Page images
PDF
EPUB

LXVII.

1

CHAP. of Epirus, his partial biographers may safely indulge the latitude of romance; but their fictions are exposed by the light of Italian history; and they af ford a strong presumption against their own truth, by a fabulous tale of his exploits, when he passed the Adriatic with eight hundred horse to the succour of the King of Naples *. Without disparagement to his fame, they might have owned that he was finally oppressed by the Ottoman powers. In his extreme danger, he applied to Pope Pius the Second for a refuge in the ecclesiastical state; and his resources were almost exhausted, since Scanderbeg died a fugitive at Lissus, on the Venetian territory. His sepulchre was soon violated by the Jan. 17. Turkish conquerors; but the Janizaries, who wore his bones enchased in a bracelet, declared by this superstitious amulet their involuntary reverence for his valour. The instant ruin of his country may redound to the hero's glory; yet, had he balanced the consequences of submission and resistance, a patriot, perhaps, would have declined the unequal

and

death,

1467,

contest

See the marvels of his Calabrian expedition in the 9th and 10th books of Marinus Barletius, which may be rectified by the testimony or silence of Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. iii. p. 291.), and his original 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 des Comines, 1. viii. c. 5.).

+ 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, (1. iii. c. 28.), a refugee in the neighbouring isle of Corfu, demonstrate his last distress, which is awk wardly concealed by Marinius Barletius, (1. x.).

LXVII.

contest which must depend on the life and genius CHA P of one man. Scanderbeg might indeed be supported by the rational, though fallacious hope, that the Pope, the King of Naples, and the Venetian republic, would join in the defence of a free and Christian people, who guarded the sea-coast of the Adriatic, and the narrow passage from Greece to Italy. His infant son was saved from the national shipwreck; the Castriots were invested with a 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 †.

*

last of the

Greek

A. D.

1448,

In the long career of the decline and fall of Constanthe Roman empire, I have reached at length the tine, the last reign of the Princes of Constantinople, who Roman or so feebly sustained the name and majesty of the Emperors, Cæsars. On the decease of John Palæologus, who survived about four years the Hungarian Nov. 1crusade, the royal family, by the death of Andronicus, and the monastic profession of Isidore, May 29. was reduced to three princes, Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas, the surviving sons of the Emperor

See the family of the Castriots, in Ducange, (Fam. Dalmaticæ, &c. xviii. p. 348-350.).

This colony of Albanese is mentioned by Mr Swinburne, (Travels into the two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 350-354-).

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.

A. D.

1453,

CHAP. Emperor Manuel. Of these the first and the last
LXVII.. were far distant in the Morea; but Demetrius, who

possessed the domain of Selybria, was in the sub-
urbs, at the head of a party; his ambition was
not chilled by the public distress; and his conspi-
racy
with the Turks and the schismatics had al-
ready disturbed the peace of his country. The fu-
neral of the late Emperor was accelerated with sin-
gular and even suspicious haste; the claim of De-
metrius 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 re-
turned to the capital, asserted with becoming zeal
the interest of his absent brother. An ambas-
sador, the historian Phranza, was immediately
dispatched 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 downfall of the Eastern empire.
By the hands of two illustrious deputies, the Im-
perial crown was placed at Sparta on the head of
Constantine. In the spring, he sailed from the
Morea, escaped the encounter of a Turkish squa-
dron, enjoyed the acclamations of his subjects,
celebrated the festival of a new reign, and ex-
hausted by his donatives the treasure, or rather
the indigence, of the state. The Emperor imme-
diately resigned to his brothers the possession of

the

LXVII.

the Morea, and the brittle friendship of the two CHAP. princes, Demetrius and Thomas, was 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 *.

Phranza,

A. D.

14,0

1452.

The protovestiare, or great chamberlain, Phranza, Embassailed from Constantinople as minister of a bride- sies of groom; 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 an hundred years of age, who had formerly been carried away a captive by the bar. VOL. XII. barians,

N

* Phranza (1. iii. c. 1-6) deserves credit and esteem.

CHAP. barians, and who amused his hearers with a tale LXVII of the wonders of India t, from whence he had re

turned to Portugal by an unknown seat. 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

*Suppose him to have been captured in 1394, in Timour's first war in Georgia, (Sherefeddin, 1. iii. c. 5o.), he might follow his Tartar master into Hindostan in 1398, and from thence sail to the spice-islands.

The happy and pious Indians lived 150 years, and enjoyed the most perfect productions of the vegetable and mineral 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 audendi, &c.

He sailed in a country-vessel from the spice-islands to one. of the ports of the exterior India; invenitque navem grandem Ibericam, qua 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.

Cantemir, (p. 83.), who styles her the daughter of Lazarus 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 cohabition, the Sultan corpus ejus non tetiget. After the taking of Constantinople, she Hed to Mahomet II. (Phranza, 1. iii. c. 22.).

« PreviousContinue »