$Unique_ID{bob00887}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hallam, Henry}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{constantinople
empire
europe
upon
footnote
emperor
years
ii
power
conquest}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book VI: History Of The Greeks And Saracens
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part II

     These successes of the Greek empire were certainly much rather due to the
weakness of its enemies than to any revival of national courage and vigor; yet
they would probably have been more durable if the contest had been only with
the khalifate, or the kingdoms derived from it.  But a new actor was to appear
on the stage of Asiatic tragedy.  The same Turkish nation, the slaves and
captives from which had become arbiters of the sceptre of Bagdad, passed their
original limits of the Iaxartes or Sihon. The sultans of Ghazna, a dynasty
whose splendid conquests were of very short duration, had deemed it politic to
divide the strength of these formidable allies by inviting a part of them into
Khorasan.  They covered that fertile province with their pastoral tents, and
beckoned their compatriots to share the riches of the south.  The Ghaznevides
fell the earliest victims; but Persia, violated in turn by every conqueror,
was a tempting and unresisting prey.  [A. D. 1038.] Togrol Bek, the founder of
the Seljukian dynasty of Turks, overthrew the family of Bowides, who had long
reigned at Ispahan, respected the pageant of Mohammedan sovereignty in the
Khalif of Bagdad, embraced with all his tribes the religion of the vanquished,
and commenced the attack upon Christendom by an irruption into Armenia.  His
nephew and successor Alp Arslan defeated and took prisoner the emperor Romanus
Diogenes [A. D. 1071]; and the conquest of Asia Minor was almost completed by
princes of the same family, the Seljukians of Rum, ^n who were permitted by
Malek Shah, the third sultan of the Turks, to form an independent kingdom.
Through their own exertions, and the selfish impolicy of rival competitors for
the throne of Constantinople, who bartered the strength of the empire for
assistance, the Turks became masters of the Asiatic cities and fortified
passes; nor did there seem any obstacle to the invasion of Europe. ^o

[Footnote n: Rum, i. e. country of the Romans.]

[Footnote o: Gibbon, c. 57; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, t. ii. l. 2.]

     In this state of jeopardy the Greek empire looked for aid to the nations
of the West, and received it in fuller measure than was expected, or perhaps
desired.  The deliverance of Constantinople was indeed a very secondary object
with the crusaders.  But it was necessarily included in their scheme of
operations, which, though they all tended to the recovery of Jerusalem, must
commence with the first enemies that lay on their line of march.  The Turks
were entirely defeated, their capital of Nice restored to the empire.  As the
Franks passed onwards, the Emperor Alexius Comnenus trod on their footsteps,
and secured to himself the fruits for which their enthusiasm disdained to
wait.  He regained possession of the strong places on the Aegean shores, of
the defiles of Bithynia, and of the entire coast of Asia Minor, both on the
Euxine and Mediterranean seas, which the Turkish armies, composed of cavalry
and unused to regular warfare, could not recover. ^p So much must undoubtedly
be ascribed to the first crusade.  But I think that the general effect of
these expeditions has been overrated by those who consider them as having
permanently retarded the progress of the Turkish power.  The Christians in
Palestine and Syria were hardly in contact with the Seljukian kingdom of Rum,
the only enemies of the empire; and it is not easy to perceive that their
small and feeble principalities, engaged commonly in defending themselves
against the Mohammedan princes of Mesopotamia, or the Fatimite khalifs of
Egypt, could obstruct the arms of a sovereign of Iconium upon the Maeander or
the Halys.  Other causes are adequate to explain the equipoise in which the
balance of dominion in Anatolia was kept during the twelfth century: the valor
and activity of the two Comneni, John and Manuel, especially the former; and
the frequent partitions and internal feuds, through which the Seljukians of
Iconium, like all other Oriental governments, became incapable of foreign
aggression.

[Footnote p: It does not seem perfectly clear whether the sea-coast, north and
south, was reannexed to the empire during the reign of Alexius, or of his
gallant son John Comnenus.  But the doubt is hardly worth noticing.]

