he delighted in blood, whether it were that of animals slain in the chase, to which he was passionately addicted, or that of his enemies on the battle-field ; and the bloodless slaughter by the bow-string, which is the privilege of the progeny of Othman, was hardly sufficiently exciting for this sanguinary tyrant, whose fierce blazing eyes and choleric com- plexion well accorded with his violent nature. He watched from an adjoining room the ghastly scene, when the mutes strangled his five orphan nephews, and the resolute resistance of the eldest and the piteous entreaties of the little ones could not move SELIM THE GRIM. I53 him from his cruel purpose. The rest, save two, were soon captured and strangled. His brother, Prince Korkud, begged for an hour's grace, and spent it in composing a reproachful poem addressed to Sellm, which the Sultan afterwards perused with tears. It was no doubt the elegance of the verse that moved him, rather than the fate of the poet ; for Sellm, like so many of his race, was devoted to letters and poetry. He wrote a volume of Persian odes, liberally rewarded men of learning, and when he went on a campaign liked to take with him historians and bards, who should record the events of the war and cheer its progress by reciting the great deeds of yore. The combination of a high degree of intellectual culture with cruel and savage barbarity is one of the com- monplaces of history. Sellm had no intention of pursuing the inactive policy of his father ; but he turned his eyes in a different direction from his remoter predecessors. Murad, BayezTd, and Mohammed had pushed the frontier to the north and the west ; Sellm would conquer the east and the south. He received cour- teously the ambassadors who came to offer him congratulations on the part of the Doge of Venice, the King of Hungary, the Czar of Russia, and the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. He had no intention for the present of quarrelling with any of them. His care was first directed to the state of affairs on his eastern frontier, where there was imminent danger of a serious invasion. The Sefevi Shah Ismail, founder of the Sufi line, had triumphed over the various local dynasties that had partitioned the pro- ^ 154 THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT, vinces of Persia among themselves, ever since the break up of the Mongol kingdom. Hulagu, the conqueror of Baghdad, and grandson of Chingiz Khan, had in the thirteenth century exter- minated the Abbaside Khali fate in all but name, and substituted his own sway for that of the numerous petty dynasties who at that time held rule in Persia and the country round about. His dynasty, called the Ilkhans, lasted about one hundred and fifty years, and their dominions then became a prey to the feuds between various Tartar and Kurdish chiefs, of whom the Jelayirs and the Turkomans of the White and of the Black Sheep were the most prominent. Tlmijr had overrun their territory at the beginning of the fifteenth century; but the "noble Tartarian's" descendants proved unable to retain his vast dominion, and the Kurds and Turkomans and other tribal chiefs soon re-established their authority in the lands bordering the Euphrates. Shah Ismail, the Sefcvi, now appeared upon the scene, and after a long and obstinate struggle, succeeded in winning the Persian provinces from the descendants of Timur and in subduing the lesser houses of Turkomans and Kurds. The Persian dominions now marched with those of the Ottoman, and friction was the more certain and irritating because the two parties belonged to two hostile sects of Islam. The Turks were orthodox Snnfiis, or believers in the conventional doctrine of pe Koran and in the Traditions handed down by the Respectable divines of the orthodox school. The Persians, on the other hand, were Shias, or believers n a somewhat mystical variety of Islam, which per- SUNNIS AND SHI AS. I55 sentoJ many and important differences from the orthodox teaching, and offered not a few temptations to political ni^ well as religious revolution. Wherever Shii'sm exists, there is always a chance of insurrection against the powers that be. The pernicious doctrine had penetrated the Ottoman dominions in Asia. A carefully organised system of detectives, whom Selim distributed throughout his Asiatic provinces revealed the fact that the number of the heretical sect reached the alarming total of seventy thousand. Sellm determined to crush the heresy before it came to even more abundant fruit. He secretly massed his troops at spots where the heretics chiefly congre- gated, and at a given signal, forty thousand ot them were massacred, or imprisoned. Christian ambassadors at the Porte, not only expressed no horror at the work, but endorsed the title of " The Just," by which Sellm was now styled in compliment o his severe vindication of orthodoxy.^ According to them, the massacre of heretics was always a proof pf justice. Having got rid of the enemy within his gates, Sellm rfow proceeded to attack the head of the Shias, the great Shah Ismail himself In such slight engage- ments as had already occurred, Ismail had gained a trifling advantage. He had also committed the un- pardonable sin of harbouring three of Sellm's nephews, who had been lucky enough to escape from the general slaughter of his kindred by which his accession had been celebrated. The Sultan sent various epistles to the Shah, couched in that bombastic language to * Von Hammer, i. 710. 156 THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT. which Oriental potentates are addicted, and meanwhile collected a great army, with which he prepared to invade the territories of his rival. Ismail does not appear to have been adequately impressed either by the correspondence or the preparations for the attack. To Sellm's vainglorious letters, he replied that he had given him no provocation, and desired not war, and that he could only imagine that the epistles were the result of an extra dose of opium taken by one of the Sultan's secretaries, to whom he therefore presented a box of the favourite drug. As Selim particularly prided himself on his literary skill, and with reason, this reply only increased his rage, and the circumstance that he was himself rather too fond of opium did not make the gift of the box any the more palatable. The sarcasm went home, and Sellm prepared for mortal conflict. It was no light task that he was undertaking. Ismail, when the contest became inevitable, had laid waste the whole country that intervened between his capital, TebrTz, and the Ottoman headquarters ; and the Turks would be compelled to traverse a desert land. So serious was the campaign felt to be, that when the Sultan informed his council of Vezirs what his intentions were, they all kept silence, and on his repeating his purpose, again not one made answer, till the very sentry who guarded the door, catching the Sultan's enthusiasm, fell at his feet and cried that he would lay down his life for him against the Persians. That Janissary was made a Bey on the spot. Despite the warnings of his ministers, Sellm set forth with an army estimated at over 140,000 men, 80,000 of which BATTLE OF CHALDIRAN. I57 were cavalry, and after making every possible prepara- tion for transport and commissariat, entered upon the long and arduous marches which the Persians had rendered doubly difficult by their previous forays The soldiers, afflicted with hunger and thirst, began to murmur ; but Ssllm harangued them, and bade such as were cowards to step out of the ranks and go home, for he would only lead brave men against the heretics. Then he gave the order to march, and not a man dared leave the ranks. At last, after weary and painful marching, the Ottomans forced Ismail to give battle at Chaldiran. The Persians had only cavalry, and no cannon ; but they were fresh, while the Turks were exhausted with their long tramp across the desert : the Shah had no fears for the upshot. The Janissaries, however, had not forgotten how to fight, and Selim and his chief commander, Sinan Pasha, knew how to marshal the battle. The Persians charged gallantly, but Sinan let his Azabs or light infantry fall back between his artillery, and when the Persians rashly followed the retreating squadrons, the guns opened upon them so deadly a fire that the day was practically won. It had been fatal to many on both sides, the Turks lost fourteen Sanjak-Begs, and the Persians an equal number of Khans of high rank. The Shah himself was wounded and thrown from his horse, and was only saved from capture by the devotion of one of his soldiers, who gallantly personated his . master, and took his fate. The Sultan entered Tebriz in triumph, massacred all his prisoners, except the j women and children, and sent back to Constantinople a trophy in the shape of a thousand of the skilful 158 THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT, workmen for which Tebriz had long been famous, and who had supplied architects, carvers, and workers in metal and on the loom, to Cairo, Damascus, and Venice, and all places where fine workmanship was prized. The artisans were estabHshed at Constanti- nople, where they continued to ply their trades with success in embellishing the Turkish capital. The victory of Chaldiran (15 14) might have been follow.^d by the conquest of Persia, but the privations which the soldiery had undergone had rendered them unmanageable, and SelTm was forced to content him- self with the annexation of the important provinces of Kurdistan and Diyarbekr, which are still part of the Turkish Empire ; and then turned homewards, to prosecute other schemes of conquest. No peace, however, was concluded between him and the Shah, and a frontier war continued to be waged for many years. During the campaign against Persia, the Turks had been kept in anxiety by the presence on their flanks of the forces of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, whose frontiers now marched with the territory of the Ottomans, and who were regarding the opera- tions of Sellm in Diyarbekr with no little apprehen- sion. They had indeed waged successful warfare with Bayezld II., but they recognized a very different leader in SelTm, and began to tremble for their old supremacy. The Mamluk Sultans had long borne a very high renown as soldiers and rulers. Mamluk means " owned," " a slave," and the origin of this cele- brated dynasty, or rather the two dynasties into which they were divided, is found in the bodyguard of pur- THE MAMLUK SULTANS. I59 chased white slaves with whom the Ayyubl Sultan Es-Salih, grandnephew of Saladin, surrounded his state in the middle of the thirteenth century. Es-Salih found such protection necessary, not only against the Franks who were threatening his kingdom in one of their crusading manias, but also against his own kins- men, who were at once too numerous and too powerful for his peace of mind. Like most great conquerors, Saladin had left his empire to be fought for by a numerous progeny and kindred, and the result was that individual weakness which seeks to support itself on mercenary arms, and is eventually compelled to yield to the very power which it has called in to its aid. The MamlQks of Es-Salih were a fine body of Turkish soldiers, recruited by capture or purchase from various parts of the Mohammedan territories, and reinforced from the same regions. They were loyal servants while their master lived ; their brilliant- charge under Beybars put the French to route at Mansura, and brought about the surrender of the king, St Louis himself In the troubles that succeeded upon the death of Es-Salih, when the intrigues of the beauti- ful Queen with the picturesque name of Shejer-ed- durr, or " Tree of Pearls," roused hot blood among the grandees, the dynasty of Saladin came to an end, and for two centuries and a half the throne of Egypt and Syria was occupied by a