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vered his four sons as the pledges of his fidelity; CHAP. 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 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

His circumcision, education, &c. are marked by Marinus with brevity and reluctance, (l. i. p. 6. 7.).

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CHAP. traitor and apostate. In the eyes of the Christians the rebellion of Scanderbeg is justified by his fa ther'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* 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 only serve 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

Since Scanderbeg died, A. D. 1466, in the 63d year of his age, (Marinius, 1. xiii. p. 370.), he was born in 1403; since he was torn from his parents by the Turks, when he was novennis, (Marinius, 1. i. p. 1. 6.), that event must have happened in 1412, nine years before the accession 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.

from the

A. D.

1443,

commanded the vanguard of the Turkish army? CHAP. shall we excuse the desertion of his standard, a LXVII, treacherous desertion, which abandoned the victory His revolt to the enemies of his benefactors? In the confusion Turks, of a defeat, the eyes of Scanderbeg was fixed on the Reis Effendi, or principal secretary; with a dag- Nov. 28. ger at his breast, he extorted a firman or patent 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 proportion of men and money. From these contributions, from his patrimonial eftate, and from the valuable salt-pits of Selina, he drew an annual revenue of two hundred thousand ducats*; and the entire

His revenue and forces are luckily given by Marinus, (1. ii. p. 44.).

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His va. lour.

CHAP. 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 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 Sfetigrade; and the garrison, invincible to his arms, was oppressed by a paltry artifice and a superstitious scruple *. Amurath

There were two Dibras, the upper and lower, the Bulgarian

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Amurath retired with shame and loss from the walls CHA P. 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 embitter, perhaps to shorten, the last days of the Sultan f. 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 antiquity, who triumped over the East and the Roman legions. His splendid atchievements, the bashaws whom he encountered, the armies that he discomfited, and the three thousand Turks who were slain by his single hand, must be weighed in the scales of suspicious criticism. Against an illiterate enemy, and in the dark solitude

of

garian and Albanian; the former, 70 miles from Croya, (1.i. P. 17.), was contiguous to the fortress of Sfetigrade, whose inhabitants refused to drink from a well into which a dead dog had traiterously been cast, (1. v. p. 139. 140.). We want a good map of Epirus.

+ Compare the Turkish narrative of Cantemir (p. 92.) with the pompous and prolix declamation in the 4th, 5th, and 6th books of the Albanian priest, who has been copied by the tribe of strangers and moderns.

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 is disproved by the Greeks and Turks, who agree in the time and manner of Amurath's death at Adrianople.