     But whatever obligation might be due to the first crusaders from the
Eastern empire was cancelled by their descendants one hundred years
afterwards, when the fourth in number of those expeditions was turned to the
subjugation of Constantinople itself.  One of those domestic revolutions which
occur perpetually in Byzantine history had placed a usurper on the imperial
throne.  The lawful monarch was condemned to blindness and a prison; but the
heir escaped to recount his misfortunes to the fleet and army of crusaders
assembled in the Dalmatian port of Zara. [A.D. 1202.] This armament had been
collected for the usual purposes, and through the usual motives, temporal and
spiritual, of a crusade; the military force chiefly consisted of French
nobles; the naval was supplied by the republic of Venice, whose doge commanded
personally in the expedition.  It was not apparently consistent with the
primary object of retrieving the Christian affairs in Palestine to interfere
in the government of a Christian empire; but the temptation of punishing a
faithless people, and the hope of assistance in their subsequent operations,
prevailed.  They turned their prows up the Archipelago; and, notwithstanding
the vast population and defensible strength of Constantinople, compelled the
usurper to fly, and the citizens to surrender.  But animosities springing from
religious schism and national jealousy were not likely to be allayed by such
remedies; the Greeks, wounded in their pride and bigotry, regarded the
legitimate emperor as a creature of their enemies, ready to sacrifice their
church, a stipulated condition of his restoration, to that of Rome.  In a few
months a new sedition and conspiracy raised another usurper in defiance of the
crusaders' army encamped without the walls.  The siege instantly recommenced;
and after three months the city of Constantinople was taken by storm.  [A.D.
1204.] The tale of pillage and murder is always uniform; but the calamities of
ancient capitals, like those of the great, impress us more forcibly.  Even now
we sympathize with the virgin majesty of Constantinople, decked with the
accumulated wealth of ages, and resplendent with the monuments of Roman empire
and of Grecian art.  Her populousness is estimated beyond credibility: ten,
twenty, thirty-fold that of London or Paris; certainly far beyond the united
capitals of all European kingdoms in that age. ^q In magnificence she excelled
them more than in numbers; instead of the thatched roofs, the mud walls, the
narrow streets, the pitiful buildings of those cities, she had marble and
gilded palaces, churches and monasteries, the works of skilful architects,
through nine centuries, gradually sliding from the severity of ancient taste
into the more various and brilliant combinations of eastern fancy. ^r In the
libraries of Constantinople were collected the remains of Grecian learning;
her forum and hippodrome were decorated with those of Grecian sculpture; but
neither would be spared by undistinguishing rapine; nor were the chiefs of the
crusaders more able to appreciate the loss than their soldiery.  Four horses,
that breathe in the brass of Lysippus, were removed from Constantinople to the
square of St. Mark at Venice; destined again to become the trophies of war,
and to follow the alternate revolutions of conquest.  But we learn from a
contemporary Greek to deplore the fate of many other pieces of sculpture,
which were destroyed in wantonness, or even coined into brass money. ^s

[Footnote q: Ville Hardouin reckons the inhabitants of Constantinople at
quatre cens mil nommes ou plus, by which Gibbon understands him to mean men of
a military age.  Le Beau allows a million for the whole population. Gibbon,
vol. xi. p. 213.  We should probably rate London, in 1204, too high at 60,000
souls.  Paris had been enlarged by Philip Augustus, and stood on more ground
than London.  Delamare sur la Police, t. i. p. 76.]

[Footnote r: O quanta civitas, exclaims Fulk of Chartres a hundred years
before, nobilis et decora!  quot monasteria quotque palatia sunt in ea, opere
mero fabrefacta!  quo etiam in plateis vel in vicis opera ad spectandum
mirabilia!  Taedium est quidam magnum recitare, quanta sit ibi opulentia
bonorum omnium, auri et argenti palliorum multiformium, sacrarumque
reliquiarum.  Omni etiam tempore, navigio frequenti cuncta hominum necessaria
illuc afferuntur.  Du Chesne, Scrip.  Rerum Gallicarum, t. iv. p. 822.]

[Footnote s: Gibbon, c. 60.]