series of Mamliik chiefs. These rulers, who often bore no relationship to each other, but succeeded to power by force of arms and factious influence, were among the best that Egypt ever had. They valiantly repulsed the Mongols l6o THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT. and Tartars in many a sanguinary field : they drove the Christians from the Holy Land, and they made Cairo and Damascus, their two capitals, homes of civilization, art, and literature. These apparently rude soldiers, " merciless to their enemies, tyrannous to their subjects, yet delighted in the delicate refine- ments which art could afford them in their home life, were lavish in the endowment of pious foundations, magnificent in their mosques and palaces, and fas- tidious in the smallest details of dress and furniture : the noblest promoters of art and literature and of public works that Egypt has known since the time of Alexander the Great." ' At the time at which we have arrived, the Mamluks had lost little, if anything, of their character as patrons of art and learning. The great Sultan Kait Bey was but lately dead, who had covered Cairo with his stately mosques and other buildings, and whose encourage- ment of men of letters was not less marked. The Sultan who surveyed Sellm's progress in Persia was an old man, Kansu El-Ghilrl, the same whose two mosques in the principal street of Cairo are familiar sights to every traveller in Egypt. He posted an army of observation on his Syrian frontier, to watch the course of the Ottoman advance. Sellm took this as a menace, and consulted his VczTrs as to what was to be done. His secretary, Mohammed, urged him to make war upon the Mamluks, and the Sultan was so delighted with this spirited proposal, that he made the secretary Grand Vezir on the spot, though it was found necessary to administer the bastinado to the excellent * S. Lane -Poole, "The Art of the Saracens in Egypt," 12-40. DEFEAT OF THE MAMLUKS, l6l man before he consented to accept so dangerous a dignity. Sellm was famous for executing his Vezirs, and it was a common form of cursing at the time to say, " Mayest thou be SelTm's Vezir," as an equivalent for "Strike you dead ! " Acting upon the advice of the new VezIr, Sellm set out in 15 16 for Syria, and meeting the Mamluk army on the field of Marj Dabik near Aleppo, administered a terrible defeat, in which the aged Sultan El-Ghurl was trampled to death. He found a brave successor in TQman Bey, but in the interval the Turks had mastered Syria, and were advancing to Gaza. Here the Mamluks made another stand, but the generalship of Sinan Pasha was not to be resisted any more than the preponderance of his forces. The final battle was fought at Reydaniya, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, in January, 15 17. The tremendous charge of the Mamluks, which had been their strong point for three centuries, almost secured the person of Sellm, who was saved only by their mis- taking Sinan Pasha for the Sultan. The great general was speared, many pashas and nobles were cut down, and the Mamluks rode out of the mei^e almost unhurt ; but they had not achieved their object, and " the efforts of this splendid cavalry were as vain against the batteries of SelTm's artillery as were in after times the charges of their successors against the rolling fire of Napoleon's squares." ^ Twenty-five thousand Mamluks lay stark upon the field, and the enemy occupied Cairo. There a succes- sion of street fights took place ; the houses were defended by the Mamluks, and only step by step did * Sir E. Creasy, 143. 1 62 THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT. the Turks reach the citadel. But treason was at work among the followers of Tuman Bey, and a traitor advised Sellm to offer an amnesty to all who would lay down their arms. Thereupon a truce was made, which Sellm celebrated by beheading the eight hundred Mamluks who had trusted to his good faith, and by delivering up the unfortunate city to massacre. One of the bravest of the chiefs, whose name was Kurt Bey, or " Sir Wolf," was induced to come before the Sultan with promises of safe con- duct, and after a colloquy, in which the Bey made spirited answer alike to the Sellm's promises and threats, his head was cut off before the enraged tyrant's eyes. Tuman Bey, after some further resis- tance, was captured and executed, and Egypt became a Turkish province. Twenty-four Mamluk Beys were constituted a sort of commission for the government of the country, and the traitor Kheyr Bey was ap- pointed Pasha of Egypt. Sultan Sellm returned to Constantinople in 1518, a much more dignified personage than he had set out. By the conquest of the Mamluk kingdom he had also succeeded to their authority over the sacred cities of Arabia, Mekka and Medina, and in recognition of this position, as well as of his undoubted supremacy among Mohammedan monarchs, he received from the last Abbaside Khalif, who kept a shadowy court at Cairo, the inheritance of the great Pontiffs of Baghdad. T\\Q faineant Khalif was induced to make over to the real sovereign the spiritual authority which he still affected to exercise, and with it the symbols of his office, the standard and cloak of the Prophet Mo- SEUM THE KHALIF. 163 hammed. Selim now became not only the visible chief of the Mohammedan State throughout the wide dominions subdued to his sway, but also the revered head of the religion of Islam, wher^oever it was practised in. its orthodox form. The heretical Shias of Persia might reject his claim, but in India, in all parts of Asia and Africa, where the traditional Khali- fate was recognized, the Ottoman Sultan henceforth was the supreme head of the church, the successor to the spiritual prestige of the long line of the Khalifs. How far this new title commands the homage of the orthodox Moslem world is a matter of dispute ; but there can be no doubt that it has always added, and still adds, a real and important authority to the acts and proclamations of the Ottoman Sultan. The last year of his life was spent by Sellm in immense preparations, both naval and military. His object was concealed, but Rhodes was believed to be his intended victim. He superintended every detail of the arming and building of his navy with unceasing diligence, until his health began to give way, and he felt the approach of the fatal disorder which carried him off on the 22nd of September, 1520. He looked sadly upon his great muniments of war, and said, " For me there is no journey, save that to the Here- after." Selim the Grim was fifty-four years old when he died, and he had reigned less than nine years ; yet in that short space he had nearly doubled the extent of his empire. Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and large tracts in the Euphrates valley were the fruits of his campaigns. On land the Turks had shown themselves invincible. Sehm was 164 THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT, preparing to prove them equally so on sea, when his career was arrested. Death, however, did not check the preparations he had made, nor diminish the stores of war materials he had collected. Like another Philip he had made ready the way for a second Alexander, and in his son Suleyman the Magnificent such an imperial conqueror was now found. X. SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. (15 20- 1 566.) The long reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, who ascended the throne at the age of twenty-six, in 1520, and ruled in unequalled glory for nearly half a century, is fraught with significance to Europe, and teems with so many events of the first importance that it deserves a volume to itself. We can only give a bare outline of the great wars and sieges that signalized this re- markable epoch : such scenes as the terrible battle of Mohacs, the conquest of Rhodes, the siege of Vienna, and of Szigeth, and the repulse at Malta, might well engage each a chapter to itself; but here they must be depicted in outline, and the best will have been attained if the student is incited to read the fuller records which have been written of them in larger works. Suleyman lived at a wonderful epoch. All Europe, as well as the East, seemed to have conspired together to produce its greatest rulers in the sixteenth century, and to make its most astonishing advances in all fields of civilization. The age which boasted of Charles V., the equal of Charlemagne in empire ; of Francis I. of 1 66 SU LEY MAN THE MAGNIFICENT. France; of our notable Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, queen of queens ; of Pope Leo X. ; of Vasili Ivanovich, the founder of the Russian power ; of Sigismund of Po- land ; Shah Ismail of Persia ; and of the Moghul Em- peror Akbar, could yet point to no greater sovereign than Suleyman of Turkey. The century of Columbus, of Cortes, of Drake and Raleigh, of Spenser and Shake- speare, the epoch that saw the revival of learning in Italy by the impulse of the refugees from Constanti- nople, and which greeted at once the triumph of Christianity over Islam in Spain and the opening of a new world by Spanish enterprise, was hardly more brilliant in the West than in the East, where the un- ceasing victories of Suleyman, and the successes of Turghud and Barbarossa, formed a worthy counter- part to the achievements of the great soldiers and admirals of the Atlantic. Even the pirates of this age were unique : they founded dynasties. But the most remarkable feat that the Turks achieved during this glorious century was — that they survived it. With such forces as were arrayed against them, with a Europe roused from its long sleep, and ready to seize arms and avenge its long disgrace upon the infidels, it was to be expected that the fall of the Ottoman power must ensue. Instead, we shall see that this power was not only able to meet the whole array of rejuvenated Europe on equal terms, but emerged from the conflict stronger and more triumphant than ever. Suleyman ascended the throne surrounded by the glamour which belonged to his youth and charm of manner, and to the affection which his gracious rule • 8VLELYMAN •AIN'KAISER.DERfTIRCREI Li4-OBl;ilfLoliL Vni^! vwfrrxm^ Xm lexrc "XJtjtrc (rrtO, 6kt» vvrc xjfiragt&p rrryi Tr^fcWv^*" ' I j^tttw Vtvicrv fr^-Vn^ TKU^/^ >vre*«yfi~rfj ^arncnbctJctj>eUx^«xii»«^,fifrwrw*»V^- SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT (iN YOUTH). LORD OF THE AGE, 169 in more than one provincial government had inspired ; but he owed something to the detestation which Sellm's cruel character had evoked from all classes. The son differed by the whole heaven from his father. He was already renowned for his justice and clemency, and his first acts were calculated to strengthen the good opinion which had early been formed of his character. He began by punishing evildoers, and especially such of the officers and pashas who were proved to have been guilty of corruption and par- tiality. His greatest object was the same as that of the founder of the Ottoman Empire ; he desired to see even-handed justice administered throughout the length and breadth of his vast dominions. " Saulen seines Thron's sind Milde, Biedersinn, und Redlichkeit, Und von seinem Wappenschilde strahlet die Gerechtigkeit." The people rejoiced to see once more a Sultan they could love as well as fear, and welcomed Suley- ' man as another Murad. He had not been long seated on the throne when the occasion arrived for him to vindicate that title of " Lord of the Age " which his courtiers bestowed on him, and which was recorded on his official documents. The Hungarians had insulted and tortured his envoy, and vengeance must follow. All the materials for a campaign were ready ; Selim had left him a ripe fruit, and he had only to pluck it.