READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER I

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TURKS IN EUROPE AND THEIR WARS WITH THE HUNGARIANS, VENETIANS, &C, TILL THE DEATH OF MOHAMET II. AFFAIRS OF ITALY DOWN TO THE TURKISH INVASION OF 1481

MAHOMET II, after capturing Constantinople, May 29th, 1453, made it the capital of his extensive Empire, and took up his residence in that City. The Emperor Constantine Palaeologus had fallen while bravely fighting in defence of his Crown; about 2,000 of the inhabitants were put to the sword; many thousands more were sold into slavery, or sought refuge in other lands, and the void thus created was supplied by a Turkish population. New Rome, the second head of the Christian world, thus assumed the appearance of an Eastern city; Justinian’s magnificent patriarchal church of St. Sophia was converted into a Mahometan mosque; and the wish of Sultan Bajazet I was at length accomplished, to obtain possession of Constantinople, and “to convert that great workshop of Unbelief into the seat of the True Faith”.

In consolidating his new Empire Mahomet was guided by politic and enlightened counsels. To entice back the fugitive Constantinopolitans, the free enjoyment of the religion and the customs of their ancestors was proclaimed; the Greek clergy and learned men were treated with indulgence; the Patriarchate was allowed to subsist; and Gennadius, head of the party which had opposed a union with the Latin Church, having been elected to that dignity by an assembly of the chief citizens, was confirmed in it by the approbation of the Sultan. The renewal of the Patriarchate gave rise to that remarkable population of Greek nobles called Phanariots, who attained to a considerable share of wealth and independence. In spite, however, of these measures, a void was still left within the walls of Constantinople, which Mahomet was employed several years in filling. As his conquests proceeded he drafted to his capital city families from Serbia and the Morea; the Genoese colonies on the Black Sea, as well as Trebizond, Sinope, and other places, were with the same view deprived of a considerable portion of their inhabitants; and even Adrianople was compelled to contribute its reluctant quota of citizens to the new seat of Turkish Empire.

After the fall of Constantinople the Greek towns and Princes which still remained independent sent messages of congratulation to Mahomet II, who compelled them to acknowledge his sovereignty either by paying tribute or by sending every year ambassadors to the Porte. To these conditions Thomas and Demetrius, the brothers of Constantine and Despots of Peloponnesus, the Trebizond Emperor, the Princes of Chios and Lesbos, and other potentates, submitted. But the Peloponnesians revolted against the act of their rulers. The population of Peloponnesus, or the Morea, was a mixture of Franks, Albanians, and Greeks, the last of whom, however, had received a large infusion of Slavonic blood.

The Franks were descended from settlers at the time of the Latin Byzantine Empire, and were holders of small fiefs. The Albanians, a hardy Old-Illyrian peasantry, were chiefly immigrant agricultural laborers, retaining their native customs and mixing but little with the Greeks. A poor and nomad race, supported chiefly by the flocks which they pastured on the mountains, their numbers and warlike habits nevertheless rendered them the most formidable part of the population, and it was among them that the revolt was organized. But it proved unsuccessful.

Mahomet espoused the cause of the Despots, dispatched an army into the Morea, and reduced the rebels to obedience (1454). But the Despots having, from the distracted state of the country, failed to pay their tribute, Mahomet in 1458 overran the Morea, with exception of the strong town of Monemvasia and the mountain tract of Maina, where Demetrius and Thomas had respectively taken shelter; and he seized Corinth, the key of the peninsula. The conquered lands, together with the district formerly ruled by Constantine, were now annexed to the Pashalic of Thessaly.

In 1460, Mahomet, in consequence of an attempted revolt of the Despots themselves, proceeded in person into the Morea, and reduced the whole peninsula, with exception of Monemvasia, which town placed itself under the protection of Pope Pius II. Thomas ultimately found refuge at Rome, where he died in 1462, leaving two sons, Andrew and Manuel Palaeologus, and two daughters. Andrew also died at Rome, without issue, in 1502, bequeathing his Imperial claims, which he had previously sold to Charles VIII of France, to the Spanish Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella.

Manuel was generously permitted to reside at Constantinople and to retain his religion, and he died in that city in the reign of Bajazet II. The fate of Demetrius was still more unfortunate than that of his brother Thomas. Having submitted to Mahomet II on the promise of a maintenance, which after a little while was withdrawn, he fell into want and misery, and entering a convent at Adrianople, under the name of Brother David, died of a broken heart in 1471. Of the two sisters of Andrew and Manuel, Helena, the elder, also died in a convent in the island of St. Maura: the younger, Zoe, married, in 1472, through the mediation of Pope Sixtus IV, Ivan Basilovitch, Grand Prince of White Russia or Moscow. Such was the end of the Byzantine dynasty in the Morea and of the ancient Imperial family of the Palaeologi.

Athens, the last Frankish principality in Greece, whose name and some remains of its ancient splendour lend interest to its fate, fell about the same time as the Despots of Peloponnesus. Athens, and its once hostile rival Thebes, whose fortunes had become strangely linked together, had been made over in 1205 to Othon de la Roche, a Burgundian noble; and about half a century later these two famous cities were erected by Louis IX of France into a duchy in favour of Guy de la Roche.

After obeying various masters, Athens came into possession of the Florentine house of Acciajuoli (1386). It had for some time been little more than a fief of the Porte, when the crimes and dissensions of the ruling family hastened its complete subjection. Mahomet terminated their quarrels by seizing Athens. In 1458, on his return from his campaign in the Morea, he visited the former renowned abode of philosophy and art. The Athenian Acropolis and other remains still existed, and the Sultan, who possessed some taste for magnificent architecture, broke out into passionate exclamations of wonder, delight, and thankfulness for the possession of so glorious a city.

In 1500 Thebes with its territory was also annexed to the Turkish dominions. Mahomet having discovered that Franco Acciajuoli, whom he had invested with the duchy, was plotting for the recovery of Athens, caused him to be put to death by the Janissaries. Thus he obtained possession of all the mainland between the Aegean and the Adriatic, with exception of Albania and several important towns on the western coast and in the Morea which were held by the Venetians—as Spalato, Scutari, Alessio, Durazzo, Zara, Xavarino, Modon, Argos, Nauplia, Koron, and many more. Of the islands some had acknowledged themselves tributaries of the Porte: while Thasos, Samothrace and Imbros had been subdued by Mahomet in 1457. Some few islands were in the hands of Genoese families, as Chios and Lesbos; a far greater number either belonged to Venice or were ruled by some Frankish lord owing allegiance to that Republic. Among the chief islands under Venetian sway were Euboea, or Negropont, and Crete, or Candia. Naxos was the seat of an independent duchy which comprehended several other isles; and Rhodes, with Cos, was held by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who acknowledged no superior but the Pope. The Knights had obtained possession of Rhodes by the victory of Foulques de Villaret in 1310; but the order was now in a declining state and overwhelmed with debt. In 1456 Mahomet, with 180 vessels, undertook an abortive expedition against Rhodes, though his troops succeeded in making a temporary lodgement in Cos. In 1462 he took Lesbos, and put an end to the Frankish dominion there. The necessity of a navy for reducing the islands and waging war with the Venetians induced Mahomet to establish a great naval arsenal at Constantinople, in which undertaking the ancient foundations of the docks of the Emperor Julian were of much assistance; and the Dardanelles were now fortified with castles on each shore near the ancient Sestos and Abydos.

Mahomet abolished in conquered Greece the Greek archons and Frankish lords, substituting for them the Turkish system of timars, or fiefs. The middle and lower classes lost perhaps little or nothing by this change. The Mahometan government, if we exclude the barbarous system of tribute children, was milder than that of their former petty tyrants; and the Rayabs, or Christian agricultural population, reaped more of the fruits of their labour than the serfs in many Christian States were permitted to enjoy.

Greece was subjected to the government of several Pashas under the supremacy of the Beylerbey of Roumelia, the Turkish commander-in-chief in Europe. The non-Mahometan part of the population was subject to the haratsch, or poll-tax, from which were exempted only old men, children under ten years of age, priests, and those suffering under any permanent bodily disease or disability. Many of the higher Greek families enriched themselves by farming the revenues of the Grand Signor, or by commerce. Under the Ottomans this class adopted Asiatic customs, as they had assumed Italian ones under the Venetians. They wore the turban; their women affected the Turkish style of dress, and in their mode of living they imitated the arrangements of a Turkish household. But neither life nor property was secure. The Sultan would sometimes hang up the richer Greeks and seize upon their treasures. The lower classes continued to retain many of their ancient customs, and particularly their armed dances. Their nationality, however, and consequently their patriotism, had become extinct; much of their land was left uncultivated; and though they submitted to the Turks, they took care to have as little commerce or connection with them as possible. Under the Ottoman rule the fine arts vanished altogether. The Turk loved no serious pursuit but war, and had little taste for any pleasures except those of sensual enjoyment. The northern tribes that overran Italy for the most part respected and adopted its civilization; the Turk remained always a barbarian, and wandered, listless and vacant, among the monuments of classic taste and ancient grandeur. Mahomet II himself, indeed, possessed, or affected, some liking for art; he sent to Venice for the painter Gentile, whom he loaded with honours; and Gibbon has related the story of his cutting down the Turk whom he caught demolishing the marble pavement of St. Sophia.

ALARM OF EUROPE.

