and invincible. The sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator and judge of their valour: he was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic troops, whom he reserved 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 atabals; and experience has proved, that the mechanical 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 deliverance or destruction of the Roman empire. The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections; the skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform 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 a thousand 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 gauntlet of John Justiniani. The sight of his blood, and the exquisite pain, appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsels were the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew from his station in quest of a surgeon, his flight was perceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor. "Your wound," exclaimed Palæologus, "is slight; the danger is pressing; your presence is necessary; and whither will you retire?" "I will retire," said the trembling Genoese, "by the same road which God has opened to the Turks;" and at these words he hastily passed through one of the breaches of the inner wall. By this pusillanimous act, he stained the honours of a military life; and the few days which he survived in Galata, or the isle of Chios, were imbittered by his own and the public reproach.m His example was imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries, and the defence began to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled m In the severe censure of the flight of Justiniani, Phranza expresses his own feelings and those of the public. For some private reasons, he is treated with more lenity and respect by Ducas; but the words of Leonardus Chiensis express his strong and recent indignation, gloriæ salutis suique oblitus. In the whole series of their eastern policy, his countrymen, the Genoese, were always suspected, and often guilty. n Ducas kills him with two blows of Turkish soldiers; Chalcondyles wounds him in the shoulder, and then tramples him in the gate. The. grief of Phranza carrying him among the enemy, escapes from the precise image of his death; but we may, without flattery, apply these noble lines of Dryden : As to Sebastian, let them search the field, vigour. The number of the Ottomans 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 Hassan the janizary, of gigantic stature and strength. With his scymitar in one hand and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortification of the thirty janizaries, who were emulous of his valour, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve companions had reached the summit; the giant was precipitated from the rampart; 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 Palæologus and Cantacuzene: his mournful exclamation was heard, "Cannot there be found a christian 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: amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. After his death, resistance and order were no more: the Greeks fled towards the city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner wall, and as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbour. In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and 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 Loss of the city a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chagan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the second. Her Death of the em. peror Constantine Palæologus. and empire. Send one to climb, and looking down beneath, Spondanus, (A. D. 1453. No. 10.) who has hopes of his salvation, wishes to absolve this demand from the guilt of suicide. p Leonardus Chiensis very properly observes, that the Turks, had they known the emperor, would have laboured to save and secure a captive so acceptable to the sultan. Cantemir, p. 96. The christian ships in the mouth of the harbour had flanked and retarded this naval attack. empire only had been subverted by the Latins: her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors." The Turks enter The tidings of misfortune ly with a and pillage Con- rapid wing; yet such was the extent stantinople. of Constantinople, that the more distant quarters might prolong, some moments, the happy ignorance of their ruin. But in the general consternation, in the feelings of selfish or social anxiety, in the tumult and thunder of the assault, a sleepless night and morning must have elapsed; nor can I believe that many Grecian ladies were awakened by the janizaries from a sound and tranquil slumber. On the assurance of the 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 the multitude of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins: the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on the prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor; that one day the Turks should enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine in the square before St. Sophia: but that this would be the term of their calamities: that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand, and would deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a poor man seated at the foot of the column. "Take this sword," would he say, “and avenge the people of the Lord." At these animating words, the Turks would instantly fly, and the victorious Romans would drive them from the west, and from all Anatolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this occasion, that Ducas, with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and obstinacy of the Greeks. "Had that angel appeared," exclaims the historian, “had he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to the union of the church, even then, in that fatal moment, you would have rejected your safety, or have deceived your God." Captivity of the While they expected the descent Greeks. of the tardy angel, the doors were broken with axes; and as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed Chatcondyles most absurdly supposes, that Constantinople was sacked by the Asiatics in revenge for the ancient calamities of Troy; and the grammarians of the fifteenth century are happy to melt down the uncouth appellation of Turks, into the more classic name of Teucri. When Cyrus surprised Babylon during the celebration of a festi. val, so vast was the city, and so careless were the inhabitants, that much time elapsed before the distant quarters knew that they were captives, Herodotus, (1. i. c. 191.) and Usher, (Annal. p. 78.) who has quoted from the prophet Jeremiah a passage of similar import. This lively description is extracted from Ducas, (c. 39.) who two years afterwards was sent ambassador from the prince of Lesbos to the sultan, (c. 44.) Till Lesbos was subdued in 1463, (Phranza, l. iii. c. 27.) in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth, attracted their choice; and the right of property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space of an hour, the 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. 