^ In 1521 he took the old familiar road of Turkish generals, and marched upon Hungary. Belgrade, which had repelled Mo- hammed the Conqueror, yielded to his even greater ^ Jurien de la Graviere, " Doria et Barberousse, " chap. vii. ff. -H t 170 SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. successor. The church was turned into a mosque, the fortifications strengthened, and, to the days of Prince Eugene, "der edle Ritter," the key of the Danube formed a jewel in the Ottoman crown. The effect of the victory was immediate : Venice, in consternation, humbled herself as the Sultan's vassal, and paid him twofold tribute for Zante and Cyprus. It was only the first rumble of the storm, however. In the follow- ing year, 1522, an even more renowned place f&ll before Suleyman's assault. Rhodes, where Mohammed II. had received a second repulse, was now besieged by Suleyman with all the strength of his empire. A hun- dred thousand troops by land, and ten thousand by sek, encompassed the devoted island ; and all the efforts of the heroic Grand Master, Villiers de L'Isle Adam, could not avail to prevent the fall of the stronghold of the Knights of St. John. For close upon five inontlTslHey mH" mme~with countermine, and repelled four tremendous assaults with heavy loss ; but no garrison, without any prospect of a relieving force, could withstand for ever the skilful engineering of the Turks, who were the masters of Europe in the art of making regular approaches against a fortified position, and possessed the best artillery in the world. At last, seeing the hopelessness of the contest,Jtlie^_^Grand Maste'r'and his brave Knights accepted the honourable terms which Suleyman had offered them, but which they had before refused. The Sultan was no breaker of his word. They were allowed twelve days to leave the island with their property and arms ; the people of Rhodes were to have full privilege of the exercise of their religion, and to be free from tribute for five SIEGE OF RHODES. CONQUEST OF RHODES. I73 years. So deeply were the Turks impressed by the v&.lour of the Knights, that even their armorial es- cutcheons, which stood over their houses, were left undisturbed, and may be seen there to this day. The first year's campaign had ended in the capture V of Belgrade, the second had brought the surrender of N Rhodes ; the one had opened Hungary, the other had delivered up the Levantine waters to the Ottoman fleets. Now for two years the Sultan busied himself in the internal administration of his empire and in putting down a revolt in Egypt. He soon found out his mistake in intermitting the annual expeditions which had kept his large standing army in good temper \ The Janissaries began to mutiny, and though the Sultan at first tried the effect of boldness, and with his own hands slew two of the leaders of the insurrec- tion, he found himself forced at last to pacify them by a large bribe, like Sultans before and since, to the great damage of the imperial authority and impoverishment of the treasury. It became necessary to gratify the soldiers' love of war ~^and" 'booty, and Suleyman resolved on a campaign in Hungary, being the more encouraged to it by the advice of the ambassador sent to the Porte by Francis I, of France, who was anxious to divert his great rival Charles V. from further designs in the west. The decision was due, however, as much to another voice as to the machinations of the French king. Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with/ a second mind, to. which his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand VezTr Ibrahim was the counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman. He 174 SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince Suleyman, then governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary talents and address brought him promotion. The Turks have a proverb : " When God gives office, he gives also the ability to fill it : " and it was so with the young man who, from being Grand P'al- coner on the accession of Suleyman, rose to be first -minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523. He was- the object of the Sultan's tender regard : an emperor knows better than most men how solitary is life without friendship and love, and Suleyman loved this man more than a brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining and instructive com- panion. He read Persian, Greek, and Italian ; he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan's mind, and Suleyman drank in his VezTr's wisdom with assiduity. They lived together : their meals were shared in common ; even their beds were in the same room. The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the sailor's son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power.. "La douce et feconde union! L'Empire en ressent d'heure en heure le bienfait. Elle dure depuis six ans : puisse-t-clle, pour le salut de la Chretiente, ne pas etre eternelle!"^ Ibrahim deserved his success. He was great in war and in peace. He alone knew how to appease the Janissaries ; and he counselled and led the expedition against Vienna. Accordingly in 1526 the Ottoman army, mustering * Jurien de la Graviere, ** Doria et Barbcroussc," 114. COUNCIL HALL, RHODES. '00MMWW^^:^;:I^ Mi"} BATTLE OF MOHACS. lyg at least icx),ooo men and three hundred guns, marched north headed by the Sultan in person. Louis II. of Hungary met him on August 29th on the fatal field of Mohacs with a far inferior force, and the result was disastrous to the Christians. The king, and many of his nobles and bishops, and over 20,000 Hungarians fell on the fatal spot, where the encounter is known as " The Destruction of Mohdcs." ^ Buda and Pesth were occupied, the whole country roundabout ravaged, and 100,000 captives were driven back to be sold as slaves. The spoils of the palace of Matthias Corvinus and its famous library were added to those of the Palaeologi in the Seraglio at the Golden Horn. For over a century Hungary had been the rampart of Europe against the Turks. | The campaign of Mohacs made Hungary an Ottoman provmce'foF a hundred and forty yearsi The ruling influence which the Sultan exercised over the appointment of his deputy, the nominal king of Hungary took him northward again in 1529 to place his own candidate upon the throne — Zapolya, formerly Voyvode of Transylvania, who had withheld his help from Hungary at the battle of Mohacs. The Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, brother of Charles V., however, claimed the throne, and Suleyman had to interfere in the civil war. Ferdinand in vain sent ambassadors to arrange a truce, and make terms with the indignant Sultan. The messengers were dismissed, and Ferdinand was told that the Sultan was coming, and would expect to meet him at Mohacs or at Pesth, or should he fail to appear, he would breakfast with ^ See " The Story of Hungary," pp. 286-336. X 1 8*0 SU LEY MAN THE MAGNIFICENT, him at Vienna itself. And he came with a vengeance, bringing a quarter of a million of men at his heels. In September, 1529, the army retook Ofen (Buda) from Ferdinand's garrison, not without treason from within. Zapolya was restored, and the Sultan pro- ceeded to execute his threat of advancing upon Vienna. It is worth recording that Suleyman released the commander of Buda on parole that he would not- fight against the Turks during the campaign, and this generous act was done in spite of the murmurs of the Janissaries, who were enraged at not being allowed to pluiriderThe Hungarian capital, and even against the urgent representations of the Hungarians of Zapolya's party, who were now ranged with the Sultan ready to attack their countrymen and besiege Vienna. For a century and a half the capital of Hungary remaiiTed a Turkish outpost. On September 21st Suleyman crossed the Raab at Altenburg, and let loose his terrible troops of irregular cavalry or " Sackmen," as they are called in contem- porary German records, upon the stricken land. Far and wide these fierce riders forayed, under their savage leader Mikhal Oglu, who was a descendant of Scant- Beard Mikhal, a close ally of the first Othman. They carried devastation and misery among the villages, destroying and burning everything, and bear- ing off into captivity men, v^omen, and children. Place after place surrendered, in terrpr of the Ottoman army and the scourge of the Sickmcn. Pesth fell without a blow. The Archbishop of Gran surrendered his city, and sought refuge in the Sultan's camp. Co- morn was abandoned : Raab was burned : Altenburg SOLIMANVS -IMPEFATOF. •TVRCHAR-VM SULEYMAN ON THE WAR-PATH. INVASION OF HUNGARY, 183 betrayed. Briick, however, made a stout defence, and the Sultan, always pleased with a show of courage, accorded the garrison the lenient condition that they should only do him homage after the fall of Viennal Meanwhile Austria was striving to collect some adequate force wherewith to meet the overwhelming hosts of the Turks. Every tenth man was called out for service, and the neighbouring states sent contribu- tions to the army, but it was still miserably unequal to the demand which was to be made upon its valour. Ferdinand implored aid of the empire, and the Diet of Spires, moved by the rumour that Suleyman had sworn not to stop short of the Rhine, voted a puny force of 12,000 foot and 4,000 horse. Even this was not granted without interminable discussion, and the choice of a commander still remained a hotly debated question, when the Turks were already over the Save and had won their way into Pesth. "There were not wanting men hard of belief, pedants of the true German stamp, who maintained that mere apprehension had exaggerated the danger ; and finally it was agreed at Ratisbon, to which city the assembly had transferred itself, to send a deputation of two persons to Hungary to investigate the state of affairs on the spot. They went, and having the good fortune to escape the hands of the Turks, returned with evidence sufficient to satisfy the doubts of their sagacious employers." ^ It soon became evident that Austria could not muster an army of any service, in time to check the Turkish advance ; and the efforts of the Christians were now devoted to the defence of the capital. " In ' Schimmer, "Two Siegesof Vienna by the Turks" (Eng. trans.), 15. 184 SULBYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. Vienna, the necessary preparations had been made with almost superhuman exertion, but in such haste and with so little material, that they could only be con- sidered as very inadequate to the emergency. The city itself occupied the same ground as at present, the defences were old and in great part ruinous, the walls scarcely six feet thick and the outer palisade so frail and insufficient that the name Stadtzaun,or city hedge, which it bears in the municipal records of the time, was literally as well as figuratively appropriate. The citadel was merely the old building which now exists under the name of Schweitzer Hof All the houses which lay too near the wall were levelled to the ground ; where the wall was specially weak or out of repair a new entrenched line of earthen defence was con- structed and well palisaded ; within the city itself, from the Stuben to the Karnthner or Carinthian gate, an entirely new wall twenty feet high was constructed with a ditch interior to the old. The bank of the Danube was also entrenched and palisaded, and from the drawbridge to the Salz gate protected with a rampart capable of resisting artillery. As a precau- tion against fire, the shingles with which the houses were generally roofed were throughout the city removed. The pavement of the streets was taken up to deaden the effect of the enemy's shot, and watchposts established to guard against conflagra- tion. Parties were detached to scour the neighbour- ing country in search of provisions, and to bring in cattle and forage. Finally, to provide against the possibility of a protracted siege, useless consumers, women, children, old men, and ecclesiastics, were as SIEGE OF VIENNA. 