The actual fall of Constantinople, though long foreseen, filled Europe with grief and terror. Rome trembled as the victim which might be next devoured; for each new Sultan, as he girded on his sword in the barrack of the Janissaries, and drank from the cup which he returned to them filled with gold, was accustomed to exclaim, “Farewell, till we meet again at the Red Apple”—by which name the Turks designated the Roman capital. Rome must now depend chiefly on her own resources: the days were past in which the Pope might have hoped to precipitate the European Powers into a crusade against the Infidels. Of all these Powers the German Emperor was naturally one of the most interested, both as the leading Prince of Christendom and because his dominions might soon have to feel the progress of the Turkish arms.

Frederick III, who then filled the Imperial throne, possessed in Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II, a minister who combined the most eminent talents with decision of character and energy in action; and at this time Aeneas Sylvius must be regarded as one of the foremost champions of Christendom against the Turks. It was he who incited Nicholas V, who then occupied the Papal chair, to promulgate the celebrated bull calling on all Christian Princes to take up arms against the Infidel Ottomans, and promising to every man who took the field, either personally or by substitute, a plenary indulgence. A large share of the revenues of the Church was to be devoted to the crusade; a tithe was to be levied throughout Christendom, and a universal peace was to be enforced among Christian Powers. But the bull met with small success. The Church had sunk immeasurably in public opinion since the days of the early crusades; the appeal to the pocket was particularly unwelcome and suspicious; and the objection which might be made to the schism and heresy of the Greeks afforded a decent pretext for inaction. Few volunteered their services; contributions came in scantily and slowly; and even the little money that found its way to the Papal treasury seems to have been appropriated by Nicholas to the gratification of his literary tastes. He dispatched agents through all the countries subject to the Turks, both in Europe and Asia, to buy up, regardless of expenses, the Greek manuscripts which had been dispersed by the capture of Constantinople; and his conduct may perhaps be cited as one of the few instances in which a departure from strict honesty may have entitled those guilty of it to the gratitude of mankind. The defection of the two great maritime Republics of Italy, Venice and Genoa, from the common cause, rendered matters still more embarrassing. When Constantinople fell, both were at peace with the Turks, and, for the interests of their commerce, desired to remain so. At Venice, indeed, the old Doge Foscari, hot and enterprising in spite of his eighty years, was for avenging by an immediate war the losses sustained by the Venetian merchants through the siege, and the death of their Bailo and his son, who had been murdered; but Foscari was overruled by the more prudent, or timid, counsels of the Senate. They contented themselves with demanding back their countrymen who had been made prisoners, and with sending a fleet to protect Negropont. At the same time they dispatched ambassadors to Adrianople, to lay the foundations of a new and more solid peace. By a treaty concluded in the following year Venice secured her commerce, but precluded herself from taking part in any future struggle with the Moslems: a defection the more important as she was the only Power able to cope with them at sea.

The alarm, or rather perhaps the despair, was still greater at Genoa than at Venice. When Constantinople surrendered, Pera delivered its keys to Mahomet by virtue of a capitulation which seemed to secure the rights and privileges of the Peratian colonists. In the preamble Mahomet swore to observe the treaty by God and the Prophet, by the seven volumes of the faith, by the 124,000 prophets, by the souls of his forefathers, by his own head and the heads of his children, and lastly, by the sword which he bore; yet, a fortnight after, he entered Pera, caused the greater part of the fortifications on the land side to be demolished, removed the heavy artillery from the ramparts, and ordered the inhabitants to be disarmed. The commerce of Pera was thus threatened with ruin. The mother city, then torn by domestic factions, had had nothing to do with the capitulation; she dreaded the immediate loss of Caffa and her other settlements on the Black Sea; and the Doge of Genoa, Pietro Fregoso, who was sufficiently employed with his own enemies and rivals, was glad to evade all responsibility regarding these colonies, by making them over, together with Corsica, then menaced by the arms of Alfonso V, to the Casa di San Giorgio, or Bank of St. George (November, 1453).

With regard to the other European Powers, whatever might have been their inclination to take part in the proposed crusade, few or none were in a condition to undertake it. France was exhausted by her long struggle with England and the miseries thereby entailed upon her; while the civil dissensions fermenting in England, precluded all hope of assistance from that country. Spain also was not in a condition to engage in foreign wars; and though Alfonso, King of Aragon and the Sicilies, made the Pope some promises, he only partially fulfilled them. Burgundy seemed to be the only Power that could lend any effectual succour; and Philip the Good would willingly have wiped out the disgrace inflicted by the Turks on his House half a century before at the battle of Nicopolis; but he feared that his neighbour, Charles VII, might attack his dominions when stripped of their defenders. His only contribution to the cause of the Church was a splendid and absurd fete, in which the Knights of the Golden Fleece took part; but the project of an expedition to the East remained a sort of dream, with which the half chivalrous though sensual Philip amused his declining years.

Thus the whole weight of the Turkish war fell upon the Emperor Frederick III, and on Hungary, or rather on the latter country alone, for Frederick was prevented from doing anything by the disturbed state of his own dominions. In 1451 Frederick had proceeded to Rome for his Imperial coronation, taking with him his ward, the young King Ladislaus Postumus of Hungary. During their absence, Count Ulrich of Cilly, great maternal uncle of Ladislaus, and Eyzinger, a Hungarian knight, had excited disturbances on the pretence that the Hungarian King was unlawfully detained. When Frederick returned to Vienna, Eyzinger appeared before the Neustadt with a large army: the Austrians themselves rose against their Sovereign, who was besieged in his palace, and compelled to surrender Ladislaus, then thirteen years of age, to the guardianship of Count Cilly (September 4, 1452). But in 1453, Eyzinger formed a conspiracy against Cilly, whose government had excited great discontent, and, with Austrian help, compelled him to fly. Eyzinger was now installed in his stead as the young King's guardian; and he soon after carried Ladislaus to Prague, where he received the Bohemian crown from the hands of the Bishop of Olmütz (October 28th). During these transactions, Frederick III, almost powerless in his own hereditary dominions, was in still worse condition as Emperor; in fact, he seemed almost to have forgotten Germany, and contented himself with entrusting the affairs of the Empire to commissaries. In such a state of things it was not to be expected that the Pope's bull for a crusade should obtain much attention. Frederick indeed summoned a Diet to meet at Ratisbon, in the spring of 1454, which was afterwards adjourned to Frankfurt; but instead of appearing himself, he delegated the matter to Aeneas Sylvius. The energy and eloquence of that minister, and the urgent representations of the Hungarian ambassadors, who described the Turks as already threatening their frontier, procured a vote of 10,000 men-at-arms and 30,000 infantry, but without fixing the time at which they should take the field.

The Hungarian ambassadors did not exaggerate. After the capture of Constantinople and submission of Peloponnesus, Mahomet II turned his views northwards, and in 1454 overran Serbia, which, though a tributary State, still obeyed its own Despot, George. In this emergency, John of Hunyad, who had been appointed by the Hungarian Diet Captain-General of the national force, compelled the Turks to raise the siege of Semendria, the most important of all the Serbian fortresses on the Danube. Mahomet retired in the direction of Sophia, carrying with him 50,000 Serbian prisoners. Hunyad, after defeating another large Turkish division, wrested from the Turks Widdin, which he burnt; and then, recrossing the Danube, took up a strong position near Belgrade. In the following year the Turks again appeared in southern Serbia, but nothing of importance took place. A German Diet, assembled at Vienna-Neustadt, had separated on the announcement of the death of Pope Nicholas V (March, 1455), without voting any aid to the Hungarians; but an extraordinary character had appeared there, a new Peter the Hermit, who succeeded in extorting from the zeal of the people what could not be raised by the care of the government. This was the Friar Minor, Giovanni da Capistrano, who had already filled all Europe with the fame of his miracles and of his fiery zeal for the Catholic faith. Born in 1386, of a noble family, at the little town of Capistrano, in the Abruzzi, Giovanni had been bred to the profession of the law, but soon abandoned it for one more congenial to his fanatical enthusiasm. Aeneas Sylvius describes him as small of stature, mere skin and bone, but strong of mind, cheerful, laborious, learned, and eloquent. Capistrano had travelled through great part of Italy and Germany; and although his discourses were delivered in Latin, and afterwards translated by an interpreter, he had a singular talent for inspiring the multitudes he addressed with the same enthusiasm which animated himself. Aeneas Sylvius had invited him to the Neustadt in hope that his eloquence might work on the assembled Princes. That expectation was disappointed; but Capistrano was daily listened to with avidity by 20,000 or 30,000 Viennese, who received him as an apostle endowed with miraculous powers, and fell down and kissed his garment.

The new Pope, Calixtus III, seconded the efforts of Capistrano, and sent him the Cross. Thus armed, the friar traversed the greater part of Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia and Serbia, and collected from those countries and from Germany a large tumultuary host. Calixtus displayed the greatest zeal in the cause. He had solemnly vowed on the Gospels to use every effort, even to the shedding of his own blood, to recover Constantinople from the Infidels; he alienated part of his domains to raise money for the crusade, and even pawned his tiara, as Eugenius IV had done before him. Yet with all these efforts, added to the tithe collected in Europe under the Papal bull, it was with difficulty that a fleet of sixteen galleys could be equipped! More attention was paid to the Pope's spiritual behests; and if the nations of Europe were disinclined to fight, they at least consented to pray, against the Turks. At noon the “Turks’ bell” was daily sounded in every parish, and processions were instituted, and prayers offered up, to arrest the progress of the common enemy of Christendom.

SIEGE OF BELGRADE.