     The lawful emperor and his son had perished in the rebellion that gave
occasion to this catastrophe; and there remained no right to interfere with
that of conquest.  But the Latins were a promiscuous multitude, and what their
independent valor had earned was not to be transferred to a single master.
Though the name of emperor seemed necessary for the government of
Constantinople, the unity of despotic power was very foreign to the principles
and the interests of the crusaders.  In their selfish schemes of
aggrandizement they tore in pieces the Greek empire.  One-fourth only was
allotted to the emperor, three-eighths were the share of the republic of
Venice, and the remainder was divided among the chiefs.  Baldwin Count of
Flanders obtained the imperial title, with the feudal sovereignty over the
minor principalities.  A monarchy thus dismembered had little prospect of
honor or durability.  The Latin emperors of Constantinople were more
contemptible and unfortunate, not so much from personal character as political
weakness, than their predecessors; their vassals rebelled against sovereigns
not more powerful than themselves; the Bulgarians, a nation who, after being
long formidable, had been subdued by the imperial arms, and only recovered
independence on the eve of the Latin conquest, insulted their capital; the
Greeks viewed them with silent hatred, and hailed the dawning deliverance from
the Asiatic coast.  On that side of the Bosphorus the Latin usurpation was
scarcely for a moment acknowledged; Nice became the seat of a Greek dynasty,
who reigned with honor as far as the Maeander; and crossing into Europe, after
having established their dominion throughout Romania and other provinces,
expelled the last Latin emperors from Constantinople in less than sixty years
from its capture.  [A.D. 1261.]

     During the reign of these Greeks at Nice they had fortunately little to
dread on the side of their former enemies, and were generally on terms of
friendship with the Seljukians of Iconium.  That monarchy indeed had
sufficient objects of apprehension for itself.  Their own example in changing
the upland plains of Tartary for the cultivated valleys of the south was
imitated in the thirteenth century by two successive hordes of northern
barbarians.  The Karismians, whose tents had been pitched on the lower Oxus
and Caspian Sea, availed themselves of the decline of the Turkish power to
establish their dominion in Persia, and menaced, though they did not
overthrow, the kingdom of Iconium.  A more tremendous storm ensued in the
eruption of Moguls under the sons of Zingis Khan.  From the farthest regions
of Chinese Tartary issued a race more fierce and destitute of civilization
than those who had preceded, whose numbers were told by hundreds of thousands,
and whose only test of victory was devastation.  All Asia, from the sea of
China to the Euxine, wasted beneath the locusts of the north.  They
annihilated the phantom of authority which still lingered in the name of
khalif at Bagdad.  They reduced into dependence and finally subverted the
Seljukian dynasties of Persia, Syria, and Iconium.  [A.D. 1218-1272.] The
Turks of the latter kingdom betook themselves to the mountainous country,
where they formed several petty principalities, which subsisted by incursions
into the territory of the Moguls or the Greeks.  The chief one of these, named
Othman, at the end of the thirteenth century, penetrated into the province of
Bithynia, from which his posterity were never withdrawn. ^t

[Footnote t: De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, t. iii. l. 15; Gibbon, c. 64.]

     The empire of Constantinople had never recovered the blow it received at
the hands of Latins.  Most of the islands in the Archipelago, and the
provinces of proper Greece from Thessaly southward, were still possessed by
those invaders.  The wealth and naval power of the empire had passed into the
hands of the maritime republics; Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Barcelona were
enriched by a commerce which they carried on as independent states within the
precincts of Constantinople, scarcely deigning to solicit the permission or
recognize the supremacy of its master.  In a great battle fought under the
walls of the city between the Venetian and Genoese fleets, the weight of the
Roman empire, in Gibbon's expression, was scarcely felt in the balance of
these opulent and powerful republics [A. D. 1352.] Eight galleys were the
contribution of the Emperor Cantacuzene to his Venetian allies; and upon their
defeat he submitted to the ignominy of excluding them forever from trading in
his dominions. Meantime the remains of the empire in Asia were seized by the
independent Turkish dynasties, of which the most illustrious, that of the
Ottomans, occupied the province of Bithynia.  [A. D. 1331.] Invited by a
Byzantine faction into Europe, about the middle of the fourteenth century,
they fixed themselves in the neighborhood of the capital, and in the thirty
years' reign of Amurath I. subdued, with little resistance, the province of
Romania and the small Christian kingdoms that had been formed on the lower
Danube.  Bajazet, the successor of Amurath, reduced the independent emirs of
Anatolia to subjection, and, after long threatening Constantinople, invested
it by sea and land.  The Greeks called loudly upon their brethren of the West
for aid against the common enemy of Christendom; but the flower of French
chivalry had been slain or taken in the battle of Nicopolis in Bulgaria, ^u
where the king of Hungary, notwithstanding the heroism of these volunteers,
was entirely defeated by Bajazet.  [A. D. 1396.] The Emperor Manuel left his
capital with a faint hope of exciting the courts of Europe to some decided
efforts by personal representations of the danger; and, during his absence,
Constantinople was saved, not by a friend, indeed, but by a power more
formidable to her enemies than to herself.

