CHAP. prose

LXVIII.

might find a passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth 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, perhaps 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 employed 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 beauteous slave, whose head he severed from her body, to convince the Janizaries that their master was not the votary of love. His sobriety is attested by the silence of the Turkish annals, which accuses three, and three only, of the Ottoman

*Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his twelve books, de Re Militari, in which he first mentions the use of bombs. By his patron Sigismond Malatesta, Prince of Rimini, it had been addressed with a Latin epistle to Mahomet II.

+ According to Phranza, he assiduously studied the lives and actions of Alexander, Augustus, Constantine, and Theodosius. I have read somewhere, that Plutarch's Lives were translated by his orders into the Turkish language. If the Sultan homself understood Greek, it must have been for the benefit of his subjects. Yet these lives are a school of ficed. m as well as of valour.

The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, was dismissed with a chain and collar of gold, and a puise of goco ducats. With Voltaire, laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely beheaded, to instruct the painter in the action of the muscles.

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Ottoman line of the vice of drunkennesss*. But CHAP. 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 provocation; and that the noblest of the captive youth were often dishonoured by his unnatural lust. In 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 atchievements, 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; 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.

14519

A. D. 1481,

July 2.

In the reign of Amurath, he twice tasted of royal- His reign, ty, and twice descended from the throne; his tender age was incapable of opposing his father's resto- Feb. 9ration, 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

* These Imperial drunkards were Soliman I. Selim II. and Amurath IV. (Cantemir, p. 61.). The sophis of Persia can produce a more regular succession; and in the last age, our European travellers were the witnesses and the companions of their revels.

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CHAP. 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 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;

Calapin, one of these royal infants, was saved from his cruel brother, and baptised at Rome under the name of Callistus Othomannus. The Emperor Frederic III. presented him with an eftate in Austria, where he ended his life; and Cuspinian, who in his youth conversed with the aged prince at Vienna, applauds his piety and wisdom, (de Caesaribus, p. 672. 673.).

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hold; the expences of luxury were applied to those CHAP. of ambition, and an useless train of seven thousand falconers was either dismissed from his service, or enlisted 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 *.

intentions

of Maho

met,

A. D.

1451.

The Mahometan, and more especially the Turk- Hostile ish casuists, have pronounced, that no promise can bind the faithful against the interest and duty of their religion; 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

See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas (c. 33.), Phranza (1. i. c. 33. 1. ii. c. 2.), Chalcondyles (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 account of this conquest; such an account as we possess of the siege of Rhodes by Soliman II. (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxvi. p. 723—769.). I must therefore depend on the Greeks, whose prejudices, in some degree, are subdued by their distress. Our standard texts are those of Ducas (c. 34 -42.), Phranza (1. iii. c. 7—20.), Chalcondyles (1. viii. p. 201-214.), and Leonardus Chiensis, (Historia C. P. a Turco

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CHAP. of labouring to be forgotten, their ambassadors pursued his camp, to demand the payment, and even the increase of their annual stipend. The divan was importuned by their complaints, and the vizir, a secret friend of the Christians, was constrained to deliver the sense of his brethren. "Ye foolish "and miserable Romans," said Calil, "we know

your devices, and ye are ignorant of your own "danger! the scrupulous Amurath is no more; "his throne is occupied by a young conqueror, "whom no laws can bind, and no obstacles can "resist; and if you escape from his hands, give

praise to the divine clemency, which yet delays. "the chastisement of your sins. Why do ye seek "to affright us by vain and indirect menaces? Re"lease the fugitive Orchan, crown him Sultan of "Romania; call the Hungarians from beyond the "Danube; arm against us the nations of the West; "and be assured, that you will only provoke and "precipitate your ruin." But if the fears of the ambassadors were alarmed by the stern language of the vizir, they were soothed by the courteous audience and friendly speeches of the Ottoman prince;

Turco expugnatæ. Norimberghe, 1544, in 4to, 20 leaves). The last of these narratives is the earliest in date, since it was composed in the isle of Chios, the 16th of August 1453, only seventy-nine days after the less of the city, and in the first confusion of ideas and passions. Some hints may be added from an epistle of Cardinal Isidore (in Farragine Rerum Turticarum, ad calcem Chalcondyl. Clauseri, Basil, 1556) to Pope Nicholas V. and a tract of Theodosius Zygomala, which he addressed, in the year 1581, to Martin Crusius, (Turco Græcia, 1. i. p. 74-98. Basil, 1584.). The various facts and materials are brietly, though critically reviewed by Spondanus, (A. D. 1553. No. 1-27.). The hearsay-relations of Monstrelet and the distant Latins, I fhall take leave to disregard.