estimate of the number of the French knights and squires engaged in the battle. The former had reduced them to one thousand, Daru increased them to ten; our author adopts, from the German eye-witness of the battle, the intermediate number six thousand. By his account of this memorable battle the French knights overthrew in succession the Asabi, the light infantry of the Turks, broke the Janizaries themselves, and scattered the Sipahis, the cavalry. The victory appeared won-when, on mounting a hill in pursuit of the Sipahis, they found the reserve of Bajazet, or rather the main strength of his army, called the Porte (the Greek historian names it Oupa) consisting of forty thousand lancers. The Christians were seized with a panic, and fled on all sides. The Admiral Jean de Vienne rallied some of the bravest, who scorned to purchase their lives at the cost of their honour. They all charged and fell before the spears of the Turks. The Hungarian army had been left behind in the impetuous onset of the French. As the remains of the latter fell back upon them in consternation and disorder, their two wings broke and fled. The centre alone, which consisted of Germans from Steyermark and Bavaria, advanced firmly, again broke the Janizaries, but were overwhelmed by a superior force. Schiltberger was among the ten thousand Christian prisoners led out to be murdered in cold blood by the infuriated conqueror. He saw his comrades butchered around him, and was only spared himself, with some others, on account of his extreme youth, through the intercession of the son of Bajazet. The characteristic sarcasm of Gibbon on the trivial cause which arrested Bajazet in his career of Western conquest, rests, we suspect, on no very satisfactory authority: His progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the apostle-not by a crusade of the Christian powers-but by a long and painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral are sometimes corrected by those of the physical world; and an acrimonious humour falling on a single fibre of one man, may prevent or suspend the misery of nations.' If, however, the personal activity of Bajazet was arrested by any such cause, his lieutenants were incessantly employed in consolidating his empire from the Euphrates to the frontier of Hungary. Constantinople was pressed with a siege, which was only averted by the concession of a mosque for the performance of Mahometan worship within its walls, and Bajazet himself directed the expedition in which the City of the Wise,' so the Turkish historians denominate Athens, sank before the spoiler.

Our author's explanation of the famous iron cage,' in which Bajazet was imprisoned after the fatal battle of Angora, is both

simple

simple and satisfactory. By a mistake in the meaning of the Turkish word kafe, a covered litter drawn by two horses, such as usually conveys the harem of eastern sovereigns during a journey, with the lattice-work in this case made of iron, has been transformed into a cage. For this, Von Hammer adduces the European Schiltberger, the two oldest of the Turkish historians, and the most valuable of the later compilers, Seadeddin. This last, in a passage which gives no mean opinion of oriental historical criticism, (we say nothing of taste,) observes-

That which fabulists in some Turkish histories relate of his imprisonment in a cage, is pure fiction. Had such a circumstance taken place, Moslana Scherefeddin (as the panegyrist of Timur) would have taken pains to have glorified it in his boastful manner. As the hateful sight of the Tartars excited his (Bajazet's) indignation, he chose to travel in a litter. Whoever will place himself in his situation will understand, that he really did travel in this manner, and will feel that it was impossible for his indignant spirit to endure every day the sight of his enemies. Those who cannot distinguish between a cage and a litter belong to the indiscriminating multitude, who would confound with each other heaven and a halter.' *

The death of Bajazet, as the prisoner of Timour, threatened the Ottoman kingdom with the usual fate of Asiatic monarchies. The succession, instead of being fixed by the will of the dying sovereign, and secured from dangerous competition by the bowstring, became the prize of successful policy and valour among the five sons of Bajazet. Fatally for the peace of Europe, and for the cause of Christianity, the superior abilities of Mahomet I. triumphed over his four rivals, and the Byzantine empire found itself again environed by a watchful, warlike, and ambitious enemy, who reigned at once at Boursa and Adrianople. We pass on to the final conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet II., pausing only to point out our author's correction of a grave mistake of Gibbon, with regard to the extraordinary abdication of the intervening sovereign, Amurath II. In his fortieth year, after having reigned twenty-two years of almost uninterrupted warfare, this emperor, of a milder nature than most of his royal race, and deeply afflicted at the death of his elder and favourite son, retired from the throne into a luxuriant solitude in the delicious climate of Ionia.

Resigning the sceptre (says Gibbon) to his son, he retired to the pleasant residence of Magnesia; but he retired to the society of saints and hermits. The Lord of Nations submitted to fast and

pray,

We of course take, on Von Hammer's authority, the meaning of the two last Turkish words which form this jingle, and which, even in Turkish, do not appear to bear a very close resemblance in sound.

and

and turn round in endless rotation, with the fanatics who mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the spirit.'

The companions of Amurath were of a different character and complexion than those assigned to him by the sarcastic European; profane, not divine love, was the occupation of the unmonastic retreat, which was more like that of Sardanapalus, than of Charles V.; the only dance was that described by Horace, as belonging to the region, motus doceri gaudet Ionicos. But it is the most remarkable part of the transaction, that the mind of the emperor was not in the least emasculated by this interval of Epicurean indulgence. Summoned to reascend the throne by the exigencies and dangers of the time, the heroes of the Christian cause, John Hunniades and Scanderbeg, found in the voluptuous solitary of Magnesia, an arm still vigorous enough to arrest their bold and gallant incursions, a mind, which had lost nothing either of its daring ambition, or its promptitude and decision in the execution of its gigantic schemes.

To the last siege of Constantinople by Mahomet II., we had looked forward in expectation, that the Eastern writers would have thrown some further light on the plans and councils of the besiegers. But either the Turkish historians are more vague and general, or must coincide with the more precise and detailed narratives of the Byzantines. For our author has borne his high testimony to the accuracy as well as to the graphic spirit and boldness of Gibbon, in his relation of this memorable event, by following closely his outline, filling up occasionally the details, and departing from his predecessor only in few, and those by no means important circumstances. With the fall of Constantinople, the fulfilment of the vision of Osman, closes the first period of the Turkish history, which occupies the first volume of our author, and here breaks off Gibbon's sketch.

