Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of

Eastern Empire.—Part IV.

While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the doors
were broken with axes; and as the Turks encountered no
resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and
securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the
appearance of wealth, attracted their choice; and the right of
property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by
personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space
of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females
with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their
slaves; the prelates, with the porters of the church; and young
men of the plebeian class, with noble maids, whose faces had been
invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common
captivity, the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of
nature were cut asunder; and the inexorable soldier was careless
of the father’s groans, the tears of the mother, and the
lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were
the nuns, who were torn from the altar with naked bosoms,
outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair; and we should piously
believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils of the
harem to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of
these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through
the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more
prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows.
At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the
churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations, of
the capital; nor could any place, however sacred or sequestered,
protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty
thousand of this devoted people were transported from the city to
the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold according to the caprice or
interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude
through the provinces of the Ottoman empire. Among these we may
notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phranza, first
chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved with his family
in the common lot. After suffering four months the hardships of
slavery, he recovered his freedom: in the ensuing winter he
ventured to Adrianople, and ransomed his wife from the _mir
bashi_, or master of the horse; but his two children, in the
flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of
Mahomet himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio,
perhaps a virgin: his son, in the fifteenth year of his age,
preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the
royal lover. 66 A deed thus inhuman cannot surely be expiated by
the taste and liberality with which he released a Grecian matron
and her two daughters, on receiving a Latin doe From ode from
Philelphus, who had chosen a wife in that noble family. 67 The
pride or cruelty of Mahomet would have been most sensibly
gratified by the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity of
Cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he escaped from Galata in
a plebeian habit. 68 The chain and entrance of the outward harbor
was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war.
They had signalized their valor in the siege: they embraced the
moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dissipated in
the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail, the beach was
covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of
transportation were scanty: the Venetians and Genoese selected
their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the fairest promises of
the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and
embarked with their most precious effects.

66 (return) [ See Phranza, l. iii. c. 20, 21. His expressions are
positive: Ameras suâ manû jugulavit.... volebat enim eo turpiter
et nefarie abuti. Me miserum et infelicem! Yet he could only
learn from report the bloody or impure scenes that were acted in
the dark recesses of the seraglio.]

67 (return) [ See Tiraboschi (tom. vi. P. i. p. 290) and
Lancelot, (Mém. de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718.)
I should be curious to learn how he could praise the public
enemy, whom he so often reviles as the most corrupt and inhuman
of tyrants.]

68 (return) [ The commentaries of Pius II. suppose that he
craftily placed his cardinal’s hat on the head of a corpse which
was cut off and exposed in triumph, while the legate himself was
bought and delivered as a captive of no value. The great Belgic
Chronicle adorns his escape with new adventures, which he
suppressed (says Spondanus, A.D. 1453, No. 15) in his own
letters, lest he should lose the merit and reward of suffering
for Christ. * Note: He was sold as a slave in Galata, according
to Von Hammer, p. 175. See the somewhat vague and declamatory
letter of Cardinal Isidore, in the appendix to Clarke’s Travels,
vol. ii. p. 653.—M.]

In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is
condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity: the same
effects must be produced by the same passions; and when those
passions may be indulged without control, small, alas! is the
difference between civilized and savage man. Amidst the vague
exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of
a wanton or immoderate effusion of Christian blood: but according
to their maxims, (the maxims of antiquity,) the lives of the
vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the
conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom,
of his captives of both sexes. 69 The wealth of Constantinople
had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the
rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years.
But as no regular division was attempted of the spoil, the
respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards
of valor were stolen away by the followers of the camp, who had
declined the toil and danger of the battle. The narrative of
their depredations could not afford either amusement or
instruction: the total amount, in the last poverty of the empire,
has been valued at four millions of ducats; 70 and of this sum a
small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the
Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners,
the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation: but
the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle ostentation
of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots
and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the
defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the
monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The
dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second
firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory
of God, 71 was despoiled of the oblation of ages; and the gold
and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal
ornaments, were most wickedly converted to the service of
mankind. After the divine images had been stripped of all that
could be valuable to a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood, was
torn, or broken, or burnt, or trod under foot, or applied, in the
stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses. The example of
sacrilege was imitated, however, from the Latin conquerors of
Constantinople; and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and
the saints, had sustained from the guilty Catholic, might be
inflicted by the zealous Mussulman on the monuments of idolatry.
Perhaps, instead of joining the public clamor, a philosopher will
observe, that in the decline of the arts the workmanship could
not be more valuable than the work, and that a fresh supply of
visions and miracles would speedily be renewed by the craft of
the priests and the credulity of the people. He will more
seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were
destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and
twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; 72 ten
volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same
ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology,
included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest
productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We
may reflect with pleasure that an inestimable portion of our
classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the
mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the
havoc of time and barbarism.

