Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part III

In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the
escape of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the
Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less
potent than Alexander, they were pressed, like the Macedonian,
both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and had the
Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to
the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and
voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the
vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks; 34 and in a second
expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the
capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms
into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine
war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fifty-seventh degree of
latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants and regulated the
tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the
Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand
horse penetrated through the gates of Derbend; and the Greeks
might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the
recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus, 35 at a distance
from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a
Thracian castle, by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of
their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance
of Azzadin, the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person
and the treasure of the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name
is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable
rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak;
obtained in marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palæologus;
and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The
subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and
fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been
driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant
life, and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the
influence in Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first
terror of their arms secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of
the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal
interview with John Vataces; and his artful policy encouraged the
Turks to defend their barrier against the common enemy. 36 That
barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of
the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The
formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at the
head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of
the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he
had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a
doleful litany, “From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver
us,” had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre.
In the blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded
with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom
they fled; and some hours elapsed before the firmness of the
military officers could relieve the city from this imaginary foe.
But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately
diverted by the conquest of Bagdad, and a long vicissitude of
Syrian wars; their hostility to the Moslems inclined them to
unite with the Greeks and Franks; 37 and their generosity or
contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an
Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were
disputed by the emirs who had occupied the cities or the
mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khans of
Persia; and he often interposed his authority, and sometimes his
arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and
balance of his Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan, 38 one of
the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of
Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the
Moguls gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman
Empire. 39

34 (return) [ Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew
Paris, p. 545, 546) might propagate and color the report of the
union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines of
Bulgaria. Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 310) after forty years,
beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived.]

35 (return) [ See Pachymer, l. iii. c. 25, and l. ix. c. 26, 27;
and the false alarm at Nice, l. iii. c. 27. Nicephorus Gregoras,
l. iv. c. 6.]

36 (return) [ G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6,
l. iv. c. 5.]

37 (return) [ Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares
that the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat of Batou, had not
attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a
competent witness. Hayton likewise, the Armenian prince,
celebrates their friendship for himself and his nation.]

38 (return) [ Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan,
the rival of Cyrus and Alexander, (l. xii. c. 1.) In the
conclusion of his history (l. xiii. c. 36) he _hopes_ much from
the arrival of 30,000 Tochars, or Tartars, who were ordered by
the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D.
1308.]

39 (return) [ The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by
the critical learning of Mm. De Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv.
p. 329—337) and D’Anville, (Empire Turc, p. 14—22,) two
inhabitants of Paris, from whom the Orientals may learn the
history and geography of their own country. * Note: They may be
still more enlightened by the Geschichte des Osman Reiches, by M.
von Hammer Purgstall of Vienna.—M.]

After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had
returned from India to the possession and defence of his Persian
kingdoms. In the space of eleven years, that hero fought in
person fourteen battles; and such was his activity, that he led
his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflis to Kerman, a march of a
thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed by the jealousy of the
Moslem princes, and the innumerable armies of the Moguls; and
after his last defeat, Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the
mountains of Curdistan. His death dissolved a veteran and
adventurous army, which included under the name of Carizmians or
Corasmins many Turkman hordes, that had attached themselves to
the sultan’s fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs invaded
Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more
humble engaged in the service of Aladin, sultan of Iconium; and
among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They
had formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the
Oxus, in the plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat
remarkable, that the same spot should have produced the first
authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At the head, or in
the rear, of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the
passage of the Euphrates: his son Orthogrul became the soldier
and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of
the Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he
governed fifty-two years both in peace and war. He was the father
of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the
appellation of the caliph Othman; and if we describe that
pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from
those characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman
possessed, and perhaps surpassed, the ordinary virtues of a
soldier; and the circumstances of time and place were propitious
to his independence and success. The Seljukian dynasty was no
more; and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans soon
enfranchised him from the control of a superior. He was situate
on the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his
_gazi_, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political
errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to
descend into the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of
Palæologus, these passes had been vigilantly guarded by the
militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and
an exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their privilege
and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously
collected, the custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy
mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of peasants
without spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of
July, in the year twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian
æra, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; 40 and
the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some
foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster. The
annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign would exhibit a
repetition of the same inroads; and his hereditary troops were
multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and
volunteers. Instead of retreating to the hills, he maintained the
most useful and defensive posts; fortified the towns and castles
which he had first pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for
the baths and palaces of his infant capitals. But it was not till
Othman was oppressed by age and infirmities, that he received the
welcome news of the conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered
by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The glory
of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the
Turks have transcribed or composed a royal testament of his last
counsels of justice and moderation. 41