[Footnote u: The Hungarians fled in this battle and deserted their allies,
according to the Memoires de Boucicaut, c. 25.  But Froissart, who seems a
fairer authority, imputes the defeat to the rashness of the French.  Part iv.
ch. 79.  The Count de Nevers (Jean Sanspeur, afterwards Duke of Burgundy), who
commanded the French, was made prisoner with others of the royal blood, and
ransomed at a very high price.  Many of eminent birth and merit were put to
death; a fate from which Boucicaut was saved by the interference of the Count
de Nevers, who might better himself have perished with honor on that occasion
than survived to plunge his country into civil war and his name into infamy.]

     The loose masses of mankind, that, without laws, agriculture, or fixed
dwellings, overspread the vast central regions of Asia, have, at various
times, been impelled by necessity of subsistence, or through the casual
appearance of a commanding genius, upon the domain of culture and
civilization.  Two principal roads connect the nations of Tartary with those
of the west and south; the one into Europe along the sea of Azoph and northern
coast of the Euxine; the other across the interval between the Bukharian
mountains and the Caspian into Persia.  Four times at least within the period
of authentic history the Scythian tribes have taken the former course and
poured themselves into Europe, but each wave was less effectual than the
preceding.  The first of these was in the fourth and fifth centuries, for we
may range those rapidly successive migrations of the Goths and Huns together,
when the Roman empire fell to the ground, and the only boundary of barbarian
conquest was the Atlantic ocean upon the shores of Portugal.  The second wave
came on with the Hungarians in the tenth century, whose ravages extended as
far as the southern provinces of France.  A third attack was sustained from
the Moguls under the children of Zingis at the same period as that which
overwhelmed Persia.  The Russian monarchy was destroyed in this invasion, and
for two hundred years that great country lay prostrate under the yoke of the
Tartars.  As they advanced, Poland and Hungary gave little opposition; and the
farthest nations of Europe were appalled by the tempest.  But Germany was no
longer as she had been in the anarchy of the tenth century; the Moguls were
unused to resistance, and still less inclined to regular warfare; they retired
before the Emperor Frederic II., and the utmost points of their western
invasion were the cities of Lignitz in Silesia and Neustadt in Austria.  [A.
D. 1245.] In the fourth and last aggression of the Tartars their progress in
Europe is hardly perceptible; the Moguls of Timur's army could only boast the
destruction of Azoph and the pillage of some Russian provinces.  Timur, the
sovereign of these Moguls and founder of their second dynasty, which has been
more permanent and celebrated than that of Zingis, had been the prince of a
small tribe in Transoxiana, between the Gihon and Sirr, the doubtful frontier
of settled and pastoral nations. His own energy and the weakness of his
neighbors are sufficient to explain the revolution he effected.  Like former
conquerors, Togrol Bek and Zingis, he chose the road through Persia; and,
meeting little resistance from the disordered governments of Asia, extended
his empire on one side to the Syrian coast, while by successes still more
renowned, though not belonging to this place, it reached on the other to the
heart of Hindostan.  In his old age the restlessness of ambition impelled him
against the Turks of Anatolia.  Bajazet hastened from the siege of
Constantinople to a more perilous contest; his defeat [A. D. 1402] and
captivity in the plains of Angora clouded for a time the Ottoman crescent, and
preserved the wreck of the Greek empire for fifty years longer.

     The Moguls did not improve their victory; in the western parts of Asia,
as in Hindostan, Timur was but a barbarian destroyer, though at Samarcand a
sovereign and a legislator.  He gave up Anatolia to the sons of Bajazet; but
the unity of their power was broken; and the Ottoman kingdom, like those which
had preceded, experienced the evils of partition and mutual animosity.  For
about twenty years an opportunity was given to the Greeks of recovering part
of their losses; but they were incapable of making the best use of this
advantage, and, though they regained possession of part of Romania, did not
extirpate a strong Turkish colony that held the city of Gallipoli in the
Chersonesus.  When Amurath II., therefore, reunited under his vigorous sceptre
the Ottoman monarchy, Constantinople was exposed to another siege and to fresh
losses.  [A. D. 1421.] Her walls, however, repelled the enemy; and during the
reign of Amurath she had leisure to repeat those signals of distress which the
princes of Christendom refused to observe.  The situation of Europe was,
indeed, sufficiently inauspicious; France, the original country of the
crusades and of chivalry, was involved in foreign and domestic war; while a
schism, apparently interminable, rent the bosom of the Latin church and
impaired the efficiency of the only power that could unite and animate its
disciples in a religious war.  Even when the Roman pontiffs were best disposed
to rescue Constantinople from destruction, it was rather as masters than as
allies that they would interfere; their ungenerous bigotry, or rather pride,
dictated the submission of her church and the renunciation of her favorite
article of distinctive faith.  The Greeks yielded with reluctance and
insincerity in the council of Florence; but soon rescinded their treaty of
union.  Eugenius IV. procured a short diversion on the side of Hungary; but
after the unfortunate battle of Warna the Hungarians were abundantly employed
in self-defence.  [A. D. 1444.]

