His defence of Belgrade, and death, A. D. 1456. the shock of the Ottoman army, four times more numerous than his own. As he fled alone through the woods of Walachia, the hero was surprised by two robbers; but while they disputed a gold chain that hung at his neck, he recovered his sword, slew the one, terrified the other, and, after new perils of captivity or death, consoled by his presence an afflicted kingdom. But the last and most glorious action of his life was the defence of Belgrade against the powers of Mahomet the second in person. After a siege of forty days, the Turks, who had already entered the town, were compelled to retreat; and the joyful nations celebrated Huniades and Belgrade as the bulwarks of Christendom. About a month after this great deliverance, the champion expired; and his most splendid epitaph is the regret of the Ottoman prince, who sighed that he could no longer hope for revenge against the single antagonist who had triumphed over his arms. On the first vacancy of the throne Matthias Corvinus, a youth of eighteen years of age, was elected and crowned by the grateful Hungarians. His reign was prosperous and long: Matthias aspired to the glory of a conqueror and a saint; but his purest merit is the encouragement of learning; and the Latin orators and historians, who were invited from Italy by the son, have shed the lustre of their eloquence on the father's character.' Birth and edu cation of Scanderbeg, prince of Albania, A. D. In the list of heroes, John Huniades and Scanderbeg are commonly associated: and they are both entitled to 1404-1413, &c. Our notice, since their occupation of the Ottoman arms delayed the ruin of the Greek empire. John Castriot, the father of Scanderbeg," was the hereditary prince of a small district of Epirus and Albania, between the mountains and the Adriatic sea. Unable to contend with the sultan's power, Castriot submitted to the hard conditions of peace and tribute; he delivered his four sons as the pledges of his fidelity; and the christian youths, after receiving the mark of circumcision, were instructed in the Mahometan religion, and trained in the arms and arts of Turkish policy. The three elder brothers were confounded in the crowd of slaves; and the poison to which their deaths are ascribed, cannot be verified or disproved by any positive evidence. Yet the suspicion is in a great measure removed by the kind and paternal treatment of George Castriot, the fourth brother, who, from his tender youth, displayed the strength and k See Bonfinius (decad iii. 1. viii. p. 492.) and Spondanus. (A. D. 1456, No. 1-7.) Huniades shared the glory of the defence of Belgrade with Capistran, a Franciscan friar; and in their respective narratives, neither the saint nor the hero condescend to take notice of his rival's merit. 1 See Bonfinius, decad iii. 1. viii.—decad iv. 1. viii. The observations of Spondanus on the life and character of Matthias Corvinus are curious and critical. (A. D. 1464, No. 1. 1475, No. 6. 1476, No. 14-16. 1490, No. 4, 5.) Italian fame was the object of his vanity. His actions are celebrated in the Epitome Rerum Hungaricarum (p. 322-412.) of Peter Ranzanus, a Siciliau. His wise and facetious sayings are regis. tered by Galestus Martius of Narni: (528–568.) and we have a parti. cular narrative of his wedding and coronation. These three tracts are all contained in the 1st vol. of Bel's Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum. m They are ranked by Sir William Temple, in his pleasing Essay on Heroic Virtue, (Works, vol. iii. p. 385.) among the seven chiefs who spirit of a soldier. The successive overthrow of a Tartar and two Persians, who carried a proud defiance to the Turkish court, recommended him to the favour of Amurath, and his Turkish appellation of Scanderbeg, (Iskender beg,) or the lord Alexander, is an indelible memorial of his glory and servitude. His father's principality was reduced into a province: but the loss was compensated by the rank and title of Sanjiak, a command of five thousand horse, and the prospect of the first dignities of the empire. He served with honour in the wars of Europe and Asia; and we may smile at the art or credulity of the historian, who supposes, that in every encounter he spared the christians, while he fell with a thundering arm on his mussulman foes. The glory of Huniades is without reproach; he fought in the defence of his religion and country; but the enemies who applaud the patriot, have branded his rival with the name of traitor and apostate. In the eyes of the christians, the rebellion of Scanderbeg is justified by his father's wrongs, the ambiguous death of his three brothers, his own degradation, and the slavery of his country; and they adore the generous, though tardy, zeal, with which he asserted the faith and independence of his ancestors. But he had imbibed from his ninth year. the doctrines of the Koran; he was ignorant of the gospel; the religion of a soldier is determined by authority and habit; nor is it easy to conceive what new illumination at the age of forty P could be poured into his soul. His motives would be less exposed to the suspicion of interest or revenge, had