69 (return) [ Busbequius expatiates with pleasure and applause on
the rights of war, and the use of slavery, among the ancients and
the Turks, (de Legat. Turcicâ, epist. iii. p. 161.)]

70 (return) [ This sum is specified in a marginal note of
Leunclavius, (Chalcondyles, l. viii. p. 211,) but in the
distribution to Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Ancona, of 50, 20,
and 15,000 ducats, I suspect that a figure has been dropped. Even
with the restitution, the foreign property would scarcely exceed
one fourth.]

71 (return) [ See the enthusiastic praises and lamentations of
Phranza, (l. iii. c. 17.)]

72 (return) [ See Ducas, (c. 43,) and an epistle, July 15th,
1453, from Laurus Quirinus to Pope Nicholas V., (Hody de Græcis,
p. 192, from a MS. in the Cotton library.)]

From the first hour 73 of the memorable twenty-ninth of May,
disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth
hour of the same day; when the sultan himself passed in triumph
through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his viziers,
bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian)
was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle
to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror 74
gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange, though
splendid, appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from
the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or
_atmeidan_, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the
three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered
with his iron mace or battle-axe the under jaw of one of these
monsters, 75 which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or
talismans of the city. 751 At the principal door of St. Sophia,
he alighted from his horse, and entered the dome; and such was
his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on
observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble
pavement, he admonished him with his cimeter, that, if the spoil
and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private
buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the
metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque:
the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been
removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were
covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and
restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on
the ensuing Friday, the _muezin_, or crier, ascended the most
lofty turret, and proclaimed the _ezan_, or public invitation in
the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mahomet
and Second performed the _namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving on
the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been
celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. 76 From St. Sophia he
proceeded to the august, but desolate mansion of a hundred
successors of the great Constantine, but which in a few hours had
been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on
the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind;
and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider
has wove his web in the Imperial palace; and the owl hath sung
her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.” 77

73 (return) [ The Julian Calendar, which reckons the days and
hours from midnight, was used at Constantinople. But Ducas seems
to understand the natural hours from sunrise.]

74 (return) [ See the Turkish Annals, p. 329, and the Pandects of
Leunclavius, p. 448.]

75 (return) [ I have had occasion (vol. ii. p. 100) to mention
this curious relic of Grecian antiquity.]

751 (return) [ Von Hammer passes over this circumstance, which is
treated by Dr. Clarke (Travels, vol. ii. p. 58, 4to. edit,) as a
fiction of Thevenot. Chishull states that the monument was broken
by some attendants of the Polish ambassador.—M.]

76 (return) [ We are obliged to Cantemir (p. 102) for the Turkish
account of the conversion of St. Sophia, so bitterly deplored by
Phranza and Ducas. It is amusing enough to observe, in what
opposite lights the same object appears to a Mussulman and a
Christian eye.]

77 (return) [ This distich, which Cantemir gives in the original,
derives new beauties from the application. It was thus that
Scipio repeated, in the sack of Carthage, the famous prophecy of
Homer. The same generous feeling carried the mind of the
conqueror to the past or the future.]