     The two monarchies which have successively held their seat in the city of
Constantine may be contrasted in the circumstances of their decline.  In the
present day we anticipate, with an assurance that none can deem extravagant,
the approaching subversion of the Ottoman power; but the signs of internal
weakness have not yet been confirmed by the dismemberment of provinces; and
the arch of dominion, that long since has seemed nodding to its fall and
totters at every blast of the north, still rests upon the landmarks of ancient
conquest, and spans the ample regions from Bagdad to Belgrade.  Far different
were the events that preceded the dissolution of the Greek empire.  Every
province was in turn subdued - every city opened her gates to the conqueror;
the limbs were lopped off one by one; but the pulse still beat at the heart,
and the majesty of the Roman name was ultimately confined to the walls of
Constantinople.  Before Mahomet II. planted his cannon against them, he had
completed every smaller conquest and deprived the expiring empire of every
hope of succor or delay.  It was necessary that Constantinople should fall;
but the magnanimous resignation of her emperor bestows an honor upon her fall
which her prosperity seldom earned.  [A. D. 1453.] The long deferred but
inevitable moment arrived; and the last of the Caesars (I will not say of the
Palaeologi) folded round him the imperial mantle, and remembered the name
which he represented in the dignity of heroic death.  It is thus that the
intellectual principle, when enfeebled by disease or age, is found to rally
its energies in the presence of death, and pour the radiance of unclouded
reason around the last struggles of dissolution.

     Though the fate of Constantinople had been protracted beyond all
reasonable expectation, the actual intelligence operated like that of sudden
calamity.  A sentiment of consternation, perhaps of self-reproach, thrilled
through the heart of Christendom.  There seemed no longer anything to divert
the Ottoman armies from Hungary; and if Hungary should be subdued, it was
evident that both Italy and the German empire were exposed to invasion. ^v A
general union of Christian powers was required to withstand this common enemy.
But the popes, who had so often armed them against each other, wasted their
spiritual and political counsels in attempting to restore unanimity.  War was
proclaimed against the Turks at the diet of Frankfort, in 1454; but no efforts
were made to carry the menace into execution.  No prince could have sat on the
imperial throne more unfitted for the emergency than Frederic III.; his mean
spirit and narrow capacity exposed him to the contempt of mankind - his
avarice and duplicity ensured the hatred of Austria and Hungary.  During the
papacy of Pius II., whose heart was thoroughly engaged in this legitimate
crusade, a more specious attempt was made by convening a European congress at
Mantua. [A. D. 1459.] Almost all the sovereigns attended by their envoys; it
was concluded that 50,000 men-at-arms should be raised, and a tax levied for
three years of one-tenth from the revenues of the clergy, one-thirtieth from
those of the laity, and one-twentieth from the capital of the Jews. ^w Pius
engaged to head this armament in person; but when he appeared next year at
Ancona, the appointed place of embarkation, the princes had failed in all
their promises of men and money, and he found only a headlong crowd of
adventurers, destitute of every necessary, and expecting to be fed and paid at
the pope's expense.  It was not by such a body that Mahomet could be expelled
from Constantinople.  If the Christian sovereigns had given a steady and
sincere co-operation, the contest would still have been arduous and uncertain.
In the early crusades the superiority of arms, of skill, and even of
discipline, had been uniformly on the side of Europe.  But the present
circumstances were far from similar.  An institution, begun by the first and
perfected by the second Amurath, had given to the Turkish armies what their
enemies still wanted, military subordination and veteran experience.  Aware,
as it seems, of the real superiority of Europeans in war, these sultans
selected the stoutest youths from their Bulgarian, Servian, or Albanian
captives, who were educated in habits of martial discipline, and formed into a
regular force with the name of Janizaries. After conquest had put an end to
personal captivity, a tax of every fifth male child was raised upon the
Christian population for the same purpose. The arm of Europe was thus turned
upon herself; and the western nations must have contended with troops of
hereditary robustness and intrepidity, whose emulous enthusiasm for the
country that had adopted them was controlled by habitual obedience to their
commanders. ^x

