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LXVIII.

CHAP. who, on a similar summons, had yielded a fortified city with four hundred cannon and ten or twelve thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully performed; and the emperor, with his family, was transported to a castle in Romania: but on a slight suspicion of corresponding with the Persian king, David, and the whole Comnenian race, were sacrificed to the jealousy or avarice of the conqueror. Nor could the name of father long protect the unfortunate Demetrius from exile and confiscation; his abject submission moved the pity and contempt of the sultan; his followers were transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty was alleviated by a pension of fifty thousand aspers, till a monastic habit and a tardy death released Palæologus from an earthly master. It is not easy to pronounce whether the 'servitude of Demetrius, or the exile of his brother Thomas,99 be the most inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to Corfu, and from thence to Italy, with some naked adherents: his name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St. Andrew, entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery was prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope and cardinals. His two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in Italy; but the eldest, contemptible to his enemies and burthensome to his friends, was degraded by the baseness of his life and marriage. A title was his sole inheritance; and that inheritance he successively sold to the kings of France and Arragon. During his transient prosperity, Charles the eighth was ambitious of joining the empire of the East with the kingdom of Naples: in a public festival, he assumed the appellation and the purple of Augustus: the Greeks rejoiced, and the Ottoman already trembled at the approach of the French chivalry.92 Manuel Palæologus, the second son, was

90 Spondanus (from Gobelin Comment Pii. II. 1. v.) relates the arrival and reception of the despot Thomas at Rome (A. D. 1461, No. 3).

91 Ey an act dated A, D. 1494, Sept. 6. and lately transmitted from the archives of the Capitol to the royal library of Paris, the despot Andrew Palæolegus, reserving the Morea, and stipulating some private advantages, conveys to Charles VIII. king of France the empres of Constantinople and Trebizond (Spondanus A D. 1495, No. 2). M. de Foncemagne (Mem de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xvii. p. 539...578.) has bestowed a dissertation on this national title, of which he had obtained a copy from Rome.

92 See Philippe de Coraines (1. vii. c. 14.) who reckons with pleasure the number of Grecks who were prepared to rise, 60 miles of an easy navigation, eighteen days journey from Valona to Constantinople, &c. On this occasion the Turkish empire was saved by the policy of Venice.

LXVIII.

tempted to revisit his native country: his return might be CHAP. · grateful, and could not be dangerous to the Porte: he was maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an honourable train of Christians and Moslems attended him to the grave. If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the Imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind: he accepted from the sultan's liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave.

terror of

A. D.

1453.

The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified Grief and in its loss: the pontificate of Nicholas the fifth, however Europe, peaceful and prosperous, was dishonoured by the fall of the Eastern empire; and the grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades. In one of the most distant countries of the West, Philip duke of Burgundy entertained at Lisle in Flanders, an assembly of his nobles; and the pompous pageants of the feast were skilfully adapted to their fancy and feelings." In the midst of the banquet, a gigantic Saracen entered the hall, leading a fictitious elephant, with a castle on his back: a matron in a mourning robe, the symbol of religion, was seen to issue from the castle; she deplored her oppression, and accused the slowness of her champions: the principal herald of the golden fleece advanced, bearing on his fist a live pheasant, which, according to the rites of chivalry, he presented to the duke. At this extraordinary summons, Philip, a wise and aged prince, engaged his person and powers in the holy war against the Turks: his example was imitated by the barons and knights of the assembly; they swore to God, the Virgin, the ladies, and the pheasant; and their particular vows were not less extravagant than the general sanction of their oath. But the performance was made to depend on some future and foreign contingency; and, during twelve years, till the last hour of his life, the duke of Burgundy might be scrupuously, and perhaps sincerely, on the eve of his departure. Had every breast glowed with the

93 See the original feast in Olivier de la Marche (Memoires, P. i. c. 29, 30), with the abstract and observations of M. de St. Palaye (Memoires sur la Chevalerie, tom. i. P. iii. p. 182...185). The peacock and the pheasant were distinguished as royal birds.

LXVIII.

CHAP same ardour; had the union of the Christians corresponded with their bravery; had every country, from Sweden 94 to Naples, supplied a just proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and money, it is indeed probable that Constantinople would have been delivered, and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the Hellespont or the Euphrates. But the secretary of the emperor, who composed every epistle, and attended every meeting, Eneas Sylvius," a statesman and orator, describes from his own experience the repograat state and spirit of Christendom. "It is a body," says he, "without an head; a republic without laws or ma"gistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty

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titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to com"mand, and none are willing to obey: every state has a "separate prince, and every prince has a separate interest. "What eloquence could unite so many discordant and hos"tile powers under the same standard? Could they be as"sembled in arms, who would dare to assume the office of

general? What order could be maintained?.... what mili"tary discipline? Who would undertake to feed such an 66 enormous multitude? Who would understand their va"rious languages, or direct their stranger and incompatible "manners? What mortal could reconcile the English with "the French, Genoa, with Arragon, the Germans with the "natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small number en"listed in the holy war, they must be overthrown by the in"fidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion." Yet the same Eneas, when he was raised to the papal throne, under the name of Pius the second, devoted his life to the prosecution of the Turkish war. In the council of Mantua he excited some sparks of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when the pontiff appeared at Ancona to embark in person with the troops, engagements vanished in excuses; a precise day was adjourned to an indefinite term; and his effective army consisted of some German pilgrims, whom

94 It was found by an actual enumeration, that Sweden, Gothland, and Finland, contained 1,800,000 fighting men, and consequently were far more populous than at present.