1 87 far as possible forced to withdraw from the city," ' too often only to fall into the ruthless hands of the Sackmen. Behind these hastily improvised defences, the veteran Count of Salm, who had seen half a century of service in the field, posted his garrison of 20,000 foot, 2,000 horse, and 1,000 volunteer burghers, and manned the seventy guns which formed the artillery of the city. At the last moment, when the Turks, having taken Briick and Altenburg, were almost upon the capital, the order was given to destroy the suburbs, lest they should afford cover to the besiegers. The unfortunate inhabitants deprived of their homes thus late, had no time to escape from the harries of the Sackmen, who now spread over the whole country 40,000 strong, burning and slaying wherever they went, murdering unborn children, and brutally de- stroying helpless girls, whose insulted bodies lay unheeded upon the roads : " God rest their souls, and grant vengeance upon the bloodhounds who did this wrong ! " as a writer of the day indignantly ex- ■ claims. It was stated at the time that scarcely 1 i third of the inhabitants of Upper Austria survived this calamitous invasion. On the 27th of September, the Sultan and his Grand Vezir Ibrahim brought the main army before the city. "The country within sight of the walls as far as Schwechat and Trautmannsdorf was co- vered with tents, the number of which was cal- culated at 30,000, nor could the sharpest vision from St Stephen's tower overlook the limit of the * "Tv\o Sieges of Vienna," 16-17. l88 SU LEY MAN THE MAGNIFICENT. circle so occupied. The flower of the Turkish force, the Janissaries, took possession of the ruins of the suburbs, which afforded them an excellent cover from the fire of the besieged. They also cut loop- holes in the walls still standing from which they directed a fire of small ordnance and musketry on the walls of the city. The tent of Suleyman rose in superior splendour over all others at Simmering. Hangings of the richest tissue separated its numerous compartments from each other. Costly carpets and cushions and divans studded with jewels formed the furniture. Its numerous pinnacles were terminated by knobs of massive gold. Five hundred archers of the royal guard kept watch there night and day. Around it rose in great though inferior splendour the tents of ministers and favourites ; and 12,000 Janissaries, the terror of their enemies, and not un- frequently of their masters, were encamped in a circle round this central sanctuary." ^ While this immense army of a quarter of a million, of which, however, probably not more than a third was fully armed, invested the city, the circuit was completed by means of the four hundred vessels, which con- stituted the marine part of the siege, on the Lobau. The work of approaching the walls now began. The Turks had been compelled by heavy rains to leave their siege guns behind them, and tlic}- had only field pieces and musketry. Accordingly mines were the chief weapon in which they trusted. For a fortnight they exerted all their noted skill in burrow- ing under the walls and towers and laying mines in ' '* Two Sieges of Vienna," 26. SIEGE OF VIENNA, 1 89 the most propitious positions ; but all to no purpose. The besieged kept a watchful eye upon every approach, and no sooner was a mine carefully laid, than it was destroyed by a counter mine, or its powder was ex- tracted by an exploring party working from the cellars within the city. The Viennese were in good spirits and even ventured to indulge in jokes at the Sultan's expense. Suleyman had vowed to take his breakfast in Vienna on the 29th of September, and when the morning arrived, and the city was unsubdued, the inhabitants sent out prisoners to his tent, to tell him that his breakfast was getting cold, and they were afraid they had no better cheer to offer him but the produce of the guns on the battlements. Such pleasantries relieved the tedium of mines and counter- mines, varied by the occasional sallies which the besieged made from time to time without much result. On October 9th the Turks effected a broad breach by the side of the Karnthner gate, but three successive storming parties were repulsed, and the breach was repaired. On the 1 1 th another and greater breach was made, and for three hours the assailants fought hand to hand with the defenders, till at midday they were forced to abandon the assault. All the next day the walls were the scene of protracted conflicts between the storming parties and the besieged, who still manfully resisted every effort of the Turks to gain a footing inside the defences. The Sultan was enraged, and his troops afflicted by the severe weather and bad food, and weary of daily defeat, became more and more discouraged, so that they had to be driven to the assault by their officers' swords and igO SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT. whips. At last, on the 14th, a final attempt was made. Every preparation had been made by both sides, and at nine o'clock the Janissaries and the flower of the Ottoman army came on to the attack. The soldiers however were dispirited, and when the Vezir and his officers urged them on with stick and sabre, they cried that they would rather die by the hands of their own officers than face the long muskets of the Spaniards and the German spits, as they called the Lanzknechts' long swords. Still when a breach had been made twenty-four fathoms wide the Turks were forced to the assault. The efforts of such un- willing men were of no avail against the resolute defence of the Spaniards and Germans of the garrison. As an instance of the courage of the besieged a story is told of a Portuguese and a German, of whom one had lost his right arm and the other his left in repell- ing the assault : the two then stood together side close to side, and thus made up a whole man between them. When even the halves of soldiers can fight, such exhausted energies as were left to the Turks might well succumb. The last assault had f^iiled, and Suleyman ordered a retreat. The Janissaries set fire to their camp, and flung into the flames — it is to be hoped without the Sultan's knowledge — the old people and children who were prisoners, and cut to pieces the remainder. After this disgusting and use- less revenge, they set out on their retreat, to the music of the salvo of artillery which the delighted garrison now discharged from the ramparts of Vienna, and the ringing of all the bells which during the siege had been silenced. Had they been nearer they would RETREAT OF THE rC//?A:S.^*i«— i*"^ I9I have heard the solemn strains of the Te Deum which was being celebrated in St. Stephen's, where the defenders were rendering their glad thanks for the victory. """^ — Suleyman pursued his way, harassed by skirmishing bodies of Austrian cavalry, till he reached Pesth, and thence departed for Constantinople, where he made a triumphant entry, and proclaimed that he had par- doned the infidel, and that, as the city of Vienna was so far from his frontiers, he had not deemed it necessary to " clear out the fortress, or purify, improve, and put it into repair." Such was the view sedulously in- culcated into the minds of his subjects, when the disastrous siege of Vienna was spoken of Of the 20,000 or 30,000 men who fell in the siege, Suleyman would probably not be expected to say much. The 14th of October which saw the abandonment of the siege of Vienna, and the limit set to the rush of Turkish advance, is a famous day in German history : it is the anniversary of the peace of Westphalia and of Vienna, the battles of Hochkirchen, Jena, and Leip- zig, and of the capture of Ulm. Thre3 years later Suleyman returned to the attack, followed by an even larger army ; but the Emperor Charles V. had now taken up the gauntlet, and his forces were too considerable for a rash engagement. Suleyman did not care to risk his long tide of success, already once broken by his failure at Vienn*a,~upon so hazardous a chance as an open battle with Charles ; and after again ravaging the country with the lawless bands of Akinji,made peace at Constantinople in 1533; Hungary was divided between the two claimants, 192 SV LEY MAN THE MAGNIFICENT. Ferdinand and Zapolya, and the Sultan retained his advantages. The peace was, however, very transitory, for in 1 541 the Sultan led his ninth campaign, and after gaining many advantages over the Austrians com- pelled Charles V. and Ferdinand to sue for peace, so in 1547 a truce was signed for five years. The Archduke Ferdinand was to pay a tribute of 30,000 ducats a year to his master the Sultan, and was proud to be addressed as the brother of his master's Vezir. Sulcy- man retained all Hungary and Transylvania, and had certainly come out of the long struggle with the honours of war. Many of the Hungarian cities, how- ever, stoutly resisted his domination, and their defenders performed prodigies of valour. When the five years were over, hostilities were punctually re- sumed, and continued unceasingly and unproductive!/ until Suleyman's death in 1566. He died in his tent 6th September, while superin- tending, the siege of Szigetvar, which was heroically defended by Nicholas Zrinyi. The great Sultan expired tranquilly of mere old age, after a reign of forty-six years,filled with a militaryglory which no similar period could show. As he lay in his tent, while his death was studiously concealed from his troops, Zrinyi made his final sally. He had vowed never to surrender, and had used the Sultan's summons as wadding for his musket. Now seeing that further defence was hopeless, he led the last charge. The Turks were pressing forward along a narrow bridge wh ichTeH t6"tHe castle when the gates were flung open, a mortar filled with broken iron_was fired into their midst, and through the smoke ancicar- nage" Zrinyried his men to their death. Like the SULTAN SULEYMAN. i ZRINYI'S HEROISM. I95 famous Light Brigade, the number of these devoted horsemen was six hundred ; their leader tied the keys of the castle to his belt, and the banner of the empire was borne above his head. Zrinyi fell pierced by two musket shots and an arrow, and the Turks entered the castle of Szigctvar, only to find that a slow match had been applied to a mine containing 3,000 lbs. of gunpowder, which speedily sent as many Turks to paradise. The castle still remains a ruin : a monument of the death of a Leonidas and of an Alexander. Suleyman is perhaps the greatest figure in Turkish! history. His personal qualities were superb : his wis-j dom, justice, generosity, kindness, and courtesy were, a proverb, and his intellectual gifts were the counter-' part of his fine moral nature. His reign had not passed without its blots ; he had done more than one cruel deed : he had sacrificed his dear friend and peerless minister Ibrahim in a fit of jealousy in 1536, and never ceased to find cause to regret his fault ; and spurred on by a clever and unscrupulous Russian wife, who rejoiced in the name of Khurrem or Joyous, and whom all the nations of Europe have adopted under the name of Roxelana, he had killed the most hopeful of his sons, his first-born, Mustafa, who showed such promise of rivalling his father that Khurrem deemed the chances of her own son Sellm unsafe while the splendid young prince survived ; and other executions had stained his career. But these were the rare exceptions. The rule was justice, pru- dence, and magnanimity, and Suleyman deserves all the praises that have been lavished upon him by his-' torians of every nationality. He left his century the 196 SV LEY MAN THE MAGNIFICENT, better for his generous example. He left the Turkish arms respected by land and sea. While the horsetails had waved before Vienna, the Sultan's galleys had swept the seas to the coasts of Spain. It was the age of great admirals, and Charles V/s splendid Doria found a rival in Kheyr-ed-din