40 (return) [ See Pachymer, l. x. c. 25, 26, l. xiii. c. 33, 34,
36; and concerning the guard of the mountains, l. i. c. 3—6:
Nicephorus Gregoras, l. vii. c. l., and the first book of
Laonicus Chalcondyles, the Athenian.]

41 (return) [ I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers
older than Mahomet II., * nor can I reach beyond a meagre
chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550) translated by John
Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius, (ad calcem Laonic.
Chalcond. p. 311—350,) with copious pandects, or commentaries.
The history of the Growth and Decay (A.D. 1300—1683) of the
Othman empire was translated into English from the Latin MS. of
Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia, (London, 1734, in folio.)
The author is guilty of strange blunders in Oriental history; but
he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions
of the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the
Synopsis of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696
to Sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original
historians. In one of the Ramblers, Dr. Johnson praises Knolles
(a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London,
1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of
his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose
compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of
speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened
age, which requires from the historian some tincture of
philosophy and criticism. Note: * We could have wished that M.
von Hammer had given a more clear and distinct reply to this
question of Gibbon. In a note, vol. i. p. 630. M. von Hammer
shows that they had not only sheiks (religious writers) and
learned lawyers, but poets and authors on medicine. But the
inquiry of Gibbon obviously refers to historians. The oldest of
their historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the
“Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade,” i. e. the History of the Great
Grandson of Aaschik Pasha, who was a dervis and celebrated
ascetic poet in the reign of Murad (Amurath) I. Ahmed, the author
of the work, lived during the reign of Bajazet II., but, he says,
derived much information from the book of Scheik Jachshi, the son
of Elias, who was Imaum to Sultan Orchan, (the second Ottoman
king) and who related, from the lips of his father, the
circumstances of the earliest Ottoman history. This book (having
searched for it in vain for five-and-twenty years) our author
found at length in the Vatican. All the other Turkish histories
on his list, as indeed this, were _written_ during the reign of
Mahomet II. It does not appear whether any of the rest cite
earlier authorities of equal value with that claimed by the
“Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade.”—M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix.
p. 292.)]

From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true æra of the
Ottoman empire. The lives and possessions of the Christian
subjects were redeemed by a tribute or ransom of thirty thousand
crowns of gold; and the city, by the labors of Orchan, assumed
the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a
mosque, a college, and a hospital, of royal foundation; the
Seljukian coin was changed for the name and impression of the new
dynasty: and the most skilful professors, of human and divine
knowledge, attracted the Persian and Arabian students from the
ancient schools of Oriental learning. The office of vizier was
instituted for Aladin, the brother of Orchan; 411 and a different
habit distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems
from the infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of
loose squadrons of Turkman cavalry; who served without pay and
fought without discipline: but a regular body of infantry was
first established and trained by the prudence of his son. A great
number of volunteers was enrolled with a small stipend, but with
the permission of living at home, unless they were summoned to
the field: their rude manners, and seditious temper, disposed
Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers and those of
the prophet; but the Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount
on horseback, and follow his standard, with the appellation and
the hopes of _freebooters_. 412 By these arts he formed an army
of twenty-five thousand Moslems: a train of battering engines was
framed for the use of sieges; and the first successful experiment
was made on the cities of Nice and Nicomedia. Orchan granted a
safe-conduct to all who were desirous of departing with their
families and effects; but the widows of the slain were given in
marriage to the conquerors; and the sacrilegious plunder, the
books, the vases, and the images, were sold or ransomed at
Constantinople. The emperor Andronicus the Younger was vanquished
and wounded by the son of Othman: 42 421 he subdued the whole
province or kingdom of Bithynia, as far as the shores of the
Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the Christians confessed the
justice and clemency of a reign which claimed the voluntary
attachment of the Turks of Asia. Yet Orchan was content with the
modest title of emir; and in the list of his compeers, the
princes of Roum or Anatolia, 43 his military forces were
surpassed by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of whom
could bring into the field an army of forty thousand men. Their
domains were situate in the heart of the Seljukian kingdom; but
the holy warriors, though of inferior note, who formed new
principalities on the Greek empire, are more conspicuous in the
light of history. The maritime country from the Propontis to the
Mæander and the Isle of Rhodes, so long threatened and so often
pillaged, was finally lost about the thirteenth year of
Andronicus the Elder. 44 Two Turkish chieftains, Sarukhan and
Aidin, left their names to their conquests, and their conquests
to their posterity. The captivity or ruin of the _seven_ churches
of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and
Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian
antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the
fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick,
of the Revelations; 45 the desolation is complete; and the temple
of Diana, or the church of Mary, will equally elude the search of
the curious traveller. The circus and three stately theatres of
Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardes is reduced
to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival or a
son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the
populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the
Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by
prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by
the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant
citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore
years; and at length capitulated with the proudest of the
Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia,
Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of ruins; a
pleasing example, that the paths of honor and safety may
sometimes be the same. The servitude of Rhodes was delayed about
two centuries by the establishment of the knights of St. John of
Jerusalem: 46 under the discipline of the order, that island
emerged into fame and opulence; the noble and warlike monks were
renowned by land and sea: and the bulwark of Christendom
provoked, and repelled, the arms of the Turks and Saracens.