he broken his chain from the moment that he was sensible of its weight: but a long oblivion had surely impaired his original right; and every year of obedience and reward had cemented the mutual bond of the sultan and his subject. If Scanderbeg had long harboured the belief of christianity and the intention of revolt, a worthy mind must condemn the base dissimulation, that could serve only to betray, that could promise only to be forsworn, that could actively join in the temporal and spiritual perdition of so many thousands of his unhappy brethren. Shall we praise a secret correspondence with Huniades, while he commanded the vanguard of the Turkish army? shall we excuse the desertion of his standard, a treacherous desertion, which abandoned the victory to the enemies of his benefactor? In the confusion of a defeat, the eye His revolt from of Scanderbeg was fixed on the Reis Effendi or principal secretary: with the Turks, A. D. 1443. Nov. 28. have deserved, without wearing, a royal crown; Belisarius, Narses, Gonsalvo of Cordova, William first prince of Orange, Alexander duke of Parma, John Huniades, and George Castriot, or Scanderbeg. n I could wish for some simple authentic memoirs of a friend of Scanderbeg, which would introduce me to the man, the time, and the place. In the old and national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest of Scodra, (de Vita, Moribus, et Rebus gestis Georgii Castrioti, &c. libri xiii. p. 367. Argentorat. 1537, in fol.) his gaudy and cumbersome robes are stuck with many false jewels. See likewise Chalcondyles, l. vii. p. 185. 1. viii. p. 229. o His circumcision, education, &c. are marked by Marinus with brevity and reluctance, (1. i. p. 6, 7.) p Since Scanderbeg died A. D. 1466, in the sixty-third year of his age, (Marinus, 1. xiii. p. 370.) he was born in 1403; since he was torn from his parents by the Turks, when he was novennis, (Marinus, I. i. p. 1. 6.) that event must have happened in 1412, nine years before the was oppressed by a paltry artifice and a superstitious scruple. Amurath retired with shame and loss from the walls of Croya, the castle and residence of the Castriots; the march, the siege, the retreat, were harassed by a vexatious, and almost invisible, adversary; and the disappointment might tend to imbitter, perhaps to shorten, the last days of the sultan. In the fulness of conquest, Mahomet the second still felt at his bosom this domestic thorn: his lieutenants were permitted to negociate a truce; and the Albanian prince may justly be praised as a firm and able champion of his national independence. The enthusiasm of chivalry and religion has ranked him with the names of Alexander and Pyrrhus; nor would they blush to acknowledge their intrepid countryman: but his narrow dominion and slender powers must leave him at an humble distance below the heroes of anti a dagger at his breast, he extorted a firman or pa- | grade; and the garrison, invincible to his arms, tent for the government of Albania; and the murder of the guiltless scribe and his train prevented the consequences of an immediate discovery. With some bold companions, to whom he had revealed | his design, he escaped in the night, by rapid marches, from the field of battle to his paternal mountains. The gates of Croya were opened to the royal mandate; and no sooner did he command the fortress, than George Castriot dropt the mask of dissimulation; abjured the prophet and the sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger of his family and country. The names of religion and liberty provoked a general revolt: the Albanians, a martial race, were unanimous to live and die with their hereditary prince; and the Ottoman garrisons were indulged in the choice of martyrdom or baptism. In the assembly of the states of Epirus, Scanderbeg was elected general of the Turkish war; and each of the allies engaged to furnish his respective pro-quity, who triumphed over the east and the Roman portion of men and money. From these contributions, from his patrimonial estate, and from the valuable salt-pits of Selina, he drew an annual revenue of two hundred thousand ducats; and the entire sum exempt from the demands of luxury was strictly appropriated to the public use. His manners were popular; but his discipline was severe; and every superfluous vice was banished from his camp: his example strengthened his command, and under his conduct the Albanians were invincible in their own opinion and that of their enemies. The bravest adventurers of France and His valour; Germany were allured by his fame and retained in his service his standing militia consisted of eight thousand horse and seven thousand foot; the horses were small, the men were active: but he viewed with a discerning eye the difficulties and resources of the mountains; and, at the blaze of the beacons, the whole nation was distributed in the strongest posts. With such unequal arms Scanderbeg resisted twenty-three years the powers of the Ottoman empire; and two conquerors, Amurath the second, and his greater son, were repeatedly baffled by a rebel, whom they pursued with seeming contempt and implacable resentment. At the head of sixty thousand horse and forty thousand janizaries, Amurath entered Albania; he might ravage the open country, occupy the defenceless towns, convert the churches into moschs, circumcise the christian youths, and punish with death his adult and obstinate captives; but the conquests of the sultan were confined to the petty fortress of Sfetiaccession of Amurath II. who must have inherited, not acquired, the Albanian slave. Spondanus has remarked this inconsistency, A. D. 1431, No. 31. 