immediately sailed from Modon in the Morea; ascended the throne of Constantinople; and dismissed his blind competitor to an easy exile in the isle of Lesbos. The ambassadors of the son of Bajazet were soon introduced to his presence; but their pride was fallen, their tone was modest; they were awed by the just apprehension, lest the Greeks should open to the Moguls the gates of Europe. Soliman saluted the emperor by the name of father; solicited at his hands the government or gift of Romania; and promised to deserve his favour by inviolable friendship, and the restitution of Thessalonica, with the most important places along the Strymon, the Propontis, and the Black Sea. The alliance of Soliman exposed the emperor to the enmity and revenge of Mousa; the Turks appeared in arms before the gates of Constantinople; but they were repulsed by sea and land; and unless the city was guarded by some foreign mercenaries, the Greeks must have wondered at their own triumph. But, instead of prolonging the division of the Ottoman powers, the policy or passion of Manuel was tempted to assist the most formidable of the sons of Bajazet. He concluded a treaty with Mahomet, whose progress was checked by the insuperable barrier of Gallipoli; the sultan and his troops were transported over the Bosphorus; he was hospitably entertained in the capital; and his successful sally was the first step to the conquest of Romania. The ruin was suspended by the prudence and moderation of the conqueror; he faithfully discharged his own obligations and those of Soliman, respected the laws of gratitude and peace; and left the emperor guardian of his two younger sons, in the vain hope of saving them from the jealous cruelty of their brother Amurath. But the execution of his last testament would have offended the national honour and religion; and the divan unanimously pronounced, that the royal youths should never be abandoned to the custody and education of a Christian dog. On this refusal, the Byzantine councils were divided; but the age and caution of Manuel yielded to the presumption of his son John; and they unsheathed a dangerous weapon of revenge, by dis missing the true or false Mustapha, who had long been detained as a captive and hostage, and for whose mainte nance they received an annual pension of three hundred

thousand aspers. At the door of his prison, Mustapha subscribed to every proposal; and the keys of Gallipoli, or rather of Europe, were stipulated as the price of his deliverance. But no sooner was he seated on the throne of Romania, than he dismissed the Greek ambassadors with a smile of contempt, declaring, in a pious tone, that, at the day of judgment, he would rather answer for the violation of an oath, than for the surrender of a Mussulman city into the hands of the infidels. The emperor was at once the enemy of the two rivals, from whom he had sustained, and to whom he had offered, an injury; and the victory of Amurath was followed, in the ensuing spring, by the siege of Constantinople.+

The religious merit of subduing the city of the Cæsars attracted from Asia a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom; their military ardour was inflamed by the promise of rich spoils and beautiful females; and the sultan's ambition was consecrated by the presence and prediction of Seid Bechar, a descendant of the prophet,+

The Turkish asper (from the Greek donρòç) is, or was, a piece of white or silver money, at present much debased, but which was formerly equivalent to the fifty-fourth part, at least, of a Venetian ducat or sequin; and the three hundred thousand aspers, a princely allowance or royal tribute, may be computed at two thousand five hundred pounds sterling. (Leunclav. Pandect. Turc. p. 406-408.) [It is very difficult to ascertain the value of money at this period. The pension allowed to Mustapha cannot have been equal to the tribute paid by Manuel to the sultan, which, as will be seen in the next page, was also 300,000 aspers. According to Finlay (ii. 613, note) the last were a larger coin, ten of which are said by Ducas to have made a gold byzant. But the genuine money of this last denomination, or perpers (see note, p. 29) were worth much more than the debased current coin. If the data be correct, which are afforded by Finlay in the above cited note, and in another at p. 494 of the same volume, the pension amounted to 13,500l., and the tribute to 93,7501, sums which appear to be probable.-ED.]

For the siege of Constantinople in 1422, see the particular and contemporary narrative of John Cananus, published by Leo Allatius, at the end of his edition of Acropolita (p. 188-199). [Gibbon's statement of two hundred thousand men having been employed in this siege, appears to be an exaggeration. According to Von Hammer (Geschichte der Osmanen, ii. 235), the number was only twenty thouBand.-ED.]

Cantemir, p. 80. Cananus, who describes Seid Bechar without naming him, supposes that the friend of Mahomet assumed in his

A.D. 1422.]