411 (return) [ Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 82.—M.]

412 (return) [ Ibid. p. 91.—M.]

42 (return) [ Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and
heroic flight of the younger Andronicus, (l. ii. c. 6, 7, 8,)
dissembles by his silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia,
which are fairly confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. viii. 15,
ix. 9, 13, xi. 6.) It appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in
1330, and Nicomedia in 1339, which are somewhat different from
the Turkish dates.]

421 (return) [ For the conquests of Orchan over the ten
pachaliks, or kingdoms of the Seljukians, in Asia Minor. see V.
Hammer, vol. i. p. 112.—M.]

43 (return) [ The partition of the Turkish emirs is extracted
from two contemporaries, the Greek Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii.
1) and the Arabian Marakeschi, (De Guignes, tom. ii. P. ii. p.
76, 77.) See likewise the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles.]

44 (return) [ Pachymer, l. xiii. c. 13.]

45 (return) [ See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and
Chandler, and more particularly Smith’s Survey of the Seven
Churches of Asia, p. 205—276. The more pious antiquaries labor to
reconcile the promises and threats of the author of the
Revelations with the _present_ state of the seven cities. Perhaps
it would be more prudent to confine his predictions to the
characters and events of his own times.]

46 (return) [ Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de l’Ordre de
Malthe, par l’Abbé de Vertot. That pleasing writer betrays his
ignorance, in supposing that Othman, a freebooter of the
Bithynian hills, could besiege Rhodes by sea and land.]

