Amurath had retired for the second time to Magnesia after the victory of Varna, but he was recalled by the outbreak of disorders which Mohammed was unable to quell, and he continued to rule till his death in 1451. During his last years he was busied with a rising in Albania, headed by George Castriot, or Scanderbeg, as the Turks |Scanderbeg in Albania.| called him. This famous patriot had been trained in the Turkish service, and thoroughly understood the strength and the weakness of their tactics. Collecting round him a band of hardy mountaineers, he avoided all conflicts in the open ground; and, aided by the difficult character of the country, maintained a harassing guerilla warfare for more than twenty years. But though he caused great annoyance to his enemies, he was not strong enough to divert them from the career of successful aggression which has given to a prince, who had twice shown an apparent incapacity for government, the name of Mohammed the Conqueror.
Mohammed II. ascended the throne with the firm determination to reduce the tributary states into complete subjection, and to begin the work with the Greek Empire. The year 1452 was spent in open preparation |Mohammed II. takes Constantinople.| for the siege of Constantinople. A fort was built upon the Bosphorus, troops and stores were collected from all parts of the Turkish dominions, and foreign engineers were employed to construct larger cannon than had ever yet been employed in warfare. Constantine, who had succeeded his brother John in 1448, was fully aware of the danger which threatened his capital. To remove any difficulties with the western powers he confirmed the acts of the Council of Florence, and the union of the Churches was formally celebrated in St. Sophia. The bigoted Greeks looked on in sullen indignation, and resolved to do nothing for a prince who thus paltered with heresy. And Latin Christendom was not prepared to do anything in return for this tardy acceptance of its creed. France and England were exhausted by their long struggle, which was just ending in the loss of the English possessions on the mainland; Philip of Burgundy was absorbed in the extension of his rule in the Netherlands; Germany was hopelessly distracted; and Frederick III., the weakest of emperors, was unable to govern even his own hereditary provinces. In the eastern states the disputes that had gathered round the succession of Ladislas Postumus distracted attention from vital interests in the distant Balkan peninsula. The only peoples who could give any aid to the Greeks were the Venetians, Genoese, and Catalans, whose trade with the Levant impelled them to do all in their power to maintain the feeble ramparts of Christianity against the Turks; and their forces, scanty as they were in proportion to the work to be performed, provided the only efficient garrison for the city of the eastern Cæsars. In the spring of 1453 the great siege began. The first general assault was repulsed; and a Genoese squadron, by superior weight and seamanship, forced its way through the immense Turkish flotilla which attempted to exclude the arrival of supplies and reinforcements by sea. But this was the last success of the defenders, whose limited numbers had to hold five miles of fortifications against an overwhelming attack. On the 29th of May the last assault was ordered, and after a desperate struggle for two hours the Janissaries forced an entrance through a great breach which the artillery had made in the wall. The Emperor Constantine, whose heroism did something to redeem the cowardly incapacity of his predecessors, fell at the head of the defenders of his capital. The mass of the Greeks did nothing to resist the advance of the victorious assailants, and Mohammed II. made a triumphal progress to the Church of St. Sophia, which witnessed on that day the first celebration of the worship of the Prophet. The measures of the conqueror were marked by consummate wisdom. To conciliate the bigotry of the natives, which had signally contributed to his victory, and to interpose a permanent barrier between his new subjects and western Christendom, Mohammed proclaimed himself the protector of the Greek Church, and allowed the installation of a new Patriarch, whose gratitude should take the form of servility to his Mussulman patron. To remove the disastrous results of the siege, Mohammed set himself to restore the buildings of the city, and to encourage the immigration of settlers from all parts of his dominions. Before the end of his reign Constantinople was more populous and more flourishing than it had been at any time under the rule of the Palæologi.
