Timour would have been extinct, if an hero, his descen- CHAP. dant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbek LXV. arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls") extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern ocean.

of the sons

-1421.

Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. Civil wars The massy trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner of Bajadid the hurricane pass away, than it again rose with fresh zet, vigour and more lively vegetation. When Timour, in A.D. 1403 every sense, had evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a king. The open country was overspread with hords of shepherds and robbers of Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent conquests of Bajazet were restored to the emirs, one of whom, in base revenge, demolished his sepulchre; and his five sons were eager, by civil discord, to consume the rem nant of their patrimony. I shall enumerate their names in the order of their age and actions72. 1. It is doubtful, 1. Musta. pha; whether I relate the story of the true Mustapha, or of an imposter, who personated that lost prince. He fought by his father's side in the battle of Angora: but when the captive sultan was permitted to enquire for his children, Mousa alone could be found; and the Turkish historians, the slaves of the triumphant faction, are persuaded that his brother was confounded among the slain. If Mustapha escaped from that disastrous field, he was concealed twelve years from his friends and enemies ; till he emerged in Thessaly, and was hailed by a numerous party, as the son and successor of Bajazet. His first defeat would have been his last, had not the true, or false, Mustapha been saved by the Greeks, and restored, after the decease of his brother Mahomet, to li

71 Shah Allum, the present Mogul, is in the fourteenth degree from Ti. mour by Miran Shah, his third son. See the iid volume of Dow's History of Hindostan.

72 The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that of Mustapha, are related, according to the Turks, by Demetrius Cantemir, (p. 58-82). Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles (1. iv. and v.), Phranza (1. i. c. 30-32.), and Ducas (c. 18-27.), the last is the most copious and best informed.

73

CHAP. berty and empire. A degenerate mind seemed to argue LXV. his spurious birth; and if, on the throne of Adrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman sultan; his flight, his fettors, and an ignominious gibbet, delivered the imposter to popular contempt. A similar character and claim was asserted by several rival pretenders; thirty persons are said to have suffered under the name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps insinuate, that the Turkish court was not perfectly secure of the death of the lawful prince. 2. After his father's captivity, Isa reigned for some time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambassadors were dismissed from the presence of Timour with fair promises and honourable gifts. But their master was soon deprived of his province and life, by a jealous brother, the sovereign of Amasia; and the final event suggested a pious allusion, that the law of Moses and Jesus, of Isa and 3.Soliman, Mousa, had been abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3. A. D. 1403 Soliman is not numbered in the lists of the Turkish em

2. Isa;

-1410.

perors yet he checked the victorious progress of the Moguls; and after their departure, united for a while the thrones of Adrianople and Boursa. In war he was brave, active, and fortunate: his courage was softened by clemency; but it was likewise inflamed by presumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline, in a government where either the subject or the sovereign must continually tremble his vices alienated the chiefs of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in a prince and man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the slumber of intoxication, he was surprised by his brother Mousa; and as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath, after a reign of seven years and 4. Mousa, ten months. 4. The investiture of Mousa degraded him as the slave of the Moguls: his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania, Mousa fled in disguise from the palace of Boursa; tra

A. D.

1410.

73 Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 26. whose testimony on this occasion is weighty and valuable. The existence of Isa (unknown to the Turks) is likewise confirmed by Sherefeddin (1. v. c. 57).

LXV.

I.

A. D. 1413

versed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over CHAP. the Walachian and Servian hills; and after some vain attempts, ascended the throne of Adrianople, so recently stained with the blood of Soliman. In a reign of three years and a half, his troops were victorious against the Christians of Hungary and the Morea; but Mousa was ruined by his timorous disposition and unseasonable clemency. After resigning the sovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his ministers, and the superior ascendant of his brother Mahomet. 5. The final victory of Mahomet was the just 5. Mahorecompense of his prudence and moderation. Before met 1. his father's captivity, the royal youth had been entrust-1421. ed with the government of Amasia, thirty days journey from Constantinople, and the Turkish frontier against the Christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The castle, in Asiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of Amasia", which is equally divided by the river Iris, rises on either side in the form of an amphitheatre, and represents on a smaller scale the image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obscure and contumacious angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his silent independence, and chased from the province the last stragglers of the Tartar host. He relieved himself from the dangerous neighbourhood of Isa; but in the contests of their more powerful brethren, his firm neutrality was respected; till, after the triumph of Mousa, he stood forth the heir and avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by treaty, and Romania by arms; and the soldier who presented him with the head of Mousa was rewarded as the benefactor of his king and country. The eight years of his sole and peaceful reign were usefully employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and restoring on a firmer basis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. His last care was the choice of two vizirs, Bajazet and Ibrahim", who might guide the youth of

74 Arabshah, loc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph: tab. xvii. p. 302. Busbequius, epist. i. p. 96, 97. in Itinere C, P. et Amasiano.