The next great period may comprehend the further extent and consolidation of the Turkish power, till it reached its culminating point in the reign of Soliman the Magnificent. During this interval it advanced its frontier in Europe, subdued Egypt, and hardly admitted the Euphrates as its eastern boundary. It is of course impossible for us to trace even in the most rapid manner this history, extending over a whole century; we shall content ourselves, therefore, with selecting, as before, some of its more memorable passages, particularly those in which the Turkish character and habits are brought into collision with those of Western Europe, in which the politics of the European world were influenced by those or the Ottoman empire, or those which throw a strong light on the religious and social character of the Turks themselves.

From the character of Mahomet II. our author strips away much of the romantic and legendary cruelty attributed to the conqueror,'

by

by the hatred and the terror of the Christian world. The haughty inscription said to have been placed upon his tomb, It was my determination to conquer Rhodes and subdue proud Italy,' is contradicted by the tomb itself. His decapitation of the beautiful Irene, with his own hand,-(the subject of Johnson's tragedy, and of several folio pages in Knolles,)—on account of the remonstrances of the warrior Turks at his enslavement to that dangerous beauty, is dismissed as altogether imaginary. The Turks did not venture to penetrate into the secrets of their master's harem, where, however, there is no doubt that much more shameless and revolting atrocities took place. To have been the slave of the Sultan's lust, by no means incapacitated for the highest offices of the state, nor secured the favourite, as witness the case of more than one vizier, from the scaffold or the bowstring. Mahomet is less known in Europe as the restorer and builder, than as the depopulator of flourishing cities, as the last destroyer of Grecian arts and letters, than as the patron of Mahometan sciences-as a bloody and remorseless warrior, than as accomplished in the Asiatic arts of peace, though he was encircled by learned men and poets, among whom may be reckoned some of his most martial viziers and pashas-as the extirpator of the last remains of the glory and pride of imperial Rome, of the religious establishments of Christian Constantinople, than as the promulgator of a new law, the founder of a new imperial ceremonial, the regulator of the establishment of Mahometanism in the Great City.

The eighteenth book of this history is occupied with the institutes of The Conqueror, which, since that time, have regulated, with little variation, the court, the public administration, and the policy of the Ottomans. In the metaphorical language of the East, the state is represented as a palace, or rather as a tent-its foundations are the law (the Koran), the customs, and the decrees of the ruling Sultan. The gate (the Porte) is, as it were, an image of the whole edifice; it signifies the whole government, in allusion to the patriarchal times, when the head of the tribe sat as judge and ruler in the gate.' The term Gate, or Porte, is likewise used, in a subordinate sense, for the whole military array;-and thirdly, it is applied to the inner palace or harem. In this sense it is the gate of bliss;' in the former, the Sublime Porte of the empire, or the gate of good fortune.' Within this inner gate of bliss' is not only the harem, but the treasury, and the divan. The canon of Mahomet II., which regulated the administration of the empire and the ceremonial of the court, delighted in the number four. Four angels, according to the Koran, support the throne of glory, four winds blow from the four quarters of heaven, there are four chief virtues,

and

and four caliphs ruled over Islam. So the empire rests on four pillars-the Viziers, the Kadiaskers, (the judges,) the Defterdars, (the treasurers,) and the Nitschandis, (the secretaries of state ;) besides these were the two kinds of Agas, the military and the civil, and the Ulemas, or learned in the law. The Viziers were four in number-the grand Vizier held the seal, the symbol of the imperial power. At a later period the chief judicial power, in dubious cases, was vested in the Mufti. The canon of Mahomet II. established fratricide as the law of the land, or rather that of the royal family; yet it was during this reign of war and conquest, the epoch of a great empire settling down on a firm and régular basis—it was under the patronage of this ferocious despot, that Turkish literature made most extensive progress in all its branches. The romantic poems of Persia were translated or imitated, even Persian poets were encouraged, and the Turkish bards complained that the Sultan listened with partial delight to these foreign strains. The fame of Mahomet II.'s encouragement of letters penetrated into Europe; one historian, copied by Knolles, informs us, that he could speak Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Persian, and likewise Chaldee!-that he delighted in reading the history of Alexander the Great, and of Julius Cæsar. The former, no doubt, was the Persian legend, which, it is remarkable enough, came back to Europe, and was popular throughout the middle ages as 'the Romaunt of Alexander.' But the founder of the imperial dynasty of Rome, according to M. von Hammer, is altogether unknown in the East.

The fratricidal canon of Mahomet the Conqueror was not carried into execution at his death, and the secret inclination of the Grand Vizier, Mahomet the Caramanian, towards the second son, Prince Dschem, endangered the succession of the elder born, the Sultan Bajazet II. But the vizier lost his life in an uproar of the Janizaries, who already began to be conscious of their power, and to use their privilege of insurrection at every change in the ruling sovereign, either for the purpose of extorting from the new monarch an exorbitant donative, or forcing it by plunder from the peaceful citizens. The army declared for Bajazet, and from that moment his throne was secure. Bajazet proclaimed aloud the stern maxim, there is no blood between kings.' But Prince Dschem had the good fortune to escape, after a fruitless struggle for the sceptre, to Europe, where his adventures have all the character of a busy and stirring romance-nowhere, that we remember, so fully or so amusingly related as by our author. Having first secured an honourable reception, he sailed in the state galley of the Knights of St. John to Rhodes, where he was received in great pomp by the Grand Master, and the assembled

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