There can be no doubt that despotism, such as it was known then in Asia, and as it is seen in our days, is the most fragile of human institutions. The violent measures which it took to preserve itself, showed plainly that it itself felt a consciousness of its own fragility. When we see it immolate all the laws of nature to its own laws, hold the sword constantly suspended over all that approach it, and itself experience more fear than it inspires, we are tempted to believe that it has no veritable support. Whilst reading the oriental history of the middle ages, we are astonished to see all those empires which the genius of despotism raised in Asia, fall almost without resistance, and disappear from the scene of the world. But we must admit, when this monstrous government supports itself upon religious ideas, and upon the prejudices and passions of a great nation, it has also its popular ascendancy; it is also, to employ a mode of speaking very common at present, the expression of all its wills, and nothing can resist its action, or arrest the development of its power.
Thus arose the Ottoman empire, which had for its springs of action a hatred of the Christians, and the conquest of the Greek empire, and which sustained itself by the double fanaticism of religion and victory. The Turks had but two ideas, or rather two ever-acting passions, which with them supplied the place of patriotism,—to extend their dominions and propagate the Mussulman faith. The ambition which led the sovereign to conquer Christian provinces, was found to be that of the whole nation, accustomed to enrich themselves by all the violences of war, and who believed they obeyed the most sacred precept of the Koran, by exterminating the race of infidels. If the prince was unceasingly obliged to animate the religious enthusiasm and the warlike ardour of his subjects, the subjects, in their turn, kept the prince as constantly in exercise. The absolute leader of the Ottomans might commit all sorts of crimes with impunity; but he could not live long in a state of peace with his neighbours, without risking his authority and his life. The Turks could not endure either a pacific prince, or a prince unfortunate in war; so thoroughly were they persuaded that they ought to be always fighting, and that they ought always to conquer. The Ottoman people, to whom nothing was good or right but conquest, would obey none but a conqueror; and if they consented to be slaves, and tremble beneath the frown of a master, it was upon the sole condition that this all-powerful master should carry abroad the terror of his arms, and should give chains to other nations.
The Ottoman dynasty which began with the Turkish nation and gave its name to it, that dynasty, always the object of veneration, and respected by revolt itself, has presented by its stability a new spectacle in the East. It has exhibited to the world a succession of great princes, who have in history almost all the same physiognomy, and resemble each other in their pride, their ambition and their military genius: which proves that all these barbarian heroes were formed by their national manners, and that among the Turks, there is but one single road to greatness. We may judge what advantages this harmony between subjects and sovereign must have given to the Ottoman nation, in its wars against the Christians, or even against other Mussulman people.
Whilst the only defence of Europe consisted in feudal troops which were assembled at certain periods, and could not be held beneath their banners for any length of time together, the Ottomans were the only people who had a regular army always under arms. Their warriors, always animated by one same spirit, had moreover the advantage of discipline over the insubordinate chivalry of the Franks, who were constantly agitated by discord, and were put in action by a thousand different passions.
As the population of the Turks was not always sufficient for their armies, they forced each family of the countries they conquered to give up a fifth part of its male children for the military service. They thus levied a tribute upon the population of the Christians, and the sons of the effeminate Greeks became those invincible janissaries who were one day to besiege Byzantium, and destroy even the ruins of the empire of the Cæsars. Such were the new people who were about to place themselves between the East and the West, and engross all the attention of Christian Europe, until that time occupied with the deliverance of the holy places.
When we are acquainted with the power and the character of the Ottomans, we are astonished at seeing what remained of the Greek empire subsist a long time in their vicinity. We must here resume from a past period, the history of the feeble successors of Constantine, sometimes forming alliances with the Turks ready to plunder them, at others, imploring the assistance of the Latins, whom they hated, and seeking to awaken the spirit of the crusades whose consequences they dreaded.