The Greeks, by their intestine divisions, were the authors of
their final ruin. During the civil wars of the elder and younger
Andronicus, the son of Othman achieved, almost without
resistance, the conquest of Bithynia; and the same disorders
encouraged the Turkish emirs of Lydia and Ionia to build a fleet,
and to pillage the adjacent islands and the sea-coast of Europe.
In the defence of his life and honor, Cantacuzene was tempted to
prevent, or imitate, his adversaries, by calling to his aid the
public enemies of his religion and country. Amir, the son of
Aidin, concealed under a Turkish garb the humanity and politeness
of a Greek; he was united with the great domestic by mutual
esteem and reciprocal services; and their friendship is compared,
in the vain rhetoric of the times, to the perfect union of
Orestes and Pylades. 47 On the report of the danger of his
friend, who was persecuted by an ungrateful court, the prince of
Ionia assembled at Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels, with
an army of twenty-nine thousand men; sailed in the depth of
winter, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus. From thence,
with a chosen band of two thousand Turks, he marched along the
banks of the river, and rescued the empress, who was besieged in
Demotica by the wild Bulgarians. At that disastrous moment, the
life or death of his beloved Cantacuzene was concealed by his
flight into Servia: but the grateful Irene, impatient to behold
her deliverer, invited him to enter the city, and accompanied her
message with a present of rich apparel and a hundred horses. By a
peculiar strain of delicacy, the Gentle Barbarian refused, in the
absence of an unfortunate friend, to visit his wife, or to taste
the luxuries of the palace; sustained in his tent the rigor of
the winter; and rejected the hospitable gift, that he might share
the hardships of two thousand companions, all as deserving as
himself of that honor and distinction. Necessity and revenge
might justify his predatory excursions by sea and land: he left
nine thousand five hundred men for the guard of his fleet; and
persevered in the fruitless search of Cantacuzene, till his
embarkation was hastened by a fictitious letter, the severity of
the season, the clamors of his independent troops, and the weight
of his spoil and captives. In the prosecution of the civil war,
the prince of Ionia twice returned to Europe; joined his arms
with those of the emperor; besieged Thessalonica, and threatened
Constantinople. Calumny might affix some reproach on his
imperfect aid, his hasty departure, and a bribe of ten thousand
crowns, which he accepted from the Byzantine court; but his
friend was satisfied; and the conduct of Amir is excused by the
more sacred duty of defending against the Latins his hereditary
dominions. The maritime power of the Turks had united the pope,
the king of Cyprus, the republic of Venice, and the order of St.
John, in a laudable crusade; their galleys invaded the coast of
Ionia; and Amir was slain with an arrow, in the attempt to wrest
from the Rhodian knights the citadel of Smyrna. 48 Before his
death, he generously recommended another ally of his own nation;
not more sincere or zealous than himself, but more able to afford
a prompt and powerful succor, by his situation along the
Propontis and in the front of Constantinople. By the prospect of
a more advantageous treaty, the Turkish prince of Bithynia was
detached from his engagements with Anne of Savoy; and the pride
of Orchan dictated the most solemn protestations, that if he
could obtain the daughter of Cantacuzene, he would invariably
fulfil the duties of a subject and a son. Parental tenderness was
silenced by the voice of ambition: the Greek clergy connived at
the marriage of a Christian princess with a sectary of Mahomet;
and the father of Theodora describes, with shameful satisfaction,
the dishonor of the purple. 49 A body of Turkish cavalry attended
the ambassadors, who disembarked from thirty vessels, before his
camp of Selybria. A stately pavilion was erected, in which the
empress Irene passed the night with her daughters. In the
morning, Theodora ascended a throne, which was surrounded with
curtains of silk and gold: the troops were under arms; but the
emperor alone was on horseback. At a signal the curtains were
suddenly withdrawn to disclose the bride, or the victim,
encircled by kneeling eunuchs and hymeneal torches: the sound of
flutes and trumpets proclaimed the joyful event; and her
pretended happiness was the theme of the nuptial song, which was
chanted by such poets as the age could produce. Without the rites
of the church, Theodora was delivered to her barbarous lord: but
it had been stipulated, that she should preserve her religion in
the harem of Bursa; and her father celebrates her charity and
devotion in this ambiguous situation. After his peaceful
establishment on the throne of Constantinople, the Greek emperor
visited his Turkish ally, who with four sons, by various wives,
expected him at Scutari, on the Asiatic shore. The two princes
partook, with seeming cordiality, of the pleasures of the banquet
and the chase; and Theodora was permitted to repass the
Bosphorus, and to enjoy some days in the society of her mother.
But the friendship of Orchan was subservient to his religion and
interest; and in the Genoese war he joined without a blush the
enemies of Cantacuzene.

47 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras has expatiated with pleasure on
this amiable character, (l. xii. 7, xiii. 4, 10, xiv. 1, 9, xvi.
6.) Cantacuzene speaks with honor and esteem of his ally, (l.
iii. c. 56, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 86, 89, 95, 96;) but he seems
ignorant of his own sentimental passion for the Turks, and
indirectly denies the possibility of such unnatural friendship,
(l. iv. c. 40.)]

48 (return) [ After the conquest of Smyrna by the Latins, the
defence of this fortress was imposed by Pope Gregory XI. on the
knights of Rhodes, (see Vertot, l. v.)]