BY AMURATH

199

who arrived in the camp, on a mule, with a venerable train
The strength
of five hundred disciples. But he might blush, if a fanatic
could blush, at the failure of his assurances.
of the walls resisted an army of two hundred thousand
Turks; their assaults were repelled by the sallies of the
Greeks and their foreign mercenaries; the old resources of
defence were opposed to the new engines of attack; and
the enthusiasm of the dervish, who was snatched to heaven
in visionary converse with Mahomet, was answered by the
credulity of the Christians, who beheld the Virgin Mary, in
a violet garment, walking on the rampart and animating
their courage. After a siege of two months, Amurath was
recalled to Boursa by a domestic revolt, which had been
kindled by Greek treachery, and was soon extinguished by
the death of a guiltless brother. While he led his janizaries
to new conquests in Europe and Asia, the Byzantine empire
was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty
years. Manuel sank into the grave, and John Palæologus
was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three
hundred thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost all
that he held beyond the suburbs of Constantinople.t

In the establishment and restoration of the Turkish empire, the first merit must doubtless be assigned to the personal qualities of the sultans; since in human life, the most important scenes will depend on the character of a single actor. By some shades of wisdom and virtue, they may be discriminated from each other; but, except in a single instance, a period of nine reigns and two hundred and sixty-five years is occupied, from the elevation of Othman to the death of Soliman, by a rare series of warlike and active princes, who impressed their subjects with obedience and their enemies with terror. Instead of the slothful luxury of the seraglio, the heirs of royalty were educated in the council and the field; from early youth they were intrusted by their fathers with the command of provinces and armies; and this manly institution, which was often productive of civil war, must have essentially contributed to the discipline amours the privilege of a prophet, and that the fairest of the Greek nuns were promised to the saint and his disciples.

For this miraculous apparition, Cananus appeals to the Mussulman saint; but who will bear testimony for Seid Bechar?

+ [Ducas (109) makes this treaty the last act of Manuel's reign

and vigour of the monarchy. The Ottomans cannot style themselves, like the Arabian caliphs, the descendants or successors of the apostle of God; and the kindred which they claim with the Tartar khans of the house of Zingis appears to be founded in flattery rather than in truth.* Their origin is obscure, but their sacred and indefeasible right, which no time can erase and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A weak or vicious sultan may be deposed and strangled; but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty vizir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation.

To the spirit and constitution of that nation, a strong and singular influence may, however, be ascribed. The primitive subjects of Othman were the four hundred families of wandering Turkmans, who had followed his ancestors from the Oxus to the Sangar; and the plains of Anatolia are still covered with the white and black tents of their rustic brethren. But this original drop was dissolved in the mass of voluntary and vanquished subjects, who, under the name of Turks, are united by the common ties of religion, language, and manners. In the cities, from Erzeroum to Belgrade, that national appellation is common to all the Moslems, the first and most honourable inhabitants; but they have abandoned, at least in Romania, the villages and the cultivation of the land to the Christian peasants. In the vigorous age of the Ottoman government, the Turks were themselves excluded from all civil and military honours; and a servile class, an artificial people, was raised by the Finlay, ii. p. 613.-ED.] *See Ricaut (1. 1, c. 13). The Turkish sultans assume the title of khan. Yet Abulghazi is ignorant of his Ottoman cousins. + The third grand

vizir of the name of Kiuperli, who was slain at the battle of Salankanen in 1691 (Cantemir, p. 382), presumed to say, that all the successors of Soliman had been fools or tyrants, and that it was time to abolish the race. (Marsigli, Stato Militare, &c. p. 28.) This political heretic was a good Whig, and justified against the French ambassador the revolution of England. (Mignot, Hist, des Ottomans, tom. iii p. 431)

discipline of education to obey, to conquer, and to command. From the time of Orchan and the first Amurath, the sultans were persuaded that a government of the sword must be renewed in each generation with new soldiers; and that such soldiers must be sought, not in effeminate Asia, but among the hardy and warlike natives of Europe. The provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Servia, became the perpetual seminary of the Turkish army; and when the royal fifth of the captives was diminished by conquest, an inhuman tax, of the fifth child, or of every fifth year, was rigorously levied on the Christian families. At the age of twelve or fourteen years, the most robust youths were torn from their parents; their names were enrolled in a book, and from that moment they were clothed, taught, and maintained, for the public service. According to the promise of their appearance, they were selected for the royal schools of Boursa, Pera, and Adrianople, intrusted to the care of the bashaws, or dispersed in the houses of the Anatolian peasantry. It was the first care of their masters to instruct them in the Turkish language; their bodies were exercised by every labour that could fortify their strength: they learned to wrestle, to leap, to run, to shoot with the bow, and afterwards with the musket; till they were drafted into the chambers and companies of the janizaries, and severely trained in the military or monastic discipline of the order. The youths most conspicuous for birth, talents, and beauty, were admitted into the inferior class of agiamoglans, or the more liberal rank of ichoglans, of whom the former were attached to the palace, and the latter to the person of the prince. In four successive schools, under the rod of the white eunuchs, the arts of horsemanship and of darting the javelin were their daily exercise, while those of a more studious cast applied themselves to the study of the Koran, and the knowledge of the Arabic and Persian tongues. As they advanced in seniority and merit, they were gradually dismissed to military, civil, and even ecclesiastical employments; the longer their stay, the higher was their expectation; till, at a mature period,

His presumption condemns the singular exception of continuing offices in the same family. Chalcocondylas (1. 5) and Ducas (c. 23) exhibit the rude lineaments of the Ottoman policy, and the transmutation of Christian children into Turkish soldiers.