75 The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a contemporary Greek (Ducas, c. 25). His descendants are the sole nobles in Turkey: they content themselves with the administration of his pious foundations, are excused from public offices, and receive two annual visits from the sultan (Cantemir, p. 76).

VOL. VIII.

F

Reign of

II.

CHAP. his son Amurath; and such was their union and pruLXV. dence, that they concealed above forty days the emperor's death, till the arrival of his successor in the palace Amurath of Boursa. A new war was kindled in Europe by the A. D. 1421 prince, or imposter, Mustapha; the first vizir lost his ar-1451, my and his head; but the more fortunate Ibrahim, whose Feb. 9. name and family are still revered, extinguished the last pretender to the throne of Bajazet, and closed the scene of domestic hostility.

Re-union of the

A. D.

1421.

In these conflicts, the wisest Turks, and indeed the Ottoman body of the nation, were strongly attached to the unity empire, of the empire; and Romania and Anatolia, so often torn asunder by private ambition, were animated by a strong and invincible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have instructed the Christian powers; and had they occupied with a confederate fleet the straits of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been speedily annihilated. But the schism of the West, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted the Latins from this generous enterprise: they enjoyed the present respite, without a thought of futurity; and were often tempted by a momentary interest to serve the common enemy of their religion. A colony of Genoese76, which had been planted at Phocæa" on the Ionian coast, was enriched by the lucrative monopoly of alum78; and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was secured by the annual payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoese governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth, embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook with seven stout gallies to transport him from Asia to Europe. The sultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral's

76 Sec Pachymer (1. v. 29), Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. 1), Sherefeddin (1. v. c. 57), and Ducas (c. 25). The last of these, a curious and careful observer, is entitled, from his birth and station, to particular credit in all that concerns Ionia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted to New Phocaa, he mentions the English (Igaves) an early evidence of Mediterranean trade.

77 For the spirit of navigation, and freedom of ancient Phocæa, or rather of the Phocæans, consult the first book of Herodotus, and the Geographical Index of his last and learned French translator, M. Larcher (tom. vii. p. 299).

78 Phocæa is not enumerated by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 52.) among the places productive of alum; he reckons Egypt as the first, and for the second the isle of Melos, whose alum mines are described by Tournefort (tom i.lettre iv), a traveller and a naturalist. After the loss of Phocæa, the Genoese, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the isle of Ischia (Ismael. Bouilland, ad Ducam, c. 25),

LXV.

ship; which was manned by eight hundred of the brav- CHAP. est Franks. His life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance, applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the passage, knelt before him, and gratefully accepted a discharge of his arrears of tribute. They landed in sight of Mustapha and Gallipoli; two thousand Italians, armed with lances and battle-axes, attended Amurath to the conquest of Adrianople; and this venal service was soon repaid by the ruin of the commerce and colony of Phocæa.

empire,

If Timour had generously marched at the request, and State of to the relief, of the Greek emperor, he might be entitled the Greek to the praise and gratitude of the Christians". But a A. D. 1402 Musulman, who carried into Georgia the sword of per--1425. secution, and respected the holy warfare of Bajazet, was not disposed to pity or succour the idolaters of Europe. The Tartar followed the impulse of ambition; and the deliverance of Constantinople was the accidental consequence. When Manuel abdicated the government, it was his prayer, rather than his hope, that the ruin of the church and state might be delayed beyond his unhappy days; and after his return from a western pilgrimage, he expected every hour the news of the sad catastrophe. On a sudden he was astonished and rejoiced by the intelligence of the retreat, the overthrow, and the captivity of the Ottoman. Manuels 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 resti

79 The writer who has most abused this fabulous generosity, is our inge nious Sir William Temple (his works, vol. iii. p. 349, 350. octavo edition), that lover of exotic virtue. After the conquest of Russia, &c. and the pas sage of the Danube, his Tartar hero relieves, visits, admires and refuses the city of Constantine. His flattering pencil deviates in every line from the truth of history yet his pleasing fictions are more excusable than the gross errors of Cantemir.

80 For the reigns of Manuel and John, of Mahomet 1. and Amurath II. see the Othman history of Cantemir (p. 70-95), and the three Greeks, Chalcondyles, Phranza, and Ducas, who is still superior to his riyals,