associated; [35] and they are both entitled to our notice, since their
occupation of the Ottoman arms delayed the ruin of the Greek empire.
John Castriot, the father of Scanderbeg, [36] was the hereditary prince
of a small district of Epirus or Albania, between the mountains and
the Adriatic Sea. Unable to contend with the sultan's power, Castriot
submitted to the hard conditions of peace and tribute: he delivered
his four sons as the pledges of his fidelity; and the Christian youths,
after receiving the mark of circumcision, were instructed in the
Mahometan religion, and trained in the arms and arts of Turkish policy.
[37] The three elder brothers were confounded in the crowd of slaves;
and the poison to which their deaths are ascribed cannot be verified
or disproved by any positive evidence. Yet the suspicion is in a great
measure removed by the kind and paternal treatment of George Castriot,
the fourth brother, who, from his tender youth, displayed the strength
and spirit of a soldier. The successive overthrow of a Tartar and two
Persians, who carried a proud defiance to the Turkish court, recommended
him to the favor of Amurath, and his Turkish appellation of Scanderbeg,
(_Iskender beg_,) or the lord Alexander, is an indelible memorial of
his glory and servitude. His father's principality was reduced into a
province; but the loss was compensated by the rank and title of
Sanjiak, a command of five thousand horse, and the prospect of the first
dignities of the empire. He served with honor in the wars of Europe and
Asia; and we may smile at the art or credulity of the historian, who
supposes, that in every encounter he spared the Christians, while he
fell with a thundering arm on his Mussulman foes. The glory of Huniades
is without reproach: he fought in the defence of his religion and
country; but the enemies who applaud the patriot, have branded his rival
with the name of traitor and apostate. In the eyes of the Christian,
the rebellion of Scanderbeg is justified by his father's wrongs, the
ambiguous death of his three brothers, his own degradation, and the
slavery of his country; and they adore the generous, though tardy, zeal,
with which he asserted the faith and independence of his ancestors. But
he had imbibed from his ninth year the doctrines of the Koran; he was
ignorant of the Gospel; the religion of a soldier is determined by
authority and habit; nor is it easy to conceive what new illumination at
the age of forty [38] could be poured into his soul. His motives would be
less exposed to the suspicion of interest or revenge, had he broken his
chain from the moment that he was sensible of its weight: but a long
oblivion had surely impaired his original right; and every year of
obedience and reward had cemented the mutual bond of the sultan and his
subject. If Scanderbeg had long harbored the belief of Christianity
and the intention of revolt, a worthy mind must condemn the base
dissimulation, that could serve only to betray, that could promise only
to be forsworn, that could actively join in the temporal and spiritual
perdition of so many thousands of his unhappy brethren. Shall we praise
a secret correspondence with Huniades, while he commanded the vanguard
of the Turkish army? shall we excuse the desertion of his standard, a
treacherous desertion which abandoned the victory to the enemies of
his benefactor? In the confusion of a defeat, the eye of Scanderbeg was
fixed on the Reis Effendi or principal secretary: with the dagger at his
breast, he extorted a firman or patent for the government of Albania;
and the murder of the guiltless scribe and his train prevented the
consequences of an immediate discovery. With some bold companions,
to whom he had revealed his design he escaped in the night, by rapid
marches, from the field or battle to his paternal mountains. The gates
of Croya were opened to the royal mandate; and no sooner did he command
the fortress, than George Castriot dropped the mask of dissimulation;
abjured the prophet and the sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger
of his family and country. The names of religion and liberty provoked
a general revolt: the Albanians, a martial race, were unanimous to live
and die with their hereditary prince; and the Ottoman garrisons were
indulged in the choice of martyrdom or baptism. In the assembly of the
states of Epirus, Scanderbeg was elected general of the Turkish war; and
each of the allies engaged to furnish his respective proportion of men
and money. From these contributions, from his patrimonial estate, and
from the valuable salt-pits of Selina, he drew an annual revenue of two
hundred thousand ducats; [39] and the entire sum, exempt from the demands
of luxury, was strictly appropriated to the public use. His manners were
popular; but his discipline was severe; and every superfluous vice was
banished from his camp: his example strengthened his command; and under
his conduct, the Albanians were invincible in their own opinion and that
