LXVII. "the Western powers; from the Morea you shall sail to CHAP. "Cyprus on a particular commission; and from thence pro"ceed to Georgia to receive and conduct the future em"press." "Your commands," replied Phranza, “are irre"sistible; but deign, great sir," he added, with a serious smile,"to consider that if I am thus perpetually absent "from my family, my wife may be tempted either to seek "another husband, or to throw herself into a monastery." After laughing at his apprehensions, the emperor more gravely consoled him by the pleasing assurance that this should be his last service abroad, and that he destined for his son a wealthy and noble heiress; for himself, the important office of great logothete, or principal minister of state. The marriage was immediately stipulated; but the office, however incompatible with his own, had been usurped by the ambition of the admiral. Some delay was requisite to negociate a consent and an equivalent; and the nomination of Phranza was half declared, and half suppressed, lest it might be displeasing to an insolent and powerful favourite. The winter was spent in the preparations of his embassy; and Phranza had resolved that the youth his son should embrace this opportunity of foreign travel, and be left, on the appearance of danger, with his maternal kindred of the Morea. Such were the private and public designs, which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire. met II. CHAP. LXVIII. Reign and Character of Mahomet the Second....Siege, Assault, and final Conquest, of Constantinople by the Turks...Death of Constantine Paleologus... Servitude of the Greeks...Extinction of the Roman Empire in the East...Consternation of Europe... Conquests and Death of Mahomet the Second. CHAP. THE siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our LXVIII. first attention to the person and character of the great deCharacter stroyer. Mahomet the second was the son of the second of Maho- Amurath; and though his mother has been decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous concubines who peopled from every climate the haram of the sultan. His first education and sentiments were those of a devout Musulman; and as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands and face by the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry: his aspiring genius disdained to acknowledge a power above his own; and in his looser hours he presumed (it is said) to brand the prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the doctrine and discipline of the Koran :2 his private indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear; and we should suspect the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind which is hardened against truth, must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the most skilful masters, Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and besides his native tongue, it is affirmed that he spoke or understood five languages,3 the Arabic, the Persian, the Chaldæan or Hebrew, the Latin and the Greek. The Persian 1 For the character of Mahomet II. it is dangerous to trust either the Turks or the Christians. The most moderate picture appears to be drawn by Phranza (l. i. c. 33), whose resentment had cooled in age and solitude; see likewise Spondanus (A. D. 1451, No. 11), and the continuator of Fleury (tom. xxii. p. 552), the Elegia of Paulus Jovius (1. iii. p. 164...166), and the Dictionaire de Bayle (tom. iii. p. 272.. 279). 2 Cantemir (p. 115), and the moschs which he founded, attest his public regard for religion. Mahomet freely disputed with the patriarch Gennadius on the two religions (Spond. A. D. 1453, No. 22). 3 Quinque linguas præter suam noverat; Græcam, Latinam, Chaldaicam, Persicam. The Latin translator of Phranza has dropt the Arabic, which the Koran must recommend to every Musulman. LXVIII. might indeed contribute to his amusement, and the Arabic CHAP. to his edification; and such studies are familiar to the Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and Turks, a conqueror might wish to converse with the people over whom he was ambitious to reign: his own praises in Latin poetry or prose 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 accuse three, and three only, of the Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness. But it cannot be denied that his passions were at once furious and inexorable; that in the palace, as 4 Philelphus, by a Latin ode, requested and obtained the liberty of his wife's mother and sisters from the conqueror of Constantinople. It was delivered into the sultans hands by the envoys of the duke of Milan. Philelphus himself was suspected of a design of retiring to Constantinople; yet the orator often sounded the trumpet of holy war (see his Life by M. Launcelot, in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718. 724, &c). 5 Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his xii 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. 6 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 himself understood Greek, it must have been for the benefit of his subjects. Yet these lives are a school of freedom as well as of valour. 7 The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, was dismissed with a chain and collar of gold, and a purse of 3000 ducats. With Voltaire I laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely beheaded, to instruct the painter in the action of the muscles. 8 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 companions of their revels. CHAP. in the field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest proLXVIII. vocation; and that the noblest of the captive youth were often dishonoured by his unnatural lust. In the Albanian His reign 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 achievements, 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. In the reign of Amurath, he twice tasted of royalty, and twice descended from the throne: his tender age was incaA.D.1481, pable of opposing his father's restoration, but never could July 2. 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 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 4 9 Calapin, one of these royal infants, was saved from his cruel brother, and baptised at Rome under the the name of Callistus Othomannus. The empe ror Frederic III. presented him with an estate in Austria, where he ended his life; and Cuspinian, who in his youth conversed with the aged prince at Vi enna, applauds his piety and wisdom (de Cæsaribus, p. 672, 673). LXVIII. confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn CHAP. 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: the expenses of luxury were applied to those 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.10 Mahomet, The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish ca- Hostile insuits, have pronounced that no promise can bind the faithful tentions of against the interest and duty of their religion; and that the A. D.1451. 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."1 10 See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas (c. 33), Phranza (1. i. c. 33. 1. iii. c. 2), Chalcocondyles (1. vii. p. 199), and Cantemir (p. 96). 11 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), Chalcocondyles (1. viii. p. 201 ...214), and Leonardus Chiensis (Historia C. P. a Turco expugnatæ. Norimberghæ, 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 loss 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 Turcicarum, 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, l. i. p. 74...98. Basil, 1584). The various facts and materials are briefly, though critically, reviewed by Spondanus (A. D. 1453, No. 1...27). The hearsay relations of Monstrelet and the distant Latins, I shall take leave to disregard. |