the order of their age and actions. 1. 1. Mustapha;

Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, | their patrimony. I shall enumerate their names in without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed laden It is doubtful, whether I relate the with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops story of the true Mustapha, or of an impostor who to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to pro- personated that lost prince. He fought by his tect the obedient natives. When he had broken father's side in the battle of Angora: but when the the fabric of their ancient government, he abandon-❘ captive sultan was permitted to inquire for his ed them to the evils which his invasion had aggra- | children, Mousa alone could be found; and the vated or caused, nor were these evils compensated Turkish historians, the slaves of the triumphant by any present or possible benefits. 3. The king-faction, are persuaded that his brother was condoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the pro-founded among the slain. If Mustapha escaped per field which he laboured to cultivate and adorn, from that disastrous field, he was concealed twelve as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his years from his friends and enemies; till he emerged peaceful labours were often interrupted, and some- in Thessaly, and was hailed by a numerous party, times blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. as the son and successor of Bajazet. His first While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, defeat would have been his last, had not the true, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master or false, Mustapha been saved by the Greeks, and and their duty. The public and private injuries | restored, after the decease of his brother Mahomet, were poorly redressed by the tardy rigour of inquiry to liberty and empire. A degenerate mind seemed and punishment; and we must be content to praise to argue his spurious birth: and if, on the throne the institutions of Timour, as the specious idea of a of Adrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman sultan, perfect monarchy. 4. Whatsoever might be the his flight, his fetters, and an ignominious gibbet, blessings of his administration, they evaporated delivered the impostor to popular contempt. A with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was similar character and claim was asserted by several the ambition of his children and grandchildren; rival pretenders; thirty persons are said to have the enemies of each other and of the people. A suffered under the name of Mustapha; and these fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory frequent executions may perhaps insinuate, that by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after his decease, the Turkish court was not perfectly secure of the the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; death of the lawful prince. 2. After and before the end of a century, Transoxiana and his father's captivity, Isad reigned for Persia were trampled by the Uzbeks from the north, some time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Turkmans of the black and white sheep. and the Black sea; and his ambassadors were disThe race of Timour would have been extinct, if a missed from the presence of Timour with fair prohero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not mises and honourable gifts. But their master was fled before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hin- soon deprived of his province and life, by a jealous dostan. His successors (the great Moguls") ex- brother, the sovereign of Amasia; and the final tended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to event suggested a pious allusion, that the law of Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the gulf of Moses and Jesus, of Isa and Mousa, had been Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their em- abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3. pire has been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi Soliman is not numbered in the lists of A. D. 1403—1410, have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the the Turkish emperors: yet he checked the victorious richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a progress of the Moguls; and after their departure, company of christian merchants, of a remote island united for a while the thrones of Adrianople and Boursa. In war he was brave, active, and fortunate: his courage was softened by clemency; but it was likewise inflamed by presumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline, in a government where either the subject or the sovereign must continually

in the northern ocean.

Civil wars of the

A. D. 1403-1421.

Far different was the fate of the sons of Bajazet, Ottoman monarchy. The massy trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away, than it again arose with fresh vigour and more lively vegetation. When Timour, in every sense, had evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a king. The open country was overspread with hordes of shepherds and robbers of Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent conquests of Bajazet were restored to the emirs, one of whom, in base revenge, demolished his sepulchre; and his five sons were eager, by civil discord, to consume the remnant of

a Consult the last chapters of Sherefeddin and Arabshah, and M. de Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. ir. I. xx.) Fraser's History of Nadir Shah, p. 1-62. The story of Timour's descendants is imperfectly told; and the second and third parts of Sherefeddin are unknown.

b Shah Allum, the present Mogul, is in the fourteenth degree from Timour, by Miran Shah, his third son. See the second volume of Dow's History of Hindostan.

2. Isa;

3. Soliman,

tremble: his vices alienated the chiefs of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in a prince and a man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the slumber of intoxication he was surprised by his brother Mousa; and as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath, after a reign of seven years and ten months.

The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that of Mustapha, are related, according to the Turks, by Demetrius Cantemir, (p. 58–82Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles, (l. iv. and v.) Phranza, (l. i. c. 30-32) and Ducas, (c. 18-27.) the last is the most copious and best informed. d Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 26. whose testimony on this occasion is weighty and valuable. The existence of Isa (unknown to the Turks) is likewise confirmed by Sherefeddin, (1. v. c. 57.)