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 haram to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows. At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations of the capital; nor could any palace, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty thousand of this devoted people were transported from the city to the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold according to the caprice or interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude through the provinces of the Ottoman empire. Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phranza, first chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved with his family in the common lot. After suffering four months the hardships of slavery, he recovered his freedom; in the ensuing winter he ventured to Adrianople, and ransomed his wife from the mir bashi or master of horse; but his two children, in the flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of Mahomet himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio, perhaps a virgin; his son, in the fifteenth year of his age, preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the royal lover." A deed thus inhuman cannot surely be expiated by the taste and liberality with which he released a Grecian matron and her two daughters, on receiving a Latin ode from Philelphus, who had chosen a wife in that noble family. The pride or cruelty of Mathat island must have been full of the fugitives of Constantinople, who delighted to repeat, perhaps to adorn, the tale of their misery. u See Phranza, I. iii. c. 20, 21. His expressions are positive: Ameras suâ manu jugulavit... volebat enim eo turpiter et nefarie abuti. Me miserum et infelicem. Yet he could only learn from report the bloody or impure scenes that were acted in the dark recesses of the seraglio. x See Tiraboschi, (tom. vi. p. i. p. 290.) and Lancelot. (Mem. de l' Academie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718.) I should be curious to learn how he could praise the public enemy, whom he so often reviles as the most corrupt and inhuman of tyrants. be inflicted by the zealous mussulman on the monuments of idolatry. Perhaps, instead of joining the public clamour, a philosopher will observe, that in the decline of the arts, the workmanship could not be more valuable than the work, and that a fresh supply of visions and miracles would speedily be renewed by the craft of the priest and the credulity of the people. He will more seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We may reflect with pleasure, that an inestimable portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time and barbarism. homet would have been most sensibly gratified by | vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity God, was despoiled of the oblations of ages; and of cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he escaped the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases from Galata in a plebeian habit. The chain and and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly conentrance of the outward harbour was still occupied verted to the service of mankind. After the divine by the Italian ships of merchandise and war. They images had been stripped of all that could be valuhad signalized their valour in the siege; they em- able to a profane eye, the canvass, or the wood, was braced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish torn, or broken, or burnt, or trod under foot, or mariners were dissipated in the pillage of the city. applied, in the stables or the kitchen, to the vilest When they hoisted sail, the beach was covered with uses. The example of sacrilege was imitated, howa suppliant and lamentable crowd: but the means ever, from the Latin conquerors of Constantinople; of transportation were scanty: the Venetians and and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and the Genoese selected their countrymen; and notwith-saints, had sustained from the guilty catholic, might standing the fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and embarked with their most precious effects. Amount of the In the fall and the sack of great spoil. cities, an historian is condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity: the same effects must be produced by the same passions; and when those passions may be indulged without control, small, alas! is the difference between civilized and savage man. Amidst the vague exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or immoderate effusion of christian blood: but according to their maxims, (the maxims of antiquity,) the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom, of his captives of both sexes. The wealth of Constantinople had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. But as no regular division was attempted of the spoil, the respective shares were not determined by merit; and From the first hourd of the memo- Mahomet II. the rewards of valour were stolen away by the fol- rable twenty-ninth of May, disorder visits the city, lowers of the camp, who had declined the toil and and rapine prevailed in Constantino- palace, &c. danger of the battle. The narrative of their depre-ple, till the eighth hour of the same day; when the dations could not afford either amusement or instruction: the total amount, in the last poverty of the empire, has been valued at four millions of ducats; and of this sum a small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation: but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle ostentation of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches, excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second firmament, the St. Sophia, the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizirs, bashaws, 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 oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or atmeidan, his eye was 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 these monsters, which in the eye of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door been dropt. Even with the restitution, the foreign property would scarcely exceed one-fourth. b See the enthusiastic praises and lamentations of Phranza, 1. iii. c. 17. c See Ducas, (c. 43.) and an epistle, July 15th, 1453, from Laurus Quirinus to pope Nicholas V. (Hody de Græcis, p. 192. from a MS. in the Cotton library.) d The Julian calendar, which reckons the days and hours from midnight, was used at Constantinople. But Ducas seems to understand the natural hours from sun-rise. e See the Turkish Annals, p. 329. and the Pandects of Leunclavius, p. 448. f I have had occasion (p. 238.) to mention this curious relic of Grecian, antiquity. 