Yet his mind was not satisfied, nor did the victory seem
complete, till he was informed of the fate of Constantine;
whether he had escaped, or been made prisoner, or had fallen in
the battle. Two Janizaries claimed the honor and reward of his
death: the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the
golden eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged,
with tears, the head of their late emperor; and, after exposing
the bloody trophy, 78 Mahomet bestowed on his rival the honors of
a decent funeral. After his decease, Lucas Notaras, great duke,
79 and first minister of the empire, was the most important
prisoner. When he offered his person and his treasures at the
foot of the throne, “And why,” said the indignant sultan, “did
you not employ these treasures in the defence of your prince and
country?”—“They were yours,” answered the slave; “God had
reserved them for your hands.”—“If he reserved them for me,”
replied the despot, “how have you presumed to withhold them so
long by a fruitless and fatal resistance?” The great duke alleged
the obstinacy of the strangers, and some secret encouragement
from the Turkish vizier; and from this perilous interview he was
at length dismissed with the assurance of pardon and protection.
Mahomet condescended to visit his wife, a venerable princess
oppressed with sickness and grief; and his consolation for her
misfortunes was in the most tender strain of humanity and filial
reverence. A similar clemency was extended to the principal
officers of state, of whom several were ransomed at his expense;
and during some days he declared himself the friend and father of
the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and before
his departure, the hippodrome streamed with the blood of his
noblest captives. His perfidious cruelty is execrated by the
Christians: they adorn with the colors of heroic martyrdom the
execution of the great duke and his two sons; and his death is
ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children to
the tyrant’s lust. 791 Yet a Byzantine historian has dropped an
unguarded word of conspiracy, deliverance, and Italian succor:
such treason may be glorious; but the rebel who bravely ventures,
has justly forfeited his life; nor should we blame a conqueror
for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the
eighteenth of June the victorious sultan returned to Adrianople;
and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the Christian
princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the
Eastern empire.

78 (return) [ I cannot believe with Ducas (see Spondanus, A.D.
1453, No. 13) that Mahomet sent round Persia, Arabia, &c., the
head of the Greek emperor: he would surely content himself with a
trophy less inhuman.]

79 (return) [ Phranza was the personal enemy of the great duke;
nor could time, or death, or his own retreat to a monastery,
extort a feeling of sympathy or forgiveness. Ducas is inclined to
praise and pity the martyr; Chalcondyles is neuter, but we are
indebted to him for the hint of the Greek conspiracy.]

791 (return) [ Von Hammer relates this undoubtingly, apparently
on good authority, p. 559.—M.]

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince
or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable
situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire;
and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents
of time and fortune. Boursa and Adrianople, the ancient seats of
the Ottomans, sunk into provincial towns; and Mahomet the Second
established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the
same commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. 80 The
fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the
Latins, were prudently destroyed; but the damage of the Turkish
cannon was soon repaired; and before the month of August, great
quantities of lime had been burnt for the restoration of the
walls of the capital. As the entire property of the soil and
buildings, whether public or private, or profane or sacred, was
now transferred to the conqueror, he first separated a space of
eight furlongs from the point of the triangle for the
establishment of his seraglio or palace. It is here, in the bosom
of luxury, that the _Grand Signor_ (as he has been emphatically
named by the Italians) appears to reign over Europe and Asia; but
his person on the shores of the Bosphorus may not always be
secure from the insults of a hostile navy. In the new character
of a mosque, 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
mosques; 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. 81 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 lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of
their religion. In the election and investiture of 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 a horse richly caparisoned, and directed the
viziers and bashaws to lead him to the palace which had been
allotted for his residence. 82 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 83 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 allege 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 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. 84

80 (return) [ For the restitution of Constantinople and the
Turkish foundations, see Cantemir, (p. 102—109,) Ducas, (c. 42,)
with Thevenot, Tournefort, and the rest of our modern travellers.
From a gigantic picture of the greatness, population, &c., of
Constantinople and the Ottoman empire, (Abrégé de l’Histoire
Ottomane, tom. i. p. 16—21,) we may learn, that in the year 1586
the Moslems were less numerous in the capital than the
Christians, or even the Jews.]

81 (return) [ The _Turbé_, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is
described and engraved in the Tableau Générale de l’Empire
Ottoman, (Paris 1787, in large folio,) a work of less use,
perhaps, than magnificence, (tom. i. p. 305, 306.)]

82 (return) [ Phranza (l. 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 Turco-Græcia of
Crusius, (l. 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.”]

83 (return) [ 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.]

84 (return) [ 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 honorable 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 favor of the Greeks of the times, who would not have
forgotten this honorable and salutary treaty. Voltaire, as usual,
prefers the Turks to the Christians.]

