XLIX.

CHAP. 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. L.

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.

II.

СНАР.

L.

THE siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to the person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet the Second was the son Character of of the second Amurath; and though his mother has Mal.omet been decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous concubines who peopled from every climate the haram of the sultan. His first education and sentiments were those of a devout Musulman; and as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands and face by the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry his aspiring genius disdained to acknowledge a power above his own; and in his looser hours he presumed (it is said) to brand the prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the doctrine and discipline of the Koran his private indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear; and we should suspect the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind which is hardened against truth

*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 continuator of Fleury (tom. xxii. p. 552), the Elogia of Paulus Jovius (1. iii. p. 164-166), and the Dictionaire de Bayle (tom. P. 272-279).

iii.

CHAP.
L.

must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity
and error.
Under the tuition of the most skilful
masters, Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid
progress in the paths of knowledge; and besides his
native tongue, it is affirmed that he spoke or under-
stood five languages, the Arabic, the Persian, the
Chaldæan, or Hebrew, the Latin, and the Greek.
The Persian might indeed contribute to his amuse-
ment, and the Arabic 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 could recommend to the statesman, or
the scholar, the 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, per-
haps of the West, excited his emulation: his skill in
astrology is excused by the folly of the times, and
supposes some rudiments of mathematical science;
and a profane taste for the arts is betrayed in his
liberal invitation and reward of the painters of Italy.
But the influence of religion and learning were em-
ployed without effect on his savage and licentious
nature. I will not transcribe, nor do I firmly believe,
the stories of his fourteen pages, whose bellies were
ripped open in search of a stolen melon; or of the beau-
teous slave, whose head he severed from her body, to
convince the Janizaries that her master was not the
votary of love. His sobriety is attested by the silence
of the Turkish annals, which accuse three, and three
only, of the Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness.
But it cannot be denied that his passions were at once
furious and inexorable; that in the palace, as in the
field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest pro-
vocation; and that the noblest of the captive youth

L.

were often dishonoured by his unnatural lust. In CHAP. the Albanian war, he studied the lessons, and soon surpassed the example, of his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and two hundred cities, a vain and flattering account, is ascribed to his invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier, and possibly a general; Constantinople has sealed his glory; but if we compare the means, the obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet the Second must blush to sustain a parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his command, the Ottoman forces were always more numerous than their enemies; and yet their progress was bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic; and his arms were checked by Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the Rhodian knights, and by the Persian king.

A. D. 1451,

July 2.

In the reign of Amurath, he twice tasted of roy- His reign, alty and twice descended from the throne: his ten- Feb. 9der age was incapable of opposing his father's restora- A. D. 1481, tion, but never could he forgive the vizirs who had recommended that salutary measure. His 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 Adrianople, the vizirs and emirs, the imams and cadhis, the soldiers and the people, fell prostrate before the new sultan. They affected to weep; they affected to rejoice; he ascended the throne at the age of twenty-one years, and removed the cause of sedition by the death, the inevitable death, of his infant brothers. The ambassadors of

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CHAP. Europe and Asia soon appeared to congratulate his accession, and solicit his friendship; and to all he spoke the language of moderation and peace. The confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths and fair assurances with which he sealed the ratification of the treaty; and a rich domain on the banks of the Strymon was assigned for the annual payment of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an Ottoman prince, who was detained at his request in the Byzantine court. Yet the neighbours of Mahomet might tremble at the severity with which a youthful monarch reformed the pomp of his father's household: the expenses of luxury were applied to those of ambition, and an useless train of seven thousand falconers was either dismissed from his service, or inlisted in his troops. In the first summer of his reign, he visited with an army the Asiatic provinces; but after humbling the pride, Mahomet accepted the submission, of the Caramanian, that he might not be diverted by the smallest obstacle from the execution of his great design *.

Hostile in

The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish tentions of casuists, have pronounced that no promise can bind A. D. 1452. the faithful against the interest and duty of their reli

Mahomet,

gion; and that the sultan may abrogate his own treaties and those of his predecessors. The justice 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 Greeks, by their own indiscretion, afforded the first pretence of the fatal rupture †. Instead of labouring to be for

* See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas (c. 33), Phranza (1. i. c. 33. 1. iii. c. 2, Chalcocondyles (1. vii. p. 199), and Cantemir (p. 96).

+ Before I enter on the siege of Constantinople I shall observe, that except the short hints of Cantemir and Leunclavius, I have not been able to obtain any Turkish