49 (return) [ See Cantacuzenus, l. iii. c. 95. Nicephorus
Gregoras, who, for the light of Mount Thabor, brands the emperor
with the names of tyrant and Herod, excuses, rather than blames,
this Turkish marriage, and alleges the passion and power of
Orchan, eggutatoV, kai th dunamo? touV kat’ auton hdh PersikouV
(Turkish) uperairwn SatrapaV, (l. xv. 5.) He afterwards
celebrates his kingdom and armies. See his reign in Cantemir, p.
24—30.]

In the treaty with the empress Anne, the Ottoman prince had
inserted a singular condition, that it should be lawful for him
to sell his prisoners at Constantinople, or transport them into
Asia. A naked crowd of Christians of both sexes and every age, of
priests and monks, of matrons and virgins, was exposed in the
public market; the whip was frequently used to quicken the
charity of redemption; and the indigent Greeks deplored the fate
of their brethren, who were led away to the worst evils of
temporal and spiritual bondage 50 Cantacuzene was reduced to
subscribe the same terms; and their execution must have been
still more pernicious to the empire: a body of ten thousand Turks
had been detached to the assistance of the empress Anne; but the
entire forces of Orchan were exerted in the service of his
father. Yet these calamities were of a transient nature; as soon
as the storm had passed away, the fugitives might return to their
habitations; and at the conclusion of the civil and foreign wars,
Europe was completely evacuated by the Moslems of Asia. It was in
his last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the
deep and deadly wound, which could never be healed by his
successors, and which is poorly expiated by his theological
dialogues against the prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own
history, the modern Turks confound their first and their final
passage of the Hellespont, 51 and describe the son of Orchan as a
nocturnal robber, who, with eighty companions, explores by
stratagem a hostile and unknown shore. Soliman, at the head of
ten thousand horse, was transported in the vessels, and
entertained as the friend, of the Greek emperor. In the civil
wars of Romania, he performed some service and perpetrated more
mischief; but the Chersonesus was insensibly filled with a
Turkish colony; and the Byzantine court solicited in vain the
restitution of the fortresses of Thrace. After some artful delays
between the Ottoman prince and his son, their ransom was valued
at sixty thousand crowns, and the first payment had been made
when an earthquake shook the walls and cities of the provinces;
the dismantled places were occupied by the Turks; and Gallipoli,
the key of the Hellespont, was rebuilt and repeopled by the
policy of Soliman. The abdication of Cantacuzene dissolved the
feeble bands of domestic alliance; and his last advice admonished
his countrymen to decline a rash contest, and to compare their
own weakness with the numbers and valor, the discipline and
enthusiasm, of the Moslems. His prudent counsels were despised by
the headstrong vanity of youth, and soon justified by the
victories of the Ottomans. But as he practised in the field the
exercise of the _jerid_, Soliman was killed by a fall from his
horse; and the aged Orchan wept and expired on the tomb of his
valiant son. 511

50 (return) [ The most lively and concise picture of this
captivity may be found in the history of Ducas, (c. 8,) who
fairly describes what Cantacuzene confesses with a guilty blush!]

51 (return) [ In this passage, and the first conquests in Europe,
Cantemir (p. 27, &c.) gives a miserable idea of his Turkish
guides; nor am I much better satisfied with Chalcondyles, (l. i.
p. 12, &c.) They forget to consult the most authentic record, the
ivth book of Cantacuzene. I likewise regret the last books, which
are still manuscript, of Nicephorus Gregoras. * Note: Von Hammer
excuses the silence with which the Turkish historians pass over
the earlier intercourse of the Ottomans with the European
continent, of which he enumerates sixteen different occasions, as
if they disdained those peaceful incursions by which they gained
no conquest, and established no permanent footing on the
Byzantine territory. Of the romantic account of Soliman’s first
expedition, he says, “As yet the prose of history had not
asserted its right over the poetry of tradition.” This defence
would scarcely be accepted as satisfactory by the historian of
the Decline and Fall.—M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p.
293.)]

511 (return) [ In the 75th year of his age, the 35th of his
reign. V. Hammer. M.]