1443, No. 14. q His revenue and forces are luckily given by Marinus, (1. ii. p. 44.) There were two Dibras, the upper and lower, the Bulgarian and Albanian: the former, 70 miles from Croya, (l. i. p. 17.) was contiguous to the fortress of Sfetigrade, whose inhabitants refused to drink from a well into which a dead dog had traitorously been cast, (1. v. p. 139, 140.) We want a good map of Epirus. s Compare the Turkish narrative of Cantemir (p. 92.) with the pompous and prolix declamation in the fourth fifth and sixth books of the Albanian priest, who has been copied by the tribe of strangers and moderns. t In honour of his hero, Barletius (1. vi. p. 188-192.) kills the sultan, by disease indeed, under the walls of Croya. But this audacious fiction legions. His splendid achievements, the bashas and death, A. D. 1467. Jan. 17. is disproved by the Greeks and Turks, who agree in the time and manner of Amurath's death at Adrianople. u See the marvels of his Calabrian expedition in the ninth and tenth books of Marinus Barletius, which may be rectified by the testimony or silence of Muratori, (Anuali d'Italia, tom. xiii. p. 291.) and his origi nal authors. (Joh. Simonetta de Rebus Francisci Sfortiæ, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xxi. p. 728. et alios.) The Albanian cavalry, under the name of Stradiots, soon became famous in the wars of Italy. (Memoires de Comines, 1. viii. c. 5.) x Spondanus, from the best evidence, and the most rational criticism, has reduced the giant Scanderbeg to the human size. (A. D. 1461, No. 20. 1463, No. 9. 1465, No. 12, 13. 1467, No. 1.) His own letter to the pope, and the testimony of Phranza, (l. iii. c. 28.) a refugee in the neighbouring isle of Corfu, demonstrate his last distress, which is awk wardly concealed by Marinus Barletius, (1. x.). people, who guarded the sea-coast of the Adriatic, | of the two princes, Demetrius and Thomas, was and the narrow passage from Greece to Italy. His infant son was saved from the national shipwreck; the Castriots were invested with the Neapolitan dukedom, and their blood continues to flow in the noblest families of the realm. A colony of Albanian fugitives obtained a settlement in Calabria, and they preserve at this day the language and manners of their ancestors." Constantine the or Greek empe In the long career of the decline and last of the Roman fall of the Roman empire, I have reached at length the last reign of the rors, A. D. 1448. Nov. 1.princes of Constantinople, who so A. D. 1453. feebly sustained the name and majesty May 29. of the Cæsars. On the decease of John Palæologus, who survived about four years the Hungarian crusade," the royal family, by the death of Andronicus and the monastic profession of Isidore, was reduced to three princes, Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas, the surviving sons of the emperor Manuel. Of these the first and the last were far distant in the Morea; but Demetrius, who possessed the domain of Selybria, was in the suburbs, at the head of a party: his ambition was not chilled by the public distress; and his conspiracy with the Turks and the schismatics had already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest | son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor; and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally returned to the capital, asserted with becoming zeal the interest of his absent brother. An ambassador, the historian Phranza, was immediately despatched to the court of Adrianople. Amurath received him with honour and dismissed him with gifts; but the gracious approbation of the Turkish sultan announced his supremacy, and the approaching downfal of the eastern empire. By the hands of two illustrious deputies, the imperial crown was placed at Sparta on the head of Constantine. In the spring he sailed from the Morea, escaped the encounter of a Turkish squadron, enjoyed the acclamations of his subjects, celebrated the festival of a new reign, and exhausted by his donatives the treasure, or rather the indigence, of the state. The emperor immediately resigned to his brothers the possession of the Morea; and the brittle friendship y See the family of the Castriots, in Ducange. (Fam. Dalmaticæ, &c. xviii. p. 348-350.) z This colony of Albanese is mentioned by Mr. Swinburne. (Travels into the two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 350-354.) a The chronology of Phranza is clear and authentic; but instead of four years and seven months, Spondanus (A. D. 1445, No 7.) assigns seven or eight years to the reign of the last Constantine, which he deduces from a spurious epistle of Eugenius IV. to the King of Ethiopia. b Phranza (1. iii. c. 1-6.) deserves