4. Mousa, A. D. 1410.

Be

his successor in the palace of Boursa. A new war was kindled in Europe by the prince, or impostor, Mustapha; the first vizir lost his army and his head; but the more fortunate Ibrahim, whose name and family are still revered, extinguished the last pretender to the throne of Bajazet, and closed the scene of domestic hostility.

Reunion of the

A. D. 1421.

In these conflicts, the wisest Turks, and indeed the body of the nation, Ottoman empire, were strongly attached to the unity of the empire; and Romania and Anatolia, so often torn asunder by private ambition, were animated by a strong and invincible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have instructed the christian powers; and had they occupied, with a confederate fleet, the straits of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been speedily annihilated. But the schism of the west, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted the Latins from this generous enterprise: they enjoyed the present respite, without a thought of futurity; and were often tempted by a momentary interest to serve the common enemy of their religion. A colony of Genoese, which had been planted at Phocæah on the Ionian coast, was enriched by the lucrative monopoly of alum; and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was secured by the annual payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoese governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth, embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook, with seven stout galleys, to transport him from Asia to Europe. The sultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral's ship; which was manned by eight hundred of the bravest Franks. His life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance, applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the passage, knelt before him, and gratefully accepted a discharge of his arrears of tribute. They landed in sight of Mustapha and Gallipoli; two thousand Italians, armed with lances and battle-axes, attended Amurath to the conquest of Adrianople; and this venal service was soon repaid by the ruin of the commerce and colony of Phocæa.

4. The investiture of Mousa degraded him as the slave of the Moguls: his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania. Mousa fled in disguise from the palace of Boursa; traversed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over the Wallachian and Servian hills; and after some vain attempts, ascended the throne of Adrianople, so recently stained with the blood of Soliman. In a reign of three years and a half, his troops were victorious against the christians of Hungary and the Morea; but Mousa was ruined by his timorous disposition and unseasonable clemency. After resigning the sovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his ministers, and the superior ascen5. Mahomet 1. dant of his brother Mahomet. 5. The A. D. 1413-1421. final victory of Mahomet was the just recompence of his prudence and moderation. fore his father's captivity, the royal youth had been intrusted with the government of Amasia, thirty days' journey from Constantinople, and the Turkish frontier against the christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The castle, in Asiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of Amasia, which is equally divided by the river Iris, rises on either side in the form of an amphitheatre, and represents on a smaller scale the image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obscure and contumacious angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his silent independence, and chased from the province the last stragglers of the Tartar host. He relieved himself from the dangerous neighbourhood of Isa; but in the contests of their more powerful brethren, his firm neutrality was respected; till, after the triumph of Mousa, he stood forth the heir and avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by treaty, and Romania by arms; and the soldier who presented him with the head of Mousa, was rewarded as the benefactor of his king and country. The eight years of his sole and peaceful reign were usefully employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and restoring on a firmer basis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. His last care was the choice of two vizirs, Bajazet and Ibrahim, who Reign of Amu. might guide the youth of his son Amurath; and such was their union and prudence, that they concealed above forty days the emperor's death, till the arrival of

rath II.

A. D. 1421-1451.
Feb. 9.

e Arabshah, loc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph. tab. xvii. p. 302. Busbequius, epist. i. p. 96, 97. in Itinere C. P. et Amasiano,

The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a contemporary Greek, (Ducas, c. 25.) His descendants are the sole nobles in Turkey: they content themselves with the administration of his pious foundations, are excused from public offices, and receive two annual visits from the sultan. (Cantemir, p. 76.)

See Pachymer, (1. v. c. 29.) Nicephorus Gregoras, (1. ii. c. 1.) Sherefeddin, (1. v. c. 57.) and Ducas, (c. 25) The last of these, a curious and careful observer, is entitled, from his birth and station, to particular credit in all that concerns lonia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted to New Phocæa, he mentions the English (A77Anvoc); an early evidence of Mediterranean trade.

