THE TURKISH STRUGGLE WITH CATHOLIC EUROPE.

HE Turks to day, as through all their history, are a foreign. and hostile race in the European world. Their ways are not the ways of Europe, their desires are not the desires of European man, their religion is not his. The band of roving shepherds which was the origin of the Ottoman empire was not a nation but a gathering of barbarian warriors for the sake of plunder, much like the crew of a pirate ship. They banded together that they might live on the labors of others by their barbarian swords; and empire, not national development, has been the principle that has since kept them together. The Tartar shepherds despise the settled lives of civilized men as slavish, the Mahometan hates and despises the Christian as one accursed by God, and the modern Turk is in all essentials still a Mahometan Tartar. The name given by diplomacy to the Turkish government from its own usage, expresses well its character. It is the Sublime Porte, the "raised gate of the Sultan's tent," where originally the Tartar chief gave law to his followers as they wandered over their native plains or ravaged the lands of their civilized fellow-men. The Sultan dwells in the palaces of Constantine and Theodosius, but the tent of the armed freebooter is to him and his people his natural and most honorable abode. The contrast between barbarian and civilized thought and desires, could hardly be more significantly expressed.

The struggle between civilized and barbarian man has been repeated again and again since the earliest times. Greek thought, Roman law and discipline and the Christian religion have established civilization supreme in Europe and America, but the history of Asia and Africa to our own time is one record of conquests of the more civilized peoples by barbarian hordes. The Turkish Empire is the one example of such a state of things in Europe today. It was founded and it flourished by war and conquest alone, and now that it is unequal to continue conquering it remains a mere clog on the land which still remains subject to its dominion. Its establishment in Europe was a triumph of barbarism over civilization, and its subsequent history was one long effort to make barbarism supreme throughout that continent. The struggle was doubtful for more than three centuries after the first invasion. Almost the whole body of Eastern Christians that came in the Turkish path were reduced to bondage, and it was only by the most desperate struggle and deeds of heroic self-devotion that

Rome and Vienna escaped the same fate. We shall try to sketch briefly the story of the conflict.

The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 gave the Turkish Sultans control of greater wealth and material resources than those of any western nation. The Turkish soldiers were armed and maintained by the skill and labor of their Christian rayas. Mahomet II. was only twenty-three when he captured the imperial city, and he was as ambitious as brutal in his character. The resources of his first conquests were utilized for others. The Eastern Christians through the Balkan peninsula had been subdued by his father, and the Turkish frontier already touched the Catholic countries in Hungary and the Venetian territories. Three years after the capture of Constantinople the Sultan moved his great army, provided with the best artillery of the time, to the invasion of Hungary. The Hungarian Government was, like most mediæval states, without either standing army or fixed revenues, and thus was at a terrible disadvantage compared with the Moslem despot, who disposed of all the wealth of his empire at will, and was served by a disciplined standing army in his Janissaries and horseguards. The Hungarians had no force able to meet the Turks in the field, and the Sultan laid siege to Belgrade, the frontier city and military bulwark of the Christian Kingdom. As at Constantinople, his artillery, cast by Greek workmen, was superior by far to that of Belgrade, and in a few weeks the ramparts were battered down, and a general assault carried his banners into the heart of the city. The result was wholly unexpected. Hunyadi the Hungarian Regent, swept back the Janissaries, and at the same moment a body of a thousand soldiers, with the Franciscan preacher John of Capistrano, afterwards a canonized saint, issued from the town and charged the Turkish trenches. The artillery was captured, and the garrison, following up their repulsed assailants, attacked the besiegers outside. The siege became a pitched battle and a panic seized the Turks, who broke and retreated in complete rout, leaving their camp in possession of the victors. The victory thus gained saved Hungary from invasion for sixty years, though its people had no sufficient force to drive the invaders from the already conquered provinces to the south.

The remaining twenty-four years of Mahomet, the Conqueror, were engaged in conquest of the various islands and cities of the Archipelago, which remained free or in possession of the Italian republics after the fall of the Greek Empire. The barbarian nature of a Turkish warrior was amply displayed against those weaker Christian foes. Negropont, on the Greek coast, had long been in possession of the Venetians. It was attacked by the Turkish Sultan, and the capital surrendered after a brave defence VOL. XXII.-38

on the Sultan's solemn promise of life and liberty. The whole Italian portion of the garrison was put to death by torture, and the governor sawn slowly in two, as a sign of the working of Turkish faith to Christians. Caffa in the Crimea, was in possession of the Genoese, and in wealth and population was the greatest city on the Black Sea after Constantinople. Mahomet attacked and captured it. After a short resistance forty thousand of its population were carried off to the capital, and fifteen hundred boys of the best Christian families were enrolled in the ranks of the Janissaries and compelled to accept Mahometanism, under pain of instant death. The Crim Tartars who then occupied the south of modern Russia, nearly up to Moscow, became subjects of the Sultan, in whom they hailed a Mahometan Conqueror of their own stamp. With an empire thus strengthened, Mahomet prepared for the invasion of Italy, which offered prospect of an easier conquest than Hungary. The island of Rhodes, off the coast of Asia Minor, was also still in Christian hands. The military order of St. John of Jerusalem had established itself in Rhodes after the conquest of Palestine from the western crusaders, and their navy was a formidable foe to the Turkish corsairs which now began to swarm on the eastern seas. The capture of Rhodes and the invasion of Italy were the last objects of Mahomet's ambition. In 1480 two great armaments were sent out simultaneously for those objects. The Italian expedition captured Otranto and gave the Turks a footing beyond the Adriatic; but the bravery of the military monks under the Grand Master, D'Aubusson, baffled every assault, and after a three months' desperate struggle the Turkish commander abandoned the siege. Mahomet had gathered his forces for a new expedition the following year, 1481, but death came to close his career before even his proposed course was known. A civil war between his sons, Bajazet and Djem, occupied the Turkish empire for the next few years. Otranto was recovered by the Neapolitans, and for forty years there was a lull in the long-threatened Turkish onward march.