Mahomet II spent the winter of 1455 in preparing an expedition against Belgrade. Vast stores of ammunition and provisions were collected: a number of cannon of large calibre were cast, many of them near thirty feet long, with seven mortars for discharging stones of enormous size; and a fleet of vessels of small draught was prepared on the Lower Danube, partly to convey the artillery, and partly to prevent Belgrade from being relieved from the river. In June, 1456, the march of the Turkish army began. Mahomet arrived before Belgrade without resistance, and pitched his tent on an eminence within sight of the town; a line of Turkish vessels secured with chains was flung across the stream above Belgrade, near the confluence of the Save and Danube; the town was invested on the land side, and Mahomet’s terrible artillery opened on its thick walls and lofty towers. The whole burthen of the war rested on Hunyad. By the advice of timid counsellors, King Ladislaus, on the approach of the Turks, had fled by night from Buda to Vienna; while the neighbouring Hungarian barons were only roused from their apathetic slumber by the roar of the Turkish cannon. Hunyad’s force amounted to about 60,000 men, after the junction of Capistrano with his levies; but these were for the most part mere rabble, without proper arms or discipline—peasants, bankrupt tradesmen, monks, hermits, students, and adventurers of every sort. Capistrano had with him a band of congenial friars, one of whom, John Tagliacozzo, has written a description of the campaign. After a fortnight’s bombardment the walls of Belgrade were beginning to crumble, when John of Hunyad’s vessels broke through the line of Turkish galleys; and that commander, accompanied by Capistrano, and followed by the greater part of his army, succeeded in throwing himself into the town (July 14th). The breaches were hastily repaired, the few cannon still serviceable remounted. Enraged at seeing himself thus foiled, Mahomet redoubled his efforts, and at length established his troops on the outworks. On the evening of July 21st a general assault was ordered; the combat was continued through the night, and by morning the Janissaries had penetrated into the fortress, when they were surprised and repulsed by the Hungarian troops whom Hunyad had placed in ambush. Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, Capistrano’s followers, no longer to be restrained, pursued the flying enemy, carried the first and second lines of the Turkish entrenchments, with all the artillery, and were only arrested by the third, the ramparts and ditches which defended the permanent camp. Here Mahomet himself rushed into the thickest of the fight, clearing a path through the assailants wherever he charged, till a severe wound obliged him to quit the field. The Hungarians had now turned the captured guns against the Turkish fortifications; even the Janissaries began to waver; and though a charge of Osmanli horse seemed for a while to restore the fortune of the day, yet the Sultan, in despair, gave towards evening the signal for a retreat, which was soon converted into a disorderly flight. Furious with rage and disappointment, Mahomet, at Sophia, slew with his own hand many of his captains and attendants, or caused them to be slaughtered before his eyes.

The news of the relief of Belgrade diffused a universal joy through Europe, which, however, was soon damped by the death of Hunyad. The pestilential disorders which began to waste his troops compelled retreat; and he himself died suddenly at Semlin, August 11th, 1456, only a few weeks after his victory. Hunyad was of middle stature, and broad-shouldered; his chestnut hair flowed in natural curls; his eyes were large, his complexion ruddy, his countenance open and engaging. Capistrano also expired in the following October, and thus Christendom was suddenly deprived of two of its foremost champions. Before this event Count Cilly again administered the dominions of the youthful Ladislaus, having, in April, 1455, in turn succeeded in overthrowing Eyzinger. Cilly’s policy had had two objects: to annoy Frederick III, and to ruin Hunyad, whom he regarded with implacable hatred. Cilly, assisted by Frederick’s own brother Albert, by the Elector Palatine Frederick I, surnamed the Victorious, and by other potentates, had attempted to depose the Emperor, who, with obscure menaces, was summoned to appear before a Diet at Nuremberg, in November, 1456; but that assembly, more intent on their own interests, which throve by the Emperor's weakness, than moved by the grievances of the German nation, declined to second the views of Cilly and his confederates. Cilly’s designs against Hunyad were a great deal more atrocious. A little before that commander’s expedition to Belgrade, Cilly had invited him to Vienna, and there endeavored to procure his assassination, which Hunyad escaped only by a fortunate discovery. After Hunyad’s death, Cilly continued to plot against his family. Hunyad had left two sons, Ladislaus and Matthias Corvinus; and Cilly, wishing to get possession of Belgrade, invited the elder to the Court of King Ladislaus, at the same time furnishing him with a safe conduct. The interview was seemingly of the most friendly kind: Ladislaus Corvinus promised to give up Belgrade, besides all the other fortresses held by his father’s troops, and Cilly and the young King descended the Danube with a considerable army to take possession. An intercepted letter revealed the Count’s design of taking the lives of both Hunyad’s sons, who resolved to anticipate him by a similar stroke. After the King, Count Cilly, and a few followers had entered the gate of Belgrade, the portcullis was suddenly lowered, and they were disarmed. At an interview on the following day, which Cilly attended unarmed, but with a cuirass under his clothes, Hunyad’s sons produced the intercepted letter, and charged Cilly with his meditated crime. A warm altercation ensued; the Count, seeing the fate that awaited him, snatched a sword from an attendant and wounded Ladislaus Corvinus on the head, but was immediately cut down and dispatched by some guards, who rushed in at a concerted signal (November, 1456)

DEATH OF LADISLAUS POSTUMUS AND ELECTION OF MATTHIAS CORVINUS.

The hypocritical young King affected to approve of the murder of his guardian and quieted his army outside the walls of Belgrade, which was preparing to come to his rescue. He appeared to bear no ill-will towards Hunyad’s sons and accompanied them to the Castle of Temesvar, the residence of their widowed mother, where he bound himself by an oath and a written promise to abstain from avenging the death of Cilly. But in the following year he invited the youths to Buda, where they were immediately arrested; and by a summary process the elder was condemned to be beheaded (March, 1457). Aeneas Sylvius describes him as a comely youth of twenty-four, with long light hair hanging loose upon his shoulders, after Hungarian fashion. Clothed in a long garment of gold brocade, his hands tied behind his back, Ladislaus Corvinus walked with undaunted step and cheerful countenance to the place of execution, and met his death with fortitude, though the bungling headsman took four strokes to accomplish it. King Ladislaus then proceeded to Vienna, carrying with him Matthias Corvinus as a prisoner. But he did not long outlive his namesake. George Podiebrad invited him to Prague to celebrate his marriage with Magdalen, daughter of Charles VII of France; and he had not been long in that city when he was carried off by the plague in the 18th year of his age (November 23rd, 1457). Most of the contemporary chronicles, as well as Aeneas Sylvius, accuse Podiebrad and the Hussite Utraquists of having poisoned him.

After the death of King Ladislaus several competitors arose for the Crown of Hungary; as, William Duke of Saxony and Casimir King of Poland, as sons-in-law of Albert II; and Charles VII of France, either for any Prince that might marry his daughter, so inopportunely disappointed, or for one of his own sons; while Frederick III demanded Bohemia as a lapsed fief which reverted to the Empire. In Hungary the popular feeling was in favour of Matthias Corvinus, who was then in the custody of the Regent of Bohemia; but there was an influential party opposed to the Hunyad family, the chiefs of which summoned a Diet to meet at Buda in January, 1458, for the purpose of electing a King. On the day appointed, Szilagyi, uncle of Matthias Corvinus, drew out a large body of troops under pretext of protecting the electors, and by way of intimidating the opposite party erected a gallows, conspicuous on the banks of the Danube. The populace assembled in great numbers on the frozen river, and the electors, overawed by this display, bestowed the Crown on Matthias Corvinus (January 24th, 1458).

Podiebrad, the Bohemian Regent, who had refused large sums offered by the family of Matthias for his release, was now all complaisance towards his illustrious prisoner, in whose election he foresaw his own. He betrothed his daughter Cunigund to the Hungarian King, and after receiving a ransom of 60,000 ducats and a promise of aid in obtaining the Crown of Bohemia, he conducted Matthias Corvinus over the frontier. The new monarch was then only fifteen years of age; but he had already a manly spirit, and he astonished the Hungarian nobles, as well as his uncle Szilagyi, who had obtained the appointment of Gubernator, or Regent, for a term of five years, by declaring his intention to reign without a tutor. Szilagyi, disgusted at what he deemed his nephew’s ingratitude, joined the party which had opposed his election; but Matthias won him back with the government of Bistritz, on condition of his renouncing the title of Gubernator. Such was the temper with which Matthias Corvinus began his long reign. It lasted till 1490; and during that period he rivalled his father as a champion against the Turks, without neglecting, in the midst of his warlike enterprises, the encouragement of literature and art. George Podiebrad was elected to the throne of Bohemia, chiefly by the influence of the Hussite party, at Whitsuntide, 1458. The Emperor flew to arms; but finding small support from the Bohemian Catholics, and being also embarrassed with the affairs of his hereditary dominions, as well as anxious to seize the Crown of Hungary, he agreed in 1459 to invest Podiebrad with the Bohemian Kingdom, and concluded with him a defensive alliance against all enemies but the Pope.

In Hungary the large party opposed to the Hunyad family favoured the pretensions of Frederick III, who, in February, 1459, caused himself to be crowned at the Neustadt with the crown of St. Stephen, pledged to him by Queen Elizabeth, which still remained in his possession, an object regarded by the Hungarians with superstitious veneration. Frederick shortly afterwards entered Hungary with an army, but the hostilities which ensued are devoid of any events of importance, and were concluded in 1463 by a peace, mediated through the Papal Legates, Cardinals Bessarion and Carvajal. Frederick delivered to Matthias the crown of St. Stephen on receiving 60,000 ducats; but he retained the title of King of Hungary, and stipulated for the succession of his son to that Kingdom in the event of Matthias dying without heirs. In the same year Matthias consummated his marriage with Podiebrad’s daughter, who, however, died before the end of it in bringing forth a dead child. Matthias was crowned with the Holy Crown at Alba Regalis, or Stuhlweissenburg, March 29th, 1464.

