ARTICLE IV.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.1

NO SPECTACLE, perhaps, combines more elements of grandeur and pathos, is more full of lofty and inextinguishable sadness, than the decline of a great nation; when the lights of its better days go out, one after another, the traditions of its glory become forgotten, corruption assumes the place of honor, and its pathway leads downward to humiliation and forgetfulness. The course of one such nation - the mightiest of the ancient, the most domineering and most tenacious of life- has been pourtrayed by the first historical genius of England, in pages which will be read as long as literature endures, or fallen greatness can excite sympathy or teach a lesson. The history of another nation, somewhat similar in its course, and, though of far less grandeur and importance, not to be forgotten in the review of modern achievements of peril, has not, until lately, received its share of attention.

On the 29th of May, 1453, the last of the Constantines fell beneath the ruins of the city which he could not defend, and Mohammed II. entered Constantinople in triumph. "The Conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange, though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental architecture. In the Hippodrome or Atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered, with his iron mace or battle-axe, the

1 History of the Ottoman Turks: From the beginning of their Empire to the present time. Chiefly founded on Von Hammer. By E. S. Creasy, M. A., Prof. of History in University College, London; Late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, etc. etc London: Richard Bentley. Vol. I. 1854. Vol. II. 1856. The Russo Turkish Campaigns of 1828 and 1829. By Col. Chesney, R. A., D. C. L., F. R. S.

Chapters on Turkish History. Understood to be by Mr. Hulme. Blackwood's Magazine.

under-jaw of one of these monsters, which, in the eyes of the Turks, were the idols or talisman of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted from his horse and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that, on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scimitar, that, if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command, the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque; the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed, and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mohammed the Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving at the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. From St. Sophia, he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian history: 'The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Apasiab." In these words, the great historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire recounts that conquest whose effects were so vast on the fortunes of Eastern Europe. From this era, modern history is generally dated. The first result, however, of

1 The Ottoman race, rising, so far as known to history, in the regions east and south of the Euxine and the Caspian, and pursuing their way westward, absorbing city after city, and province after province, had at last that which for two centuries had stimulated the ambition of the Ottomans the Amuraths and Bajazets. The empire of the East was subverted, and the career of the Ottomans in Europe fairly commenced.

the fall of Constantinople, was not to disarrange the relations of European kingdoms, nor to establish a close alliance between them. Under all the later emperors, the city had been isolated; and its fall, though mortifying to the pride of Christendom, and ominous of the fate of more western nations, stimulated no crusade for its recovery, changed the boundaries of no empires, and awakened but a distant and uncertain apprehension, too weak to excite the zeal of the people, and too doubtful to inspire the energy of the rulers. One incidental effect, however, is too important to be passed over unnoticed. During the progress of the dark centuries (from the fifth to the twelfth), when the old dynasties were crumbling, and the imperial splendors were becoming dim, when art and learning suffered an eclipse, Grecian letters and the knowledge of the Greek language, the old philosophy, poetry, and history, the ample legacy of refinement, taste, and skill, which the ancients had bequeathed to the moderns; all this was buried and forgotten, or cast into secret corners, as the veriest rubbish. In Constantinople, however, a traditional knowledge of this (and somewhat more) was preserved. There were still

found scholars, who looked back upon the old glories with reverence, and prided themselves upon their inherited wisdom. With the fall of the Greek Empire, large numbers of this class wandered, as refugees, over the western kingdoms, scattering, as they went, the seeds of that old literature which fell, now into the minds of such as Dante and Petrarch, and again into such as Erasmus and Melanchthon, and, springing up, produced fruit-thirty, sixty, an hundred fold-in the revival of learning, the bursting spring of European civilization.

A still more important result of the fall of Constantinople, was seen in its effects upon the fortunes of the conquerors. The Ottomans had, indeed, before this, gained an important foothold in what is now European Turkey; but, while that magnificent city which, for a thousand years, had borne the name of Constantine, remained under the authority of his successors, the Ottoman Empire was imperfect and un

certain. It still had no centre, no unity. It consisted of an invading and plundering people, but was not consolidated into a nation. By this great victory, Mohammed gained, at once, what he most wanted. The Sultan seated himself upon the throne of the Cæsars, proclaimed himself, in some sense, their successor, and assumed their prescriptive rights.' So grand and domineering, we may say, is the power of a great capital, over minds accustomed to associate with it the traditions of government. It gives a local habitation and a name to those who may need them most, and consolidates conquest by gathering about the conqueror all the customs of social life and every institution of the state. It may be asked, then, why should the western nations permit such immense advantages to flow, so easily, to a hostile power? Why allow the Ottomans to cross the Bosphorus, and gain a foothold in Europe, when the Greeks, by their navy, and the western nations, by their united strength, could have so easily prevented it? The answer is found in their lack of energy and foresight, in their underrating, and therefore despising their foe, and still more in their lack of unity of purpose, and a certain weariness and indifference of the public mind. "About six centuries ago," to quote from Prof. Creasy's volume, "a pastoral band of four hundred Turkish families was journeying westward from the upper streams of the river Euphrates. Their armed force consisted of four hundred and forty-four horsemen; and their leader's name was Ertoghrul, which means, "The Right-hearted man." As they travelled through Asia Minor, they came in sight of a field of battle, on which two armies, of unequal numbers, were striving for the mastery. Without knowing who the combatants were, the Right-hearted man took, instantly, the resolution to aid the weaker party; and, charging desperately and victoriously, with his warriors, upon the larger host, he. decided the fortunes of the day. Such, according to the Ori

1 "Whatever belonged to the empire of Rome," Solyman was accustomed to say, "was of right his, forasmuch as he was rightfully possessed of the imperial seat and sceptre of Constantine the Great, commander of the world, which his grandfather (Mohammed) had, by law of arms, won." (Knolles, p. 615.)

ental historian Neschir, is the first recorded exploit of that branch of the Turkish race which, from Ertoghrul's son, Othman, has been called the nation of the Ottoman Turks."1 This vigorous race, giving promise of success in their earliest feat of arms, inspired with something of that Saracenic enthusiasm which led the Arab to boast that, "in the space of eighty years, his conquests embraced a wider extent of territory than Rome had mastered in eight hundred," rapidly established its power in Asia Minor, seized upon Adrianople and the shores of the Black Sea; and, not content with the possession of the great capital (which, as we have seen, after repeated efforts, fell under their attacks), with a gigantic ambition of universal empire, worthy of Alexander or Cæsar, a Charlemagne or Napoleon, prepared immediately to carry their victorious arms into the south and heart of Europe. The first object was to repeople the deserted and half-destroyed city. The fugitives were invited to return; they were assured of protection and the free exercise of their religion; new inhabitants were transplanted to the capital, from various parts of the Empire, and Constantinople became the centre of Mohammedan power. Brousa and Adrianople were both partially abandoned for the city whose fortunate situation has made it coveted by every conqueror from Constantine to Nicholas; and which, under every change of government, will insure it a prominence in the history of the world. But the beauty of that central situation did not enervate the invaders, nor check the progress of victory.

There was no adequate foe between them and the centre of Europe, rent and divided by jealousies and contention. Everywhere was vigor, self-confidence, and success. "Will you secure your life and treasures by resigning your kingdom?" said the conqueror to the so-called emperor of Trebizond, "or would you rather forfeit your kingdom, your treasures, and your life?" "You are too weak," said the Sultan to the ruler of Sparta, to whose assistance he had

1 Hist. Ott. Turks, Vol. I. pp. 1, 2.