Turks take Constantinople
The Tartars came in irresistible numbers. They swept over nearly all Asia Minor and down into Egypt where the Caliph, the religious head of Mohammedanism, ruled. And then, as always before, they went back again. The ravaged countries were left to recover as best they could, and the Ottomans resumed their campaign in Europe.
Constantinople, again besieged in 1422, was again saved for a while by the appearance of a rival claimant to the Sultanship of Turkey. But the Turks pushed northwards into Hungary, where the Hungarians opposed them with a resolute resistance. Battles were fought with varying result, until, again on the fatal battlefield of Kossovo, the Moslem won another great victory. The siege of Constantinople was recommenced with more vigour than ever. In 1453 the long-deferred end came. The city was taken by assault. The Christian Church of St. Sophia became the Moslem mosque.
There is little more to say, to complete the story of the Turks in this south-eastern corner of Europe. They did not rest content with their conquests, but were constantly pushing northward and westward. The Christian nations generally, but by no means always, united to oppose them. They fought their conquering way as far north as Poland, and for a while we find Poland in alliance with the Moslem power. Yet fighting broke out afresh, and a large portion of Poland was laid waste. Peace was again made between the two in the first year of the sixteenth century, and it was a peace that had some permanence, but it enlarged still further the bounds of the Turkish possessions.
In the midst of all this fighting by land in Europe, the Turks had found leisure to attend to naval matters and to the building and outfit of a large fleet. And with a fleet thus in constant readiness for action in the eastern waters of the Mediterranean Sea, there was one power, at least, with which it was certain to come into collision—the great naval power of Venice.
Ever since the fourth Crusade in which Constantinople had been taken, largely by the aid of the Venetian navy, Venice had held many of the islands in the Ægean Sea and had a hold on cities on the Levantine coast.
She was not the only Italian State, as we have seen, to be powerful at sea. There was Genoa, on the western side of the peninsula. We have also seen why the situation of Venice was the more favourable—because she looked eastward, and so was the gate by which the wealth of the East came into Western Europe. It was largely by the help of the Genoese navy that the Greeks had retaken Constantinople, in 1261, from the Latins. Naval encounters between the fleets of these two rival Italian States were many during the next century and a half. Now one had the victory and now the other. But always the greater resources and wealth were on the side of Venice.