Meanwhile an insurrection, occasioned by bad government, had broken out in Austria. Wolfgang Holzer, son of a cattle dealer, assisted by the Emperor’s brother, Albert the Prodigal, who reigned in Upper Austria, excited the people of Vienna to rebellion and got possession of that capital (July, 1462); and Frederick, who had hastened thither in alarm for the safety of the Empress and his son Maximilian, was kept waiting three days outside the gates till he had signed a capitulation. He was entirely at the mercy of the insurgents, till Podiebrad marched to his relief and mediated a peace between the brothers, by which Albert obtained Lower Austria, with the city of Vienna, for a term of eight years. But his extravagance and tyranny soon became so intolerable that the Lower Austrians regretted the sway of the tame and phlegmatic Frederick. Holzer, now burgomaster of Vienna, directed the fury of the populace against Albert; but he contrived to persuade them that Holzer was playing them false, and the demagogue was tortured and put to death.

The war which again arose between the brothers was terminated by the sudden death of Albert, December 2nd, 1463; and Frederick reunited all the Austrian lands, except Tyrol, under his immediate dominion. Occupied with these domestic quarrels, Frederick could bestow little attention on the affairs of the Empire, which was torn by domestic wars. These disturbances, and the contest between the Emperor and Matthias Corvinus, favoured the progress of Mahomet II, who had vowed to take vengeance for his defeat at Belgrade. In 1458 he overran nearly all Serbia, and carrying a great part of the population into slavery, supplied their place with Osmanlis. Henceforward Serbia remained a Turkish province. Mahomet next turned his views towards Bosnia. Stephen Thomas, King of Bosnia, was already a tributary of the Porte; but disgusted with Turkish tyranny, he had appealed to a Hungarian Diet held at Szegedin in 1458, which agreed to protect him, and invested his son with the portion of Serbia that still remained unconquered. For the next three or four years Mahomet left Bosnia without much molestation, and in 1462 employed himself in reducing Wallachia.

The Voyvodes, or Hospodars, of Wallachia, had been vassals of Poland, but after the fall of Constantinople became, like other neighbouring Princes, tributary to the Porte. Here had reigned since 1456 the cold-blooded tyrant Bladus, son of Drakul. Mahomet himself is related to have shuddered with horror, when, on arriving with his army at Praylab, he beheld the place of execution, a plain more than two miles in extent, planted with stakes, on which upwards of 20,000 persons, men, women, and children, are said to have been impaled by this inhuman monster.

In the following year (1403) the Turks overran Herzegovina, reduced the Voyvode of Montenegro, and renewed their attempts on Bosnia. In the last-named country, King Stephen Thomas fell a victim to his own ill-timed generosity and the crimes of his unnatural son. Mahomet II, in the disguise of a monk, had penetrated into Bosnia to inspect its fortresses. He was discovered and brought before Stephen, who, neglecting the opportunity which fortune had thrown in his way, honourably dismissed the Sultan. A large party of the nobles, displeased with this act, joined the party of Stephen’s son, who was in open rebellion against his father, and soon after murdered him. Bosnia was now torn by the factions of three claimants of the Crown: that of the murderer, of Ban Radivoi his brother, and of Catharine, Stephen’s widow—a state of things which enabled Mahomet to attack that country with advantage. These movements of the Turks were a principal reason with King Matthias for concluding with Frederick III in 1463 the peace already mentioned. In September of that year, having assembled his vassals at Peterwardein, Matthias crossed the Save into Bosnia, drove the Turks before him, and after a siege of three months recovered the important fortress of Jaicza. At Christmas, having been forced to retire by a want of provisions, he entered Buda in triumph, followed by a long train of Osmanli prisoners clad in purple dresses. In 1464, however, Jaicza, after a memorable defense and in spite of the attempts of Matthias to relieve it, was captured by Mahomet; when all Bosnia, except a few fortresses and a small northern district, fell into the hands of the Turks. Matthias made Nicholas of Ujlak King of the unconquered portion.

During these struggles Matthias Corvinus had in vain looked around for help. The accession of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini to the pontificate in 1458, under the title of Pius II, had, from his well-known zeal in the cause, awakened an expectation that something would be effected against the Infidels. One of that Pontiff’s first steps was to assemble a council at Mantua (August 1459) for the purpose of organizing a crusade; but in spite of the eloquence of Cardinal Bessarion, little was done. The complaints of the Hungarian envoys, that the Emperor left them no repose to turn their arms against the common enemy were hushed by Pius himself, Frederick’s friend and former minister. On adding up the promises of aid when the council was dissolved in January, 1460; an army of 88,000 men appeared upon paper; but on paper it remained. The crusade was evidently a pious chimera: yet it continued to be talked of; the Emperor had the vanity to procure himself to be declared generalissimo, and the Pope sent him a sword and hat which he had blessed! Yet the zeal of Pius II was unaffected, and continued till his death, which indeed it contributed to hasten. He was even enthusiastic enough to fancy that his exhortations might work on a hardened and ambitious conqueror like Mahomet, and in a remarkable letter (1461) he exhorted the Sultan to be baptized; promising in reward for his compliance to salute him as Emperor of the East, and to confer on him by right what at present he held only by force. But the resistance against the Turks, which flagged under the stimulus of religious zeal, was at length roused by the avidity of commerce and the plans of secular ambition. Scarcely had Servia, Wallachia, and Bosnia been conquered by the Turks when a war broke out between them and the Venetians, which during some years diverted the Moslem arms from any formidable attempts against the rest of Europe.

VENETIAN AND TURKISH WAR.

Although by the treaty concluded with Mahomet II after the fall of Constantinople, Venice had abandoned the common cause of Christendom, yet it might have been foreseen that the interests of her trade and the nature and extent of her dominion, which brought her at so many points into contact with the Turks, must at no distant period involve her in hostilities with them. The treaty had already been frequently violated on both sides in some of its most important articles, when in the spring of 1463 an event that happened in the Morea rendered a war inevitable. A slave belonging to the Pasha of Athens, having robbed his master of 100,000 aspers, fled to the Venetian town of Koron, where Girolamo Valaresso, one of the magistrates, not only sheltered the fugitive, but even divided with him the booty. The enraged Pasha now appeared with a considerable force before Argos, which was betrayed to him by a Greek priest; for the hatred of those fanatics for the Latin heretics outweighed even their fear of the Mussulman yoke. At the same time Omar Bey, the Turkish Governor of the Morea, annoyed and plundered the Venetian districts of Modon and Lepanto, and an unceasing system of annoyance was kept up on both sides. Luigi Loredano, the Venetian admiral, having, according to his instructions, in vain demanded the restoration of Argos, requested his government to supply him with 20,000 men in order to make an attack upon Lesbos; an application which brought the decisive question of war or peace before the Pregadi. Pius II used every exertion to arouse the martial ardour of the Venetians and sent Cardinal Bessarion to promise his aid. After a warm debate, war was decided on by a small majority of the Venetian Senate; and in September an alliance was concluded between Venice, the Pope, and the King of Hungary, by which it was agreed to carry on the war for three years, and that none of the contracting parties should enter into a separate peace. The Venetians were to maintain a fleet of forty three-banked galleys, while the Hungarians were to infest the northern Turkish provinces; for which purpose, in consideration of a subsidy of 25,000 ducats, they were to raise an army of 25,000 men. The Venetians also contracted an alliance with the Sultan of Caramania, and with Usan Hassan, chief of a Turkoman horde in Mesopotamia, who subsequently established the dynasty of the White Sheep in Persia.

Nothing could exceed the ardour of Pius II in this projected enterprise against the Turks. Notwithstanding his years and infirmities, he declared his intention of taking the Cross in person, and summoned the younger Cardinals to accompany him. How, it was thought, could temporal Princes hang back when they beheld their aged Spiritual Father and the Princes of the Church, men whose profession called on them to sheathe instead of draw the sword, hazarding their sacred persons in an encounter with the Infidels? Yet the example failed to produce much effect. Duke Philip of Burgundy, indeed, reiterated his promises, and, to put himself in funds, restored to Louis XI the towns on the Somme, which had been pledged to the Duke for 40,000 ducats. Yet two ships were the solo and tardy fruits of his engagement. Ferdinand I of Naples sent 30,000 ducats—half the legacy destined by his father for this holy purpose. The Genoese promised eight ships. The Florentines, so far from aiding the expedition, secretly sided with the Turks, in hope of reaping those commercial advantages which the Venetians would lose by the war; and they are even said to have betrayed the Venetian correspondence to Mahomet, and to have prompted him as to the measures which he should take. Personally at least even the Doge of Venice, Cristoforo Moro, was against the war, and pleaded his great age in excuse for not proceeding to it; but Vittore Capello, the leader of the war party, told him plainly that if he would not go with good words he should go by force, and that the interests of the Republic were of more importance than his life. Such were the power and liberty of the chief magistrate of Venice!

The Venetian fleet was reinforced, and unlimited power was conferred on Loredano to act for the interest of the Republic. The Venetians aimed at nothing less than the conquest of the Morea. Their army in that country, under command of Bertoldo d'Este, numbered about 30,000 men, including 3,000 or 4,000 Cretan bowmen. Argos was recovered after a short siege, and Corinth was then invested both by sea and land. The wall of the Hexamilion was again repaired, to prevent the approach of succours from the north; and the labour of 30,000 men by day and night completed, this structure in a fortnight. It was 12 feet high, and was fortified with 136 watch-towers and a deep ditch on both sides: in the middle stood an altar for Mass, high over which floated the standard of St. Mark. This defence, however, proved of little avail. It served, indeed, to arrest the advance of Omar Pasha, who was hastening from the south to the relief of Corinth; but the approach of Mahomet himself with a large army on the northern side struck a panic into the Venetians, whose numbers had been reduced by dysentery, and who had lost their commander. They resolved to abandon the isthmus and its defences, and all the guns, ammunition, and provisions were hastily embarked on board the fleet. This ill-considered step caused the loss of their possessions in the Morea. Scarce had the Venetian galleys departed when Mahomet appeared before the wall, breached it with his artillery, and, entering the Morea, speedily reduced the places which the Venetians had acquired either by revolt or capture.