For the spirit of navigation, and freedom of ancient Phocæa, or rather of the Phocæaus, consult the first book of Herodotus, and the

State of the

A. D. 1402-1425.

But a

If Timour had generously marched
at the request, and to the relief, of the Greek empire,
Greek emperor, he might be entitled to
the praise and gratitude of the christians.
mussulman, who carried into Georgia the sword of
persecution, and respected the holy warfare of
Bajazet, was not disposed to pity or succour the
idolaters of Europe. The Tartar followed the impulse

Geographical Index of his last and learned French translator, M.
Larcher, (tom. vii. p. 299.)

i Phocæa is not enumerated by Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 52.) among
the places productive of alum; he reckons Egypt as the first, and for
the second the isle of Melos, whose alum mines are described by Tour.
nefort, (tom i. lettre iv.) a traveller and a naturalist. After the loss of
Phoca, the Genoese, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the isle of
Ischia. (Ismael. Bouillaud, ad Ducam, c. 25.)

k The writer who has the most abused this fabulous generosity, is our ingenious Sir William Temple, (his Works, vol. iii. p. 349, 450, oc: tavo edition,) that lover of exotic virtue. After the conquest of Russia, &c. and the passage of the Danube, his Tartar hero relieves, visits, admires, and refuses the city of Constantine. His flattering pencil deviates in every line from the truth of history; yet his pleasing fictions are more excusable than the gross errors of Cantemir.

|

Amurath II.

A. D. 1422.
June 10-

0

of ambition; and the deliverance of Constantinople | they received an annual pension of three hundred was the accidental consequence. When Manuel thousand aspers. At the door of his prison, Musabdicated the government, it was his prayer, rather tapha subscribed to every proposal; and the keys than his hope, that the ruin of the church and state of Gallipoli, or rather of Europe, were stipulated might be delayed beyond his unhappy days; and as the price of his deliverance. But no sooner was after his return from a western pilgrimage, he ex- he seated on the throne of Romania, than be dispected every hour the news of the sad catastrophe. missed the Greek ambassadors with a smile of conOn a sudden, he was astonished and rejoiced by the tempt, declaring, in a pious tone, that, at the day of intelligence of the retreat, the overthrow, and the judgment, he would rather answer for the violation captivity of the Ottoman. Manuel1 immediately of an oath, than for the surrender of a mussulman sailed from Modon in the Morea, ascended the city into the hands of the infidels. The emperor was throne of Constantinople, and dismissed his blind at once the enemy of the two rivals; from whom competitor to an easy exile in the isle of Lesbos. he had sustained, and to whom he had offered, an The ambassadors of the son of Bajazet were soon injury; and the victory of Amurath was followed, introduced to his presence; but their pride was fallen, in the ensuing spring, by the siege of Constantitheir tone was modest; they were awed by the just nople." apprehension, lest the Greeks should open to the Moguls the gates of Europe. Soliman saluted the emperor by the name of father; solicited at his hands the government or gift of Romania; and promised to deserve his favour by inviolable friendship, and the restitution of Thessalonica, with the most important places along the Strymon, the Propontis, and the Black sea. The alliance of Soliman exposed the emperor to the enmity and revenge of Mousa: the Turks appeared in arms before the gates of Constantinople; but they were repulsed by sea and land; and unless the city was guarded by some foreign mercenaries, the Greeks must have wondered at their own triumph. But, instead of prolonging the division of the Ottoman powers, the policy or passion of Manuel was tempted to assist the most formidable of the sons of Bajazet. He concluded a treaty with Mahomet, whose progress was checked by the insuperable barrier of Gallipoli: the sultan and his troops were transported over the Bosphorus; he was hospitably entertained in the capital; and his successful sally was the first step to the conquest of Romania. The ruin was suspended by the prudence and moderation of the conqueror: he faithfully discharged his own obligations and those of Soliman, respected the laws of gratitude and peace; and left the emperor guardian of his two younger sons, in the vain hope of saving them from the jealous cruelty of their brother Amurath. But the execution of his last testament would have offended the national honour and religion: and the divan unanimously pronounced, that the royal youths should never be abandoned to the custody and education of a christian dog. On this refusal, the Byzantine councils were divided: but the age and caution of Manuel yielded to the presumption of his son John; and they unsheathed a dangerous weapon of revenge, by dismissing the true or false Mustapha, who had long been detained as a captive and hostage, and for whose maintenance 1 For the reigns of Manuel and John, of Mahomet I. and Amurath 11. see the Othman history of Cantemir, (p. 70-95.) and the three Greeks, Chalcondyles, Phranza, and Ducas, who is still superior to his rivals. m The Turkish asper (from the Greek aampos) is, or was, a piece of white or silver money, at present much debased, but which was formerly equivalent to the 54th part, at least, of a Venetian ducat or sequin; and the 300,000 aspers, a princely allowance or royal tribute, may be computed at 25001. sterling. (Leunclav. Pandect. Turc. p, 406-408.)