The European powers were aghast when the news arrived that Constantinople had fallen; but as they had been impotent to save the city, they were still more unable to attempt its recovery with any prospect of success. This was fully recognised by those states which were most immediately concerned. The Venetians and Genoese continued their inveterate rivalry in the haste with which they made terms with the conqueror, and purchased the retention of their trading privileges and of their possessions in the east by the payment of tribute. The two brothers of Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas, who had established themselves as petty princes at Patras and Mistra in the Morea, obtained temporary recognition upon similar terms, and even received Turkish aid to put down a rebellion among their subjects. Leaving these self-seeking vassals in their humiliating dependence, Mohammed turned his arms to the subjection of the tributary states in the |Conquest of Servia, Wallachia, and Bosnia.| north. In 1455 he advanced through Servia, expelled its king, and in the next year laid siege to Belgrade. Here he met with his first and most serious reverse. The crusading army raised by Hunyadi and Capistrano not only relieved the fortress, but drove the sultan and his shattered army in disorderly flight to Sofia (see p. [412]). This signal triumph saved Hungary and eastern Germany from serious danger for eighty years, but it failed to effect the liberation of the Balkan states. The Hungarian hero died on the scene of his greatest exploit; and the subsequent death of Ladislas Postumus, and the difficulties attending the succession, distracted the attention of Hungary from the eastern war. Mohammed II. returned to the attack with renewed vigour, and in 1457 and 1458 Servia was again overrun and made a province of the Ottoman dominions. For the next three years Mohammed was engaged with war in Albania and in Greece, but in 1462 he again turned northwards and completed his work by the annexation of Wallachia (1462) and of Bosnia (1464).
The incompetence of the two surviving Palæologi, Thomas and Demetrius, and their incessant quarrels with each other, created such anarchy in the Morea that intervention |Conquest of Greece.| was almost forced upon the Turks. At first a few garrisons were sent to the chief cities for the enforcement of order, but in 1460 an army was despatched to take more stringent measures. Resistance was hopeless. Demetrius was taken prisoner and conveyed to Asia Minor, where a small territory was assigned to him rather as a place of exile than as a principality. Thomas fled in a Venetian galley to Corfu, and thence made his way to Rome. By the end of the year the whole of the peninsula, with the exception of a few harbours which were held by the Venetians, was in Turkish occupation. At the same time, the Turks were also active to the north of the isthmus of Corinth. The last duke of Athens was put to death by the bowstring; and his duchy, with the other Frankish principalities which had survived since the partition of Greece among the Crusaders, was annexed by the Turks. In the Ægean the conquest of the islands was undertaken by a Turkish fleet, and was completed in 1462 by the capture of Lesbos. Only Rhodes continued to make good its resistance under the Knights of St. John.
The annexation of Greece constituted a serious danger to the Venetians, who now held the only considerable possessions in the east which were left under Christian rule. So far they had gained rather than lost by the fall of Constantinople, because their treaty with Mohammed in 1454 had given them greater advantages over the Genoese than they could have extorted from the Palæologi, who had usually favoured their rivals. But a series of significant events convinced them that the sultan was not likely to observe the treaty any longer than his interest impelled him. While he was still confronted with serious problems in the north and the south, he had good reason for desiring to pacify Venice. But his successive conquests had removed these difficulties from his way, and there was no longer any substantial reason for allowing the Venetian dominions to escape the fate that had attended the other tributary states. There had always been a party in Venice which had opposed the |War with Venice.| policy expressed in the treaty of 1454; and the obvious approach of danger, heralded by the fall of Lesbos, enabled this party to gain the upper hand in 1463. It is needless to trace the history of the war, which has been already alluded to in connection with the history of Venice (see Chapter [XII].). On the whole, it was creditable to the capacity and the resolution of the great maritime republic; and though the Venetians could not prevent the loss of Negropont and the conquest of Albania, which had been left under their protection on the death of Scanderbeg, they obtained better terms than were given to any other opponent of Mohammed. By the treaty of Constantinople in 1479 the Turks obtained Albania and the islands of Negropont and Lemnos, but Venice was able to keep her possessions in the Morea and some of her trading privileges in the Levant on payment of increased tribute. The Venetian quarter in Constantinople was restored under the administration of a bailiff appointed by the Republic.