The remaining fragments of the Greek kingdom in Europe and Asia I
shall abandon to the Turkish arms; but the final extinction of
the two last dynasties 85 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, 86 the two
surviving brothers of the name of Palæologus, were astonished by
the death of the emperor Constantine, and the 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 neighboring 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 succors 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
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 control this turbulent province: I will take your
daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the remainder of your life
in security and honor.” Demetrius sighed and obeyed; surrendered
his daughter and his castles; followed to Adrianople his
sovereign and his 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 861 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. 87 In the progress of
his Anatolian conquest, Mahomet invested with a fleet and army
the capital of David, who presumed to style himself emperor of
Trebizond; 88 and the negotiation was comprised in a short and
peremptory question, “Will you secure your life and treasures by
resigning your kingdom? or had you rather forfeit your kingdom,
your treasures, and your life?” The feeble Comnenus was subdued
by his own fears, 881 and the example of a Mussulman neighbor,
the prince of Sinope, 89 who, on a similar summons, had yielded a
fortified city, with four hundred cannon and ten or twelve
thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully
performed: 891 and the emperor, with his family, was transported
to a castle in Romania; but on a slight suspicion of
corresponding with the Persian king, David, and the whole
Comnenian race, were sacrificed to the jealousy or avarice of the
conqueror. 892 Nor could the name of father long protect the
unfortunate Demetrius from exile and confiscation; his abject
submission moved the pity and contempt of the sultan; his
followers were transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty
was alleviated by a pension of fifty thousand aspers, till a
monastic habit and a tardy death released Palæologus from an
earthly master. It is not easy to pronounce whether the servitude
of Demetrius, or the exile of his brother Thomas, 90 be the most
inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to
Corfu, and from thence to Italy, with some naked adherents: his
name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St. Andrew,
entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery
was prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope
and cardinals. His two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in
Italy; but the eldest, contemptible to his enemies and burdensome
to his friends, was degraded by the baseness of his life and
marriage. A title was his sole inheritance; and that inheritance
he successively sold to the kings of France and Arragon. 91
During his transient prosperity, Charles the Eighth was ambitious
of joining the empire of the East with the kingdom of Naples: in
a public festival, he assumed the appellation and the purple of
_Augustus_: the Greeks rejoiced and the Ottoman already trembled,
at the approach of the French chivalry. 92 Manuel Palæologus, the
second son, was tempted to revisit his native country: his return
might be grateful, and could not be dangerous, to the Porte: he
was maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an
honorable train of Christians and Moslems attended him to the
grave. If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they
refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the Imperial
race must be ascribed to an inferior kind: he accepted from the
sultan’s liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son
was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave.

85 (return) [ 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.]

86 (return) [ In the worthless story of the disputes and
misfortunes of the two brothers, Phranza (l. iii. c. 21—30) is
too partial on the side of Thomas Ducas (c. 44, 45) is too brief,
and Chalcondyles (l. viii. ix. x.) too diffuse and digressive.]

861 (return) [ Kalo-Johannes, the predecessor of David his
brother, the last emperor of Trebizond, had attempted to organize
a confederacy against Mahomet it comprehended Hassan Bei, sultan
of Mesopotamia, the Christian princes of Georgia and Iberia, the
emir of Sinope, and the sultan of Caramania. The negotiations
were interrupted by his sudden death, A.D. 1458. Fallmerayer, p.
257—260.—M.]

87 (return) [ See the loss or conquest of Trebizond in
Chalcondyles, (l. ix. p. 263—266,) Ducas, (c. 45,) Phranza, (l.
iii. c. 27,) and Cantemir, (p. 107.)]

88 (return) [ Though Tournefort (tom. iii. lettre xvii. p. 179)
speaks of Trebizond as mal peuplée, Peysonnel, the latest and
most accurate observer, can find 100,000 inhabitants, (Commerce
de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 72, and for the province, p. 53—90.)
Its prosperity and trade are perpetually disturbed by the
factious quarrels of two _odas_ of Janizaries, in one which
30,000 Lazi are commonly enrolled, (Mémoires de Tott, tom. iii.
p. 16, 17.)]

881 (return) [ According to the Georgian account of these
transactions, (translated by M. Brosset, additions to Le Beau,
vol. xxi. p. 325,) the emperor of Trebizond humbly entreated the
sultan to have the goodness to marry one of his daughters.—M.]