The year 1464 offers little of importance, except the death of Pius II. That learned and enthusiastic Pontiff, whose body was already broken down with age and disease, after a solemn service in St. Peter’s, June 10th, set off in a litter for Ancona, accompanied by several Cardinals, to fulfil his intention of leading the crusade in person. But when, exhausted with the fatigue of his journey, he arrived at that port, he found neither soldiers, nor money, nor ships, but only a beggarly rabble without any means of transport. The last of those who had undertaken the crusade at their own expense, tired of waiting for the Venetian fleet, departed under the very eyes of the Pope, while the poorer sort were clamouring for employment and bread. This heartrending scene gave Pius his death-blow. The arrival of the Venetian fleet was signalled on the 10th of August; but on that very night Pius breathed his last, without having seen the Doge. In September, Pietro Barbo, a Venetian, and Cardinal of St. Mark, was elected his successor, and took the title of Paul II. The natural expectation that he would support his countrymen in their struggle with the Turks was not realized; and indeed, he rather injured their cause, by directing against Bohemia the arm of Matthias Corvinus, the only ally of Venice. The high opinion formed of Paul's talent and virtue was disappointed, and he displayed in his conduct only passion, imprudence, perfidy, and ambition.

The ill success of the Venetians in the campaign of 1465 led them again to seek the alliance of the Albanian chieftain, Scanderbeg, whom Mahomet had long in vain endeavored to subdue; and Kroja and Scutari received Venetian garrisons. In 1466, Mahomet marched against Albania with an apparently overwhelming force of 200,000 men; but the attacks of Scanderbeg, and the difficulty of providing for so numerous an army, compelled him to retire. In the following January, however, Scanderbeg died at Alessio, from the effects of a fever, recommending with his dying breath his son, John Castriot, a minor, to the protection of the Venetians. When Mahomet, some years afterwards, obtained possession of Alessio, he caused Scanderbeg’s tomb to be opened, and his remains to be exhibited to the admiring Osmanlis. Pieces of his bones were sought for with avidity, to be converted into talismans, which were deemed capable of inspiring the wearers with some portion of the valour of that unconquered hero.

For the next two or three years the Turkish and Venetian war offers little of importance. In July, 1470, the Turks made themselves masters of the important island of Negropont, the ancient Euboea. Towards the north, large bodies of their cavalry had penetrated in 1469 as far as Cilly in Styria, harrying all around, and carrying off 20,000 persons into slavery. The alarm inspired in Italy by their progress produced, at the instance of the Pope, a league, which, besides the Pontiff, included King Ferdinand I of Naples, the Dukes of Milan and Modena, the Republics of Florence, Lucca, and Siena, and Ferdinand of Aragon, who had begun to reign in Sicily; yet it only added a reinforcement of nineteen Papal and Neapolitan galleys to the Venetian fleet, and achieved nothing of importance except the surprising, plundering, and burning of Smyrna, in 1472. Meanwhile, from their fortress of Schabatz on the Save the Turkish incursions were repeated every year, with a still increasing circle. The inhabitants of Laibach and Klagenfurt beheld those savage hordes sweeping up to their very gates, devastating the surrounding country, and carrying off the peasants as well as their flocks and herds. Matthias Corvinus is said to have favoured some of these attacks on his old enemy Frederick; at all events he made no attempt to check them till 1475, when, after taking Schabatz, he penetrated with his army down the Save and Danube to Semendria, driving the enemy before him; a success which shows what might have been achieved by well-concerted efforts.

Venetian writers accuse Matthias of having, through mediation of a Jew, concluded a secret peace with Mahomet, to which the Neapolitan King was also a party. The Hungarian monarch had, in 1470, contracted a marriage with Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand of Naples: and it is certain that the bride, on passing through the Turkish army, on her way to Hungary, was treated with respect. In that year the Turks approached the Salzburg Alps, and the very border of Italy; and in the summer of 1477 their ravages were repeated in a still more dreadful manner. Crossing the Isonzo, they threatened Venice herself, and the sea-queen might have beheld from her towers the columns of fire that rose in the plains between the Tagliamento and the Piave. After the enemy had retired, the Venetians attempted to secure themselves from a repetition of this insult, by throwing up a lofty rampart on the banks of the Lower Isonzo, from Görz to the marshes of Aquileia, protected at each end by a fortified camp. But scarcely was it completed, when a fresh swarm of Osmanlis, under Omar Bey, broke through in several places, and 100 villages became a prey to the flames. The historian Sabellico, who beheld this fearful spectacle from a tower near Udine, likened the whole plain between the Isonzo and the Tagliamento to a sea of fire.

In other respects the arms of the Turks had not been successful. An attempt on Kroja in 1477 had been repulsed; and in Greece Lepanto had been delivered by Loredano and his fleet. But the war had now lasted thirteen years, and the resources of Venice were almost exhausted. The withdrawal of the Pope and the King of Naples from the Italian League, a family alliance between Ferdinand and King Matthias, their reported treaty with the Sultan, their suspected designs on Northern Italy, a dreadful plague which ravaged the Venetian dominions, all these were causes which induced that Republic to enter into negotiations with Mahomet (1478), and their ambassador Mulipiero was instructed to submit to his demands. But his terms rose with the concessions offered, and the Venetians in disgust resolved to continue the war. It went, however, in favour of the Turks. Kroja surrendered on a capitulation, which was not respected; Scutari was twice assaulted and then blockaded. Meanwhile the resources of Venice continued to decline, and Giovanni Dario, Secretary of the Senate, was dispatched to Constantinople, with full powers, to conclude a peace on any conditions. A treaty was accordingly signed, January 26th, 1479, by which the Venetians ceded their claims to Scutari and its territory, Kroja, the islands of Lemnos and Negropont, and the highlands of Maina, and engaged to restore within two months all the places which they had captured during the war. They also agreed to pay the Grand Signor a yearly sum of 10,000 ducats, in lieu of all customs on Venetian goods imported into Turkish harbours. The Sultan, on his side, restored all the places in the Morea, Albania, and Dalmatia, except those before specified. Although the States of Europe had done little or nothing to help Venice in her arduous struggle with the Turk, they agreed in condemning the peace which necessity had imposed upon her. While the Venetian commerce was secured by this treaty, that of the Genoese in the Black Sea had been nearly annihilated during the last few years of the war. In 1475, Caffa, their principal colony, fell into the hands of the Turks, whence Mahomet extended his dominion over the smaller settlements. Although Caffa had capitulated, the Turks, with their habitual disregard of such engagements, carried off 40,000 of the inhabitants; many of the principal citizens were barbarously tortured and killed, and fifteen hundred of the most promising youths were incorporated in the Janissaries. The peace enabled Mahomet to direct his operations against Hungary and Italy. In 1479 the Turks made dreadful inroads into Slavonia, Hungary, and Transylvania; but Paul Kinis, Count of Temesvar, whose name was long a terror to them, and Stephen Bathory, Voyvode of Transylvania, inflicted on them a memorable defeat on the Brotfeld, near Szaszvaros, or Broos (October 13th). An anecdote will show the brutality of these wars. At a supper after the victory, the bodies of the slaughtered Turks were made to supply the place of tables, and Count Kinis himself fixed his teeth in one of them. This signal defeat put a stop for some time to the Turkish incursions. Mahomet soon after the peace wrested three of the Ionian Islands, Stª Maura, Zante, and Cephalonia, from the Despot of Arta. This conquest afforded the Sultan an opportunity to display one of those singular caprices in which despotic power alone can indulge. He caused some of the inhabitants to be conveyed to the islands in the Sea of Marmora, where he compelled them to intermarry with Africans, in order that he might have a race of coloured slaves! The Turks also made an ineffectual attempt to take Rhodes, which was valiantly defended by the Knights under their Grand-Master, Pierre d'Aubusson. The aid afforded to the Knights, on this occasion, by Ferdinand of Naples, determined Mahomet to undertake an expedition against that King. The state of Italy was favourable to such an attempt; but, before relating its progress, it will be proper to take a brief review of the history of that country.

RETROSPECT OF ITALIAN AFFAIRS.  

The treaty of Lodi before mentioned, to which Alfonso, King of Aragon and the Sicilies, acceded in January, 1455, might have secured the peace of Italy, but for that monarch’s implacable hatred of Genoa. The domestic factions of this city, and Alfonso’s superiority at sea, compelled the Genoese to purchase the aid of France by submitting themselves to Charles VII, who invested John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, with the government of Genoa. This appointment of his old enemy incited Alfonso to still more vigorous action, and the fall of Genoa appeared imminent, when she was unexpectedly delivered by the death of that King, June 27th, 1458.

In spite of some defects, Alfonso must be regarded as one of the greatest and most generous Princes of the fifteenth century. He was both wise and courageous, he loved and patronized literature, and he was remarkable for a liberality which not unfrequently degenerated into profusion. His chief defects were his immeasurable ambition and his unbridled licentiousness. His last amour with a certain Lucrezia d'Alagna, the daughter of a Neapolitan gentleman, has been recorded by the good Pontiff Pius II, without a word of censure, in the Commentaries written after he was seated on the papal throne.

