state. The marriage was immediately stipulated; but the office, however incompatible with his own, had been usurped by the ambition of the admiral. Some delay was requisite to negotiate a consent and an equivalent; and the nomination of Phranza was half declared and half suppressed, lest it might be displeasing to an insolent and powerful favourite. The winter was spent in the preparations of his embassy; and Phranza had resolved that the youth his son should embrace this opportunity of foreign travel, and be left, on the appearance of danger, with his maternal kindred of the Morea. Such were the private and public designs, which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire. 62 62 [A Burgundian knight, Bertrandon de la Brocquière, returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visited Constantinople in 1432, and has left us a very interesting description of life in that city, and also of Murad's court at Hadrianople. Legrand D'Aussy published this work (Voyage d'Outremer et Retour de Jérusalem en France) in 1804, and it has been re-edited by C. Schefer, 1892. An English edition appeared in T. Wright's Early Travels in Palestine (ed. Bohn, 1848, p. 283-382). Finlay writes (Hist. of Greece, iii. p. 492): "Court processions, religious ceremonies, and national vanity amused and consoled the Greeks as they hastened along the path of degradation and ruin. Dramatic representations of sacred subjects were performed in the Church of St. Sophia, as musical exhibitions had been celebrated in earlier days. Exercises of archery and imitations of Turkish horsemanship replaced the military pageants and the games of the hippodrome which had been the delight of the Byzantine populace in better days."] Character of Mahomet II. CHAPTER LXVIII Reign and Character of Mahomet the Second-Siege, Assault, T 1 HE siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to the person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet the Second was the son of the second Amurath; and, though his mother has been decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous concubines who peopled from every climate the harem of the sultan. His first education and sentiments were those of a devout Musulman; and, as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands and face by the legal rights of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry; his aspiring genius disdained to acknowledge a power above his own; and in his looser hours he presumed (it is said) to brand the prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet the Sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the doctrine and discipline of the Koran; his private indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear; and we should suspect the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone 1 For the character of Mahomet II. it is dangerous to trust either the Turks or the Christians. The most moderate picture appears to be drawn by Phranza (1. i. c. 33), whose resentment had cooled in age and solitude; see likewise Spondanus (A.D. 1451, No. 11), and the continuator of Fleury (tom. xxii. p. 552), the Elogia of Paulus Jovius (1. iii. p. 164-166), and the Dictionnaire de Bayle (tom. iii. p. 272279). [Cp. Critobulus, i. 5, in Müller, Frag. Hist. Gr., v. part 2; Zinkeisen, Gesch. des osmanischen Reiches, ii. 468 sqq.; Pears, Destruction of the Greek Empire, p. 206 sqq.] Cantemir (p. 115), and the mosques which he founded, attest his public regard for religion. Mahomet freely disputed with the patriarch Gennadius on the two religions (Spond. A.D. 1453, No. 22). to believe that a mind which is hardened against truth must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the most skilful masters, Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and, besides his native tongue, it is affirmed that he spoke or understood five languages,3 the Arabic, the Persian, the Chaldæan or Hebrew, the Latin, and the Greek. The Persian might, indeed, contribute to his amusement, and the Arabic to his edification; and such studies are familiar to the Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and Turks, a conqueror might wish to converse with the people over whom he was ambitious to reign; his own praises in Latin poetry or prose might find a passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves? The history and geography of the world were familiar to his memory; the lives of the heroes of the East, perhaps of the West, excited his emulation; his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the times, and supposes some rudiments 4 5 3 Quinque linguas præter suam noverat; Græcam, Latinam, Chaldaicam, Persicam. The Latin translator of Phranza has dropt the Arabic, which the Koran must recommend to every Musulman. [The Greek text of Phranza, i. 32 (p. 95, ed. Bonn) has 'Apaßikhv. The historian Critobulus (for whom see Appendix 1) gives us the means of criticizing this statement of Phrantzes. He says (i. 5, 2) that Mohammad was thoroughly conversant with Arabic and Persian and had studied Greek philosophical works (Aristotelian and Stoic) that were translated into those languages. He repeats this statement, v. 10, 4, and describes the Sultan studying the cosmographical diagrams of Ptolemy. Villoison (Notices et extraits des Manuscrits, vol. viii. part 2, p. 22) quotes from a description of Mohammad given by Nicolaus Sagundinus to King Alfonso of Aragon, in Jan. 1453, the statement that the Sultan kept by him two physicians, one versed in Latin, the other in Greek; and they instructed him in ancient history.] Philelphus, by a Latin Ode, requested and obtained the liberty of his wife's mother and sisters from the conqueror of Constantinople. It was delivered into the sultan's hands by the envoys of the duke of Milan. Philelphus himself was suspected of a design of retiring to Constantinople; yet the orator often sounded the trumpet of holy war (see his Life by M. Lancelot, in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718, 724, &c.). [The Letter of Philelphus to Mohammad, 11th March, 1454, is published in his biography by Rosmini (1805), vol. ii. p. 305.] 