History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0177/01774.txt

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$Title{History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Part III.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Gibbon, Edward}
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$Subject{footnote
turkish
first
orchan
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$Date{1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)}
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Title:       History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Book:        Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turkds.
Author:      Gibbon, Edward
Date:        1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

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 Caesars.  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 Palaeologus, ^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 khaus of Kipzak; obtained in
marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palaeologus; 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 zeats, 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

[Footnote 34: 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.]

[Footnote 35: 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.]

[Footnote 36: G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37.  Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6, l. iv. c. 5.]

[Footnote 37: 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.]

[Footnote 38: 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.]

[Footnote 39: 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, than hero fought in person fourteen battles; and
such was his activity, that he led his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflia
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 Palaeologus, 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 aera, 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

[Footnote 40: 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.]

[Footnote 41: 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 aera 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; ^* 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. ^! 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 ^!! 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 Maeander 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.

[Footnote *: Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 82. - M.]

[Footnote !: Ibid. p. 91. - M.]

[Footnote 42: Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and heroic flight of
the younger Androcinus, (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.]

[Footnote !!: 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.]

[Footnote 43: 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.]

[Footnote 44: Pachymer, l. xiii. c. 13.]

[Footnote 45: 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.]

[Footnote 46: Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de 'Ordre de Malthe, par
l'Abbe 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.

[Footnote 47: 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.)]

[Footnote 48: 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.)]

[Footnote 49: 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, Turkish, (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. ^*

[Footnote 50: 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!]

[Footnote 51: 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.)

     Note: In the 75th year of his age, the 35th of his reign.  V. Hammer. M.]