The conquests of Mohammed II. were not confined to Greece and the Balkan peninsula. In Asia Minor he extinguished |Other conquests of Mohammed II.| the independence of the feeble empire of Trebizond (1461), which had been allowed to remain in harmless obscurity under a branch of the Comneni ever since their expulsion from Constantinople in 1204. He also completed the subjection of the princes of Caramania, the most inveterate opponents of the Ottoman ascendency. To the north of the Black Sea he extorted tribute from the Tartars of the Crimea, and ruined the Genoese by depriving them of their valuable establishments at Kaffa and Azof. In 1480 he undertook an enterprise which made almost more sensation in Europe than the siege of Constantinople. A Turkish force landed on the coast of Apulia and took possession of Otranto. For the moment men believed that the conqueror of the eastern empire would complete his fatal work by the capture of Rome, the capital of the west. But the dreadful anticipation was never realised. The death of Mohammed in |Mohammed’s death, 1481.| 1481 led to the recall of the garrison from Otranto. Under his successor Bajazet II., the only one of the early Ottoman rulers who did not display conspicuous courage and ability, the progress of the Turkish arms was stayed for a generation, to be resumed again under Selim I., the conqueror of Egypt, and under the great Suleiman, who at last overcame the obstacle offered by Belgrade, and added to his dominions the greater part of Hungary.
CHAPTER XXII
THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Some differences between mediæval and modern history—The period of the Renaissance is the transition between the two periods—The Renaissance in its wider and in its narrower sense—Prominence of Italy in the Renaissance—The revival of letters—Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio—The age of collectors—The age of criticism—The revival of art—(1) Painting—(2) Sculpture—(3) Architecture—Humanism and the Reformation—The impulse given to education.
The division of history into periods is always arbitrary, and always, if too rigidly interpreted, misleading. Yet some sort of division is not only convenient, but almost |Mediæval and modern history.| necessary, and the distinction between mediæval and modern history is as clearly marked as any distinction of the kind can be. It is, of course, impossible to fix upon any date, and to say that here the Middle Ages come to an end and modern times begin, just as it is impossible to say that on a given day in the year winter ends and spring begins. The changes in history, as in the seasons, are gradual, and not sudden. Between the great historic epochs there is a period of transition in which the changes which mark them off from each other are slowly developing, sometimes advancing, sometimes apparently receding, but ultimately, by a gradual evolutionary process, reaching completion. And another word of caution is necessary. It must be borne in mind that the Middle Ages—the period which follows the disruption of the Roman Empire by the immigration of the German peoples, and ends with the formation of the great national states which still exist—do not constitute a complete homogeneous and stationary epoch. Social and political changes were not perhaps quite as rapid before the fifteenth century as they have been since the Reformation, but changes were constantly taking place. A generalisation about the eighth century cannot be applied without serious modifications to the eleventh or the twelfth. All attempts to estimate the Middle Ages as a whole can only be extremely superficial and general.
It follows that it is impossible to give any adequate account of the differences between mediæval and modern history in a few perfunctory sentences or paragraphs. The |Differences between the two periods.| differences are real and substantial, but they must be felt rather than expressed, and can only be properly and usefully comprehended by a prolonged study of the past. There is, it may be said, a difference of historical atmosphere, to which some historians, eager above measure to find comparisons and parallels, have never become acclimatised, in spite of great learning and research. The often-quoted phrase that ‘history is past politics’ has been responsible for a woful number of anachronisms. For the historical student imagination, the power of projecting himself by a sort of instinct into the conditions and life of the past, is almost as necessary a quality as painstaking industry. And imagination is rather fettered than assisted by the attempt to express what it sees, in precise and formal language. For the immediate purpose of this chapter it will be better to abandon all attempt at minute precision or completeness of analysis, and to be content with pointing out three salient characteristics of the Middle Ages, which the modern reader should grasp at the outset. These may serve to guide him to the appreciation of other and deeper distinctions between that period and the more familiar times that have followed it.