95 In the year 1454 Spondanus has given, from Eneas Sylvius, a view of the state of Europe, enriched with his own observations. That valuable annalist, and the Italian Muratori, will continue the series of events from the year 1453 to 1481, the end of Mahomet's life, and of this chapter.

he was obliged to disband with indulgences and alms. Re- CHAP. gardless of futurity, his successors and the powers of Italy LXVIII. were involved in the schemes of present and domestic ambition; and the distance or proximity of each object determined, in their eyes, its apparent magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would have taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the common enemy; and the support of Scanderbeg and his brave Albanians, might have prevented the subsequent invasion of the kingdom of Naples. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks diffused a general consternation; and pope Sixtus was preparing to fly beyond the Alps, when the storm was Death of instantly dispelled by the death of Mahomet the second, in the fifty-first year of his age.96 His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour; and the same reign might have been July 2. decorated with the trophies of the NEW and the ANCIENT ROME.97

96 Besides the two annalists, the reader may consult Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. iii. p. 449...455.) for the Turkish invasion of the kingdom of Naples. For the reign and conquest of Mahomet II. I have occasionally used the Memorie Istoriche de Monarchi Ottomanni di Giovanni Sagredo (Venezia, 1677, in 4to). In peace and war, the Turks have ever engaged the attcation of the republic of Venice. All her dispatches and archives were open to a procurator of St. Mark, and Sagredo is not contemptible either in sense or style. Yet he too bitterly hates the infidels; he is ignoraat of their language and manners; and his narrative, which allows only seventy pages to Mahomet II. (p. 69... 140), becomes more copious and authentic as he approaches the years 1640 and 1644, the term of the historic labours of John Sagredo.

97 As I am now taking an everlasting farewell of the Greek empire, I shall briefly mention the great collection of Byzantine writers, whose names and testimonies have been successively repeated in this work. The Greek presses of Aldus and the Italians, were confined to the classics of a better age; and the first rude editions of Procopius, Agathias, Cedrenus, Zonaras, &c. were published by the learned diligence of the Germans. The whole Byzantine series (xxxvi volumes in folio) has gradually issued (A. D. 1648, &c.) from the royal press of the Louvre, with some collateral aid from Rome and Leipsic ; but the Venetian edition (A. D. 1729), though cheaper and more copious, is not less inferior in correctness than in magnificence to that of Paris. The merits of the French editors are various; but the value of Anna Comnena, Cinnamus, Villehardouin, &c. is enhanced by the the historical notes of Charles du Fresne du Cange. His supplemental works, the Greek Glossary, the Constantinopolis Christiana, the Familiæ Byzantinæ, diffuse a steady light over the darkness of the Lower Empire,

Mahomet

II.

A. D. 1481.

May 3, or

CHAP.

LXIX.

of Ronie,

A. D.

1500.

CHAP. LXIX.

State of Rome from the Twelfth Century....Temporal Dominion of the Popes....Seditions of the City....Political Heresy of Arnold of Brescia.... Restoration of the Republic....The Senators ....Pride of the Romans....Their Wars....They are deprived of the Election and Presence of the Popes, who retire to Avignon. .... The Jubilee....Noble Families of Rome....Feud of the Colonna and Ursini.

IN the first ages of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, our eye is invariably fixed on the royal city, which State and had given laws to the fairest portion of the globe. We conrevolutions template her fortunes, at first with admiration, at length with pity, always with attention; and when that attention is 1100... diverted from the Capitol to the provinces, they are considered as so many branches which have been successively severed from the Imperial trunk. The foundation of a second Rome, on the shores of the Bosphorus, has compelled the historian to follow the successors of Constantine; and our curiosity has been tempted to visit the most remote countries of Europe and Asia, to explore the causes and the authors of the long decay of the Byzantine monarchy. By the conquest of Justinian, we have been recalled to the banks of the Tyber, to the deliverance of the ancient metropolis; but that deliverance was a change, or perhaps an aggravation, of servitude. Rome had been already stripped of her trophies, her gods, and her Cæsars: nor was the Gothic dominion more inglorious and oppressive than the tyranny of the Greeks. In the eighth century of the Christian æra, a religious quarrel, the worship of images, provoked the Romans to assert their independence: their bishop became the temporal, as well as the spiritual, father of a free people; and of the Western empire, which was restored by Charlemagne, the title and image still decorate the singu lar constitution of modern Germany. The name of Rome must yet command our involuntary respect: the climate (whatsoever may be its influence) was no longer the same:1

I The Abbé Dubos, who, with less genius than his successor Montesquieu, has asserted and magnified the influence of climate, objects to himself the degeneracy of the Romans and Batavians. To the first of these examples he

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