of their enemies. The bravest adventurers of France and Germany were
allured by his fame and retained in his service: his standing militia
consisted of eight thousand horse and seven thousand foot; the horses
were small, the men were active; but he viewed with a discerning eye the
difficulties and resources of the mountains; and, at the blaze of the
beacons, the whole nation was distributed in the strongest posts. With
such unequal arms Scanderbeg resisted twenty-three years the powers
of the Ottoman empire; and two conquerors, Amurath the Second, and his
greater son, were repeatedly baffled by a rebel, whom they pursued
with seeming contempt and implacable resentment. At the head of sixty
thousand horse and forty thousand Janizaries, Amurath entered Albania:
he might ravage the open country, occupy the defenceless towns, convert
the churches into mosques, circumcise the Christian youths, and punish
with death his adult and obstinate captives: but the conquests of
the sultan were confined to the petty fortress of Sfetigrade; and the
garrison, invincible to his arms, was oppressed by a paltry artifice and
a superstitious scruple. [40] Amurath retired with shame and loss from
the walls of Croya, the castle and residence of the Castriots; the
march, the siege, the retreat, were harassed by a vexatious, and almost
invisible, adversary; [41] and the disappointment might tend to imbitter,
perhaps to shorten, the last days of the sultan. [42] In the fulness
of conquest, Mahomet the Second still felt at his bosom this domestic
thorn: his lieutenants were permitted to negotiate a truce; and the
Albanian prince may justly be praised as a firm and able champion of
his national independence. The enthusiasm of chivalry and religion has
ranked him with the names of Alexander and Pyrrhus; nor would they blush
to acknowledge their intrepid countryman: but his narrow dominion, and
slender powers, must leave him at an humble distance below the heroes
of antiquity, who triumphed over the East and the Roman legions. His
splendid achievements, the bashaws whom he encountered, the armies
that he discomfited, and the three thousand Turks who were slain by
his single hand, must be weighed in the scales of suspicious criticism.
Against an illiterate enemy, and in the dark solitude of Epirus, his
partial biographers may safely indulge the latitude of romance: but
their fictions are exposed by the light of Italian history; and they
afford a strong presumption against their own truth, by a fabulous tale
of his exploits, when he passed the Adriatic with eight hundred horse to
the succor of the king of Naples. [43] Without disparagement to his fame,
they might have owned, that he was finally oppressed by the Ottoman
powers: in his extreme danger he applied to Pope Pius the Second for
a refuge in the ecclesiastical state; and his resources were almost
exhausted, since Scanderbeg died a fugitive at Lissus, on the
Venetian territory. [44] His sepulchre was soon violated by the Turkish
conquerors; but the Janizaries, who wore his bones enchased in a
bracelet, declared by this superstitious amulet their involuntary
reverence for his valor. The instant ruin of his country may redound to
the hero's glory; yet, had he balanced the consequences of submission
and resistance, a patriot perhaps would have declined the unequal
contest which must depend on the life and genius of one man. Scanderbeg
might indeed be supported by the rational, though fallacious, hope, that
the pope, the king of Naples, and the Venetian republic, would join in
the defence of a free and Christian people, who guarded the sea-coast
of the Adriatic, and the narrow passage from Greece to Italy. His
infant son was saved from the national shipwreck; the Castriots [45] were
invested with a Neapolitan dukedom, and their blood continues to flow
in the noblest families of the realm. A colony of Albanian fugitives
obtained a settlement in Calabria, and they preserve at this day the
language and manners of their ancestors. [46]
[Footnote 35: They are ranked by Sir William Temple, in his pleasing
Essay on Heroic Virtue, (Works, vol. iii. p. 385,) among the seven
chiefs who have deserved without wearing, a royal crown; Belisarius,
Narses, Gonsalvo of Cordova, William first prince of Orange, Alexander
duke of Parma, John Huniades, and George Castriot, or Scanderbeg.]
[Footnote 36: I could wish for some simple authentic memoirs of a friend
of Scanderbeg, which would introduce me to the man, the time, and the
place. In the old and national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest of
Scodra, (de Vita. Moribus, et Rebus gestis Georgii Castrioti, &c. libri
xiii. p. 367. Argentorat. 1537, in fol.,) his gaudy and cumbersome robes
are stuck with many false jewels. See likewise Chalcondyles, l vii. p.
185, l. viii. p. 229.]
[Footnote 37: His circumcision, education, &c., are marked by Marinus
with brevity and reluctance, (l. i. p. 6, 7.)]