credit and esteem. e Suppose him to have been captured in 1394, in Timour's first war in Georgia; (Sherefeddin, J. iii. c. 50.) he might follow his Tartar master into Hindostan in 1398, and from thence sail to the spice islands. The happy and pious Indians lived an hundred and fifty years, and enjoyed the most perfect productions of the vegetable and mineral confirmed in their mother's presence by the frail security of oaths and embraces. His next occupation was the choice of a consort. A daughter of the doge of Venice had been proposed; but the Byzantine nobles objected the distance between an hereditary monarch and an elective magistrate; and in their subsequent distress, the chief of that powerful republic was not unmindful of the affront. Constantine afterwards hesitated between the royal families of Trebizond and Georgia; and the embassy of Phranza represents in his public and private life the last days of the Byzantine empire.b C Embassies of A. D. 1450-1452. The protovestiare, or great chamberlain, Phranza, sailed from Constantinople as the minister of a bridegroom: and the relics of wealth and luxury were applied to his pompous appearance. His numerous retinue consisted of nobles and guards, of physicians and monks: he was attended by a band of music; and the term of his costly embassy was protracted above two years. On his arrival in Georgia or Iberia, the natives from the towns and villages flocked around the strangers; and such was their simplicity, that they were delighted with the effects, without understanding the cause, of musical harmony. Among the crowd was an old man, above a hundred years of age, who had formerly been carried away a captive by the barbarians, and who amused his hearers with a tale of the wonders of India,a from whence he had returned to Portugal by an unknown sea.* From this hospitable land, Phranza proceeded to the court of Trebizond, where he was informed by the Greek prince of the recent decease of Amurath. Instead of rejoicing in the deliverance, the experienced statesman expressed his apprehension, that an ambitious youth would not long adhere to the sage and pacific system of his father. After the sultan's decease, his christian wife, Maria, the daughter of the Servian despot, had been honourably restored to her parents: on the fame of her beauty and merit, she was recommended by the ambassador as the most worthy object of the royal choice; and Phranza recapitulates and refutes the specious objections that might be raised against the proposal. The majesty of the purple would ennoble an unequal alliance; the bar of affinity might be removed by liberal alms and the dispensation of the church; the disgrace of Turkish nuptials had been repeatedly overlooked; and, though the fair Maria was near fifty years of age, she might yet hope to give an heir to the empire. Constantine kingdoms. The animals were on a large scale: dragons seventy cubits, ants (the formica Indica) nine inches long, sheep like elephants, elephants like sheep. Quidlibet audiendi, &c. e He sailed in a country vessel from the spice islands to one of the ports of the exterior India; invenitque navem grandem Ibericam, quâ in Portugalliam est delatus. This passage, composed in 1477, (Phranza, 1. iii. c. 30.) twenty years before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, is spurious or wonderful. But this new geography is sullied by the old and incompatible error which places the source of the Nile in India. f Cantemir, (p. 83.) who styles her the daughter of Lazarns Ogli, and the Helen of the Servians, places her marriage with Amurath in the year 1424. It will not easily be believed, that in six-and-twenty years' cohabitation, the sultan corpus ejus non tetigit. After the taking of Constantinople, she fled to Mahomet II. (Phranza, l. iii. c. 22.) listened to the advice, which was transmitted in the first ship that sailed from Trebizond; but the factions of the court opposed his marriage; and it was finally prevented by the pious vow of the sultana, who ended her days in the monastic profession. Reduced to the first alternative, the choice of Phranza was decided in favour of a Georgian princess; and the vanity of her father was dazzled by the glorious alliance. Instead of demanding, according to the primitive and national custom, a price for his daughter, he offered a portion of fifty-❘ six thousand, with an annual pension of five thou- | sand, ducats; and the services of the ambassador were repaid by an assurance, that, as his son had been adopted in baptism by the emperor, the establishment of his daughter should be the peculiar On the care of the empress of Constantinople. return of Phranza, the treaty was ratified by the Greek monarch, who with his own hand impressed | three vermilion crosses on the golden bull, and assured the Georgian envoy, that in the spring his galleys should conduct the bride to her imperial palace. But Constantine embraced his faithful servant, not with the cold approbation of a sovereign, but with the warm confidence of a friend, who, after a long absence, is impatient to pour his secrets into the bosom of his friend. State of the By. zantine court. "Since