The sultans who succeeded Mahomet, Bajazet II. and Selim I., if they did not renew the aggressions of the conqueror, prepared long and carefully for the never-relinquished scheme of European conquest. The Turkish naval strength was quietly but steadily increased. The dock-yards of Constantinople and the skill of the Greek rayas supplied the ships; Christian slaves furnished the crews and oarsmen, and Turkish soldiers the fighting-force of the new navy, which soon equalled or surpassed in numbers that of the Christian civilized states. Neither Venice nor Genoa possessed as many war-vessels as the sultan, and Turkish corsairs swept through the Mediterranean, plundering the coasts and shipping

and carrying off thousands of Christian slaves to the Moslem slave-markets. Like the old Scandinavian pirates, the Turkish corsairs were largely recruited by renegade Christians from every land. Criminals, outlaws and desperadoes of every kind readily adopted a creed which needed no more formality than the repetition of a formula of prayer, and at the same time gave unlimited license to plunder and sensual indulgence. Most of the Turkish admirals, as well as many of the generals and viziers, were Christian renegades. The resources of civilization were thus enlisted in the cause of barbarian despotism, and the same thing may be noted even in our own day.

Selim I., who succeeded Bajazet in 1512, was as fierce a conqueror as his grandfather; but his energy was employed on conquests over Mahometan, and not Christian nations. He conquered Egypt, Syria and Arabia, as well as the Persian provinces of Kurdistan and Mesopotamia. The area of the Ottoman dominions was doubled in eight years, and the new subjects were so many fighting-men more for the Turkish projects of European invasion. The condition of Christian Europe had changed rapidly since Mahomet's repulse at Belgrade. The Moors had been driven from Spain, America discovered, and the old feudal system in France and England had been replaced by the centralized monarchical governments of Louis XI. and Henry VII. Literature, art and science had received an unparalleled development in Italy. The military and political strength of Christian Europe had more than doubled since the taking of Constantinople.

The Turks had no share in the intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and in civilization and morality they were still freebooters of the Tartar steppes. But the conquests of Selim in Asia and Africa, and the wealth which still continued to be drawn from the industry of their Christian vassals, had increased the power of the sultans even more than that of Christian Europe. Like Russia to-day, the Turkish rulers readily adopted those resources of civilization which referred to war or statecraft. The Turkish artillery and commissariat were superior to that of any western nation. The revenue of Turkey was five times that of either France or England; the standing army, including the Spahis, or feudal militia, and the terrible Janissaries, still recruited from the children of Christians, reached the number of two hundred thousand. The fleet numbered three hundred war-vessels-larger than that of any Christian nation. In military and political strength, in the early part of the sixteenth century, Turkey, among the powers, held a place equal to that now held by Russia and England combined.

Solyman, who succeeded the savage Selim, made the Turkish power still more formidable by his own character. In generalship

he was equal, or superior, to either his father, Selim, or his greatgrandfather, Mahomet II., and though a true Ottoman in disregard for human life, even of his nearest relatives, wherever political interests were involved his temper was calm and his industry and forethought such as are seldom found in absolute sovereigns. His own people gave him the title of Lord of the Age, and in fact Solyman was, in material power, the greatest ruler of the sixteenth century.

Great as was the power of Turkey at that time, it was only one of several Mahometan states, each equal to any Christian power. Akbar ruled nearly all India; Persia was the rival of Turkey in military strength, and the Tartar Khans of Upper Asia still could levy armies of hundreds of thousands of warriors. The north coast of Africa was occupied by three or more Moslem states equal in strength to Venice or Genoa, and often the masters of the Mediterranean. In wealth and power for war the Mahometan world was greater than Christendom combined in the sixteenth century.

Christendom, unfortunately, was not united in itself. Francis I., of France, and Charles V., of Spain, the foremost sovereigns of Europe, were engaged in bitter warfare during nearly their whole reigns. Germany, known as the Holy Roman Empire, was not a compact state, but a confederation of independent nobles and free cities. In Italy Venice was the only strong native state, the rest of the peninsula, outside the Pope's domain, being subject to Charles V. directly or indirectly. England had no relations whatever with Eastern Europe during the reign of Solyman. Poland and Hungary, the other two Christian powers of the day, were politically in the same condition as France had been a century before. The central government had little real power or revenues; the administration was in the hands of the Palatines and magnates, who raised troops and taxes at their discretion and quarreled at every election of a king. Under rulers like Mattias Corvin or Stephen Batori Hungary or Poland would rank with the Great Powers of Christendom, but either was liable to fall to weakness in a few years by an unfortunate election or local revolts. Still, it was Hungary and Poland which had to bear the brunt of the Turkish onslaught on Christian Europe, and it was their forces which finally hurled back the invasion.

Such was the state of Europe when the greatest of the Ottoman Sultans took up again the design of the conqueror of Constantinople. Solyman began by attacking the two bulwarks which had checked the advance of Mahomet II. He attacked and captured Belgrade in person in 1521, and his navy, after a desperate struggle, obliged the Knights of Rhodes to capitulate the follow