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.107 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 Hadrianople; and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the Christian princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the Eastern empire.

peoples

Constanti

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a He reprince or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the and adorns incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of nople a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune. Boursa and Hadrianople, 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.108 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

107 [So Ducas, p. 303 sqq. Chalcondyles, p. 402. Pusculus, iv. 1071. Critobulus says generally that Notaras and his sons were put to death by the advice of the Sultan's counsellors (i. 73, 9).]

108 For the restitution of Constantinople and the Turkish foundations, see Cantemir (p. 102-109), Ducas (c. 42), with Thévenot, Tournefort, and the rest of our modern travellers. [Cp. Zinkeisen, op. cit. ii. p. 5-8.] 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 that in the year 1586 the Moslems were less numerous in the capital than the Christians or even the Jews. VOL. VII.-14

lime had been burnt for the restoration of the walls of the capital. As the entire 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 Signor (as he has been emphatically named by the Italians) appears to reign over Europe and Asia; but his person on the shores of the Bosphorus may not always be secure from the insults of an hostile navy. In the new character of a mosque, 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 mosques; 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. 109 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.110 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.111 In the

109 The Turbé, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is described and engraved in the Tableau Général de l'Empire Ottoman (Paris, 1787, in large folio), a work of less use, perhaps, than magnificence (tom. i. p. 305, 306).

110 [Subsequently 4000 Servians were settled in Constantinople; 2000 Peloponnesian families after the reduction of the Peloponnesus; two-thirds of the population of Amastris, the Genoese colony on the Black Sea; also Trapezus, Sinope, Caffa, Euboea, Samothrace, &c., were forced, when they were conquered, to augment the population of the capital. See Zinkeisen, loc. cit.]

[The first volume of a history of the Greck Church under Turkish rule by Prof. Lebedev appeared in 1896. It is entitled, Istoriia greko-vostochnoi tserkvi pod vlastiiu Turok, ot padeniia Konstantinopolia do nastoiaschago vremeni.]

election and investiture of a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated. With 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 an horse richly caparisoned, and directed the vizirs and bashaws to lead him to the palace which had been allotted for his residence.112 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 113 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 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.114

112 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. 106184). [C. Sathas has shown that the Historia Patriarchica was not the work of Malaxus but of Damascenus Studites, to whom he also ascribes the Historia Politica, which is likewise printed in Turco-Græcia.] 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 ".

113 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.

114 Cantemir (p. 101-105) insists on the unanimous consent of the Turkish historians, ancient as well as modern, and argues that they 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 particular 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. [This fable, recorded in the Hist. Patriarch. p. 156, is connected with the reign of Sulayman, not with that of his father Selim. Finlay has pointed out that it involves a chronological mistake. The date given is 1537 and the vizir named, as interesting himself in the cause of the Greeks, is Tulphi. But the Lufti -who is meant was vizir in 1539-1541. See History of Greece, v. p. 142.]

Extinction

of the Im

families of

and Palæo

The remaining fragments of the Greek kingdom in Europe perial and Asia I shall abandon to the Turkish arms; but the final Comnenus extinction of the two last dynasties 115 which have reigned in logus Constantinople should terminate the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East. The despots of the Morea, Demetrius and Thomas,116 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 Greeks 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;

115 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.

116 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 (1. viii. ix. x.) too diffuse and digressive.

117 [The misgovernment of the Poloponnesus in the 15th century is illustrated by the discourses of Gemistus Plethon addressed to the Emperor Manuel and his son the despot Theodore, proposing political reforms. They were published by Canter in his edition of the Ecloge of Stobaeus (1575), and have been edited (with German translation) by Ellissen. See above, p. 182, note 111.]

Morea, A.D.

and their power was only exerted in savage and arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker rival invoked their supreme lord; and, in the season of maturity and revenge, Mahomet declared himself the friend of Demetrius, and marched Loss of the into the Morea with an irresistible force. When he had taken 1460: possession of Sparta, "You are too weak," said the sultan, "to control this turbulent province. I will take your daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the remainder of your life in security and honour." Demetrius sighed, and obeyed; surrendered his daughter and his castles; followed to Hadrianople his sovereign and son; and received, for his own maintenance, and that of his followers, a city in Thrace, and the adjacent isles of Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the next year by a companion of misfortune, the last of the COMNENIAN race, who, after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a new empire on the coast of the Black Sea.118 In the progress of his Anatolian conquests, Mahomet invested, with a fleet and army, the capital of David, who presumed to style himself Emperor of Trebizond; 119 and the negotiation was comprised in a short and peremptory question, "Will you secure your life and treasures by resigning your kingdom? or had you rather forfeit your kingdom, your treasures, and your life?" The feeble Comnenus was subdued by his own fears, and the example of a Musulman neighbour, the prince of Sinope,120 who, on a similar summons, had yielded a fortified city with four hundred cannon and ten or twelve thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebi- of Treblzond was faithfully performed; and the emperor, with his family, 1461 was transported to a castle in Romania; but on a slight suspicion of corresponding with the Persian king, David and the whole

118 See the loss or conquest of Trebizond in Chalcondyles (1. ix. p. 263-266 [p. 494 sqq. ed. Bonn]), Ducas (c. 45), Phranza (1. iii. c. 27), and Cantemir (p. 107). [The last days of the Empire of Trebizond are described by Finlay in History of Greece, iv. p. 400 sqq.]

119 Though Tournefort (tom. iii. lettre xvii. p. 179) speaks of Trebizond as mal peuplée, Peyssonel, the latest and most accurate observer, can find 100,000 inhabitants (Commerce de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 72, and for the province, p. 53-90). Its prosperity and trade are perpetually disturbed by the factious quarrels of two odas of Janizaries, in one of which 30,000 Lazi are commonly enrolled (Mémoires de Tott, tom. iii. p. 16, 17).

120 Ismael Beg, prince of Sinope or Sinople, was possessed (chiefly from his copper mines) of a revenue of 200,000 ducats (Chalcond. 1. ix. p. 258, 259). Peyssonel (Commerce de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 100) ascribes to the modern city 60,000 inhabitants. This account seems enormous; yet it is by trading with a people that we become acquainted with their wealth and numbers.

zond, A.D.