Barbarossa, the corsair of Tunis, and victor over Pope, Emperor, and Doge at the battle of Prevesa (1538) ; — in Dragut (Torghud), who finished his daring career at the fatal siege of Malta — when, despite the corsair's valour, the Knights wrought golden deeds of heroism, and dealt as deadly a blow at Turkish prestige as even the Count of Salm had struck from the walls of Vienna ; — and in Piali the conqueror of Oran and worster of Doria himself Most of the Turkish naval successes were the work of semi-independent adventurers, pirates, or buccaneers, whose venturesome exploits belong rather to the " Story of the Corsairs " than to the legitimate history of Turkey. " Sultan Suleyman left to his successors an empire to the extent of which few permanent additions were ever made, except the islands of Cyprus and Candia, and which under no subsequent Sultan maintained or recovered the wealth, power, and prosperity which it enjoyed under the great lawgiver of the house of Othman. The Turkish dominions in his time com- prised all the most celebrated cities of Biblical and classical history, except Rome, Syracuse, and Perse- polis. The sites of Carthage, Memphis, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, and Palmyra were Ottoman ground ; and the cities of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Damascus, Nice, Prusa, Athens, Philippi, and ROXELANA. SULEYMAN'S EMPIRE. igg Adrianople, besides many of later but scarce inferior celebrity, such as Algiers, Cairo, Mekka, Medina, Basra, Baghdad, and Belgrade, obeyed the Sultan of Constantinople. The Nile, the Jordan, the Orontes, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Tanais, the Borysthenes the Danube, the Hebrus, and the Ilyssus, rolled their waters 'within the shadow of the Horsetails.' The eastern recess of the Mediterranean, the Propontis, the Palus Maeotis, the Euxine, and the Red Sea, were Turkish lakes. The Ottoman crescent touched the Atlas and the Caucasus ; it was supreme over Athos, Sinai, Ararat, Mount Carmel, Mount Taurus, Ida, Olympus, Pelion, Haemus, the Carpathian and the Acroceraunian heights. An empire of more than forty thousand square miles, embracing many of the richest and most beautiful regions of the world, had been acquired by the descendants of Ertoghrul, in three centuries from the time when their forefather wandered a homeless adventurer at the head of less thg^ five hundred fighting men." ^ » Sir E. Creasy, 197 (ed. 1877). 200 NOTE TO MAP, NOTE. The accompanying plan shows in rough outline the growth and the decrease of the Ottoman Empire. Vertically it is measured by years, an inch to a century. Horizontally it is divided into three chief sections, representing Europe, Asia, and Africa, within which the prin- cipal provinces are indicated at the time when they became part of the Turkish Empire, and again when they ceased to be Ottoman. The shaded portion represents the dominion of the Turks, whether under their immediate control or under the rule of a vassal king (as Serbia in the earlier period). Thus we see the small beginning of the Ottoman power in Asia ; its spread over Bithynia in the first half of the four- teenth century ; its progress in Europe during the second half, through Rumelia and Bulgaria to Serbia and Wallachia ; its sudden extension in Anatolia at the close of the century, and its equally sudden repression i)y Timur ; and then the steady enlargement indicated by such names as Greece, Constantinople, Albania, Moldavia, Hungary, &.<:., on the European side, and Karamar^' Armenia, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis on the Asiatic and African side, until, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the greatest extent is attained. Then, in the second part of the plan, we see Algiers becoming semi-indepen- dent l)efore the seventeenth century was half gone ; Tunis following, and Hungary lost by 1700 ; Russia despoiling the Porte of the Crimea ; Mohammed Ali virtually independent in Egypt ; various vStates rising in the Balkan Peninsula, — Greece, Bosnia, Serbia, Rumania ; France in Algiers and Tunis, and Russia encroaching in Asia Minor, after the last Russo-Turkish war. The plan is a modification of a table contributed by Mr. E. J. W. Gibb to my " Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum," vol. viii. I? XL THE DOWNWARD ROAD. (1566-164O.) The reign of Suleyman the Great forms the ch'max. of Turkish history. In three centuries the little clan of Othmanlis had spread from their narrow district in Asia Minor till they had the command of the Miediterraneaii, the Euxme, and the Red Sea. Their dominions now extended from Mekka to Buda, from Baghdad to Algiers. Both the northern and southern shores of the Black Sea were theirs ; a large part of modern Austria- Hungary owned their sway ; and North Africa from the Syrian frontier to the boundary of the Empire of Morocco had been subdued by their arms. The three centuries that remain to be described consist of one long decline, relieved indeed now and then by a temporary revival of the old warlike spirit of the people, but nevertheless a steady and inevitable decline. The causes of this downward course are partly external and partly depend upon the gradual deterioration of the Turks themselves. The growth of Russia and the combination of a group of brilliant leaders in Hungary, Poland, and Austria, are the 206 THE DOWNWARD ROAD, most important of the outward causes which led to the narrowing of the Turkish boundaries : but these by themselves would hardly have sufficed to reduce the Ottoman Empire to its present decrepit condition, had there not been internal cankers which sapped its ancient vigour. The very nature of the empire de- manded extraordinary energy and wisdom to ensure its continuance. A power founded upon military predominance and exercised upon numerous alien races and hostile creeds needed peculiar care, both in maintaining the efficiency of the army and in conciliating the prejudices and winning the respect, if not the affection, of the Christian subjects who formed the majority of the European population. The Turkish Government, however, cared for none of these things. When the energy and genius of a series of great rulers had brought the empire to the height of renown, the too common result ensued ; a line of weak and vicious Sultans succeeded to the vast dominions which had been won by their ancestors* swords and retained by their administrative skill, and these degenerate scions of a heroic stock, thought only of the enjoyments which their great possessions ' permitted, not of the conditions which might ensure - their permanence. The army, deprived of the valiant iSultans who once led them to battle, lost all respect Tor the idlers who preferred the ignoble luxury of the harem to the fierce joys of war; and a disaffected soldiery, soon learning its power, set up and deposed j Sultans as seemed good to it, and extorted heavy ■ bribes from each successive puppet of its choice. The unbounded exercise of capricious power quickly led to DECAY OF THE ARMY. 2oy licence and corruption, and the ]anissa rig.§. by degrees lost their martial character and could not be trusted as of old in the field. A bribe was of more conse- quence to them than a victory. No efforts, besides, were made to keep pace with the improvements which other nations were introducing in the weapons and tactics of war, and even if their mettle had been as finely tempered as of old, the Turkish troops were not equipped as they should have been when they met the battalions of Prince Eugene, of Sobie^ki, or Suvorov. The worst feature of all was their ineffi- cient officering. Their commanders were appointed not for merit, but in consideration of bribes, and such a system naturally entailed the deterioration of every regiment, and its evil effects are visible to the present day. With effeminate Sultans, incompetent officers, and corrupt administrators, with a weak head and corrupt members, indeed, it was to be expected that the whole man should also become corrupt and power- less, — the " sick man " for whom Russia prescribed a euthanasia. To tell the various stages of decay in detail would only weary the reader with a catalogue of defeats, varied by occasional reprisals ; a series of treaties of peace, each involving loss or humiliation, each sworn for ever and broken in a few years ; an inventory of weak, corrupt, or misguided rulers and officers, whose baseness and incompetence are cast into deeper shadow by such rare apparitions as the family of the Koprilis, as Sultans like Murad IV, and Mahmud II., or generals like the Damad All, " the dauntless Vizier," the conqueror of the Morea, and the chivalrous Topal 208 THE DOWNWARD ROAD, Othman, the antagonist of Nadir Shah. It will only be possible to present a brief outline of the successive events which marked the gradual shrinking of the Turkish Empire to its present limits. .^^ The i nroads of Russia , not at first the most im- portant, but growing in force and menace with each succeeding war, are reserved for another chapter. The other principal opponen ts of the Turks were Austria ("aided \ )y Hungary an^ P oland), Venice, and Persia^ Venice was the first to dispute the supremacy of Suleyman's empire. The great Sultan had been succeeded by his son, who received the/too appropriate sobriquet of Selim the Sot.] But it was not in the nature of things that the splendid system organized by Suleyman and his able officers should fall to the ground in the hands of a single worthless successor. Many of Suleyman's agents were still alive, and especially the Grand Vezir Sokolli Mohammed spared no pains to carry on the government in the spirit of his master. Great mih'tary exploits were at first contem- plated. Sinan Pasha reduced Arabia in 1570, and prayers were said in the Holy City of Mekka for the " Sultan of Sultans, Khakan of Khakans, lord of the two seas and two continents, and the two sanc- tuaries of Islam, Sellm Khan, son of Suleyman Khan." ^ An expedition was sent to Astrakhan, as will be related further on,^ but this was not among the triumphs of the Porte ; only a fourth of the army returned alive to Constantinople. The conquest of Cyprus from the Venetians was the next venture. * Von Hammer, ii. 398. " See page 251. BATTLE OF LEPANTO. 209 It was entrusted to a rival of Sokolli, one Lala Mustafa, who conducted it with equal rashness and cruelty. It cost him fifty thousand men, and he revenged himself in the hour of success by flaying alive the gallant commandant Bragadino. The rule of the sea, thus materially strengthened, was soon destined to receive a check. ( A great mari- time league was formed by the Venetians, Spaniards, Knights of Malta,) and others, and a fleet of two hundred galleys and six huge galliasses was collected by the confederates and placed under the command of Don John of Austria, a young man famous for his recent subjugation of the Moors in the Alpuxarras,i and reputed the greatest general of the time. Against this formidable array the Turks were able to bring together an even larger fleet. Two hundred and forty galleys, besides sixty smaller vessels, were riding in the Gulf of Patras under the command of Muezzin- zada, Uluj All, and other tried admirals, when, on October 7, 1571, Don John brought his fleet out of tTTe^ 'Gulf ot Le'panto and gave battle. He formed his centre into a crescent under the command of the celebrated Prince of Parma, and took post himself in the van. The galliasses were ranged like redoubts in front of the line. The Turks were the first to open fire, and pressing forward suffered severely from the broadsides of the tall galliasses which they had to pass before they could come into close action with Don John. The two chief admirals on either sides locked their vessels together, and for two hours a deadly fight went on from the decks. At * See Lane-Poole, " The Story of the Moors in Spain," p. 278. 