The religious merit of subduing the Siege of Constancity of the Cæsars, attracted from Asia tinople by a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom: their military August 24. ardour was inflamed by the promise of rich spoils and beautiful females; and the sultan's ambition was consecrated by the presence and prediction of Seid Bechar, a descendant of the prophet, who arrived in the camp, on a mule, with a venerable train of five hundred disciples. But he might blush, if a fanatic could blush, at the failure of his assurances. The strength of the walls resisted an army of two hundred thousand Turks; their assaults were repelled by the sallies of the Greeks and their foreign mercenaries; the old resources of defence were opposed to the new engines of attack; and the enthusiasm of the dervish, who was snatched to heaven in visionary converse with Mahomet, was answered by the credulity of the christians, who beheld the Virgin Mary, in a violet garment, walking on the rampart and animating their courage. After a siege of two months, Amurath was recalled to Boursa by a domestic revolt, which had been kindled by Greek treachery, and was soon extinguished by the death of a guiltless brother. While he The emperor led his janizaries to new conquests in John Palæolo Europe and Asia, the Byzantine empire July 21was indulged in a servile and preca- A. D. 1448. rious respite of thirty years. Manuel October 31. sunk into the grave; and John Palæologus was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three hundred thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the suburbs of Constantinople.

gus I.

A. D. 1425.

of the Ottomans.

In the establishment and restoration Hereditary suc of the Turkish empire, the first merit cession and merit must doubtless be assigned to the personal qualities of the sultans; since, in human life, the most important scenes will depend on the charactor of a single actor. By some shades of wisdom n For the siege of Constantinople in 1422, see the particular and con temporary narrative of John Cananus, published by Leo Allatius, at the end of his edition of Acropolita, (p. 188-199.)

o Cantemir, p. 80. Cananus, who describes Seid Bechar without naming him, supposes that the friend of Mahomet assumed in his amours the privilege of a prophet, and that the fairest of the Greek nuns were promised to the saint and his disciples.

p For this miraculous apparition, Cananus appeals to the mussulman saint; but who will bear testimony for Seid Bechar!

and virtue, they may be discriminated from each other; but, except in a single instance, a period of nine reigns, and two hundred and sixty-five years, is occupied, from the elevation of Othman to the death of Soliman, by a rare series of warlike and active princes, who impressed their subjects with obedience and their enemies with terror. Instead of the slothful luxury of the seraglio, the heirs of royalty were educated in the counsel and the field: from early youth they were intrusted by their fathers with the command of provinces and armies; and this manly institution, which was often productive of civil war, must have essentially contributed to the discipline and vigour of the monarchy. The Ottomans cannot style themselves, like the Arabian caliphs, the descendants or successors of the apostle of God; and the kindred which they claim with the Tartar khans of the house of Zingis, appears to be founded in flattery rather than in truth. Their origin is obscure; but their sacred and indefeasible right, which no time can erase, and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A weak or vicious sultan may be deposed and strangled; but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot: nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty vizir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation.

Education and

Turks.

To the spirit and constitution of that discipline of the nation, a strong and singular influence may however be ascribed. The primitive subjects of Othman were the four hundred families of wandering Turkmans, who had followed his ancestors from the Oxus to the Sangar; and the plains of Anatolia are still covered with the white and black tents of their rustic brethren. But this original drop was dissolved in the mass of voluntary and vanquished subjects, who, under the name of Turks, are united by the common ties of religion, language, and manners. In the cities, from Erzeroum to Belgrade, that national appellation is common to all the Moslems, the first and most honourable inhabitants; but they have abandoned, at least in Romania, the villages, and the cultivation of the land, to the Christian peasants. In the vigorous age of the Ottoman government, the Turks were themselves excluded from all civil and military honours; and a servile class, an artificial people, was raised by the discipline of education to obey, to conquer, and to command. From the time of Orchan and

4 See Ricaut, (1. i. c. 13.) The Turkish sultans assume the title of khan. Yet Abulghazi is ignorant of his Ottoman cousins.

