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, ho 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 valour, 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.

But the Greeks had not time to rejoice in the death of their enemies; and the Turkish scimitar was wielded with the same spirit by Amurath the First, the son of Orchan and the brother of Soliman. By the pale and fainting light of the Byzantine annals,* we can discern, that he subdued without resistance the whole province of Romania, or Thrace, from the Hellespont to mount Hæmus, and the verge of the capital; and that Adrianople was chosen for the royal seat of his government and religion in Europe. Constantinople, whose decline is almost coeval with her foundation, had often in the lapse of a thousand years, been assaulted by the Barbarians of the East and West; but never till this fatal hour had the Greeks been surrounded, both in Asia and Europe, by the arms of the same hostile

* After the conclusion of Cantacuzene and Gregoras, there follows a dark interval of a hundred years. George Phranza, Michael Ducas, And Laonicus Chalcondyles, all three wrote after the taking of Con

monarchy. Yet the prudence or generosity of Amurath postponed for a while this easy conquest; and his pride was satisfied with the frequent and humble attendance of the emperor John Palæologus and his four sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the Ottoman prince. He marched against the Sclavonian nations between the Danube and the Adriatic, the Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians, and Albanians; and these warlike tribes, who had so often insulted the majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by his destructive inroads. Their countries did not abound either in gold or silver; nor were their rustic hamlets and townships enriched by commerce, or decorated by the arts of luxury. But the natives of the soil have been distinguished in every age by their hardiness of mind and body; and they were converted by a prudent institution into the firmest and most faithful supporters of the Ottoman greatness. The vizir of Amurath reminded his sovereign, that, according to the Mahometan law, he was entitled to a fifth part of the spoil and captives; and that the duty might easily be levied, if vigilant officers were stationed at Gallipoli, to watch the passage, and to select for his use the stoutest and most beautiful of the Christian youth. The advice was followed; the edict was proclaimed; many thousands of the European captives were educated in religion and arms; and the new militia was consecrated and named by a celebrated dervish. Standing in the front of their ranks, he stretched the sleeve of his gown over the head of the foremost soldier, and his blessing was delivered in these words: "Let them be called Janizaries (yengi cheri, or new soldiers); may their countenance be ever bright! their hand victorious! their sword keen! may their spear always hang over the heads of their enemies! and wheresoever they go, may they return with a white face! Such was the origin of these haughty troops, the terror of the nations and sometimes of the

stantinople.

* See Cantemir, p. 37-41, with his own large and curious annotations. White and black face are common and proverbial expressions of praise and reproach in the Turkish language. Hic niger est hunc tu Romane caveto, was likewise a Latin sentence. [The Latin expression, as used by Horace (Sat. i. 4. 85), is merely figurative. The proverb of the Turks seems to imply prepossessions as to character, connected with an actual colour

sultans themselves. Their valour has declined, their discipline is relaxed, and their tumultuary array is incapable of contending with the order and weapons of modern tactics; but at the time of their institution, they possessed a decisive superiority in war; since a regular body of infantry, in constant exercise and pay, was not maintained by any of the princes of Christendom. The Janizaries fought with the zeal of proselytes against their idolatrous countrymen; and in the battle of Cossova, the league and independence of the Sclavonian tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his vizir, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms. But the sword of his Janizaries could not defend him from the dagger of despair; a Servian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced in the belly with a mortal wound. The grandson of Othman was mild in his temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from public worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a civil cause; a mixture of servitude and freedom not unfrequent in Oriental history.*

The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is strongly expressed in his surname of Ilderim, or the Lightning; and he might glory in an epithet, which was drawn from the fiery energy of his soul, and the rapidity of his destructive march. In the fourteen years of his reign, he incessantly moved at the head of his

of the complexion, like the prejudice, now entertained by some, against negroes.-ED.] See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I. in Cantemir (p. 33-45), the first book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the sultan was stabbed by a Croat in his tent; and this accident was alleged to Busbequius (Epist. 1. p. 98), as an excuse for the unworthy precaution of pinioning, as it were, between two attendants, an ambasBador's arms, when he is introduced to the royal presence.