210 THE DOWNWARD ROAD, last the Turkish commander fell, and his flag-ship was boarded : the Ottoman centre was broken, and the right wing gave way. The left, under Uluj All, gained some successes over Doria, a nephew of the great ad- miral of that name, and took some of the enemy's ships, but when he saw the collapse of the centre and right he fought his way out of the melley, and with forty galleys, the remnant of a noble fleet, set sail for the Bosphorus. Ninety-four Turkish ships were sunk or burnt, at least a hundred and thirty were captured ; the Turks lost 30,000 men, and 15,000 Christian galley slaves were set free.^ The result of this tremendous defeat ought to have been the annihilation of the Turkish command of the seas ; but it was nothing of the kind. Its moral effect in showing that the terrible Ottomans were not i% vincible was lasting, but its immediate influence on the balance of maritime power in the Mediterranean was comparatively slight. The Christian confederates, perfectly satisfied with their triumph, dispersed their fleet, and began to give thanks for their victory and indulge in their favourite jealousies, but the Turks steadily set to work to repair their misfortunes. In a few months, by incredible energy and devotion, in which even the besotted Sultan took a share, a new fleet of two hundred and fifty sail was fitted out ; and so little did the victory of Lepanto encourage the Vene- tians that they threw over their allies and sued for a separate peace. They not only agreed that the Sultan was to remain in possession of Cyprus, but were so good as to repay him thecost of taking it! The * Von Hammer, ii. 423. ..^-^ H ; CICALA. ' 213 memory of I^e^anij^ was wiped out of the Turkish mind. There was comparative peace with the Venetians for a quarter of a century after this, but it was as much due to harem influence as respect for any treaty. Murad III., who succeeded his father Selim in 1574, was a feeble creature who let the offices of State be sold by sycophants to the highest bidder, and himself be ruled by his women ; but among the latter was fortu- nately at least one lady of intelligence. Safla, a cap- tured Venetian of the family of Baffo, governed her imperial husband in the interests of her countrymen, and when he died in 1595, and was succeeded by her son, Mohammed III. — one of Murad's hundred and two children, of whom nineteen were put to death on their brother's accession — she found the power of mother in no way inferior to that of wife. Her chief ally was Cicala, a Genoese of noble birth who had been made prisoner in his youth by the Turks. His father. Count Cicala, had married a captive "Turkess," and the son followed his example by espousing a granddaughter of Suleyman the Great. The combination of personal merit and backstairs influence insured the young man's rise, and in due time he obtained important commands, iln 1596 he rendered a signal service to his adopted country. Three days the imperial troops of Austria and Tran- sylvania fought with the Turks on the plain of the Keresztes. The Christians seemed about to triumph, and twice the Sultan thought of flight. Then Cicala swooped down upon them at the head of his horse- men, and in half an hour archduke and prince were 214 THE DOWNWARD ROAD. riding for dear life, followed by a panting mob of what had once been soldiers, and leaving fifty thou- sand corpses on the field. [One such success, however, hardly relieved a reign composed of military revolts, petty external wars, provincial tyrants, and general disaffection. It was a sign of the lowered status of the Turkish Empire that a treaty was concluded with Austria, after the usual campaigns, in the reign of the next Sultan, Ahmed I., a boy of fourteen, in which the Porte was treated as an ordinary equal instead of as a dreaded master, and the Austrian tribute was discontinued. Turkey was no longer the terror of Europe. Indeed, had Christendom been less divided and absorbed in , the Spanish wars at that time, it is a question whether I the Ottoman Empire might not then have come to \the end which has so often been predicted. England had an ambassador at the Porte from the time of Elizabeth (1583) who strenuously invited the Sultan to join his mistress against Spain, but England was in no condition to support the Grand Signior against his hiany and powerful enemies, nor had our tradi- tional policy in the East yet been formulated. The Indian Empire and the preservation of our road thither were in the future. Nothing seemingly but their own divisions kept the Powers from partitioning the Ottoman provinces at the beginning of the seven- teenth century. Indeed, Sir Thomas Roe, who wrote an interesting account of his mission to Turkey, looked with confidence to the speedy collapse of the Otto- man State. But peace reigned for some time on the northern THE GRAxND bl< MURAD IV, 217 frontiers of Turkey. The emperor of Austria was fully alive to the advantage of keeping on friendly terms in the south when the Thirty Years' War was raging in the north, and the Turks had no motive for aggression, since they had so far retained their con- quests. The new Sultan, Murad IV., who ascended the throne in 1623, though fired with something of the old warlike energy of his ancestors, preferred to exert it in another direction, and concluded a fresh peace with the emperor which ensured tranquillity to the Turks on their northern marches during the first | half of the seventeenth century. '•"-^ Murad was the last fighting Sultan of the race ofi Othman. The enemy he chose for his attack was I^ersia^. In the time of Murad III. there had been a|/ successful war with the Shah, which ended in a peac^ in 1590, whereby the Turks secured Georgia, Tebriz, and some of the Persian provinces adjoining the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. These acquisi- . tions had again and again been disputed by the Persians, and by a peace in i6ig the Shah had recovered his losses and the boundary between the two kingdoms had been restored to the limits which had been drawn at the time of Sellm. Murad IV. resolved to regain the conquests of his namesake. He had however to contend with grievous obstacles. He was but a boy of twelve when he came to the thro.ne, and never was an empire more in need of a strong man's hand. Disasters and rebellions vyere announced from all "il quarters. The Persians were triumphant, Asia Minor\ was in revolt, the provincial governors were refractory; the three Barbary states were practically independent; 2l8 THE DOWNWARD ROAD. the treasury was empty, the people were starving, and the army was both turbulent and Hcentious. y With the help of a capable mother the young Sultan contrived to maintain his authority in some sort in the face of such difficulties, but not without many a painful humiliation. In the ninth year of his reign the Sipahis mutinied, and gathering together in the Hippodrome demanded the heads of some of the officers of state, and especially of Hafiz, the Grand Vezir. They pressed into the courts of the Seraglio, crying, " Give us the seventeen heads ! " The choice lay between submission and abdication. The Sultan vainly used every argument and entreaty. At last he sent for the Grand Vezlr. Hafiz did not shrink from the sacrifice. " I have seen my fate in a dream to-day," he said, " and I am not afraid to die." He would not however allow the guilt of his blood to rest on his sorrowing master's head, but resolved to seek death in open conflict with the mutineers. " My Padishah," he said, " may a thousand slaves like Hafiz die for thee :" and after reciting some verses from the Koran, he strode forth into the court, while the Sultan and his retinue sobbed and wept Hafiz struck down the first assailant, and then fell pierced by seventeen wounds. The Sultan did not leave the ghastly scene without uttering ominous words to the murderers. " So help me God," he said, " ye men of blood, who fear not God nor are ashamed before God's Prophet, >y a terrible vengeance shall overtake you." Gathering together some loyal troops the stern young prince kept his word. The mutineers were slain in every province ; the Bosphorus floated thick with the CONQUEST OF BAGHDAD, 219 bodies of Sipahis and Janissaries ; while the terrible Sultan, who had {ew rivals in sword or bow, patrolled the streets himself and often carried out his sanguinary sentences with his own strong hand. The death of Hafiz was avenged tenfold, and the authority of his master was established on the foundation of terror. His severity indeed outshot the mark ; hundreds of innocent people were ruthlessly butchered to gratify the suspicions or even the caprices of the tyrant, in whom the taste of blood seemed to generate that fascinating appetite which it creates in beasts of prey. It is said that a hundred thousand persons paid the last penalty by his order. An inordinate addiction to wine still further hardened his fierce temper, but no habits of indulgence seemed to shake his iron will or enfeeble his martial frame. He watched over every department of his administration with vigilant eyes : law and justice, order and discipline, everywhere pre- vailed as they had not been known since the days of the Great Suleyman : tyrant he was, but he allowed no other man to tyrannize, and the people realized that the tyranny of one is liberty compared to the aimless tyranny of the many. As soon as he could safely leave the capital, Murad set forth to restore order and peace on his Asiatic frontiers. In 1635 he reconquered Erivan, and visited the local governors of Asia Minor with stern punish- ment for their disaffection. For months his only pillow was his saddle and his coverlet a horsecloth. In 1638 he marched to retake Baghdad, which the Persians had recovered since its first capture by Suley- man. The garrison made a desperate resistance. But 220 THE DOWNWARD ROAD. Murad led his men in person, worked in the trenches with his own hands, and, when the Persians sent out a stalwart champion to defy the besiegers to single com- bat, it was Murad himself who took up the gauntlet and after a hard fight clove the giant's skull from pate to chin. The chain armour in which he fought, a .beautiful suit of interwoven steel and gold links, is still tQj)e seen in the Treasury at Constantinople. Bagh- dad fell and a fearful butchery ensued, in which only three hundred of the thirty thousand men of the garrison escaped, nor did the unarmed inhabitants fare better. Peace was made with Persia on the basis of Suleyman's treaty of 1555 ; Erivan was restored to the Shah, but Baghdad has remained ever since in the hands of the Turks. Murad made his triumphal entry into Con- stantinople amid the shouts of the people, while the Bosphorus and Golden Horn blazed with salutes. The following year (1640) he died at the age of 28, the last of the warrior Sultans of Turkey. XII. THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. (1640- 1757.) Henceforward, until we reach the present century and the person of Mahmud IL, the names of the twelve Sultans who succeeded Murad IV. upon the throne of Turkey possess little interest or individuality for us. Secluded in the Seraglio, and abandoned, with few exceptions, to most of the worst vices that can degrade body and soul, they left the care or neglect of their empire to the Vezirs, and, accordingly as the Prime Minister was a capable or an incapable man, the empire was retarded or accelerated in its downward course. At the beginning of the period upon which we are now entering, the Porte was fortunate in the possession of an Albanian family of remarkable powers, whose influence checked for a while the dis- astrous tendencies of the empire. Koprili Moham- med, the first of this stock, was chosen Grand Vezir (1656) at the age of seventy. His inflexible yet just severity restored