89 (return) [ Ismael Beg, prince of Sinope or Sinople, was
possessed (chiefly from his copper mines) of a revenue of 200,000
ducats, (Chalcond. l. ix. p. 258, 259.) Peysonnel (Commerce de la
Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 100) ascribes to the modern city 60,000
inhabitants. This account seems enormous; yet it is by trading
with people that we become acquainted with their wealth and
numbers.]

891 (return) [ M. Boissonade has published, in the fifth volume
of his Anecdota Græca (p. 387, 401.) a very interesting letter
from George Amiroutzes, protovestiarius of Trebizond, to
Bessarion, describing the surrender of Trebizond, and the fate of
its chief inhabitants.—M.]

892 (return) [ See in Von Hammer, vol. ii. p. 60, the striking
account of the mother, the empress Helena the Cantacuzene, who,
in defiance of the edict, like that of Creon in the Greek
tragedy, dug the grave for her murdered children with her own
hand, and sank into it herself.—M.]

90 (return) [ Spondanus (from Gobelin Comment. Pii II. l. v.)
relates the arrival and reception of the despot Thomas at Rome,.
(A.D. 1461 No. NO. 3.)]

91 (return) [ By an act dated A.D. 1494, Sept. 6, and lately
transmitted from the archives of the Capitol to the royal library
of Paris, the despot Andrew Palæologus, reserving the Morea, and
stipulating some private advantages, conveys to Charles VIII.,
king of France, the empires of Constantinople and Trebizond,
(Spondanus, A.D. 1495, No. 2.) M. D. Foncemagne (Mém. de
l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xvii. p. 539—578) has bestowed
a dissertation on his national title, of which he had obtained a
copy from Rome.]

92 (return) [ See Philippe de Comines, (l. vii. c. 14,) who
reckons with pleasure the number of Greeks who were prepared to
rise, 60 miles of an easy navigation, eighteen days’ journey from
Valona to Constantinople, &c. On this occasion the Turkish empire
was saved by the policy of Venice.]

The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified in its
loss: the pontificate of Nicholas the Fifth, however peaceful and
prosperous, was dishonored by the fall of the Eastern empire; and
the grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive,
the old enthusiasm of the crusades. In one of the most distant
countries of the West, Philip duke of Burgundy entertained, at
Lisle in Flanders, an assembly of his nobles; and the pompous
pageants of the feast were skilfully adapted to their fancy and
feelings. 93 In the midst of the banquet a gigantic Saracen
entered the hall, leading a fictitious elephant with a castle on
his back: a matron in a mourning robe, the symbol of religion,
was seen to issue from the castle: she deplored her oppression,
and accused the slowness of her champions: the principal herald
of the golden fleece advanced, bearing on his fist a live
pheasant, which, according to the rites of chivalry, he presented
to the duke. At this extraordinary summons, Philip, a wise and
aged prince, engaged his person and powers in the holy war
against the Turks: his example was imitated by the barons and
knights of the assembly: they swore to God, the Virgin, the
ladies and the _pheasant_; and their particular vows were not
less extravagant than the general sanction of their oath. But the
performance was made to depend on some future and foreign
contingency; and during twelve years, till the last hour of his
life, the duke of Burgundy might be scrupulously, and perhaps
sincerely, on the eve of his departure. Had every breast glowed
with the same ardor; had the union of the Christians corresponded
with their bravery; had every country, from Sweden 94 to Naples,
supplied a just proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and
money, it is indeed probable that Constantinople would have been
delivered, and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the
Hellespont or the Euphrates. But the secretary of the emperor,
who composed every epistle, and attended every meeting, Æneas
Sylvius, 95 a statesman and orator, describes from his own
experience the repugnant state and spirit of Christendom. “It is
a body,” says he, “without a head; a republic without laws or
magistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty titles,
as splendid images; but _they_ are unable to command, and none
are willing to obey: every state has a separate prince, and every
prince has a separate interest. What eloquence could unite so
many discordant and hostile powers under the same standard? Could
they be assembled in arms, who would dare to assume the office of
general? What order could be maintained?—what military
discipline? Who would undertake to feed such an enormous
multitude? Who would understand their various languages, or
direct their stranger and incompatible manners? What mortal could
reconcile the Germans with the French, Genoa with Arragon, the
Germans with the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small
number enlisted in the holy war, they must be overthrown by the
infidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion.” Yet the
same Æneas, when he was raised to the papal throne, under the
name of Pius the Second, devoted his life to the prosecution of
the Turkish war. In the council of Mantua he excited some sparks
of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when the pontiff appeared at
Ancona, to embark in person with the troops, engagements vanished
in excuses; a precise day was adjourned to an indefinite term;
and his effective army consisted of some German pilgrims, whom he
was obliged to disband with indulgences and arms. Regardless of
futurity, his successors and the powers of Italy were involved in
the schemes of present and domestic ambition; and the distance or
proximity of each object determined in their eyes its apparent
magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would have
taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the
common enemy; and the support of Scanderbeg and his brave
Albanians might have prevented the subsequent invasion of the
kingdom of Naples. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks
diffused a general consternation; and Pope Sixtus was preparing
to fly beyond the Alps, when the storm was instantly dispelled by
the death of Mahomet the Second, in the fifty-first year of his
age. 96 His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was
possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbor; and the same
reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the New and
the Ancient Rome. 97