the death of my mother and of Cantacuzene, who alone advised me without interest or passion, I am surrounded," said the emperor, "by men whom I can neither love, nor trust, nor esteem. You are not a stranger to Lucas Notaras, the great admiral; obstinately attached to his own sentiments, he declares, both in private and public, that his sentiments are the absolute measure of my thoughts and actions. The rest of the courtiers are swayed by their personal or factious views; and how can I consult the monks on questions of policy and marriage? I have yet much employment for your diligence and fidelity. In the spring you shall engage one of my brothers to solicit the succour of the western powers; from the Morea you shall sail to Cyprus on a particular commission; and from thence proceed to Georgia to receive and conduct the future empress." "Your commands," replied Phranza, are irresistible; but deign, great sir," he added, with a serious smile, "to consider, that if I am thus perpetually absent from my family, my wife may be tempted either to seek another husband, or to throw herself into a monastery." After laughing at his apprehensions, the emperor more gravely consoled him by the pleasing assurance that this would be his last service abroad, and that he destined for his son a wealthy and noble heiress; for himself, the important office of great logothete, or principal minister of state. The marriage 66 g The classical reader will recollect the offers of Agamemnon, (1liad, 1. v. 144.) and the general practice of antiquity. h Cantacuzene (I am ignorant of his relation to the emperor of that name) was great domestic, a firm asserter of the Greek creed, and a brother of the queen of Servia, whom he visited with the character of ambassador. (Syropulus, p. 37, 38. 45.) a For the character of Mahomet II. it is dangerous to trust either the Turks or the christians. The most moderate picture appears to be drawn by Phranza, (1. i. c. 32.) whose resentment had cooled in age and solitude; see likewise Spondanus, (A. D. 1451, No. 11.) and the was immediately stipulated; but the office, however incompatible with his own, had been usurped by the ambition of the admiral. Some delay was requisite to negociate a consent and an equivalent; and the nomination of Phranza was half declared, and half suppressed, lest it might be displeasing to an insolent and powerful favourite. The winter was spent in the preparations of his embassy; and Phranza had resolved, that the youth his son should embrace this opportunity of foreign travel, and be left on the appearance of danger, with his maternal kindred of the Morea. Such were the private and public designs, which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire. CHAP. LXVIII. Reign and character of Mahomet the second.-Siege, assault, and final conquest, of Constantinople by the Turks.-Death of Constantine Palæologus.— Servitude of the Greeks.-Extinction of the Roman empire in the east.-Consternation of Europe.— conquests and death of Mahomet the second. homet II. THE siege of Constantinople by the Character of Ma- b Cantemir, (p. 115.) and the moschs which he founded, attest his e His had recommended that salutary measure. nuptials were celebrated with the daughter of a Turkman emir; and, after a festival of two months, he departed from Adrianople with his bride, to reside in the government of Magnesia. Before the end of six weeks he was recalled by a sudden message from the divan, which announced the decease of Amurath, and the mutinous spirit of the janizaries. His speed and vigour commanded their obedience: he passed the Hellespont with a chosen guard; and at the distance of a mile from Adriano to his edification; and such studies are familiar to the oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and Turks, a conqueror might wish to converse with the people over whom he was ambitious to reign; his own praises in Latin poetry or prose might find a passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves? The history and geography of the world were familiar to his memory: the lives of the heroes of the east, perhaps of the west, excited his emulation: his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the|ple, the vizirs and emirs, the imams and cadhis, the times, and supposes some rudiments of mathemati- soldiers and the people, fell prostrate before the new cal science; and a profane taste for the arts is be- sultan. They affected to weep, they affected to retrayed in his liberal invitation and reward of the joice; he ascended the throne at the age of twentypainters of Italy.s But the influence of religion one years, and removed the cause of sedition by the and learning were employed without effect on his death, the inevitable death, of his infant brothers.i savage and licentious nature. I will not transcribe, The ambassadors of Europe and Asia soon appearnor do I firmly believe, the stories of his fourteen ed to congratulate his accession and solicit his pages, whose bellies were ripped open in search of friendship; and to all he spoke the language of a stolen melon; or of the beauteous slave, whose moderation and peace. The confidence of the head he