[Footnote 38: Since Scanderbeg died A.D. 1466, in the lxiiid year of his
age, (Marinus, l. xiii. p. 370,) he was born in 1403; since he was torn
from his parents by the Turks, when he was _novennis_, (Marinus, l. i.
p. 1, 6,) that event must have happened in 1412, nine years before the
accession of Amurath II., who must have inherited, not acquired the
Albanian slave. Spondanus has remarked this inconsistency, A.D. 1431,
No. 31, 1443, No. 14.]
[Footnote 39: His revenue and forces are luckily given by Marinus, (l.
ii. p. 44.)]
[Footnote 40: There were two Dibras, the upper and lower, the Bulgarian
and Albanian: the former, 70 miles from Croya, (l. i. p. 17,) was
contiguous to the fortress of Sfetigrade, whose inhabitants refused to
drink from a well into which a dead dog had traitorously been cast, (l.
v. p. 139, 140.) We want a good map of Epirus.]
[Footnote 41: Compare the Turkish narrative of Cantemir (p. 92) with the
pompous and prolix declamation in the ivth, vth, and vith books of
the Albanian priest, who has been copied by the tribe of strangers and
moderns.]
[Footnote 42: In honor of his hero, Barletius (l. vi. p. 188--192)
kills the sultan by disease indeed, under the walls of Croya. But this
audacious fiction is disproved by the Greeks and Turks, who agree in the
time and manner of Amurath's death at Adrianople.]
[Footnote 43: See the marvels of his Calabrian expedition in the ixth
and xth books of Marinus Barletius, which may be rectified by the
testimony or silence of Muratori, (Annali d'Italia, tom. xiii. p. 291,)
and his original authors, (Joh. Simonetta de Rebus Francisci SfortiÊ, in
Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xxi. p. 728, et alios.) The Albanian
cavalry, under the name of _Stradiots_, soon became famous in the wars
of Italy, (MÈmoires de Comines, l. viii. c. 5.)]
[Footnote 44: Spondanus, from the best evidence, and the most rational
criticism, has reduced the giant Scanderbeg to the human size, (A.D.
1461, No. 20, 1463, No. 9, 1465, No. 12, 13, 1467, No. 1.) His own
letter to the pope, and the testimony of Phranza, (l. iii. c. 28,) a
refugee in the neighboring isle of Corfu, demonstrate his last distress,
which is awkwardly concealed by Marinus Barletius, (l. x.)]
[Footnote 45: See the family of the Castriots, in Ducange, (Fam.
DalmaticÊ, &c, xviii. p. 348--350.)]
[Footnote 46: This colony of Albanese is mentioned by Mr. Swinburne,
(Travels into the Two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 350--354.)]
In the long career of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, I have
reached at length the last reign of the princes of Constantinople, who
so feebly sustained the name and majesty of the CÊsars. On the decease
of John PalÊologus, who survived about four years the Hungarian crusade,
[47] the royal family, by the death of Andronicus and the monastic
profession of Isidore, was reduced to three princes, Constantine,
Demetrius, and Thomas, the surviving sons of the emperor Manuel.
Of these the first and the last were far distant in the Morea; but
Demetrius, who possessed the domain of Selybria, was in the suburbs,
at the head of a party: his ambition was not chilled by the public
distress; and his conspiracy with the Turks and the schismatics had
already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late
emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the
claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and
flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his
father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the
clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor:
and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally
returned to the capital, asserted with becoming zeal the interest of his
absent brother. An ambassador, the historian Phranza, was immediately
despatched to the court of Adrianople. Amurath received him with honor
and dismissed him with gifts; but the gracious approbation of the
Turkish sultan announced his supremacy, and the approaching downfall
of the Eastern empire. By the hands of two illustrious deputies, the
Imperial crown was placed at Sparta on the head of Constantine. In the
spring he sailed from the Morea, escaped the encounter of a Turkish
squadron, enjoyed the acclamations of his subjects, celebrated the
festival of a new reign, and exhausted by his donatives the treasure, or
rather the indigence, of the state. The emperor immediately resigned to
his brothers the possession of the Morea; and the brittle friendship of
the two princes, Demetrius and Thomas, was confirmed in their mother's
presence by the frail security of oaths and embraces. His next
occupation was the choice of a consort. A daughter of the doge of
Venice had been proposed; but the Byzantine nobles objected the distance
between an hereditary monarch and an elective magistrate; and in
their subsequent distress, the chief of that powerful republic was not
unmindful of the affront. Constantine afterwards hesitated between the
royal families of Trebizond and Georgia; and the embassy of Phranza
represents in his public and private life the last days of the Byzantine
empire. [48]
[Footnote 47: The Chronology of Phranza is clear and authentic; but
instead of four years and seven months, Spondanus (A.D. 1445, No. 7,)
assigns seven or eight years to the reign of the last Constantine
which he deduces from a spurious epistle of Eugenius IV. to the king of
∆thiopia.]