Alfonso, as we have said in the Introduction, appointed by his will his natural son Ferdinand to be his successor on the throne of Naples; and, in spite of his illegitimacy, Ferdinand had been recognized as rightful heir by two successive Popes, Eugenius IV and Nicholas V. In order to strengthen his son’s claim, Alfonso had restored to the Neapolitan States the right of electing their Sovereign and making their own laws; and the States, out of gratitude for the recovery of these privileges, had confirmed the appointment of Ferdinand (1443). Calixtus III, however, who filled the Papal chair at the time of Alfonso’s death, refused to invest Ferdinand with the sovereignty of Naples, on pretence that the war of Naples with Genoa prevented the forces of Italy from being employed against the Turks; but in reality, it is said, with the ambitious view of raising one of his nephews, the Duke of Spoleto, to the Neapolitan throne. This Pontiff, by name Alfonso Borgia, a native of Valencia in Spain, founded the greatness of that Borgian family, whose name has become synonymous with infamy. In the year of his accession he bestowed the purple on his nephew Rodrigo Borgia, afterwards under the title of Alexander VI notorious as the most wicked and profligate Pontiff that ever polluted the Chair of Peter.

On the news of Alfonso’s death, Calixtus published a bull in which he claimed Naples as a fief escheated to the Church; and he endeavored to procure the help of the Duke of Milan, in order to carry out his views upon that Kingdom. But the strong matrimonial connection between the Houses of Naples and Milan—Ferdinand’s son Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, having married Francesco Sforza’s daughter Ippolita (1456), while at the same time the Duke of Milan’s third son, Sforza Maria or Sforzino, was betrothed to Ferdinand’s daughter, Isabella—as well as political reasons, induced Sforza to support the cause of the Neapolitan King. From the opposition of Calixtus Ferdinand was soon delivered by the death of that Pontiff, August 6th; and his successor, Pius II, acknowledged Ferdinand’s claims, exacting, however, a yearly payment, and the cession of Benevento, Ponte Corvo, and Terracina, which had formerly belonged to the Church. Pius also effected a marriage between his nephew, Antonio Piccolomini, and Mary, a natural daughter of Ferdinand’s. That monarch’s most formidable opponents were the Neapolitan Barons, who, led by Gianantonio Orsino, Prince of Taranto, the uncle of Ferdinand’s own consort Isabella, revolted against him. The malcontents having in vain offered the Crown of Naples to Charles, Count of Viana, eldest son of John II of Aragon and Sicily, as well as to John himself, applied to John of Anjou, who was still residing at Genoa as representative of the French King; and from him they met with a move favourable reception. The moderation of John of Anjou had rendered him popular with the Genoese; and when he communicated to their Senate the offer that had been made him, they voted him a force of ten galleys, three large transports, and a subsidy of 60,000 florins. John’s father, René, who had renounced in his son’s favour his claims to the Neapolitan throne, also assisted him with twelve galleys, which had been assembled at Marseilles for the crusade against the Turks.

Ferdinand endeavored to detain John of Anjou at Genoa, by inciting against him the former Doge, Fregoso, who was discontented with the French because they had not rewarded him for his cession of that city. On the 13th of September Fregoso, with other exiles, attempted to take Genoa by a nocturnal assault, which, however, was repulsed, and Fregoso slain. Delivered from this danger, John of Anjou hastened on board his fleet, and on the 5th of October appeared off Naples; which city, as Ferdinand was absent in Calabria, would probably have fallen into his hands but for the vigilance and courage of Queen Isabella. In all other respects John’s enterprise was eminently successful. He was joined by the chief Neapolitan nobles, and Nocera opened its gates to him. The events of the following year (1460) were still more in his favour. He defeated Ferdinand with great loss in a battle near the Sarno (July, 7th), and that King with difficulty escaped to Naples with only twenty troopers. Towards the end of the same month, Ferdinand’s captains, Alessandro Sforza and the Count of Urbino, were also signally defeated in a bloody and obstinate battle at S. Fabriano. All the strong places in Campania and the Principate now surrendered to John of Anjou, who, had he marched directly on Naples, would probably have taken that city, in which there was a large party in his favour. Ferdinand, in this low ebb of his fortunes, is said to have owed the preservation of his Crown to the great qualities of his consort. Isabella, accompanied by her children, requested contributions fur her husband’s cause, in the streets and public places of Naples; and her fine countenance, her dignified, yet modest and engaging address, proved in most cases irresistible. In the disguise of a Franciscan friar, she also proceeded to the camp of her uncle, the Prince of Taranto, and besought him that, as he had raised her to the throne, he would permit her to die in possession of that dignity. Moved by her entreaties, Orsino adopted a policy which caused John of Anjou to lose the fruits of his victories, and by interposing delays led him to fritter away his strength in small undertakings.

From this time the cause of the Duke of Anjou began to decline. In 1461 Ferdinand was assisted by Scanderbeg at the head of 800 horse, who are said to have been paid by Pope Pius II out of the money raised by the Council of Mantua for a crusade against the Turks. Pius also assisted Ferdinand with his spiritual weapons, threatening with excommunication all who should favour the Angevin cause. The loss of Genoa by the French through the impolitic conduct of Charles VII, which will be related in the next chapter; the death of that King and consequent accession of Louis XI, who was little disposed for foreign enterprises, were also fatal blows to the cause of John of Anjou. Louis even formed an alliance with Francis Sforza, the friend of Ferdinand, and from motives of self-interest, the warmest opponent of French influence in Italy. John was defeated by Ferdinand in an engagement near Troia, August 18th 1402; and in the following year the defection of some of his adherents, and the death of Orsino, by which all the possessions and fortresses of that Prince came into the hands of Ferdinand, determined John to quit Italy. His aged father René had indeed come to his aid with a fleet; but as the French King had abandoned both to their fate, they returned to Provence (1464), and subsequently enrolled themselves among the enemies of Louis XI. About the same time Genoa, with the concurrence of the French King, fell under the dominion of the Duke of Milan.

CHARACTER OF COSMO DE' MEDICI.

The same year (1464) was marked by the death of Pius II, already related, and also by that of Cosmo de Medici. During the last years of his life, Cosmo, debilitated by ill-health, had entrusted the administration of Florence to Luca Pitti, who availed himself of his friend’s retirement to promote his own advancement. His rule was harsh and tyrannical, and is said to have been regarded by Cosmo with sorrow. His contemporary, Pope Pius II, who could have been swayed by no motives of self-interest, has left a noble portrait of Cosmo in his Commentaries. It was not so much by the extent of his wealth, as by the application which he made of it, that Cosmo gained his influence and credit. Far from relying on that pomp and show which are so captivating to the vulgar, his manner of life, both public and private, was of the plainest and most unostentatious kind. He employed his riches, not in dazzling the eyes of his fellow-citizens with his personal magnificence, but in the patronage of learning and the arts, and in the erection of unequalled monuments. He encouraged the architects Michelozzi and Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello, the painter Masaccio, and with their assistance erected and adorned several churches, convents, and palaces in Florence and its neighbourhood. His agents, throughout Europe as well as in the East, were instructed to buy or procure copies of all newly discovered manuscripts; he founded two private libraries, one at Florence and the other at Venice; whilst his private collection formed the basis of the present Bibliotheca Laurentiana, so named after his grandson Lorenzo. He was not, however, a mere dilettante. He took an interest in the higher speculations of philosophy, especially those of Plato, in which studies he displayed a just and profound judgment: nor did he neglect the improvement of the more useful and practical arts of life, and especially agriculture. But this man, so wise, so enlightened, so accomplished, and so munificent, preferred the interests of himself and his family to those of his country. By the charms of literature and art, and of a noble and splendid public luxury, he imperceptibly subjugated a lively and sensitive people: and Florence under Cosmo, somewhat like Athens under Pericles, remained indeed nominally a Republic, but under a first man, or Prince.

Nothing can more strongly show the firm hold of power which the great qualities of Cosmo had enabled him to seize, than his transmitting it to his son Peter, who, besides that he lacked the abilities of his father, was so great an invalid that he resided chiefly in the country, and was accustomed to travel in a litter. Yet the dominion of Peter survived the attacks of the able, experienced, and treacherous statesmen by whom he was surrounded. Pitti, who had allied himself with Diotisalvi Neroni, Nicholas Soderini, Angelo Acciajuoli, and other influential Florentines, encouraged by the death of Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan (1466), the firm ally of the House of Medici, attempted an insurrection, which, however, was frustrated by the vigilance of Peter de' Medici and the neutrality of the Signoria; and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the son and successor of Francis, remained true to his father’s policy.

This abortive conspiracy only strengthened the hands of Peter. Pitti, whom he had gained over, and who had helped to dissipate the plot, lost all his influence and power; most of his confederates fled and were declared enemies of their country; others were banished, and some were even tortured and put to death. Peter now began to govern dictatorially; and he assumed those airs of princely state which his more prudent and moderate father had carefully avoided. Yet a grand festival was celebrated to thank God that the democracy had been preserved! The Florentine exiles, with help of Venice, raised a considerable army, which they placed under the command of Bartholomew Coleone, a famous condottiere. The Florentines also armed, and were assisted with troops by Ferdinand of Naples and Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The latter joined the Florentine army with a body of cavalry; but, either through cowardice or inability, proving rather a hindrance than a help, Peter de' Medici invited him to Florence, whilst the Florentine general, Frederick of Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, was instructed to deliver battle in his absence; and accordingly a bloody but indecisive engagement took place near La Molinella, July 25th, 1467. Galeazzo Maria, offended by this slight, returned to Milan; and the Venetians wore obliged to abandon an enterprise which they had formed against that city in case Coleone should have proved victorious. Pope Paul II, with a view to compose these differences, but without consulting the parties interested, published the terms of an arbitrary peace (February 2nd, 1468), in which he appointed Coleone commander of a league against the Turks, with an annual subsidy of 100,000 ducats, to be paid rateably by the different States; and he threatened to excommunicate those who should refuse to accede to the treaty. Venice alone, however, in whose favour it was drawn, could be brought to assent; and as Milan, Florence, and Naples refused to contribute, and answered the threat of excommunication with the counter one of a General Council, Paul was induced to retract, and in April published a more moderate and equitable peace, to which all the belligerent States agreed.

