"The rain ceased after a while," writes the author of "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World," "and the two armies came forth from their tents on a fair and open field, and drew themselves up for battle. The Turks were arranged in their customary order. As the battle was in Europe, the European feudatory troops were on the right wing, and those of Asia on the left. Prince Bajazet commanded on the right; the other wing was led by Murad's other surviving son, Prince Yakoub. Murad himself was in the centre with the Janissaries, and the cavalry regiments of his guard. The irregulars, horse and foot, the Akindji, and the Arabs, skirmished in the van. On the Christian side, King Lazarus commanded the centre. His nephew, Verk Brankowich, led the right; and the King of Bosnia the left wing. Both armies advanced resolutely to the charge, encountered each other fiercely, stood their ground firmly, and the event of the day was long doubtful. The Asiatic troops in the left wing of the Mohammedan army began at last to give way before the warriors of Servia and Albania, who pressed them on the Christians' right. Prince Bajazet brought succour from the right wing of the Ottomans, and restored the fight. Armed with a heavy mace of iron, he fought in person in the thick of the battle, and smote down all who dared to cross his path. While the two armies thus strove together, and the field was heaped thickly with carnage, a Servian nobleman, Milosch Kabilovitsch, rode to the Ottoman centre, pretending that he was a deserter, and had important secrets to reveal to Murad in person. He was led before the Turkish sovereign, he knelt as if in homage before him, and then stabbed Murad with a sudden and mortal stroke of his dagger. Milosch sprang up from his knees, and, gifted with surprising strength and activity, he thrice cleared himself from the vengeful throng of the Ottomans who assailed him, and fought his way to the spot where his horse had been left; but, ere he could remount, the Jannissaries overpowered him, and hewed him into a thousand pieces. Murad knew that his wound was mortal; but he had presence of mind sufficient to give the orders for a charge of his reserve, which decided the victory in his favour. His rival, the Servian King, was brought captive into his presence, and Murad died in the act of pronouncing the death-doom of his foe."

King Lazarus was slain in the royal tent, but that dread stage upon which the dead bodies of the Ottoman Sultan and the Servian King were laid was to be burthened with yet another royal corpse. Prince Bajazet, who had contributed so materially by his fiery valour and rapidity of movement to the splendid victory of Kossova, hurried to the Ottoman camp as soon as the victory was secure, and was received by the assembled generals as their sovereign and the Sultan of the Ottoman Turks. He signalised his accession to the throne by one of the blackest acts in the dark record of Ottoman crimes. His younger brother Yakoub, who, in command of the left wing of the Turkish army, had fought with great gallantry in the battle that had just been won, had also returned to the Sultan's tent. But Ottoman traditions tolerate no brother near the throne, and the Koran is believed to give its sanction to the murder of all younger sons of the royal family in the suggestive words, "Disquiet is worse than putting to death." In accordance, then, with the precepts of the sacred book of Islam, Bajazet, as soon as he had been acknowledged Sultan, and, standing as he was beside the dead body of Murad, commanded his brother Yakoub to be seized and slain-an order carried out with the same savage promptness with which it had been given. In no country do the ties of blood hang so lightly on princes as in Turkey; and instances will hereafter be given of whole families being slain on the accession of heirs to the throne. By the constitution of Turkish government, in which no provision was made for debate, for the discussion and the redress of grievances and the vindication of individual rights, and in which the institution of the seraglio gave countenance to, as well as cause for, perpetual conspiracies, the very air of the Ottoman Court has ever been loaded with plot and counterplot and murderous scheming. Much of this secret plotting has ever been believed to be due to the ambition of exalted persons-brothers, sons, uncles, nephews of the reigning sovereign; and, as it has