At the period of the first invasions of Greece by the Turks, the emperor Andronicus sent an embassy to the Pope, to promise him to obey the Romish Church, and to request of him apostolic legates, with an army capable of driving away the infidels and opening the route to the Holy Sepulchre. Cantacuzenes, who followed the example of Andronicus, said to the envoys from the sovereign pontiff: “I shall consider it my glory to serve Christendom; my states shall afford the Crusaders a free and safe passage; my troops, my vessels, my treasures shall be devoted to the common defence, and my fate will be worthy of envy if I obtain the crown of martyrdom.” Clement VI., to whom Cantacuzenes addressed himself, died without having been able to interest the Christian warriors in the fate of Constantinople. A short time afterwards, the emperor buried himself in a cloister; and the brother Josaphat Christodulus, confounded among the monks of Mount Athos, troubled himself no longer with a crusade among the Latins.
Under the reign of John Palæologus, the progress of the Turks became more alarming. The emperor himself went to solicit the aid of the sovereign pontiff. After having, in a public ceremony, kissed the hands and feet of the pope, he acknowledged the double procession[69] of the Holy Ghost, and the supremacy of the Church of Rome. Touched by this humble submission, the pope protested he would come to the succour of the Greeks; but when he applied to the sovereigns of Europe, he could obtain nothing from them but vain promises. At the moment at which Palæologus was about to embark on his return to the East, he was arrested by his creditors, and remained thus during several months, without the pope or the princes he had come to solicit, and who had promised to assist him in the deliverance of his empire, making the least attempt to deliver him himself. Palæologus returned to Constantinople, to his divided family; and his subjects, who despised him, waited in vain for the performance of the promises of the pope and the European monarchs. In his despair, he at length formed the resolution of imploring the clemency of the sultan Amurath, and of purchasing by a tribute, permission to continue to reign over the wreck of his empire. He complained of this hard necessity to the pontiff of Rome, who caused a new crusade to be preached; but the Christian monarch beheld with indifference, a prince who had returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church, condemned to declare himself the vassal of infidels. The emperor of Byzantium and the head of the Church, by promising, the one, to arm the West in the cause of Greece, and the other, to subject the Greeks to the Roman Church, had formed engagements that they every day found it more difficult to fulfil. Whilst they were reciprocally upbraiding each other with not having kept their word, Amurath, who accomplished his threats better than the pope and the Christian princes did their promises, added new rigours to the fate of Palæologus, and interdicted even the repairing of the ramparts of his capital. Again the supplications to the sovereign were renewed, and again these supplications were passed on to the monarchs of Christendom; but they made no reply, or at most contented themselves with expressing pity for the emperor and people of Byzantium.
There is no doubt that the Greek emperors stood in great need of succour from the Latins, but this pusillanimous policy, which unceasingly invoked the assistance of other nations, only proclaimed the weakness of the empire, and necessarily deprived the Greeks, in the hour of peril, of all confidence in their own strength. On the other side, these cries of alarm, which constantly resounded throughout Europe, met with nothing but incredulous minds and indifferent hearts. It was in vain that the warriors of the West heard it for ever repeated that Constantinople was the barrier of Christendom; they could not consider a city which was unable to provide for its own defence, and was always in want of succour, as a barrier capable of arresting the course of a powerful enemy. When Gregory XI. solicited the emperor of Germany to assist Constantinople, that prince replied sharply that the Greeks had opened the gates of Europe to the Turks, and let the wolf into the sheep-fold.
At this time the miserable remains of the empire of the Cæsars was comprised within the extent of less than twenty leagues, and in this narrow space there was an empire of Byzantium, and an empire of Rodesto or Selivrea; the princes, whom ties of blood ought to have united, quarrelled with inveterate fury for the rags of the imperial purple. Brother was armed against brother, and father and son declared open war; all the crimes that had formerly been inspired by the ambition of obtaining the sceptre of the Roman world, were still committed for the advantage of reigning over a few miserable cities. Such was the empire of the East, upon which the Ottoman dominions continued on all sides to encroach.