[Footnote v: Sive vincitur Hungaria, sive coacta jungitur Turcis, neque Italia
neque Germania tuta erit, neque satis Rhenus Gallos securos reddet. Aen. Sylv.
p. 678.  This is part of a discourse pronounced by Aeneas Sylvius before the
diet of Frankfort; which, though too declamatory, like most of his writings,
is an interesting illustration of the state of Europe and of the impression
produced by that calamity.  Spondanus, ad ann. 1454, has given large extracts
from this oration.]

[Footnote w: Spondanus.  Neither Charles VII. nor even Philip of Burgundy, who
had made the loudest professions, and pledged himself in a fantastic pageant
at his court, soon after the capture of Constantinople, to undertake this
crusade, were sincere in their promises.  The former pretended apprehensions
of invasion from England, as an excuse for sending no troops; which,
considering the situation of England in 1459, was a bold attempt upon the
credulity of mankind.]

[Footnote x: In the long declamation of Aeneas Sylvius before the diet of
Frankfort in 1454, he has the following contrast between the European and
Turkish militia; a good specimen of the artifice with which an ingenious
orator can disguise the truth, while he seems to be stating it most precisely.
Conferamus nunc Turcos et vos invicem; et quid sperandum sit si cum illis
pugnetis, examinemus.  Vos nati ad arma, illi tracti.  Vos armati, illi
inermes; vos gladios versatis, illi cultris utuntur; vos balistas tenditis,
illi arcus trahunt; vos loricae thoracesque protegunt, illos culcitra tegit;
vos equos regitis, illi ab equis reguntur; vos nobiles in bellum ducitis, illi
servos aut artifices cogunt, &c., &c. p. 685.  This, however, had little
effect upon the hearers, who were better judges of military affairs than the
secretary of Frederic III.  Pius II., or Aeneas Sylvius, was a lively writer
and a skilful intriguer.  Long experience had given him a considerable insight
into European politics; and his views are usually clear and sensible.  Though
not so learned as some popes, he knew much better what was going forward in
his own time. But the vanity of displaying his eloquence betrayed him into a
strange folly, when he addressed a very long letter to Mahomet II., explaining
the Catholic faith, and urging him to be baptized; in which case, so far from
preaching a crusade against the Turks, he would gladly make use of their power
to recover the rights of the church.  Some of his inducements are curious, and
must, if made public, have been highly gratifying to his friend Frederic III.
Quippe ut arbitramur, si Christianus fuisses, mortuo Ladislao Ungariae et
Bohemiae rege, nemo praeter te sua regna fuisset adeptus.  Sperassent Ungari
post diuturna bellorum mala sub tuo regimine pacem, et illos Bohemi secuti
fuissent; sed cum esses nostrae religionis hostis, elegerunt Ungari, &c.
Epist. 396.]

     Yet forty years after the fall of Constantinople, at the epoch of Charles
VIII.'s expedition into Italy, the just apprehensions of European statesmen
might have gradually subsided.  Except the Morea, Negropont, and a few other
unimportant conquests, no real progress had been made by the Ottomans.
Mahomet II. had been kept at bay by the Hungarians; he had been repulsed with
some ignominy by the knights of St. John from the island of Rhodes.  A petty
chieftain defied this mighty conqueror for twenty years in the mountains of
Epirus; and the persevering courage of his desultory warfare with such
trifling resources, and so little prospect of ultimate success, may justify
the exaggerated admiration with which his contemporaries honored the name of
Scanderbeg.  Once only the crescent was displayed on the Calabrian coast; but
the city of Otranto remained but a year in the possession of Mahomet.  On his
death a disputed succession involved his children in civil war.  [A. D. 1480.]
Bajazet, the eldest, obtained the victory; but his rival brother Zizim fled to
Rhodes, from whence he was removed to France, and afterwards to Rome.
Apprehensions of this exiled prince seem to have dictated a pacific policy to
the reigning sultan, whose character did not possess the usual energy of
Ottoman sovereigns.