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A. D.

1403

1410.

brother, the sovereign of Amasia; and the final CHAP. event suggested a pious allusion, that the law of LXV. Moses and Jesus, of Isa and Mousa, had been abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3. Soliman is not 3. Soli. numbered in the lists of the Turkish Emperors; man, yet he checked the victorious progress of the Moguls; and after their departure, united for a while the thrones of Adrianople and Boursa. In war, he was brave, active, and fortunate; his courage was softened by clemency; but it was likewise inflamed by presumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline in a government, where either the subject or the sovereign must continually tremble; his vices alienated the chiefs of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in a prince and a man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the slumber of intoxication, he was surprised by his brother Mousa; and as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath, after a reign of seven years and ten months. 4. The in- 4. Mousa, vestiture of Mousa degraded him as the slave of the Moguls; his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania. Mousa fled in disguise from the palace of Boursa; traversed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over the Walachian and Servian hills; and, after some vain attempts, ascended the throne of Adrianople, so recently stained with the blood VOL. XII.

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of

A. D.

1410.

LXV.

5. Maho

met I.

1421.

CHAP. of Soliman. In a reign of three years and a half, his troops were victorious against the Christians of Hungary and the Morea; but Mousa was ruined by his timorous disposition and unseasonable clemency. After resigning the sovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his ministers, and the superior ascendant of his brother Mahomet. 5. The final victory of Mahomet was the just reA. D. compence of his prudence and moderation. Before 1413- his father's captivity, the royal youth had been entrusted with the government of Amasia, thirty days journey from Constantinople, and the Turkish frontier, against the Christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The castle, in Asiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of Amasia", which is equally divided by the river Iris, rises on either side in the form of an amphitheatre, and represents, on a smaller scale, the image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obscure and contumacious angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his silent independence, and chased from the province the last stragglers of the Tartar host. He relieved himself from the dangerous neighbourhood of Isa; but in the contests of their more powerful brethren, his firm neutrality was respected; till, after the triumph of Mousa, he stood forth the heir and avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by treaty, and Romania by arms; and the soldier who presented him with the head of Mousa,

Arabshah, lcc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph. tab. xvii. p.302. Busbequius, epist. i. p. 96 97. in tinere C. P. et Amasiano.

LXV.

Amurath

II.

Mousa, was rewarded as the benefactor of his king CHA P. and country. The eight years of his sole and peaceful reign were usefully employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and restoring, on a firmer basis, the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. His last care was the choice of two vizirs, Bajazet and Ibrahim*, who might guide the youth of his son Reign of Amurath; and such was their union and prudence, that they concealed, above forty days, the Empe- A. D. ror's death, till the arrival of his successor in the palace of Boursa. A new war was kindled in Eu- Feb. 9. rope by the prince, or impostor, Mustapha; the first vizir lost his army and his head; but the more fortunate Ibrahim, whose name and family are still revered, extinguished the last pretender to the throne of Bajazet, and closed the scene of domestic hostility.

1421

345T,

of the

Ottoman

empire,

A. D.

1421.

In these conflicts, the wisest Turks, and indeed Re-union the body of the nation, were strongly attached to the unity of the empire; and Romania and Anatolia, so often torn asunder by private ambition, were animated by a strong and invincible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have instructed the Christian powers; and had they occupied, with a confederate fleet, the straits of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been speedily annihilated. But the schism of the West, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted the

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*The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a contemporary Greek, (Ducas, c. 25.). His descendants are the sole nobles in Turkey; they content themselves with the administration of his pious foundations, are excused from public offices, and receive two annual visits from the Sultan, (Cantemir, p. 76.).

LXV.

CHAP. the Latins from this generous enterprise; they enjoyed the present respite, without a thought of futurity; and were often tempted by a momentary interest to serve the common enemy of their religion. A colony of Genoese, which had been planted at Phocæat on the Ionian coast, was enriched by the lucrative monopoly of alum; and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was secured by the annual payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoese governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth, embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook, with seven stout gallies, to transport him from Asia to Europe. The Sultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral's ship, which was manned by eight hundred of the bravest Franks. His life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance, applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the passage, knelt before him, and gratefully accepted a discharge of his arrears of

tribute.

*See Pachymer (1. v. c. 29.), Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. i.), Sherefeddin (1. v. c. 57.), and Lucas (c. 25.) The last of these, a curious and careful observer, is entitled, from his birth and station, to particular credit in all that concerns Ionia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted to New Phocæa, he mentions the English, (Iyyλ); an early evidence of Mediterranean trade.

For the spirit of navigation, and freedom of ancient Phocæa, or rather of the Phocæans, consult the first book of Herodotus, and the Geographical Index of his last and learned French translator, M. Laicher, (tom. vii. p. 299.).

Phocæa is not enumerated by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 52.) among the places productive of alum; he reckons Egypt as the first, and for the second the isle of Melos, whose alum mines are described by Tournefort, (tom. i. lettre iv.), a traveller and a naturalist. After the loss of Phocæa, the Genoese, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the isle of Ischia, (Ismael. Bouillaud, ad Ducam, c. 25.).

LXV.

tribute. They landed in sight of Mustapha and CHAP. Gallipoli; two thousand Italians, armed with lances and battle-axes, attended Amurath to the conquest of Adrianople; and this venal service was soon repaid by the ruin of the commerce and colony of Phocæa.

empire,

A. D.

1402

1425.

If Timour had generously marched at the re- State of quest, and to the relief of, the Greek Emperor, he the Greek might be entitled to the praise and gratitude of the Christians. But a Mussulman, who carried into Georgia the sword of persecution, and respected the holy warfare of Bajazet, was not disposed to pity or succour the idolaters of Europe. The Tartar followed the impulse of ambition; and the deliverance of Constantinople was the accidental consequence. When Manuel abdicated the government, it was his prayer, rather than his hope, that the ruin of the church and state might be delayed beyond his unhappy days; and after his return from a western pilgrimage, he expected every hour the news of the sad catastrophe. On a sudden, he was astonished and rejoiced by the intelligence of the retreat, the overthrow, and the captivity of the Ottoman. Manuel † immediately sailed from Modon

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The writer who has the most abused this fabulous generosity, is our ingenious Sir William Temple, (his Works, vol. iii. P. 349. 350. 8vo. edition), that lover of exotic virtue. After the conquest of Russia, &c. and the passage of the Danube, his Tartar hero relieves, visits, admires, and refuses the city of Constantine. His flattering pencil deviates in every line from the truth of history; yet his pleasing fictions are more excuseable than the gross errors of Cantemir.

For the reigns of Manuel and John, of Mahomet I. and Amurath II. see the Othman history of Cantemir, (p. 7095.), and the three Greeks, Chalcondyles, Phranza, and Ducas, who is still superior to his rivals.

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