[Footnote 48: Phranza (l. iii. c. 1--6) deserves credit and esteem.]
The _protovestiare_, or great chamberlain, Phranza sailed from
Constantinople as the minister of a bridegroom; and the relics of wealth
and luxury were applied to his pompous appearance. His numerous retinue
consisted of nobles and guards, of physicians and monks: he was attended
by a band of music; and the term of his costly embassy was protracted
above two years. On his arrival in Georgia or Iberia, the natives from
the towns and villages flocked around the strangers; and such was
their simplicity, that they were delighted with the effects, without
understanding the cause, of musical harmony. Among the crowd was an old
man, above a hundred years of age, who had formerly been carried away a
captive by the Barbarians, [49] and who amused his hearers with a tale of
the wonders of India, [50] from whence he had returned to Portugal by
an unknown sea. [51] From this hospitable land, Phranza proceeded to the
court of Trebizond, where he was informed by the Greek prince of the
recent decease of Amurath. Instead of rejoicing in the deliverance,
the experienced statesman expressed his apprehension, that an ambitious
youth would not long adhere to the sage and pacific system of his
father. After the sultan's decease, his Christian wife, Maria, [52]
the daughter of the Servian despot, had been honorably restored to her
parents; on the fame of her beauty and merit, she was recommended by the
ambassador as the most worthy object of the royal choice; and Phranza
recapitulates and refutes the specious objections that might be raised
against the proposal. The majesty of the purple would ennoble an unequal
alliance; the bar of affinity might be removed by liberal alms and the
dispensation of the church; the disgrace of Turkish nuptials had been
repeatedly overlooked; and, though the fair Maria was nearly fifty years
of age, she might yet hope to give an heir to the empire. Constantine
listened to the advice, which was transmitted in the first ship that
sailed from Trebizond; but the factions of the court opposed his
marriage; and it was finally prevented by the pious vow of the sultana,
who ended her days in the monastic profession. Reduced to the first
alternative, the choice of Phranza was decided in favor of a Georgian
princess; and the vanity of her father was dazzled by the glorious
alliance. Instead of demanding, according to the primitive and national
custom, a price for his daughter, [53] he offered a portion of fifty-six
thousand, with an annual pension of five thousand, ducats; and the
services of the ambassador were repaid by an assurance, that, as his
son had been adopted in baptism by the emperor, the establishment of his
daughter should be the peculiar care of the empress of Constantinople.
On the return of Phranza, the treaty was ratified by the Greek monarch,
who with his own hand impressed three vermilion crosses on the golden
bull, and assured the Georgian envoy that in the spring his galleys
should conduct the bride to her Imperial palace. But Constantine
embraced his faithful servant, not with the cold approbation of a
sovereign, but with the warm confidence of a friend, who, after a long
absence, is impatient to pour his secrets into the bosom of his friend.
"Since the death of my mother and of Cantacuzene, who alone advised me
without interest or passion, [54] I am surrounded," said the emperor,
"by men whom I can neither love nor trust, nor esteem. You are not a
stranger to Lucas Notaras, the great admiral; obstinately attached to
his own sentiments, he declares, both in private and public, that his
sentiments are the absolute measure of my thoughts and actions. The rest
of the courtiers are swayed by their personal or factious views; and how
can I consult the monks on questions of policy and marriage? I have yet
much employment for your diligence and fidelity. In the spring you shall
engage one of my brothers to solicit the succor of the Western powers;
from the Morea you shall sail to Cyprus on a particular commission;
and from thence proceed to Georgia to receive and conduct the future
empress."--"Your commands," replied Phranza, "are irresistible; but
deign, great sir," he added, with a serious smile, "to consider, that
if I am thus perpetually absent from my family, my wife may be tempted
either to seek another husband, or to throw herself into a monastery."