severed from her body, to convince the ja- Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths and nizaries that their master was not the votary of love. fair assurances with which he sealed the ratification His sobriety is attested by the silence of the Turk- of the treaty and a rich domain on the banks of ish annals, which accuse three, and three only, of the Strymon was assigned for the annual payment the Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness. But of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an it cannot be denied that his passions were at once Ottoman prince, who was detained at his request in furious and inexorable; that in the palace, as in the Byzantine court. Yet the neighbours of Mahothe field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest met might tremble at the severity with which a provocation; and that the noblest of the captive youthful monarch reformed the pomp of his father's youth were often dishonoured by his unnatural lust. household: the expenses of luxury were applied to In the Albanian war, he studied the lessons, and those of ambition, and an useless train of seven soon surpassed the example, of his father; and the thousand falconers was either dismissed from his conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and two service, or enlisted in his troops. In the first sumhundred cities, a vain and flattering account, is as- mer of his reign, he visited with an army the Asiatic Icribed to his invincible sword. He was doubtless a provinces; but after humbling the pride, Mahomet soldier, and possibly a general; Constantinople has accepted the submission, of the Caramanian, that sealed his glory; but if we compare the means, the he might not be diverted by the smallest obstacle obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet the from the execution of his great design. second must blush to sustain a parallel with AlexThe Mahometan, and more especiander or Timour. Under his command, the Otto- ally the Turkish, casuists, have proman forces were always more numerous than their nounced that no promise can bind the A. D. 1451. enemies; yet their progress was bounded by the faithful against the interest and duty of their reliEuphrates and the Adriatic; and his arms were gion; and that the sultan may abrogate his own checked by Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the Rho- treaties and those of his predecessors. The justice dian knights and by the Persian king. and magnanimity of Amurath had scorned this immoral privilege; but his son, though the proudest of men, could stoop from ambition to the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit. Peace was on his lips, while war was in his heart: he incessantly sighed for the possession of Constantinople; and the His reign, In the reign of Amurath, he twice A. D. 1451. tasted of royalty, and twice descended Feb. 9.A. D. 1481. from the throne: his tender age was July 2. incapable of opposing his father's restoration, but never could he forgive the vizirs who d Philelphus, by a Latin ode, requested and obtained the liberty of his wife's mother and sisters from the conqueror of Constantinople. It was delivered into the sultan's hands by the envoys of the duke of Milan. Philelphus himself was suspected of a design of retiring to Constantinople; yet the orator often sounded the trumpet of holy war. (See his life by M. Launcelot, in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718. 724, &c.) e Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his twelve books de Re Militari, in which he first mentions the use of bombs. By his pa tron Sigismond Malatesta, prince of Rimini, it had been addressed with a Latin epistle to Mahomet II. f According to Phiranza, he assiduously studied the lives and actions of Alexander, Augustus, Constantine, and Theodosius. I have read somewhere, that Plutarch's Lives were translated by his orders into the Turkish language. If the sultan himself understood Greek, it must have been for the benefit of his subjects. Yet these lives are a school of freedom as well as of valour. k Hostile intenmet, tions of Maho g The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, was dismissed with a chain and collar of gold, and a purse of 3000 ducats. With Voltaire I laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely beheaded, to instruct the painter in the action of the muscles. h These imperial drunkards were Soliman I. Selim II. aud Amurath IV. (Cantemir, p. 61.) The sophis of Persia can produce a more regu. lar succession: and in the last age, our European travellers were the witnesses and companions of their revels. i Calapin, one of these royal infants, was saved from his cruel brother, and baptized at Rome under the name of Callistus Othomaunus. The emperor Frederic III. presented him with an estate in Austria, where he ended his life; and Cuspinian, who in his youth conversed with the aged prince at Vienna, applauds his piety and wisdom, (de Cæsaribus, p. 672, 673.) k See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas, (c. 33.) Phranza, (l. i. c. 33. 1. iii. c. 2.) Chalcondyles, (1. vii. p. 199.) and Cantemir, (p. 26.) |