DEATH OF PETER DE' MEDICI AND ASSASSINATION OF GALEAZZO M. SFORZA

Peter de' Medici, whose violence is lamented by Machiavelli, took fearful vengeance on the families of those who had promoted the war. The short remnant of his life offers little of importance. He died December 2nd, 1469, leaving two sons, Lorenzo and Julian, and two married daughters. Lorenzo, now twenty-one years of age, was tall and robust; but his countenance was disfigured by a flat nose and large jaws; his sight was weak, his voice hoarse. He had received the rudiments of his education among the eminent literary men who frequented his father’s house; the chief of whom, Marsilio Ficino, had initiated him in the then fashionable study of the Platonic philosophy. By these and other pagan studies, and by a loose manner of life, the religious principles instilled into him by a devout mother were much effaced, though never entirely lost. His father had completed his education by sending him to the most splendid Courts of Italy. A lofty genius, combined with patient industry, fitted him for statesmanship rather than arms; and he had, even in his father’s lifetime, been entrusted with some share of the public business, in which he displayed considerable ability. We learn from his own memoirs that on his father’s death he was requested by the leading men of Florence to assume the charge of the Republic, as his father and grandfather had done before him. His younger brother Julian, of a quieter and less ambitious temper, was wholly engrossed by the pursuit of pleasure.

On July 20th, 1471, Pope Paul II died of apoplexy. Vanity and selfishness were his chief characteristics. He was only forty-eight years of age at the time of his elevation to the tiara, and being remarkably handsome, proposed to take the title of Formoso; a folly from which it was difficult to dissuade him. Paul was also suspicions and cruel, and rendered himself notorious by his persecution of learned men. He regarded the members of the Roman Academy, established towards the close of his pontificate by Pomponio Leto, Platina, and other distinguished men, as enemies who were plotting against his own safety and the peace of the Church; and under pretence that they were heretics or atheists, caused several of them to be apprehended and subjected to torture, at which he himself presided. Agostino Campano died under the hands of his officers; yet neither plot nor heresy could be discovered.

The impunity with which the Popes escaped the Councils held in the early part of the fifteenth century, was well fitted to inspire them with a reckless contempt for public opinion; and from that period down to the Reformation, it would be difficult to parallel among temporal Princes the ambitious, wicked, and profligate lives of many of the Roman Pontiffs. Among these, Francesco della Rovere, who succeeded Paul II with the title of Sixtus IV, was not the least notorious. Born at Savona, of obscure family, Sixtus raised his nephews, and his sons who passed for nephews, to the highest dignities in Church and State, and sacrificed for their aggrandizement the peace of Italy and the cause of Christendom against the Turks. Of his two nephews, Julian and Leonard della Rovere, the former, afterwards Pope Julius II, was raised to the purple in the second year of his uncle’s pontificate, while Leonard was married to an illegitimate daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Peter and Jerome Riario, who passed for the sons of Sixtus’s sister, were commonly supposed to be his own. Peter Riario, bred as a low Franciscan friar, became, in a few months, and at the age of twenty-six, Cardinal of San Sisto, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Archbishop of Florence; but in a few years debauchery put an end to his life (1474). For Jerome Riario was obtained the County of Imola from the Manfredi family, and he was married to Catharine Sforza, a natural daughter of the Duke of Milan.

Italy was at that period in the highest bloom of material prosperity, destined soon to wither through the decay of Genoese and Venetian commerce, and the losses inflicted on the Church by the Reformation. But its manners, though cultivated, were stained with a shameless libertinism, and many of its Princes, as well as its Popes, were models of tyranny and profligacy. Among such Princes, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, was conspicuous. He was not altogether devoid of the talent which had distinguished his father; he possessed some eloquence, and his manners were elegant and dignified. But he was a tyrant after the old Greek and Roman type. Not content with the death of his victims, he buried them alive, or amused himself with their tortures; he not only dishonoured the wives and daughters of the noblest families, but sought further gratification in acquainting husbands and parents with their shame. Among those whom he had wronged, two men of nobler race than himself, Carlo Visconti and Girolamo Olgiato, with Lampugnano, a patrician friend, animated by the exhortations of Cola de' Montani, a distinguished scholar, resolved to rid the world of such a monster, and to establish a Republic at Milan. The confederates executed their plot during the celebration of an annual festival in the cathedral, on the 26th of December, 1476. The Court, with its attendants, being assembled in the Church, Lampugnano approached the Duke as if to ask a favour, and, saluting him with his left hand, stabbed him twice or thrice with the other; while Visconti and Olgiato, pretending to hasten to Galeazo’s help, completed the work which their companion had begun. But to their shouts for a Republic not a voice replied. Lampugnano was cut down in the church; his confederates escaped for the moment, but were discovered a few days after. Visconti was cut to pieces at the time of his capture; Olgiato was reserved for an execution preceded by dreadful tortures, during which he made his political confession, founded on the maxims of the ancients. As John Galeazzo, the son of the murdered Duke, was a child of eight years, his guardianship, as well as the regency, was assumed by his mother Bona, of Savoy, sister-in-law of King Louis XI. Bona entrusted the conduct of affairs to Ciecco Simonetta, brother of the historian, who had been in the service of Francis Sforza. In May, 1477, four of Galeazzo Maria’s brothers, namely, Sforza, Duke of Bari, Lodovico, surnamed II Moro, from a mother’s mole, Ottaviano, and Ascanio, took up arms, and attempted to seize the government. Their plan was frustrated by Simonetta; Ottaviano was drowned in attempting to escape by fording the Adda; the other three brothers were captured and banished. A fifth, the eldest, Philip, acquiesced in the regency of Bona.

CONSPIRACY OF THE PAZZI.

Italy was at this time divided into two great parties or leagues. So intimate a connection, cemented by the marriage already mentioned, had been formed between Sixtus IV and Ferdinand of Naples, as excited the jealousy and suspicion of the northern States of Italy; and Lorenzo de' Medici, alarmed by the circumstance that Frederick of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, who had commonly fought in the service of Florence, had joined the Pope and Ferdinand, had, towards the end of 1474, succeeded in forming a counter-league with Venice and Milan. The Venetians were offended with Sixtus because he had diverted to his own purposes the sums which he had raised under pretence of a crusade, and left them to struggle unaided with the Turks; and with Ferdinand, because he had opposed their design of obtaining possession of Cyprus, by availing themselves of the dissensions in that island. For some years, however, the peace of Italy remained undisturbed, till the affairs of Florence afforded Sixtus IV an opportunity to gratify his enmity against the House of Medici. Under the name of a Republic, Lorenzo and Julian reigned almost despotically at Florence. The old forms of government had been changed, the chief power was in the hands of a few adherents of the Medici; the taxes had been augmented, and the people were consoled for the loss of their ancient liberties by the splendour and magnificence of the ruling house. In a plutocracy such as Florence then was, it is not surprising that the rivalry of commerce should affect the affairs of State.

The family of the Pazzi, one of the greatest and most ancient in Florence, vied with the Medici in the extent of their trade; but pride and haughty manners made them less acceptable to the people, and they had not been able to obtain any of the leading offices of the State. Hence a hatred between the two families, which was increased by commercial collisions. Sixtus IV had deprived the Medici of the office of treasurers to the Holy See, and given it to Francesco Pazzi, who had established a Bank at Rome. And when Sixtus purchased the lordship of Imola for his nephew Girolamo Riario, Lorenzo de' Medici, who wished to secure that place for Florence, had tried to thwart the bargain, by preventing Francesco Pazzi becoming security for the purchase-money. By this act he drew on himself the virulent enmity both of Girolamo and Francesco. They formed the design of overthrowing the Medici, and drew into their plans Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, who was likewise their enemy, and who commonly resided in Rome. The Pope also aided the conspiracy, though without sanctioning the shedding of blood. Thus in 1478 was formed that plot against the Medici known as the “Conspiracy of the Pazzi”! and Sixtus was base enough to make his great-nephew, Raphael Riario, a more youth of eighteen, who was studying at Pisa University, an instrument in the plot. Raphael was made a Cardinal, and sent to Florence on his way to Perugia as Legate, in order that his house might become the rendezvous of the conspirators. One Giambattista di Montesecco, a soldier, was also sent to Florence with instructions that the Pope wished a revolution there; and he succeeded in gaining over the whole of the Pazzi family, though one of them was married to a sister of Lorenzo. The plan was to assassinate Julian and Lorenzo, and then to seize the government. After one or two failures, it was resolved to perpetrate the murders, which were to be simultaneous, in the Cathedral itself, during the celebration of a solemn High Mass, on the 26th of April, 1478; and the elevation of the Host was to be the signal for the deed of blood. But here a difficulty arose. Montesecco, who was to have dispatched Lorenzo, scrupled to commit the act at the very altar of God, although it had been sanctioned by the Archbishop of Pisa, as well as by Cardinal Riario. By a not uncommon union of superstition with the perpetration of the darkest crimes, this feeling prevailed so extensively among the bravi of the time, that it was found necessary to secure the services of two priests; the only order of men, according to an observation of the historian Galli, sufficiently at ease inside a church to make it the scene of an assassination.