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ever been deemed advisable to limit as much as possible the amount of conspiracy always existing at Court, the putting to death of the persons in whose interests the conspiracies were organised, has ever been considered as merely a politic precaution. Ties of blood, the affections of the household, simply do not exist in the system of Ottoman government. Ambition and expediency are the only motives of action, and inhuman, disgusting delight in witnessing torture and bloodshed have been too frequently displayed by Turkish princes in acting from these motives. Othman slays his white-haired uncle, Murad puts out his rebel son's eyes and then beheads him, Bajazet sends his brother, still glowing with the flush of well-won victory, to be butchered by the Janissaries. Yet, according to the Turkish historians, the unnatural murder of Yakoub "was rendered particularly proper by the evil example of revolt which their brother Saoudji had given in Murad's lifetime, which proved the necessity of cutting off those who were likely to imitate such conduct." Seadeddin, one of the native historians of the Ottoman Empire, states that the murder of Yakoub "was justifiable, because the Sultan, the Shadow of God upon earth, and the Lord of all true believers, ought to reign according to the ever-to-beimitated example of God alone upon the throne, and without the possibility of any one revolting against him." A nation in which these opinions are acted upon by the sovereign and acquiesced in by the people does not deserve to live, and is fated by necessity to die out of existence, however long its extinction may be deferred by political, commercial, or other considerations. When we come to consider the reforms lately introduced into Turkey, and that section of the history of the Ottoman Empire which brings us down to the events of our own day, we shall be able to show whether the character of Ottoman morality now justifies the perpetuation of Ottoman rule.

F

CHAPTER VI.

REIGN OF BAJAZET-" THE UNSPEAKABLE TURK”.

CHRISTIAN ATROCITIES —

BATTLE OF NICOPOLIS-DEATH OF BAJAZET

HE battle of Kossova, the first occasion of many in which the Ottoman Turks have met the Christians of the Slavonic provinces of Europe in deadly conflict, may also be regarded as the event which, to use the words. of Spencer, marks the commencement of those horrible persecutions of the Christians, which have been carried on with greater or less violence, down to the present day.

Bajazet lost no time in following up the great victory over the allied Christians on the plain of Kossova. He entered into a treaty with Stephen Lasarevitch, the successor of Lazarus, king of Servia, the terms of which clearly show how completely broken was now the Servian power. Leopold Ranke, the recognised historian of Servia, informs us that by the treaty referred to, Lasarevitch, the Servian king, delivered up his sister to grace the Sultan's harem, agreed to pay Bajazet, as tribute-money, a certain portion of the produce of the silver mines for which Servia was then famous, and also undertook to render the Sultan military service in all his campaigns. And, till the close of his life, the honest Servian continued to perform his part of the compact. He continued to fight by the side of Bajazet, his brother-in-law, in all the great battles of this reign. Having by this treaty practically put an end to the Slavonic alliance, and concluded the Servian campaign, Bajazet commenced the career of conquest and devastation towards which he was inclined by the traditional policy of his dynasty, by the choice of a fierce, restless, and remorseless spirit, and by great military talents. Immediately after his accession, he sped away eastward from the Bosnian frontier to the Hellespont, and, crossing over into his Asiatic dominions, added to these a number of important conquests between Angora in the middle and Erzroum on the eastern frontier of Asia Minor. In the following year, 1390, he returned to Europe, added Wallachia—which, together with the other Danubian province of Moldavia, now constitutes Roumaniato the number of the tributary states of the Ottoman empire, and carried fire and sword into Bosnia and Hungary. He defeated the Hungarian king, Sigismund, in Bulgaria, in 1392, and drove him back within the Hungarian border. It was during this hurried retreat that king Sigismund, while passing through the county of Huniadé, first met and fell in love with the fair Elizabeth Morsiney. Referring to this intimacy, trivial in itself, but important in its consequences, Sir E. Creasy observes that "it is said and sung that monarchs seldom sigh in vain; and from this love

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passage of the fugitive Sigismund ensued the birth of Hunyades the Great, who defeated the Ottomans in so many a well-fought field."

From the Hungarian campaign in 1392, Bajazet was in the same year called away to Asia, to suppress another insurrection in Caramania, the prince of which was defeated, captured, and put to death; the violent act being excused by the Sultan on the ground that "the death of a prince is not so bad as the loss of a province." The whole of the south of Asia Minor was now under the dominion of Bajazet, and very soon afterwards that monarch had completed the conquest of the provinces in the north and east of that great peninsula.