5 Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his twelve books, de Re Militari, in which he first mentions the use of bombs. By his patron Sigismond Malatesta, prince of Rimini, it had been addressed with a Latin epistle to Mahomet II. 6 " According to Phranza, he assiduously studied the lives and actions of Alexander, Augustus, Constantine and Theodosius. I have read somewhere that Plutarch's Lives were translated by his orders into the Turkish language. If the sultan himself understood Greek, it must have been for the benefit of his subjects. Yet these Lives are a school of freedom as well as of valour. [Critobulus (i. 5, 1) says that Mohammad's examples were Alexander, Pompey and Cæsar-πρds ̓Αλέξανδρον ἑώρα καὶ Πομπηΐους καὶ Καίσαρας καὶ τοὺς κατ ̓ ἐκείνους βασιλεῖς τε καὶ στρατηγούς.] His reign, of mathematical science; and a profane taste for the arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and reward of the painters of Italy. But the influence of religion and learning were employed without effect on his savage and licentious nature. I will not transcribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories of his fourteen pages, whose bellies were ripped open in search of a stolen melon; or of the beauteous slave, whose head he severed from her body, to convince the Janizaries that their master was not the votary of love. His sobriety is attested by the silence of the Turkish annals, which accuse three, and three only, of the Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness." But it cannot be denied that his passions were at once furious and inexorable; that in the palace, as in the field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest provocation; and that the noblest of the captive youth were often dishonoured by his unnatural lust. In the Albanian war, he studied the lessons, and soon surpassed the example, of his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and two hundred cities, a vain and flattering account, is ascribed to his invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier, and possibly a general; Constantinople has sealed his glory; but, if we compare the means, the obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet the Second must blush to sustain a parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his command, the Ottoman forces were always more numerous than their enemies; yet their progress was bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic; and his arms were checked by Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the Rhodian knights, and by the Persian king. In the reign of Amurath, he twice tasted of royalty, and Feb. 9A.D. twice descended from the throne; his tender age was incapable of opposing his father's restoration, but never could he forgive 1481, July 2 7 The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, was dismissed with a chain and collar of gold, and a purse of 3000 ducats. With Voltaire I laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely beheaded, to instruct the painter in the action of the muscles. [Bellini painted a portrait of Mohammad, which is extant. It passed into the possession of Sir Henry Layard. For Bellini at the Sultan's court (1479-80) see L. Thuasne, Gentile Bellini et Sultan Mohammed II.] 8 [The story is an invention, and is likewise rejected by Thuasne (op. cit. p. 53 sqq.), who points out that a similar story was told about Parrhasius (see the elder Seneca's Controversiæ, x. 5).] These Imperial drunkards were Soliman I., Selim II., and Amurath IV. (Cantemir, p. 61). The sophis of Persia can produce a more regular succession; and in the last age our European travellers were the witnesses and the companions of their revels. His the vizirs who had recommended that salutary measure. nuptials were celebrated with the daughter of a Turkman emir; and, after a festival of two months, he departed from Hadrianople with his bride to reside in the government of Magnesia. Before the end of six weeks, he was recalled by a sudden message from the divan, which announced the decease of Amurath and the mutinous spirit of the Janizaries. His speed and vigour commanded their obedience; he passed the Hellespont with a chosen guard; and, at a distance of a mile from Hadrianople, the vizirs and emirs, the imams and cadhis, the soldiers and the people, fell prostrate before the new sultan. They affected to weep, they affected to rejoice; he ascended the throne at the age of twenty-one years, and removed the cause of sedition by the death, the inevitable death, of his infant brothers.10 The ambassadors of Europe and Asia soon appeared to congratulate his accession, and solicit his friendship; and to all he spoke the language of moderation and peace. The confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths and fair assurances with which he sealed the ratification of the treaty; and a rich domain on the banks of the Strymon was assigned for the annual payment of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an Ottoman prince who was detained at his request in the Byzantine court. Yet the neighbours of Mahomet might tremble at the severity with which a youthful monarch reformed the pomp of his father's household; the expenses of luxury were applied to those of ambition, and an useless train of seven thousand falconers was either dismissed from his service or enlisted in his troops. In the first summer of his reign, he visited with an army the Asiatic provinces; but, after humbling the pride, Mahomet accepted the submission, of the Caramanian, that he might not be diverted by the smallest obstacle from the execution of his great design."1 The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish, casuists 10 Calapin, one of these royal infants, was saved from his cruel brother, and baptized at Rome under the name of Callistus Othomannus. The emperor Frederic III. presented him with an estate in Austria, where he ended his life; and Cuspinian, who in his youth conversed with the aged prince at Vienna, applauds his piety and wisdom (de Cæsaribus, p. 672, 673). 11 See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas (c. 33), Phranza (1. i. c. 33, l. ii. c. 2), Chalcondyles (1. vii. p. 199 [p. 376, ed. Bonn]), and Cantemir (p. 96). |