The third grand vizir of the name of Kiuperli, who was slain at the battle of Salankanen in 1691. (Cantemir, p. 382.) presumed to say, that all the successors of Soliman had been fools or tyrants, and that it was time to abolish the race. (Marsigli Stato Militare, &c. p. 28.) This political heretic was a good whig, and justified against the French ambassador the revolution of England. (Mignot, Hist. des Ottomans, tom, ii. p. 434.) His presumption condemns the singular exception of continuing offices in the same family.

the first Amurath, the sultans were persuaded that a government of the sword must be renewed in each generation with new soldiers; and that such soldiers must be sought, not in effeminate Asia, but among the hardy and warlike natives of Europe. The provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Servia, became the perpetual seminary of the Turkish army; and when the royal fifth of the captives was diminished by conquest, an inhuman tax, of the fifth child, or of every fifth year, was rigorously levied on the Christian families. At the age of twelve or fourteen years, the most robust youths were torn from their parents; their names were enrolled in a book; and from that moment they were clothed, taught, and maintained, for the public service. According to the promise of their appearance, they were selected for the royal schools of Boursa, Pera, and Adrianople, intrusted to the care of the bashaws, or dispersed in the houses of the Anatolian peasantry. It was the first care of their masters to instruct them in the Turkish language: their bodies were exercised by every labour that could fortify their strength; they learned to wrestle, to leap, to run, to shoot with the bow, and afterwards with the musket; till they were drafted into the chambers and companies of the janizaries, and severely trained in the military or monastic discipline of the order. The youths most conspicuous for birth, talents, and beauty, were admitted into the inferior class of agiamoglans, or the more liberal rank of ichoglans, of whom the former were attached to the palace, and the latter to the person of the prince. In four successive schools, under the rod of the white eunuchs, the arts of horsemanship and of darting the javelin were their daily exercise, while those of a more studious cast applied themselves to the study of the Koran, and the knowledge of the Arabic and Persian tongues. As they advanced in seniority and merit, they were gradually dismissed to military, civil, and even ecclesiastical employments: the longer their stay, the higher was their expectation; till, at a mature period, they were admitted into the number of the forty agas, who stood before the sultan, and were promoted by his choice to the government of provinces and the first honours of the empire. Such a mode of institution was admirably adapted to the form and spirit of a despotic monarchy. The ministers and generals were, in the strictest sense, the slaves of the emperor, to whose bounty they were indebted for their instruction and support, When they left the seraglio, and suffered their beards to grow as the symbol of enfranchisement, they found themselves in an important office, without faction or friendship, without parents and without heirs, dependent on the hand which had raised them

Chalcondyles (1. v.) and Ducas (c. 23.) exhibit the rude lineaments of the Ottoman policy, and the transmutation of christian children into Turkish soldiers.

This sketch of the Turkish education and discipline is chiefly borrowed from Ricaut's State of the Ottoman empire, the Stato Militare del Imperio Ottomano of count Marsigli, (in Haya, 1732. in folio,) and a Description of the Seraglio, approved by Mr. Greaves himself, a curious traveller, and inserted in the second volume of his works.

from the dust, and which, on the slightest displea- | sure, could break in peaces these statues of glass, as they are aptly termed by the Turkish proverb." In the slow and painful steps of education, their character and talents were unfolded to a discerning eye: the man, naked and alone, was reduced to the standard of his personal merit; and, if the sovereign had wisdom to choose, he possessed a pure and boundless liberty of choice. The Ottoman candidates were trained by the virtues of abstinence to those of action; by the habits of submission to those of command. A similar spirit was diffused among the troops; and their silence and sobriety, their patience and modesty, have extorted the reluctant praise of their Christian enemies. Nor can the victory appear doubtful, if we compare the discipline and exercise of the janizaries with the pride of birth, the independence of chivalry, the ignorance of the new levies, the mutinous temper of the veterans, and the vices of intemperance and disorder, which so long contaminated the armies of Europe.