The Cathedral was filled with people, but Julian was not among them. Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini went to his house, accompanied him to the church with every mark of friendship, and, when the bell announced the elevation of the Host, dispatched him with their daggers. The priests who were to murder Lorenzo were either less adroit or determined than their confederates, or Lorenzo was more wary or more active than his brother. He succeeded in gaining the sacristy with only a slight wound in the neck; and, bolting the door, secured himself till some friends came to the rescue. Meanwhile the Archbishop Salviati and his associates had gone to the Palace of the Signory to seize the magistrates; but the Gonfaloniere Petrucci and the Priors, assisted by their servants, made a stout resistance, till the populace, who mostly favoured the Medici, came to their aid. The attempt of Francesco Pazzi’s uncle Jacopo to rouse the people, as, parading the town with a body of soldiers, he called on them to assert their liberty, utterly failed. He was only answered with shouts of Palle! Palle! the rallying cry of the Medici. When the magistrates learned the death of Julian, and the attempt upon Lorenzo, their indignation knew no bounds. Salviati, who had been secured during the tumult, was immediately hanged in his archiepiscopal robes outside one of the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico; Francesco de' Pazzi, who was captured soon afterwards, underwent the same fate. The populace executed summary justice on seventy persons of distinction belonging to the Pazzi party, including the two priestly assassins; and 200 persons more were subsequently put to death. Thus ended a conspiracy whose nature, the persons engaged in it, and the place of its execution, all tend to show, as a modern writer has observed, the practical atheism of the times.

Many European Sovereigns manifested on this occasion their sympathy with Lorenzo. Louis XI, especially, expressed in a letter to him the greatest indignation at the Pope’s conduct; he even threatened to cite Sixtus before a General Council, and to stop annates; and he sent Philip de Comines to Florence to assure Lorenzo of his protection. Even Mahomet II showed a friendly feeling towards the Florentine ruler by delivering up Bandini, who had sought refuge at Constantinople. But the Pope, supported by King Ferdinand, and impelled by the ambition of his nephew, displayed the most cynical contempt for public opinion. He fulminated against the Florentines the censures of the Church for hanging an Archbishop and imprisoning a Cardinal; he placed them under an interdict, annulled their alliances, and forbade all military men to enter into their service. Thus his spiritual weapons were pressed into the support of the carnal ones, which he also adopted. In conjunction with King Ferdinand he dispatched an army into Tuscany; and, to prevent the Florentines from being succoured by Milan, he created employment for the forces of the Regent Bona by exciting an insurrection at Genoa, which, however, was only partially successful. At the instigation of Sixtus, Prosper Adorno, who governed Genoa for the Regent, threw off his allegiance, and defeated a Milanese army in the pass of the Bochetta, August 7th, 1478. But the success of Adorno was frustrated by raising up against him a rival, Battista Fregoso, who, with the help of Ibletto de' Fieschi and his party, drove out Adorno, and made himself Doge. The Riviera di Levante, however, still remained in the hands of Adorno. The Pope also excited the Swiss League to hostilities against Milan, and this step was combined with a profitable speculation. A board of priests was established in Switzerland to decide cases of conscience, as well as to sell indulgences, which were dispatched thither in great abundance, and proved a very marketable commodity among a people who hired themselves out to slay and plunder; insomuch that Sixtus himself was astonished at the large sums which he drew from so poor a country. The Papal Legate excited the animosity of the Swiss against the Milanese Government on the subject of a chestnut wood in the Val Levantina, on the southern side of the St. Gothard, which had been made over to the Canton of Uri by Galeazzo Maria in 1466, by a treaty called the Capitulate of Milan. The wood had remained in dispute, and towards the close of 1478 the men of Uri, assisted by other Cantons, carried their devastations as far as Bellinzona. Hostilities were continued with varied success till Louis XI succeeded in mediating a peace.

Meanwhile the combined Papal and Neapolitan armies had entered Tuscany, the former under command of the Duke of Urbino, while that of Ferdinand was led by his son and heir, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria. The Pope demanded that Lorenzo de' Medici should be surrendered into his hands. As the Florentines had at first neither captain nor army, the Allies succeeded in taking several places; but Lorenzo at length procured the services of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, as well as of Robert Malatesta, Lord of Pesaro, Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, and other experienced captains; and the Florentine cause was proceeding pretty favourably in 1479, when it received a severe shock by a revolution which occurred at Milan. Ludovico II Moro, paternal uncle of the young Duke of Milan, having formed an alliance with Sanseverino, a celebrated condottiere, appeared suddenly before the Milanese town of Tortona (August 10th), and was admitted by the Governor; whence marching upon Milan, he found the same reception. The Duchess Bona was now advised to reconcile herself with Ludovico: but that Prince, in whose hands the chief fortresses had been placed, soon displayed his true colours. Three days after entering Milan, he caused Simonetta to be confined in the Castle of Pavia, where he was subjected to a trial accompanied with dreadful tortures, and in the following year he was beheaded. Ludovico then caused the majority of Galeazzo, who was only twelve years of age, to be proclaimed, in order that he himself might reign in his nephew's name, and Bona withdrew to Abbiate Grosso.

This revolution deprived Lorenzo de' Medici of the alliance of Milan, as the new Regent was on good terms with the King of Naples, who restored to him his brother's Duchy of Bari. The Florentines were also alarmed at the defeat of their army by the Duke of Calabria at Poggio Imperiale; and even the friends and partisans of Lorenzo threatened to desert him. In this crisis of his fortunes, Lorenzo adopted the bold step of proceeding in person to the Court of the treacherous Ferdinand; where by his talents, address, and eloquence he made such an impression on that monarch that he succeeded in effecting not only a peace but a league with him (March, 1480). This clandestine treaty made the Venetians as angry with Lorenzo as the Pope was with King Ferdinand, and they found no difficulty in persuading Sixtus to form a league with themselves; of which his nephew, Jerome Riario, Count of Imola, was appointed Captain-General. Jerome now diverted his arms from Tuscany into Romagna, drove the noble house of Ordelaffi from Forli, and was invested by Sixtus with the lordship of that city.

Such was the state of Italy when Mahomet II determined on the expedition before against Ferdinand of Naples, in revenge for the aid which he had given to the Knights of Rhodes. It is admitted by Venetian historians that their Republic, with the view of ruining Ferdinand, not only made the peace just mentioned with the Pope, but also sent ambassadors to the Grand Signor to incite him to invade Ferdinand's dominions, by representing to him that he was entitled to Brindisi, Taranto, and Otranto, as places formerly remaining to the Byzantine Empire: though it is probable that they did not communicate this step to Sixtus. The landing of the Turks in Apulia induced the Pope to pardon the Florentines and reconcile them with the Church. Twelve of the leading citizens of Florence were dispatched to Rome, where they were compelled to make the most abject submission, and to receive at the hands of the Pope the flogging usually inflicted on such occasions; and by way of penance the Florentines were ordered to fit out fifteen galleys against the Turks.

Notwithstanding the peace between King Ferdinand and Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Neapolitan army, under the Duke of Calabria, was still in Tuscany, when, in August, 1180, the Turks, under Ahmed Keduk, Pasha of Vallona, effected the landing in Apulia already referred to. They took Otranto, put the greater part of the inhabitants to deaths sawed the Commandant and the Archbishop in half, and committed many other atrocities. They also attacked Taranto, Brindisi, and Lecce; but the approach of the Duke of Calabria compelled them to re-embark, leaving, however, a garrison of 8,000 men in Otranto. The Pope, alarmed by the Turkish invasion and the menacing demands of King Ferdinand, who threatened that if he were not immediately assisted, he would treat with the invaders, and facilitate their march to Rome, formed a league with Milan, Ferrara, Genoa, and Florence; and in order to provide speedier succour, he sent his own plate, as well as that of some of the churches, to the mint. Ferdinand also received a few troops from his son-in-law, King Matthias of Hungary, and from Ferdinand of Aragon. The Venetians, on the other hand, assisted the Turks to victual Otranto. In 1481 the Turks made a fresh attempt on the Terra di Otranto, but could not penetrate the lines of the Duke of Calabria; and as the Neapolitan fleet was superior at sea, the garrison of Otranto began to feel the approach of famine. The unexpected news of Sultan Mahomet’s death added to their discouragement, and on the 10th of September they capitulated. The Duke of Calabria, following their own example, violated the capitulation, and having captured some of the Turks after they had set sail, compelled them to serve in the army and in the galleys.

Mahomet died May 3rd, 1481, in his camp near Gebseh, while on his way to Byzantine Scutari; and with him expired his magnificent projects, which amounted to nothing less than the utter extinction of the Christian name. He was fifty-one years of age at his death, of which he had reigned thirty. Possessing some of the qualities of a great and noble nature, he was nevertheless the slave of passion and caprice, which often betrayed him into acts of the basest perfidy and most revolting inhumanity. He was, perhaps, the greatest conqueror of his martial race; yet not a mere destroyer, for he could also construct and organize, as appears from the laws which he prescribed for his own State, and from the manner in which he preserved and adorned Constantinople.

Having thus brought down the conquests of the Turks and the affairs of Italy to the death of Mahomet II, we shall now direct our attention a while to the nations of Western Europe.

CHAPTER II

AFFAIRS OF FRANCE AND BURGUNDY DOWN TO THE TRUCE OF 1472;WITH A BRIEF VIEW OF ENGLISH AFFAIRS UNDER EDWARD IV