LXVIII. CHAP. the shores of the Bosphorus may not always be secure from the insults of an hostile navy. In the new character of a mosch, the cathedral of St Sophia was endowed with an ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains, for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. The same model was imitated in the jami, or royal moschs; and the first of these was built by Mahomet himself, on the ruins of the church of the holy apostles, and the tombs' of the Greek Emperors. On the third day after the conquest, the grave of Abu Ayub, or Job, who had fallen in the first siege of the Arabs, was revealed in a vision; and it is before the sepulchre of the martyr, that the new Sultans are girded with the sword of empire. Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian; nor shall I enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters. The population was speedily renewed; and before the end of September, five thousand families of Anatolia. and Romania had obeyed the royal mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of death, to occupy their new habitations in the capital. The throne of Mahomet was guarded by the numbers and fidelity of his Moslem subjects; but his rational policy aspired to collect the remnant of the Greeks; and they returned in crowds, as soon as they were assured of their *The Turbe, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is described and engraved in the Tableau General de l'Empire. Ottoman, (Paris, 1787, in large folio), a work of less use, perhaps, than magnificence, (tom. i. p. 305. 306.). their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of CHA P. their religion. In the election and investiture of LXVIII. a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated. With a mixture of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the Sultan on his throne, who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the crosier, or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office, who conducted the patriarch to the gate of the seraglio, presented him with an horse richly caparisoned, and directed the vizirs and bashaws to lead him to the palace which had been allotted for his residence *. The churches of Constantinople were shared between the two religions; their limits were marked; and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of Mahomet, the Greeks† enjoyed above sixty years the benefit of this equal partition. Encouraged by the ministers of the divan, who wished to elude the fanaticism of the Sultan, the Christian advocates presumed to al-, ledge, that this division had been an act, not of generosity, but of justice; not a concession, but a compact; and that, if one half of the city had been * Phranza (1. iii. c. 19.) relates the ceremony, which has possibly been adorned in the Greek reports to each other, and to the Latins. The fact is confirmed by Emanuel Malaxus, who wrote, in vulgar Greek, the history of the Patriarchs after the taking of Constantinople, inserted in the TurcoGræcia of Crusius, (1. v. p. 106—184.). But the most patient reader will not believe that Mahomet adopted the Catholic form, "Sancta Trinitas quæ mihi donavit imperium te in "patriarcham novæ Romæ deligit." From the Turco-Græcia of Crusius, &c. Spondanus (A. D. 1453, No. 21. 1458, No. 16.) describes the slavery and domestic quarrels of the Greek church. The patriarch who succeeded Gennadius threw himself in despair into a well. LXVIII. CHAP. taken by storm, the other moiety had surrendered on the faith of a sacred capitulation. The original grant had indeed been consumed by fire; but the loss was supplied by the testimony of three aged Janizaries who remembered the transaction; and their venal oaths are of more weight in the opinion of Cantemir, than the positive and unanimous consent of the history of the times. Extinction perial fa milies of Comnenus and Pala ologus. The remaining fragments of the Greek kingdom of the Im- in Europe and Asia I shall abandon to the Turkish arms; but the final extinction of the two last dynastiest which have reigned in Constantinople, should terminate the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East. The despots of the Morea, Demetrius and Thomas †, the two surviving brothers of the name of PALEOLOGUS, were astonished by Cantemir (p. 101-105.) insists on the unanimous consent of the Turkish historians, ancient as well as modern, and argues, that they would not have violated the truth to diminish their national glory, since it is esteemed more honourable to take a city by force than by composition. But, 1. I doubt this consent, since he quotes no particular historian, and the Turkish Annals of Leunclavius affirm, without exception, that Mahomet took Constantinople per vim, (p. 329.). 2. The same argument may be turned in favour of the Greeks of the times, who would not have forgotten this honourable and salutary treaty. Voltaire, as usual, prefers the Turks to the Christians. For the genealogy and fall of the Comneni of Trebizond, see Ducange (Fam. Byzant. p. 195.); for the last Palæologi, the same accurate antiquarian, (p. 244. 247. 248.). The Palæologi of Montferrat were not extinct till the next century; but they had forgotten their Greek origin and kindred. In the worthless story of the disputes and misfortunes of the two brothers Phranza (1. iii. c. 21-30.) is too partial on the side of Thomas; Ducas (c. 44. 45.) is too brief, and Chalcondyles (1. viii. ix. x.) too diffuse and digressive. LXVIII. by the death of the Emperor Constantine, and the CHAP. ruin of the monarchy. Hopeless of defence, they prepared, with the noble Greeks who adhered to their fortune, to seek a refuge in Italy, beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first apprehensions were dispelled by the victorious Sultan, who contented himself with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and while his ambition explored the continent and the islands in search of prey, he indulged the Morea in a respite of seven years. But this respite was a period of grief, discord, and misery. The hexamilion, the rampart of the Isthmus, so often raised, and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three hundred Italian archers; the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks; they returned from their summer excursions with a train of captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain. The Albanians, a vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with rapine and murder; the two despots implored the dangerous and humiliating aid of a neighbouring bashaw; and when he had quelled the revolt, his lessons inculcated the rule of their future conduct. Neither the ties of blood, nor the oaths which they repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar, nor the stronger pressure of necessity, could reconcile or suspend their domestic quarrels. They ravaged each other's patrimony with fire and sword; the alms and succours of the West were consumed in civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage and arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker R 4 rival LXVIII. Loss of the Mo- CHAP. rival invoked their supreme lord; and, in the season of maturity and revenge, Mahomet declared himself the friend of Demetrius, and marched into the Morea with an irresistible force. When he had taken possession of Sparta, " You are too weak," said the Sultan, "to controul this turbulent pro"vince. I will take your daughter to my bed; "and you shall pass the remainder of your life in "security and honour." Demetrius sighed, and obeyed; surrendered his daughter and his castles; followed to Adrianople his sovereign and son; and received, for his own maintenance, and that of his followers, a city in Thrace, and the adjacent isles of Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the next year by a companion of misfortune, the last of the COMNENIAN race, who, after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a new empire on the coast of the Black Sea. In the progress of his Anatolian conquests, Mahomet invested, with a fleet and army, the capital of David, who presumed to style himself the Emperor of Trebizond t; and the negociation was comprised in a short and peremptory question, "Will you secure your life "and * See the loss or conquest of Trebizond in Chalcondy les (1. ix. p. 263-266.), Ducas (c. 45.), Phranza (1. iii. c. 27.), and Cantemir, (p. 107.). Though Tournefort (tom. iii. lettre xvii. p. 179.) speaks of Trebizond as mal peuplée, Peyssonel, the latest and most accurate observer, can find roo,oco inhabitants, (Commerce de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 72. and for the province, p. 5390.). Its prosperity and trade are perpetually disturbed by the facticus quarrels of two odas of Janizaries, in one of which 30,000 Lazi are commonly enrolled, (Memoires de Tott, tom. iii. p. 16. 17.). |