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 mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scymitar, that, if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the eastern church was transformed into a mosch: the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; 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 muezin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mahomet the second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august, but desolate, mansion, of a 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 vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: "The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab."h His behaviour to | ragement from the Turkish vizir; and from this perilous interview, he was at length dismissed with the assurance of pardon and protection. Mahomet condescended to visit his wife, a venerable princess oppressed with sickness and grief; and his consolation for her misfortunes was in the most tender strain of humanity and filial reverence. A similar clemency was extended to the principal officers of state, of whom several were ransomed at his expense; and during some days he declared himself the friend and father of the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and before his departure, the hippodrome streamed with the blood of his noblest captives. His perfidious cruelty is execrated by the christians; they adorn with the colours of heroic martyrdom the execution of the great duke and his two sons; and his death is ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children to the tyrant's lust. Yet a Byzantine historian has dropt an unguarded word of conspiracy, deliverance, and Italian succour: such treason may be glorious; but the rebel who bravely ventures, has justly forfeited, his life; nor should we blame a conqueror for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the eighteenth of June, the victorious sultan returned to Adrianople; and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the christian princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the eastern empire. Constantinople had been left naked He re-peoples and and desolate, without a prince or a adorns Coustanpeople. But she could not be despoiltinople. ed of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune. Boursa and Adrianople, the ancient seats of the Ottomans, sunk into provincial towns; and Mahomet the second established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the same commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. The fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the Latins, were prudently destroyed; but the damage of the Turkish cannon was soon repaired; and before the month of August, great quantities of lime had been burnt for the re Yet his mind was not satisfied, nor the Greeks. did the victory seem complete, till he was informed of the fate of Constantine; whether he had escaped, or been made prisoner, or had fallen in the battle. Two janizaries claimed the honour and reward of his death: the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged with tears the head of their late emperor; and, after exposing the bloody trophy, Mahomet bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. After his decease, Lucas Notaras, great duke, and first minister of the empire, was the most important prisoner. When he offered his person and his treasures at the foot of the throne, "And why," said the indignantstoration of the walls of the capital. As the entire, sultan," did you not employ these treasures in the defence of your prince and country?" were yours," answered the slave; "God had re"If he reserved served them for your hands." "They them for me," replied the despot," how have you presumed to withhold them so long by a fruitless and fatal resistance?" The great duke alleged the obstinacy of the strangers, and some secret encou g We are obliged to Cantemir (p. 102.) for the Turkish account of the conversion of St. Sophia, so bitterly deplored by Phranza and Ducas. It is amusing enough to observe, in what opposite lights the same object appears to a mussulman and a christian eye. h This distich, which Cantemir gives in the original, derives new feeling carried the mind of the conqueror to the past or the future. property of the soil and buildings, whether public or private, or profane or sacred, was now transferred to the conqueror, he first separated a space of eight furlongs from the point of the triangle for the establishment of his seraglio or palace. It is here, in the bosom of luxury, that the grand signior (as he has been emphatically named by the Italians) appears to reign over Europe and Asia; but his person on time, or death, or his own retreat to a monastery, extort a feeling of sympathy or forgiveness. Ducas is inclined to praise and pity the martyr, Chalcondyles is neuter, but we are indebted to him for the hint of the Greek conspiracy. 1 For the restitution of Constantinople and the Turkish foundations, see Cantemir, (p. 102-109.) Ducas, (c. 42.) with Thevenot, Tournefort, and the rest of our modern travellers. From a gigantic picture of the greatness, population, &c. of Constantinople and the Ottoman empire (Abrégé de l'Histoire Ottomane, tom. i. p. 16-21.) we may learn, tizat in the year 1586, the Moslems were less numerous in the capital than the christians, or even the Jews. the shores of the Bosphorus may not always be secure from the insults of a hostile navy. In the new character of a mosch, the cathedral of St. Sophia was endowed with an ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains, for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. The same model was imitated in the jami or royal moschs; and the first of these was built, by Mahomet himself, on the ruins of the church of the holy apostles, and the tombs of the Greek emperors. On the third day after the conquest, the grave of Abu Ayub, or Job, who had fallen in the first siege of the Arabs, was revealed in a vision; and it is before the sepulchre of the martyr, that the new sultans are girded with the sword of empire. Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian; nor shall I enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters: the population was speedily renewed; and before the end of September, five thousand families of Anatolia and Romania had obeyed the royal mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of death, to occupy their new habitations in the capital. The throne of Mahomet was guarded by the numbers and fidelity of his Moslem subjects; but his rational policy aspired to collect the remnant of the Greeks; and they returned in crowds, as soon as they were assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. In the election and investiture of a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated. With a mixture of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the sultan on his throne: who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office; who conducted the patriarch to the gate of the seraglio, presented him with a horse richly caparisoned, and directed the vizirs and bashaws to lead him to the palace which had been allotted for his residence." The churches of Constantinople were shared between the two religions their limits were marked; and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of Mahomet, the Greeks enjoyed above sixty years the benefit of this equal partition. Encouraged by the ministers of the divan, who wished to elude the fanaticism of the sultan, the christian advocates presumed to allege that this division had been an act, not of generosity, but of justice; not a concession, but a compact; and that if one half of the city had been m The Turbe, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is described and engraved in the Tableau General de l'Empire Ottoman, (Paris, 1787. in large folio,) a work of less use, perhaps, than magnificence, (tom. i. p. 305, 306.) n Phranza (1. iii. c. 19.) relates the ceremony, which has possibly been adorned in the Greek reports to each other, and to the Latins. The fact is confirmed by Emanuel Malaxus, who wrote, in vulgar Greek, the History of the Patriarchs after the taking of Constantinople, inserted in the Turco Græcia of Crusius, (1, v. p. 106-184) But the most patient reader will not believe that Mahomet adopted the catholic form, Sancta Trinitas quæ mihi donavit imperium te in patriarcham novæ Romæ deligit." From the Turco-Græcia of Crusius, &c. Spondanus (A. D. 1453, No. 21. 1458, No. 16. describes the slavery and domestic quarrels of the Greek church. The patriarch who succeeded Gennadius, threw himself in despair into a well. P Cantemir, (p. 101-105.) insists on the unanimous consent of the Turkish historians, ancient as well as modern, and argues, that they taken by storm, the other moiety had surrendered on the faith of a sacred capitulation. The original grant had indeed been consumed by fire; but the loss was supplied by the testimony of three aged janizaries who remembered the transaction; and their venal oaths are of more weight in the opinion of Cantemir, than the positive and unanimous consent of the history of the times." of Comnenus and The remaining fragments of the Extinction of the Greek kingdom in Europe and Asia I imperial families shall abandon to the Turkish arms; Palacologus. but the final extinction of the two last dynasties which have reigned in Constantinople, should terminate the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the east. The despots of the Morea, Demetrius and Thomas, the two surviving brothers of the name of PALEOLOGUS, were astonished by the death of the emperor Constantine, and the ruin of the monarchy. Hopeless of defence, they prepared, with the noble Greeks who adhered to their fortune, to seek a refuge in Italy, beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first apprehensions were dispelled by the victorious sultan, who contented himself with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and while his ambition explored the continent and the islands in search of prey, he indulged the Morea in a respite of seven years. But this respite was a period of grief, discord, and misery. The hexamilion, the rampart of the isthmus, so often raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three hundred Italian archers: the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks; they returned from their summer excursions with a train of captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured Grecks were heard with indifference and disdain. The Albanians, a vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with rapine and murder: the two despots implored the dangerous and humiliating aid of a neighbouring bashaw; and when he had quelled the revolt, his lessons inculcated the rule of their future conduct. Neither the ties of blood, nor the oaths which they repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar, nor the stronger pressure of necessity, could reconcile or suspend their domestic quarrels. They ravaged each other's patrimony with fire and sword; the alms and succours of the west were consumed in civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage and arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker rival invoked their supreme would not have violated the truth to diminish their national glory, since it is esteemed more honourable to take a city by force than by composition. But, 1, I doubt this consent, since he quotes no particu lar historian, and the Turkish Annals of Leunclavius affirm, without exception, that Mahomet took Constantinople per vim, (p. 329.) 2. The same argument may be turned in favour of the Greeks of the times, who would not have forgotten this honourable and salutary treaty. Voltaire, as usual, prefers the Turks to the christians. q For the genealogy and fall of the Comneni of Trebizond, see Ducange; (Fam. Byzant. p. 195.) for the last Palæologi, the same accurate antiquarian, (p. 244. 247, 248.) The Palæologi of Montferrat were not extinct till the next century; but they had forgotten their Greek origin and kindred. In the worthless story of the disputes and misfortunes of the two brothers, Phranza (1. iii. c. 21-30.) is too partial on the side of Thomas; Ducas (c. 44, 45.) is too brief, and Chalcondyles (l. viii. ix. x.) too diffuse and digressive. |