We now come to a point at which it is necessary to take notice of the blackest feature of the Turkish character-the vilest of human vices. It would be much more agreeable to pass over this part of our subject with a mere passing allusion or obscure hint. To do so, however, would be to leave unmeasured the range and sweep of Turkish vices, and the thorough depravity of Turkish character. The time has come when the question, whether or not the Turk is to be longer tolerated in Europe, must be decided. In this decision the verdict of England will have great weight; but before the verdict can be spoken, something more definite than the newspaper reports of atrocities-though some of these were definite enough, horrible enough in revoltingly minute details-should be known as to the practices of the Turks, in relation to their subject-races. Among modern authors, who have dealt with this subject with light but fearless touch, the chief are Mr. E. A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D., perhaps the most conspicuous historian of our age for knowledge, clearness of vision, truthfulness, nobleness of aim, and courage. Mr. Freeman, in his "Rise and Growth of the Ottoman Power" (pp. 110-112), states that "the accession of Bajazet marks a distinct change in the history of Ottoman conquest. Up to this time the Ottoman princes had shown themselves-except in the exaction of the tribute children-at least not worse than other Eastern conquerors. With Amurath's (Murad's) successor, Bajazet, the darkest side of the Ottoman dominion comes more strongly into view. his reign, with the murder of a brother, out of cold policy. moral corruption, which has ever since been the distinguishing man Turk, came for the first time into its black prominence. Other people have been foul and depraved; what is especially characteristic of the Ottoman Turk is, that the common road to power is by the path of the foulest shame. Under Bajazet the best features of the Mohammedan law, the almost ascetic temperance which it teaches, passed away, and its worst features, the recognition of slavery, the establishment of the arbitrary right of the conqueror over the conquered, grew into a system of wrong and outrage of which the Prophet himself had never dreamed. Under Bajazet the Turk fully put on those parts of his character which distinguish him, even more than other Mohammedans, from Western and Christian nations." Under him the dominion of the Ottomans "was rather distinguished by a scourge, worse than that of actual conquest, by constant plundering expeditions, carried on chiefly for the sake of booty and slaves-the slaves being especially picked out for the vilest purposes.'

He was the first to begin Under him, too, that foul characteristic of the Otto

Sir Edward Creasy is at once more eloquent and more explicit. Speaking of the period at which we have arrived in our narrative-the period when, after annexing Caramania

in the south of Asia Minor, Bajazet vastly extended his dominion both towards the east and the north, this eminent writer (Professor of History in University College, London), goes on to say: "Proud of his numerous victories and rapidly-augmented power, Bajazet now gave himself up for a time to luxurious ease, and to several excesses of the foulest description. He is the first of the Ottoman princes who unfringed the law of the Prophet, which forbids the use of wine. His favourite general, Ali Pasha, had set his master the example of drunkenness, and Bajazet debased himself by sharing and imitating his subject's orgies. The infamy with which their names are sullied. even in the pages of Oriental writers does not end here: they introduced among the Ottoman grandees (and the loathsome habit soon spread far and wide) the open and notorious practice of those unutterable deeds of vice and crime, which the natural judgment of mankind, in every age and among every race, has branded as the most horrible of all offences against God and man. The Koran is explicit in its denunciation of such acts; but the Turks, though in other respects faithful observers of the law of the Prophet, on this point compromised with their consciences and their creed. The pen recoils from this detestable subject; and indeed it is one of the shameful peculiarities of such vice, that its very enormity secures, to a great extent, its oblivion. But it is the stern duty of history not to flinch from the facts, which prove how fearful a curse the Ottoman power was to the lands which it overran during the period of its ascendancy. It became a Turkish practice to procure by treaty, by purchase, by force, or by fraud, bands of the fairest children of the conquered Christians, who were placed in the palaces of the Sultan, his viziers, and his pashas, under the title of pages, but too often really to serve as the helpless materials of abomination. Frequently wars were undertaken and marauding inroads made into these states to collect this most miserable human spoil, for purposes at which humanity shudders. Sufficiently appalling is the institutions of the Janissaries, by which the Christian boy was taken from his home and trained to deadly service against his father's race and his father's faith. It might seem worthy of having been suggested by the fiend, whom Milton describes as,

"The strongest and the fiercest spirit

That fought in heaven."

"Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood

Of human sacrifice and parents tears :"

but infinitely more detestable is the Belial spirit that prompted these other ineffable atrocities of Turkish rule. We find an aggravation, not a mitigation of such crimes, when we read that the wretched beings, the promise of whose youth was thus turned. into infamy, were frequently, when they grew to manhood, placed by their masters in posts of importance; and that the Ottoman Empire had owed many of her ablest generals and statesmen to this foul source. Pity must be blinded with the loathing with which we regard the dishonest splendours of these involuntary apostates; but as unmixed as inexpressible is our abhorrence of the authors of their guilt and shame." We here take leave of this terrible subject not to refer to it again, except until, when sketching the "atrocities" in Bulgaria and Bosnia, we shall, perhaps, be bound in duty to show that,