His empire was rapidly extended from the wall of China to the Mediterranean sea; India in the south, and Russia in the north, acknowledged his sway, and his determination to wrest Syria and Anatolia from the Turks, compelled Bayezid to abandon the siege of Constantinople, and hasten to the defence of his Asiatic dominions (A. D. 1403). Before he could reach the scene of action, Sivas (the ancient Sebaste) had fallen, and the bravest warriors of the garrison had been buried alive by the ferocious victor. Damascus soon after shared the same fate; it was laid waste by fire and sword, and a solitary tower alone remained to mark the spot that had once been a city.

Bayezid encountered Timúr in the plains of Angora; he was defeated with great loss, and taken prisoner. The Turkish historians assert that Bayezid was confined by the conqueror in an iron cage, but Timúr's own companion and historian asserts that the conqueror treated his captive with great lenity; all that can be determined with certainty is that the sultan died in the enemy's camp. Timúr himself fell a victim to disease, while preparing to invade China (A. D. 1405). His empire was dismembered after his death, but Baber, one of his descendants, established an empire at Delhi, in northern India (A. D. 1526), which, sadly shorn of its ancient glories, subsisted almost to our own times, under the name of the empire of the Great Moguls.

After a long fratricidal war, Mohammed I., the youngest of Bayezid's sons, succeeded to his father's dominions. The greater part of his reign was spent in restoring the Ottoman power in western Asia, and thus the Byzantines obtained a respite, by which they knew not how to profit. Morad, or Amurath II., raised the glory of the Ottomans to a height greater than it had yet attained. He deprived the Greeks of all their cities and castles on the Euxine sea, and along the coasts of Thrace, Macedon, and Thessaly; he even stormed the fortifications that had been constructed across the Corinthian isthmus, and carried his victorious arms into the midst of the Peloponnesus, The Grecian emperors acknowledged him as their superior lord, and he, in turn, accorded them protection. Two Christian heroes arrested the progress of the sultan-John Hunniades, and George Castriot, better known by the name of Scanderbeg. Hunniades was a celebrated Hungarian general; he drove the Turks from Servia, whose possession they eagerly coveted, and long impeded their progress westward. Scanderbeg was an Albanian prince, possessing a small district in the Epirote mountains, of which Croia was the capital. At the head of a small but faithful band of followers, he long resisted the mighty armies of the Ottomans, and compelled Amurath himself to raise the siege of Croia.

At length Mohammed II. ascended the Ottoman throne (A. D. 1451), and from the moment of his accession, directed all his efforts to the capture of Constantinople. At the head of an army of three hundred thousand men, supported by a fleet of three hundred sail, he laid siege to this celebrated metropolis, and encouraged his men by spreading reports of prophecies and prodigies, that portended the triumph of Islamism. Constantine, the last of the Greek emperors, met the storm with becoming resolution; supported by the Genoese, and a scanty band of followers from western Europe, he maintained the city for fifty-three days, though the fanaticism of his enemies was raised to the highest

pitch by their confident reliance on the favor of Heaven, while prophecies of impending wo and desolation proportionably depressed the inhabitants of Constantinople. At length, on the 29th of May, A. D. 1453, the Turks stormed the walls, the last Constantine fell as he boldly disputed every inch of ground, multitudes of his subjects were massacred in the first burst of Turkish fury, the rest were dragged into slavery, and when Mohammed made his triumphal entry, he found the city a vast solitude.

The conquest of Constantinople was followed by that of Servia, Bosnia, Albania, Greece, including the Peloponnesus, several islands of the Archipelago, and the Greek empire of Trebizond. All Christendom was filled with alarm; Pope Pius II. convened a council at Mantua, for the purpose of organizing a general association to resist the progress of the Turks (A. D. 1459). A crusade was preached by his order, and he was about to undertake the command of the expedition in person, when death cut short his projects at Ancona (A. D. 1464). The Christian league was dissolved by his death, the Turks were permitted to establish their empire in Europe, and this received a great increase, both of security and strength, by the voluntary tender of allegiance which the khans of the Crimea made to Mohammed II. (A. D. 1478). After the first burst of fanaticism was over, Mohammed granted protection to his Christian subjects, and, by his wise measures, Constantinople was restored to its former prosperity.

CHAPTER VI.

THE REFORMATION, AND COMMENCEMENT OF THE STATES-SYSTEM IN EUROPE.

SECTION I.-Progress of Maritime Discovery.

THE Scene of the earliest-known navigation was the Mediterranean sea, which naturally seemed to the ancients to be situated in the middle of the earth; as is implied by its name. As navigation advanced only at a creeping pace, and as but a small amount of fresh experience was laid up by one generation for the benefit of the next, it took very many ages to explore the Mediterranean, Tyrrhene, Hadriatic, and gean

seas.

The great natural relief, given to ancient navigation, was the discovery of the trade-winds which prevail in the Indian ocean, These periodical changes of winds, if noticed by the Arabians, were not made to serve their maritime trade, until the keener enterprise of the West, in the person of Hippalus (about A. D. 50), first ventured to steer off from the Arabian and Persian shores, and to be impelled eastward, in the direction of the wind. A voyage which had consumed years, now took up but as many months, by a conformity on the part of the mariner with this invariable law of nature. The means of profit and information were now less monopolized, and the west became better acquainted with the inhabitants and produce of the east.

The navigation to the Indies was continued, when the Romans became masters of Egypt, by sailing down the Arabian gulf, and thence to the mouth of the river Indus, along the southern coasts of Arabia and Persia. But under the emperor Claudius this route was so far changed, that after emerging from the Arabian gulf, they cut across the Indian ocean directly to the mouth of the Indus, by noticing, and taking advantage of, the time when the southwest trade-wind blew.

