the enemy had not received a new nation into their ranks. The race of the Prophet had become degenerate; his people had been the terror of Christendom for six hundred years, and that is a long life for a bad nation. But the Turks, originally a horde of robbers, claimed for their Sultan the privileges of the Ommiades. Under Othman, this people became terrible to Christianity, and in the middle of the fifteenth century Mahomet II., as great a captain as the Prophet ever numbered among his true believers, besieged and took the capital of the Eastern Empire, after a brave defence, in which the last emperor, Constantine XII., was slain. The crazy Empire had endured upwards of eleven hundred years. The Greeks had submitted to the Church a short time before, at the Council of Florence. But they kept the treaty of union with their usual faith. Pope Nicholas V. left no means untried in order to bring them back to the fold, but to no purpose. The Holy Father foretold their ruin. "Unless you cease to rend the seamless garment of Christ," exclaimed he, "after three years you shall be treated even as the barren fig-tree." This was said in 1451, and the Empire was finally destroyed in 1453.

The fall of the imperial city filled Europe with terror. Pope Nicholas V. immediately sent preachers everywhere. Nothing less than a new crusade was resolved upon. He exhorted the

kings to lead their subjects against the common enemy. All the West was aroused; two diets were held in Germany, the Duke of Burgundy and the king of Portugal sent fleets to the Pope, and Nicholas had gathered an army in Italy, when he died, and the enterprise was abandoned.

Calixtus III. succeeded to the pontificate. He revived the Crusade. Among his warlike measures he established a small navy, consisting of sixteen galleys, the first that a Pope had ever owned. The Cardinal of Aquileia commanded it, and he harassed the Turkish coast for three years. The Pope sent legates to France and Germany to arouse the sovereigns, but to no purpose. He sent ambassadors even to Persia, Tartary, and Armenia, hoping almost against hope that their sovereigns would do the work of the indolent kings of Europe. Hassan, king of Persia, sent an army against Mahomet, and overcame him in two fearful battles. Hassan then wrote to the Pope, thanking him for having with his prayers made the Omnipotent propitious to the Persian arms.

Mahomet led a hundred and fifty thousand men to Belgrade, which was the key of Southeastern Europe. His father, Am

urath, had failed to take it, but Mahomet believed in himself. "There is but one God in heaven," he would say, "and the earth shall have no master but Mahomet." If Belgrade fell, the Sultan would find the gates of Servia, Hungary, Germany, and Italy wide open.

The Cardinal Carvajal and Capistrano, a Franciscan monk, raised a mob of forty thousand. Huniad, the general of the Hungarian armies, brought another body of men. But the forces were in such wretched condition in point of discipline, that no general could be induced to join the Hungarians; the kings were indifferent. "Perhaps it is as well," said the monk, as he reviewed them before the attack. "It is the cause of God, and he can lead ploughmen to victory, while he lays proud armies low." Prodigies of valor were performed on both sides, but, after twenty days' incessant fighting, the Sultan was wounded, and in a few hours forty thousand Turks fell upon the field. Mahomet tried to poison himself, but failed. This victory was regarded as the salvation of Europe.

Shortly after, the Turks attacked the island of Lesbos. The enemy were scaling the innermost walls, and the Christians began to fly. A young girl named Lesbia snatched a sword from a runaway, and rushed upon the Turkish ranks, calling upon the saints, and levelling a Turk at each invocation. The appalled Mahometans gave way, the Christians rallied, and the enemy was driven to his ships with great loss.

Pius II. succeeded Calixtus, and he turned his attention to the Crusade at once. Mahomet had taken Athens, Corinth, Lesbos, in a second expedition, Trebizond, the whole of Bosnia, and a number of inferior posts. Scanderbeg defended Albania successfully against the Sultan. The supreme Pontiff called a congress of the kings at Mantua, and went thither, in person. After waiting five months, he found that the kings had sent ambassadors to meet him. They were waging war against one another, and they could not abandon their quarrels. The Pope soon found that the ambassadors had caught the humor of their masters. He appealed to the people of Europe, and after declaring that he would head the expedition, he named Ancona as the place of meeting. The novelty of this ceeding drew immense crowds from every country of Europe. The Pope saw himself surrounded with the raw material of an imposing army, but while he was engaged in devising means for its support, he sickened and died.

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Paul II. did not sheathe the sword. His first act was to

encourage Scanderbeg to a rupture with Mahomet. The Turk entered Albania with a great force, and Scanderbeg repaired to Rome for aid. The influence of the Pope obtained 25,000 men. The lion of Albania returned, cut an auxiliary force of 20,000 horse to pieces, and then fell upon the main body of the Turks, with such success that few lived to carry back the tale. Then the old hero died. He had won the day in twenty-two battles against the Turks. Mahomet could not contain himself when he heard the news. "Now," he cried, "I will destroy the Christians. They have lost their sword and their shield." He then swore that he would not rest until every Christian from east to west should grovel beneath his horse's hoofs. In fact he overrun Albania in a few days. He attacked Lemnos, Colchis, and Negropont, by land and sea. The Venetians answered the prayers of the Pope by sending a fleet to the Ægean Sea. Paul succeeded in awaking the Emperor Frederic, and a diet was convoked at Ratisbon. But the army was scarcely in marching order, when the Pope, who was the soul of the undertaking, died, and the body fell to pieces.