order in all parts of the empire. For five years his eyes searched out treason and wrong- doing in every corner of the Sultan's dominions, and never was a strong will better obeyed than during this epoch. Thirty-six thousand people were executed by 222 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. his command, and the chief executioner admitted that in these five years he had with his own hands strangled over four thousand, or nearly three a day. The old Vezir had previously borne the reputation of a mild and humane man, but he saw that only strong measures could restore tranquillity to the distracted empire, and he did not shrink from the course which his reason dictated. He died in 1661, and was succeeded in his office by his even greater son Ahmed. For /fifteen years Koprili-zada Ahmed was virtual Sultan, j and he is admittedly the greatest statesman of Turkey. He had as firm a will and as stern a sense of duty as Mohammed, but he had the advantage of a better edu- cation and all the added power and experience due to his father's example. As a civil administrator he was unequalled, but as a general in the field he was doomed to suffer heavy reverses. The constant intrigues which marked the changes of succession in Hungary and Transylvania once more embroiled the Porte with Austria, and it fell to Koprili- zada Ahmed to lead the armies of Turkey to the Danube. In the battle of St.Gotthard (1664) he received a terrible defeat at the hands of Raymond, Count of Montecuculi. The Christians were outnumbered in the proportion of four to one, and the contempt of the Turks was increased when they saw the French con- tingent come riding down with their shaved cheeks and powdered perukes. They ridiculed the charge of the "young girls ;" but the "girls" and Montecuculi were too strong for their tried veterans : — ten thousand Turks were left on the field, and the VezIr was com- pelled to beat an ignominious retreat. miL GRAND VEZIR. CRETE : CHOCZIM. 225 Some compensation for this disaster was found in the success which at length attended the operations of the Ottomans against the island of Candia, or Crete. The Turks were still renowned for their siege works, and though it took them more than twenty years to subdue the determined resistance of the Venetians under their gifted leader Morosini, at last, in 1669, the island was theirs. During the last three years they had made fifty-six desperate assaults, and the garrison had replied with ninety sorties ; more than thirteen hun- dred mines had been fired on both sides, thirty thou- sand Turks had fallen, and nearly half as many Venetians. The successful termination of this memor- able siege did much to restore the waning confidence of the Porte. It was, however, but a gleam of sunshine in an Erebus of gloom. A new and formidable enemy appeared in the north. The Cossacks of the Ukraine,, had been claimed as Polish subjects by the king of| Poland against their will, and the Porte proceeded t( defend them. The struggle was short ; the kin| quickly abandoned his pretensions, agreed to pay tribute, and even surrendered Podolia as well as the Ukraine to Turkey. The Polish nobles, headed by John Sobieski, a name which stands in the front rank of European generals, refused to abide by these terms,' and, leading their forces against the Turks, adminiJ stered two crushing defeats, at Choczim in 1673, and at Lemberg in 1675. The Turks, however, were\ better able to carry on a long war than the Polish nobles, and in spite of their victories, the latter were glad to come to terms, by which the Ottomans re- 226 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. tained the advantages which they had previously- secured. A defeat followed by an accession of territory was no very calamitous ending to Koprili's-zada Ahmed's life, though the Ukraine had soon afterwards to be ceded to Russia. But when the gifted family which had already supplied two eminent men to the highest office in the State suffered a passing eclipse, and anew and temerarious Vezir was appointed, disasters of a less chequered character poured upon the Turkish I arms. The policy of Austria towards Hungary had I lately become more and more severe and unconcili- 'atory. The Protestant Magyars especially resented the proselytizing efforts of the Jesuits and the bigotry of the Catholic party towards its unorthodox subjects. Conspiracies were set on foot, and when discovered were punished with unsparing severity ; but Hun- gary remained, at least as disaffected to Austrian supremacy as before. Indeed, it was known that the nobles of Hungary preferred the rule of Mohammedans to that of bigoted Catholics. The Porte was fully informed of these matters, and a violent war party sprang up at Constantinople ; they eagerly pressed for an advance on Vienna at the moment when Hun- gary might be counted upon as an ally. Accordingly in 1682, the new Grand VezIr, Kara Mustafa, seized this favourable opportunity of put- ting an end once for all to the detested house of Hapsburg, and marched northwards with a vast host of 400,000 men, officered in part by French captains and engineers, lent for the service by Louis XIV., who was anxious to see the Imperial power humbled in yoHN SOBIESKI. 227 the dust. It seemed as if there was nothing to arrest the advance of the Turks. The Christians, as usual, were wholly unprepared. When once the terrible horsetails had been seen retreating towards the south, it was the custom of the princes of Europe to disband their armies and neglect their fortifications, and to abandon themselves to all the delights of quarrelling among themselves. Charles of Lorraine, indeed, who had fought beside Montecuculi at the battle of St. Gotthard, was ready to take his part in the defence ; but he could only muster 33,000 men, and what were they against so many, above all, when a large number of them had to be told off to sundry fortresses for garrison duty? Disaffected Hungary sought to make peace with both sides by sending a miserable contingent of 3,009 under Esterhazy. But for one circumstance the triumph of the Turks might have been predicted with certainty : this was a treaty of alliance which had just been signed between the Emperor Leopolc| and Sobieski, who was now king of Poland. It is a significant fact that when these two sovereigns bound themselves to make common cause against the Turk, the memory of many past conventions of the kind which had been dissolved by the Pope's dis- pensation, recurred to their minds, and while they swore an oath, sanctified by the Cardinal Legate, to stand by one another, they appended a clause which stipu- lated that this oath was not subject to retractation by Papal dispensation. The combination of the Legate's sacred office, with the guarding clause against its per- jured misuse, is one of the curiosities of history. John Sobieski, however, though he had sworn to 228 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS, help, and was known to be true to his word, was still in Poland, and meanwhile the Grand Vezir was push- ing on to Vienna. Despairing of succour in time, the emperor and his court fled ignominiously to Bavaria. The city was, in truth, very ill prepared to withstand a siege, especially when conducted by such good engineers as the Turks. The fortifications were in a state of decay, and it will hardly be believed that the very tools necessary for their repair were not to be had in Vienna. It was a mere chance that the Grand Vezir loitered somewhat on his way. Had he used forced marches, he must infallibly have entered the capital of the Holy Roman Empire without so much as striking a blow. The delay, little as it was, gave the people time to prepare. Count Stahremberg, a true hero, was appointed to conduct the defence, and the whole population laboured incessantly at the work of repair- ing the fortifications. Students of the University and members of the trades-guilds formed themselves into volunteer corps and drilled with might and main. Out of the population of 60,000 (for half the people had fled) some 20,000 were under arms at the dreaded moment when the flames of burning villages and the news of treacherous butchery told of the near ap- proach of the invaders. At last the orders were given for the burning of the suburbs, that they might not serve as cover to the enemy ; and on the 14th of July the siege began. The island suburb of Leopoldstadt soon fell into the hands of the Turks, and became a smouldering p)'rc. Assault after assault was made and repulsed ; mine was answered ST. STEPHEN S CATHEDRAL, VIFNNA. SECOND SIEGE OF VIENNA. 23 1 by countermine ; but Stahremberg, as he looked down upon the operations from the stone seat, which is still to be seen in the lofty spire of St Stephen's, saw with sadness that inch by inch the Turks were gaining ground. The assaults so far had indeed been fruitless, for the Turkish scimitar was no match for the German hal- berd, scythe, and battle-axe : but the mines were creeping towards the walls, and sickness was raging in the city. To sickness followed famine. Cats were so valuable, that a chase after the animal over the roofs became a recognized form of sport. The reliev- ing army was indeed known - to be on the move, but would it come in time, or would it succeed in driving away the still immense, though diminishing, hosts of the Turks ? On the 6th of September, rockets announced that Sobieski was indeed at hand. The people redoubled their efforts when they knew of the presence of the great captain. He had united the Polish, Saxon, Austrian, Bavarian, and other contingents, to the num- ber of some 85,000 men, and had occupied the Kahlen- berg, the one strategic position essential for the relief of the city. His men, moreover, were fresh, while the 100,000 troops whom the Vezir had still in camp were exhausted by a two months' siege, and many privations and labours. On the lOth, the sound of guns was heard in the city. They proceeded from the Kahlenberg. The great contest was beginning. How the thundering of the cannon was listened to in Vienna may be imagined. The people, trembling with anxiety, were held in suspense for many 232 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. hours. It was a supreme crisis in the history of Europe. Meanwhile Sobieski had taken his measures for its relief. "At sunrise of the T2th of September the crest of the Kahlenberg was concealed by one of those autumnal mists which give promise of a genial, perhaps a sultry day, and which, clinging to the wooded flanks of the acclivity, grew denser as it descended, till it rested heavily on the shores and the stream itself of the river below. From that summit the usual fiery signals of distress had been watched through the night by many an eye, as they rose incessantly from the tower of St. Stephen, and now the fretted spire of that edifice, so long the target of the ineffectual fire of the Turkish artilleries, was faintly distinguished rising from the sea of mist. As the hour wore on, and the exhalation dispersed, a scene was disclosed, which must have made those who witnessed it from the Kahlenberg tighten their saddle-girths, or look to their priming. A practised eye glancing over the fortifications of the city could discern from the Burg to the Scottish gate an interrup- tion of their continuity, a shapeless interval of rubbish and of ruin, which seemed as if a battalion might enter it abreast. In face of this desolation a labyrinth of lines extended itself, differing in design from the rectilinear zigzag of a modern approach, and formed of short curves overlapping each other, to use a com- parison of some writers of the time, like the scales of a fish. In these, the Turkish lines, the miner yet crawled to his task, and the storming parties were THE TURKISH LINES. 