+ The reign of Bajazet I. or Ilderim Bayazid, is contained in Cantemir (p. 46), the second book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici. The surname of Ilderim, or lightning, is an example, that the conquerors and poets of every age have felt the truth of a system which derives the sublime from the principle of terror. [Euripides,

armies, from Boursa to Adrianople, from the Danube to the Euphrates; and, though he strenuously laboured for the propagation of the law, he invaded, with impartial ambition, the Christian and Mahometan princes of Europe and Asia. From Angora and Amasia and Erzeroum, the northern regions of Anatolia were reduced to his obedience; he stripped of their hereditary possessions his brother emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, of Aidin and Sarukhan; and after the conquest of Iconium, the ancient kingdom of the Seljukians again revived in the Ottoman dynasty. Nor were the conquests of Bajazet less rapid or important in Europe. No sooner had he imposed a regular form of servitude on the Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed the Danube to seek new enemies and new subjects in the heart of Moldavia.* Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master; an obsequious bishop led him through the gates of Thermopyla into Greece; and we may observe, as a singular fact, that the widow of a Spanish chief, who possessed the ancient seat of the oracle of Delphi, deserved his favour by the sacrifice of a beauteous daughter. The Turkish communication between Europe and Asia had been dangerous and doubtful, till he stationed at Gallipoli a fleet of galleys to command the Hellespont and intercept the Latin succours of Constantinople. While the monarch indulged his passions in a boundless range of injustice and cruelty, he imposed on his soldiers the most rigid laws of modesty and abstinence; and the harvest was peaceably reaped and sold within the precincts of his camp. Provoked by the loose and corrupt administration of justice, he collected in a house the judges and lawyers of his dominions, who expected that in a few moments the fire would be kindled to reduce them to ashes. His ministers trembled

or Critias, in the speech of Sisyphus, quoted by Warburton (Div. Leg. iii. p. 219), has doubly illustrated this idea, by placing the abode of the gods in those regions which sent forth lightnings and dreadful bursts of thunder, to strike the human mind with awe :

ἵν ̓ ἀστραπὰς

Κάτειδεν ὄνσας δεινά τε κτυπήματα

Βροντῆς.

ED.]

• Cantemir, who celebrates the victories of the great Stephen over the Turks (p. 47), had composed the ancient and modern state of his

in silence; but an Ethiopian buffoon presumed to insinuate the true cause of the evil; and future venality was left without excuse, by annexing an adequate salary to the office of Cadhi.* The humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet condescended to !! accept a patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamelukes;† a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion, by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this august title; and he turned his arms against the kingdom of Hungary, the perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats. Sigismond, the Hungarian king, was the son and brother of the emperors of the West; his cause was that of Europe and the Church; and on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of France and Germany were eager to march under his standard and that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a confederate army of a hundred thousand Christians, who had proudly boasted, that if the sky should fall, they could uphold it on their lances. The far greater part were slain or driven into the Danube; and Sigismond, escaping to Constanti nople by the river and the Black Sea, returned after a long circuit, to his exhausted kingdom. In the pride of victory,

principality of Moldavia, which has been long promised, and is still unpublished. * Leunclav. Annal. Turcici, p. 318, 319. The venality of the cadhis has long been an object of scandal and Batire; and if we distrust the observations of our travellers, we may consult the feeling of the Turks themselves (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orientale, p. 216, 217. 229. 230.). + The fact, which

is attested by the Arabic history of Ben Schounah, a contemporary Syrian (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 336), destroys the testimony of Saad Effendi and Cantemir (p. 14, 15) of the election of Othman to the dignity of sultan. See the Decades

Rerum Hungaricarum (Dec. 3, 1. 2, p. 379) of Bonfinius, an Italian, who, in the fifteenth century, was invited into Hungary to compose an eloquent history of that kingdom. Yet if it be extant and accessible, I should give the preference to some homely chronicle of the time and country. A large body of the Knights of Rhodes formed a part of the Christian army in this battle, and all perished, except the Grand Master, who escaped in a boat with the king of Hungary (Taaffe, ii. p. 322-325). This Nicopolis has been mistaken by somo for the city that name built by Augustus, now Prevesa. But it was another