After laughing at his apprehensions, the emperor more gravely consoled
him by the pleasing assurance that _this_ should be his last service
abroad, and that he destined for his son a wealthy and noble heiress;
for himself, the important office of great logothete, or principal
minister of state. The marriage was immediately stipulated: but the
office, however incompatible with his own, had been usurped by the
ambition of the admiral. Some delay was requisite to negotiate a consent
and an equivalent; and the nomination of Phranza was half declared,
and half suppressed, lest it might be displeasing to an insolent and
powerful favorite. The winter was spent in the preparations of his
embassy; and Phranza had resolved, that the youth his son should embrace
this opportunity of foreign travel, and be left, on the appearance of
danger, with his maternal kindred of the Morea. Such were the private
and public designs, which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally
buried in the ruins of the empire.
[Footnote 49: Suppose him to have been captured in 1394, in Timour's
first war in Georgia, (Sherefeddin, l. iii. c. 50;) he might follow his
Tartar master into Hindostan in 1398, and from thence sail to the spice
islands.]
[Footnote 50: The happy and pious Indians lived a hundred and fifty
years, and enjoyed the most perfect productions of the vegetable and
mineral kingdoms. The animals were on a large scale: dragons seventy
cubits, ants (the _formica Indica_) nine inches long, sheep like
elephants, elephants like sheep. Quidlibet audendi, &c.]
[Footnote 51: He sailed in a country vessel from the spice islands
to one of the ports of the exterior India; invenitque navem grandem
_Ibericam_ qu‚ in _Portugalliam_ est delatus. This passage, composed in
1477, (Phranza, l. iii. c. 30,) twenty years before the discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope, is spurious or wonderful. But this new geography is
sullied by the old and incompatible error which places the source of the
Nile in India.]
[Footnote 52: Cantemir, (p. 83,) who styles her the daughter of Lazarus
Ogli, and the Helen of the Servians, places her marriage with Amurath
in the year 1424. It will not easily be believed, that in six-and-twenty
years' cohabitation, the sultan corpus ejus non tetigit. After the
taking of Constantinople, she fled to Mahomet II., (Phranza, l. iii. c.
22.)]
[Footnote 53: The classical reader will recollect the offers of
Agamemnon, (Iliad, c. v. 144,) and the general practice of antiquity.]
[Footnote 54: Cantacuzene (I am ignorant of his relation to the emperor
of that name) was great domestic, a firm assertor of the Greek creed,
and a brother of the queen of Servia, whom he visited with the character
of ambassador, (Syropulus, p. 37, 38, 45.)]
Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of Eastern
Empire.--Part I.
Reign And Character Of Mahomet The Second.--Siege, Assault,
And Final Conquest, Of Constantinople By The Turks.--Death
Of Constantine PalÊologus.--Servitude Of The Greeks.--
Extinction Of The Roman Empire In The East.--Consternation
Of Europe.--Conquests And Death Of Mahomet The Second.
The siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to
the person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet the Second
[1] was the son of the second Amurath; and though his mother has been
decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more
probably confounded with the numerous concubines who peopled from every
climate the harem of the sultan. His first education and sentiments
were those of a devout Mussulman; and as often as he conversed with an
infidel, he purified his hands and face by the legal rites of ablution.
Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry: his aspiring
genius disdained to acknowledge a power above his own; and in his looser
hours he presumed (it is said) to brand the prophet of Mecca as a robber
and impostor. Yet the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the
doctrine and discipline of the Koran: [2] his private indiscretion
must have been sacred from the vulgar ear; and we should suspect the
credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind
which is hardened against truth must be armed with superior contempt
for absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the most skilful masters,
Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of
knowledge; and besides his native tongue it is affirmed that he spoke or
understood five languages, [3] the Arabic, the Persian, the ChaldÊan or
Hebrew, the Latin, and the Greek. The Persian might indeed contribute to
his amusement, and the Arabic to his edification; and such studies are
familiar to the Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and
Turks, a conqueror might wish to converse with the people over which he
was ambitious to reign: his own praises in Latin poetry [4] or prose
[5] might find a passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit could
recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his
Hebrew slaves? The history and geography of the world were familiar to
his memory: the lives of the heroes of the East, perhaps of the West, [6]
excited his emulation: his skill in astrology is excused by the folly
of the times, and supposes some rudiments of mathematical science; and
a profane taste for the arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and
reward of the painters of Italy. [7] But the influence of religion and
learning were employed without effect on his savage and licentious
nature. I will not transcribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories of
his fourteen pages, whose bellies were ripped open in search of a stolen
melon; or of the beauteous slave, whose head he severed from her body,
to convince the Janizaries that their master was not the votary of love.