233 still arrayed by order of the Vezir, ready for a renewal of the assault so often repeated in vain. The camp behind had been evacuated by the fight- ing men ; the horsetails had been plucked from before the tents of the pashas, but their harems still tenanted the canvas city ; masses of Christian cap- tives awaited there their doom in chains ; camels and drivers and camp followers still peopled the long streets of tents in all the confusion of fear and sus- pense. Nearer to the base of the hilly range of the Kahlenberg and the Leopoldsberg, the still imposing numbers of the Turkish army were drawn up in battle array, ready to dispute the egress of the Christian columns from the passes, and prevent de- ployment on the plaiUo To the westward, on the reverse flank of the range. Christian troops might be seen toiling up the ascent. As they drew up on the crest of the Leopoldsberg, they formed a half-circle round the chapel of the Margrave, and when the bell for matins tolled, the clang of arms and the noise of the march was silenced. On a space kept clear round the chapel a standard with a white cross on a red ground was unfurled, as if to bid defiance to the blood-red flag planted in front of the tent of Kara Mustafa. One shout of acclamation and defiance broke out from the modern Crusaders as this emblem of a holy war was displayed, and all again was hushed as the gates of the castle were flung open, and a procession of the princes of the empire and the other leaders of the Christian host moved forward to the chapel. It was headed by one whose tonsured crown and venerable beard betokened the monastic 234 ^^^ RULE OF THE VEZIRS. profession. The soldiers crossed themselves as he passed, and knelt to receive the blessings which he gave them with outstretched hands. This was the Capuchin Marco Aviano, friend and confessor to the emperor, whose acknowledged piety and exemplary life had earned for him the general reputation of prophetic inspiration. He had been the inseparable companion of the Christian army in its hours of diffi- culty and danger, and was now here to assist at the consummation of his prayers for its success. Among the stately warriors who composed his train, three principally attracted the gaze of the curious. The first in rank and station was a man somewhat past theprim^ of middle life, strong limbed, and of impos- ing stature, but quick and lively in speech and gesture; his head partly shaved, in the fashion of his semi-Eastern country ; his hair, eyes, and beard, dark, black coloured. His majestic bearing bespoke the soldier-king, the scourge and dread of the Moslems, the conqueror of Choczim, John Sobieski. . . . " On his left was his youthful son. Prince James, armed with a breastplate and helmet, and, in addition to an ordinary sword, with a short and broad-bladcd sabre, a national weapon of former ages ; on his right was the illustrious and heroic ancestor of the present reigning house of Austria, Charles of Lorraine. Behind these moved many of the principal members of those sovereign houses of Germany. At the side of Louis of Baden was a youth of slender frame and moderate stature, but with that intelligence in his eye, which pierced in after years the cloud of many a doubtful field, and swayed the fortunes of empires. RELIEF OF VIENNA. 235 This was the young Eugene of Savoy, who drew his maiden sword in the quarrel in which his brother had lately perished. The service of high mass was per- formed in the Chapel by Aviano, the king assisting at the altar, while the distant thunder of the Turkish batteries formed strange accompaniment to the Christian choir. The prince then received the sacra- ment, and the religious ceremony was closed by a general benediction of the troops by Aviano. The king then stepped forward, and conferred knight- hood on his son, with the usual ceremonies, commend- ing to him as an example of his future course the great commander then present, the Duke of Lorraine. He then addressed his troops in their own language to the following effect: 'Warriors and friends! Yonder in the plains are our enemies, in numbers greater indeed than at Choczim, where we trod them under foot. We have to fight them on a foreign soil, but we fight for our own country, and under the walls of Vienna we are defending those of Warsaw and Cracow. We have to save to-day, not a single city, but the whole of Christendom, of which that city of Vienna is the bulwark. The war is a holy one. There is a blessing on our arms, and a crown of glory for him who falls. You fight not for your earthly sovereign, but for the King of kings. His power has led you unopposed up the difficult access to these heights, and has thus placed half the victory in your hands. The infidels see you now above their heads, and, with hopes blasted and courage depressed, are creeping among valleys destined to be their graves. I have but one command to give — Follow me ! 236 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. The time is come for the young to win their spurs.' " I The Grand Vezlr's preparations for the fight were very different from those of his Christian opponents. He began, it is said, by slaughtering in cold blood the thirty thousand captives who were confined in his camp. The majority were women who had already been subjected to the degradation of a place in the soldiers' harems. The butchering accomplished, he posted his men. Sobieski, however, had already discovered that Kara Mustafa was no general, and there could be little doubt as to the result of the contest. For many hours the Turks fought bravely, for with all their faults, cowardice in battle is unknown to them ; but the dash of the Polish cuirassiers, the steady per- sistence of the Saxons and Bavarians, above all, the unerring strategy of Sobieski, won the day. With a final rush, the Christians poured into the Turkish camp, and then all was panic and confusion. The Grand Vezlr was carried along in the flying crowd, cursing and weeping by turns, the army melted like a mist before the sun, and the luckless Janissaries who were still in the trenches, forgotten by their flying leaders, were massacred to a man. Over three hundred pieces of artillery fell into the victors' hands, besides nine thousand ammunition waggons, a hundred thousand oxen, twenty-five thousand tents, and a million pounds of gunpowder. The unlucky Vezlr paid for his error with his head. Like the Cartha- ginians, the Turks showed scant mercy to defeated generals. ^ Schimmer, "Two Sieges of Vienna" (Eng. trans.), 136-138. THE SULTAN^S HUNTS, 237 Thus was Vienna for a second time delivered out of the hands of the Ottomans ; and never again would the horsetails be seen from the steeple of St. Stephen's church ; where the preacher triumphantly- commented on the text, " There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." It is, perhaps, useless to speculate on the probable consequences of the contrary event. Had Vienna been taken, as it almost was, by the Turks, the course of European history might possibly have been changed ; but it may be questioned whether the Turks retained enough of their pristine vigour to hold such a conquest in the face of such powerful and brilliant leaders as the states of Europe could then and afterwards bring against it. Two centuries earlier it might have been otherwise : Mohammed II. might have held Vienna against the world. But Mohammed had slept the last sleep for two hundred years, and no one now sat in his seat at Constantinople who was worthy to wear his armour or wield his sword. . At the end of the seventeenth century, the Turks possessed no Sultan or general who could withstand such men as Monte- cuculi, Charles of Lorraine, Prince Eugene, or Marl- borough. The Sultan, who had been upon the throne for thirty- five eventful years, was no sluggard, indeed ; but his energies were wholly absorbed in the chase. " The long reign of Mohammed IV. (1648-87) was the intermediate epoch between the triumphs of the hero, the codes of the legislator, and the pompous nullity of the caged puppets of the seraglio ; and while the Ottoman stan- dard was planting on * Troy's rival Candia,' the now 238 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. unwarlike, but still spirited, Lord of Constantinople, and successor of the Orkhans, Mohammeds, Sellms, Murads, and Suleymans, was chasing the wild deer of Pelion and Olympus, and displaying his sylvan pomp at Larissa and Tirnova. To the remote scene of the Sultan's recreations. Pashas, Generals, Vezlrs, and Embassies, were seen hastening ; and the splendour of the seraglio, with its ceremonial, was transferred to mountain wastes and deserts ; amid untrodden forests arose halls of Western tapestry, and of Indian texture, rivalling in grandeur, and surpassing in richness, the regal palaces of the Bosphorus. Brusa, the Asiatic Olympus, the field of Troy, the sides of Ida, the banks of the Maeander, the plains of Sardis, were the favourite resorts of this equal lover of the chase and of nature. But the places more particularly honoured by his preference were Jamboli, in the Balkan, about fifty miles to the north of Adrianople, and Tirnova. Whenever he arrived or departed the inhabitants of fifteen districts turned out to assist him in his sport ; these festivities were rendered attractive to the people by exhibitions and processions, somewhat in the spirit of ancient Greece, as well as in that of Tartary, where all the esnafs or trades displayed in procession the wonders of their art, or the symbols of their calling, and in which exhibitions of rare objects and grotesque figures were combined with theatric pantomime." *" But at home this sporting Sultan was less amiable, or his ministers perhaps took too much upon them- selves : for it was in his reign that a French Ambas- sador was called a Jew by the Grand VezTr, struck in the face, and beaten with a stool ; that a Russian TREATMENT OF AMBASSADORS. 239 envoy was actually kicked out of the presence cham- ber ; and the Imperial dragoman repeatedly bastina- doed. The Ottoman ministers refused to rise on receiving a foreign representative ; yet the ambassa- dors were regarded as guests at the Porte, and were allowed so much a day for their keep. It was only in the present century that this contemptuous bearing towards Giaours was amended ; and as the Grand Vezir persisted in remaining seated when an Ambas- sador came for audience, a compromise was arranged, whereby the minister and the envoy entered the chamber simultaneously, by opposite doors, so that neither had the opportunity to seat himself.^ Defeated at Vienna, the Turks did not retire from Hungary without striking a blow at the over-confident King of Poland, who in his hot pursuit forgot the ancient valour of his foes and received a severe lesson at Parkany. But this check only made the Imperialists more careful, and the Ottomans found themselves driven step by step from their northern possessions. City after city was retaken by the enemy ; a defeat at Mohacs, once a name of glory to the Turks, still further discouraged them ; Buda was retaken after 145 years of vassalage (1686) ; the Austrians poured through Hungary and took Belgrade (1688) ; Louis of Baden entered Bosnia ; the Venetians invaded Dalmatia, and their future Doge, the former defender of CandiayMoro- sini, subdued the Peloponnesus. The great Athenian temple, the Parthenon, after having served the By- zantines as a church and the Turks as a powder maga- zine, was finally shattered to ruins by the Venetians in » Urquhart, " Spirit of the East," i. 341-345 (ed. 1838). 240 THE RULE OF THE VEZIRS. this campaign. The Russians and Poles alone had been kept at arm's length on the north-east frontier. The Turkish dominions in Europe were now reduced to half their former extent. Again the Sultan had recourse to the famous iamily that had already served his empire so well. Coprili-zada Mustafa, a brother of the more cele- )rated Ahmed/ was made Grand VezTr in i6