93 (return) [ See the original feast in Olivier de la Marche,
(Mémoires, P. i. c. 29, 30,) with the abstract and observations
of M. de Ste. Palaye, (Mémoires sur la Chevalerie, tom. i. P.
iii. p. 182—185.) The peacock and the pheasant were distinguished
as royal birds.]

94 (return) [ It was found by an actual enumeration, that Sweden,
Gothland, and Finland, contained 1,800,000 fighting men, and
consequently were far more populous than at present.]

95 (return) [ In the year 1454, Spondanus has given, from Æneas
Sylvius, a view of the state of Europe, enriched with his own
observations. That valuable annalist, and the Italian Muratori,
will continue the series of events from the year 1453 to 1481,
the end of Mahomet’s life, and of this chapter.]

96 (return) [ Besides the two annalists, the reader may consult
Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. iii. p. 449—455) for the Turkish
invasion of the kingdom of Naples. For the reign and conquests of
Mahomet II., I have occasionally used the Memorie Istoriche de
Monarchi Ottomanni di Giovanni Sagredo, (Venezia, 1677, in 4to.)
In peace and war, the Turks have ever engaged the attention of
the republic of Venice. All her despatches and archives were open
to a procurator of St. Mark, and Sagredo is not contemptible
either in sense or style. Yet he too bitterly hates the infidels:
he is ignorant of their language and manners; and his narrative,
which allows only 70 pages to Mahomet II., (p. 69—140,) becomes
more copious and authentic as he approaches the years 1640 and
1644, the term of the historic labors of John Sagredo.]

97 (return) [ As I am now taking an everlasting farewell of the
Greek empire, I shall briefly mention the great collection of
Byzantine writers whose names and testimonies have been
successively repeated in this work. The Greeks presses of Aldus
and the Italians were confined to the classics of a better age;
and the first rude editions of Procopius, Agathias, Cedrenus,
Zonaras, &c., were published by the learned diligence of the
Germans. The whole Byzantine series (xxxvi. volumes in folio) has
gradually issued (A.D. 1648, &c.) from the royal press of the
Louvre, with some collateral aid from Rome and Leipsic; but the
Venetian edition, (A.D. 1729,) though cheaper and more copious,
is not less inferior in correctness than in magnificence to that
of Paris. The merits of the French editors are various; but the
value of Anna Comnena, Cinnamus, Villehardouin, &c., is enhanced
by the historical notes of Charles de Fresne du Cange. His
supplemental works, the Greek Glossary, the Constantinopolis
Christiana, the Familiæ Byzantinæ, diffuse a steady light over
the darkness of the Lower Empire. * Note: The new edition of the
Byzantines, projected by Niebuhr, and continued under the
patronage of the Prussian government, is the most convenient in
size, and contains some authors (Leo Diaconus, Johannes Lydus,
Corippus, the new fragment of Dexippus, Eunapius, &c., discovered
by Mai) which could not be comprised in the former collections;
but the names of such editors as Bekker, the Dindorfs, &c.,
raised hopes of something more than the mere republication of the
text, and the notes of former editors. Little, I regret to say,
has been added of annotation, and in some cases, the old
incorrect versions have been retained.—M.]