[701] His sobriety is attested by the silence of the Turkish annals,
which accuse three, and three only, of the Ottoman line of the vice of
drunkenness. [8] But it cannot be denied that his passions were at once
furious and inexorable; that in the palace, as in the field, a torrent
of blood was spilt on the slightest provocation; and that the noblest
of the captive youth were often dishonored by his unnatural lust. In the
Albanian war he studied the lessons, and soon surpassed the example, of
his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and
two hundred cities, a vain and flattering account, is ascribed to his
invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier, and possibly a general;
Constantinople has sealed his glory; but if we compare the means,
the obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet the Second must blush to
sustain a parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his command, the
Ottoman forces were always more numerous than their enemies; yet their
progress was bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic; and his arms
were checked by Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the Rhodian knights and by
the Persian king.
[Footnote 1: For the character of Mahomet II. it is dangerous to trust
either the Turks or the Christians. The most moderate picture appears to
be drawn by Phranza, (l. i. c. 33,) whose resentment had cooled in
age and solitude; see likewise Spondanus, (A.D. 1451, No. 11,) and
the continuator of Fleury, (tom. xxii. p. 552,) the _Elogia_ of Paulus
Jovius, (l. iii. p. 164--166,) and the Dictionnaire de Bayle, (tom. iii.
p. 273--279.)]
[Footnote 2: Cantemir, (p. 115.) and the mosques which he founded,
attest his public regard for religion. Mahomet freely disputed with the
Gennadius on the two religions, (Spond. A.D. 1453, No. 22.)]
[Footnote 3: Quinque linguas prÊter suam noverat, GrÊcam, Latinam,
Chaldaicam, Persicam. The Latin translator of Phranza has dropped the
Arabic, which the Koran must recommend to every Mussulman. *
Note: It appears in the original Greek text, p. 95, edit. Bonn.--M.]
[Footnote 4: Philelphus, by a Latin ode, requested and obtained
the liberty of his wife's mother and sisters from the conqueror of
Constantinople. It was delivered into the sultan's hands by the envoys
of the duke of Milan. Philelphus himself was suspected of a design of
retiring to Constantinople; yet the orator often sounded the trumpet of
holy war, (see his Life by M. Lancelot, in the MÈmoires de l'AcadÈmie
des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718, 724, &c.)]
[Footnote 5: Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his xii.
books de Re Militari, in which he first mentions the use of bombs. By
his patron Sigismund Malatesta, prince of Rimini, it had been addressed
with a Latin epistle to Mahomet II.]
[Footnote 6: According to Phranza, he assiduously studied the lives and
actions of Alexander, Augustus, Constantine, and Theodosius. I have read
somewhere, that Plutarch's Lives were translated by his orders into the
Turkish language. If the sultan himself understood Greek, it must have
been for the benefit of his subjects. Yet these lives are a school of
freedom as well as of valor. *
Note: Von Hammer disdainfully rejects this fable of Mahomet's knowledge
of languages. Knolles adds, that he delighted in reading the history of
Alexander the Great, and of Julius CÊsar. The former, no doubt, was the
Persian legend, which, it is remarkable, came back to Europe, and was
popular throughout the middle ages as the "Romaunt of Alexander." The
founder of the Imperial dynasty of Rome, according to M. Von Hammer, is
altogether unknown in the East. Mahomet was a great patron of Turkish
literature: the romantic poems of Persia were translated, or imitated,
under his patronage. Von Hammer vol ii. p. 268.--M.]
[Footnote 7: The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from
Venice, was dismissed with a chain and collar of gold, and a purse
of 3000 ducats. With Voltaire I laugh at the foolish story of a
slave purposely beheaded to instruct the painter in the action of the
muscles.]
[Footnote 701: This story, the subject of Johnson's Irene, is rejected by
M. Von Hammer, vol. ii. p. 208. The German historian's general
estimate of Mahomet's character agrees in its more marked features with
Gibbon's.--M.]
[Footnote 8: These Imperial drunkards were Soliman I., Selim II., and
Amurath IV., (Cantemir, p. 61.) The sophis of Persia can produce a more
regular succession; and in the last age, our European travellers were
the witnesses and companions of their revels.]