Sixtus IV. was the next Pope, and he was scarcely elected, when he despatched cardinal legates to Germany, Spain, and France, hoping that the sovereigns would suspend their private quarrels, and join against the common enemy. But he did not succeed. He despatched his own galleys, twenty-four in number, to Asia Minor. The Venetian and Neapolitan fleets joined in the expedition, and the Cardinal Caraffa set sail for Asia Minor, where he took Smyrna and some other cities. The king of Persia was again in the field; his most important operation was the capture of Trebizond. The Sultan was preparing a great blow, and it came in 1480. He entered Moldavia with 120,000 soldiers, and the Governor Stephen routed him with a handful of rustics, collected hastily from the fields. The Christians were as astonished as Mahomet was. But he seemed to call warriors from the earth at every stamp of his foot, and he overran Moldavia, Wallachia, and the neighbouring provinces of Poland. Then he ransacked Albania, and passed the mountains of Friuli. The enemy of the Church then stood upon Italian soil. When he retired, he promised that the next visit would be to Rome. He burned for revenge against the knights of Rhodes, who were the terror of his Asiatic governors. He assailed them as he had Constantinople and Belgrade; but after a siege of ninety days he retired, leaving his artillery and twenty

thousand men on the ground. His last enterprise was the capture of Otranto, a city in Calabria. Nearly the whole population were put to death. The Italians thought not of defending their country; the flying cowards were deserting the cities, when the Pope made his voice heard in the general confusion. He sent twenty-four galleys to the Adriatic Sea. It was time, for the Turks had turned their faces towards Loretto. There was no earthly reason why the Turk should fly before the small force opposed to him, but he did. The Pope availed himself of the momentary quiet. He besought the kings to lay aside their petty quarrels and repair to Rome. The congress was agreed to, but God summoned Mahomet to a higher tribunal, and Europe thanked Heaven that she was not yet enslaved. Innocent VIII. prepared vigorously for a new Crusade, which frightened Sultan Bajazet so that he sent a renegade to Rome with a poison, mixed for the Pope's especial use. The villain was arrested, and suffered the penalty of his treason. Innocent strained every nerve to encourage and assist Ferdinand and Isabella, who had hunted the beast to his last den in Spain. He was finally expelled, after a stay of eight hundred years, almost every one of which saw deeds of arms which seem fabulous to our ears. After a few years of comparative quiet, Solyman II., a fine specimen of an infidel soldier, entered Hungary. His first action there was the capture of Belgrade. In his second visit to Hungary, he routed the army of King Louis, and beheaded fifteen hundred captives. He returned to Hungary at the invitation of John of Zapolya. This man disputed the right of the Archduke Ferdinand to the crown of Hungary, and he gathered an army, which was routed after a bloody action. Then John sold himself to the Turk. Solyman was a true believer, so Christian blood was sweet to him at all times. After he had taken twelve strong cities, he marched to Vienna, and besieged it. After twenty days' hard fighting he was compelled to retire; Solyman returned to Hungary, met the army of Ferdinand, cut it to pieces, and mortally wounded the king. Then, as his ally John was dead, he seized his wife and child, and sent them into exile; a just punishment for having called the enemy of the Church to settle a dispute between Christian kings.

The island of Rhodes, one of the strongest outworks of Christendom, had been held by the knights of St. John for two hundred years; and they gave the Turks no peace in Asia. Solyman besieged the island, and after a brilliant defence of

six months, during which a hundred thousand Moslems bit the dust, the island was yielded to the enemies of the cross. An action took place near Gerbi, where the Turks met the Spanish and Neapolitan fleets. The result was a total rout of the Christians.

The Knights of St. John, after their expulsion from Rhodes, encamped in the island of Malta, and Solyman sent Mustapha and Piali Pasha to dislodge them, and he already looked upon the island as won. It probably would have been, had the Sultan commanded in person. The siege lasted four months, the island was defended by a handful, and with a valor almost superhuman. The Grand Master, Valetta, was one of those generals whom God raises at times for the salvation of nations, and Europe, with her deadly enemy in full possession of her noblest city in the east, successfully assailed in the southeast, in imminent danger of losing Italy, and harassed along her southern shore, would have recited her preparation for death if the island of Malta, her best wall of defence in the south, had fallen into the hands of the infidels. Valetta and his little band disputed every inch of ground with the Turks; in the morning they prepared to die; and after they were strengthened by the Holy Sacraments, they marched to the walls, and when one Christian fell, ten unbelievers went with him to be judged. The Turks were almost past counting; a thing that often happened, for they relied greatly upon numbers; they liked to overwhelm the enemy with a countless crowd; they were Egyptian frogs beneath a housekeeper's broom.

The Cæsar Ferdinand concluded a disgraceful truce with Solyman, paying to the Turk thirty million pieces of gold annually, that Hungary might rest in peace for eight years.

Solyman was succeeded by Selim II., and the new Sultan. inherited the military genius of his father, and his determination to reduce Christendom. His first act was the storming of Cyprus. Nicosia was taken, and twenty thousand prisoners were savagely murdered, fifteen thousand sold. Famagusta capitulated after a brave defence. Mustapha made the Christians march before him, and every man was slain as he passed. After several conquests in the Archipelago, the general sent a large body against the island Curzola. This place was just then unaccountably abandoned by the men; not one was at home when the Turks appeared. But the women forgot for a time their natural timidity; they elected leaders, and made preparations for a vigorous defence. When the Turks came