When the Arabians, in their rapid career of conquest, had reached the Euphrates, they immediately perceived the advantages to be derived from an emporium situated upon a river which opened on the one hand a shorter route to India than they had hitherto had, and on the other, an extensive inland navigation through a wealthy country; and Bassora, which they built on the west bank of the river (A. D. 636), soon became a great commercial city, and entirely cut off the independent part of Persia from the oriental trade. The Arabian merchants of Bassora extended their discoveries eastward, far beyond the tracks of all preceding navigators, and imported directly from the place of their

growth, many Indian articles, hitherto procured at second hand in Ceylon; which they accordingly furnished on their own terms to the nations of the west.

As an instance of the depressed state of human knowledge during the middle ages, we may mention that Cosmas, a Greek merchant of the sixth century, wrote a book called "Christian Topography," the chief intent of which was to confute the heretical opinion of the earth being a globe, together with the pagan assertion that there was a temperate zone on the southern side of the torrid zone. He informed his readers that, according to the true orthodox system of cosmography, the earth was a quadrangular plane, extending four hundred courses, or days' journeys, from east to west, and exactly half as much from north to south, enclosed by lofty mountains, upon which the canopy or vault of the firmament rested; that a huge mountain on the north side of the earth, by intercepting the light of the sun, produced the vicissitudes of day and night; and that the plane of the earth had a declivity from north, by reason of which the Euphrates, Tigris, and other rivers running southward, are rapid; whereas the Nile, having to run up-hill, has necessarily a very slow current.

The Feroe islands had been discovered about the latter end of the ninth century, by some Scandinavian pirates; and soon after this, Iceland was colonized by Flok, the Norwegian. Iceland, it appears, had been discovered long before the Norwegians settled there; as many relics, in the nature of bells, books in the Irish language, and wooden crosses, were discovered by Flok, in different parts of the island: so that the Irish seem first to have set foot upon that isle. The Icelandic chronicles also relate that, about these times, the Northmen discovered a great country to the west of Ireland, which account has by many been deemed apocryphal : for, if true, they must be held to be some of the early discoverers of America; but it seems pretty clear that they made their way to Greenland in the end of the tenth century. The settlement effected in Greenland, though comprising but a small population, seems to have been very prosperous in these early times in mercantile affairs. They had bishops and priests from Europe; and paid the pope, as an annual tribute, twenty-six hundred pounds of walrus-teeth, as tithe and Peter's pence. The voyage from Greenland to Iceland and Norway, and back again, consumed five years; and upon one occasion the government of Norway did not hear of the death of the bishop of Greenland until six years after it had occurred; so that the art of navigation, after all, must have been in these times but at a very low pitch.

Greenland seems to have been called Viinland, or Finland, from the vines which were discerned by the early discoverers as abounding in this country; and, in fact, wild vines are found growing in all the northern districts of America. This Viinland is, however, supposed by some persons to have been Newfoundland; and if so, America must in reality have been discovered as much as five centuries before Columbus sailed so far as the West Indies; and moreover, it has been supposed that the many traditions about the west, existing in the time of Columbus, first set him to prosecute the idea of discovering another world.

The impulse which the cultivation of ancient learning had received in Europe was greatly strengthened by the downfall of Constantinople, which drove the most learned Greeks into exile; they sought refuge for the most part in Italy, and the libraries of that peninsula became the depositories of what remained of the ancient treasures of Greek literature and philosophy. It was hence that the first stimulus was given to the study of the Greek language in Europe. Translators of the Greek authors, and commentators upon them, began to multiply; and the rapid progress of the art of printing gave an additional impulse by the facilities it afforded for the dissemination of learning. (The belief that there existed a fourth division of the globe, larger than any yet discovered, had been encouraged by some of the ancient philosophers; and it had been so generally received, that two eminent fathers of the church, St. Augustine and Lactantius, had zealously labored to refute the theory, believing it inconsistent with the doctrines of Christianity. With the cultivation of Greek literature the old notion was revived, and at the same time the rapid development of the spirit of maritime discovery induced several nations, but especially the Portuguese, to search out new and unknown lands.

The Canaries, or Fortunate islands, were the first discovery that followed the introduction of the mariner's compass; they became known to the Spaniards early in the fourteenth century, but no regular attempt was made for their colonization.

In the early part of the fifteenth century, John I., king of Portugal, had effected some very important conquests over the Moors; in which he had been very materially assisted by his son, Prince Henry, who being an able and active-minded cavalier, took delight rather in the more solid glories of learning and science, than in the fame of war, in which he had, however, of late so highly distinguished himself. Upon the cessation of hostilities he retired to the promontory of St. Vincent, and lived at the seaport town of Sagres, which he had himself founded, where he cultivated the science of astronomy, for the purpose of making it available to the mariner, in guiding him over the ocean, when he had quitted the servile tracking of the shore. He, in fact, established a naval college, and an observatory. He engaged to his assistance all the bestinformed men of his time; and the point to which he especially directed his attention, was the practicability of sailing round Africa, and of thus reaching the East Indies. Prince Henry did not live to see the whole of his views accomplished; but the many minor discoveries which were effected under his auspices, laid up a fund of knowledge and experience for succeeding generations to profit by. Maps were formed under his superintendence: by which means all the geographical knowledge respecting the earth was brought together; the different parts were marked out; and the rocks, coasts, and quicksands, to be avoided, were all noted down.

The southernmost cape of Africa known in those days was Cape Non, which received this appellation from the idea that it was utterly impossible to get beyond this cape; but the officers of Henry having at length doubled it, found Cape Bojador in the distance, whose violent currents and raging breakers, running for miles out to sea, seemed a barrier which could not even be approached with safety by mariners, who were