In the first crusade their success began with the siege and conquest of Nicæa, and the plains of Asia Minor became again the battle-field of nations. Here the chivalry of Europe met the horsemen of the sultan, and withstood their shock, and Dorylæum became the second time the scene of a decisive battle; the cities of Antioch of Pisidia and Iconium recruited the crusaders, after an exhausting march through the bare and arid plains of Phrygia. Thence they crossed the mountain barrier of Taurus, and descending into Cilicia, proceeded to the conquest of Syria and the Holy Land. The establishment of the Genoese at Constantinople, and in numerous places along the coast and in the interior, followed the march of the Crusaders, and the Greek emperor received an insidious foe into his confidence, instead of an open enemy at his door, whilst in the course of the ensuing half century the Seljukian Turks had again invaded Asia Minor, and re-established the flourishing kingdom of Iconium.
But soon a new power appeared on the stage of the war. In the beginning of the thirteenth century Jenghiz Khan led his Mogul followers from their native deserts to the conquest of the world. Their progress was not checked by his death in 1227, for under his sons and grandsons their power extended over China, Persia, Hungary, Russia, and Syria; and when checked in Egypt they spread themselves over Armenia and Asia Minor. Here the Sultans of Iconium offered some resistance to their progress until Ala-ud-Din sought refuge in Constantinople. But when at length the tide of Mogul conquest rolled back towards the East, the Seljukian Dynasty of Iconium was extinct; Orthogrul, one of the followers of Ala-ud-Din, the last of their sultans, pitched his camp of four hundred families at Surghut on the banks of the Sangarius; and his immediate descendants, having penetrated into Bithynia in 1299, established themselves soon after in the city of Brusa. The division of Anatolia amongst the Turkish emirs was the immediate result of this conquest; the remaining Asiatic provinces, with the seven churches of Asia, were finally lost to the Christian emperor, and the Turkish rulers of Lydia and Ionia still trample on the ruins of Christian monuments.
For above 150 years the Turks of the Ottoman line held possession of Anatolia, and the frequent contests which took place between them and the naval forces of the Christians only tended to increase the power of the Ottomans, to facilitate their passage into Europe, and to bring about their establishment in Thrace and in the neighbourhood of Adrianople. With the exception of the kingdom of Trebizond, Bajazet I had conquered all the Asiatic provinces of the emperor, and only a small extent of ground in the neighbourhood of Constantinople remained to him in Europe. From the imperial residence at Brusa were issued commands almost to the Indus, and Constantinople itself appeared to be within the grasp of Bajazet. Already he had prepared his expedition, and the capital of the empire was about to become his prey, when a temporary relief appeared from a new quarter, and Bajazet himself was overthrown by a stronger arm.
This rival power had sprung up in the wilds about Samarcand, and the world was again to be conquered by an army of Tatars and Moguls, under the command of Timur, or Tamerlane. Persia, Tatary, and India had already yielded to his arms before he turned them against the Ottoman empire, influenced by the quarrels and dissensions which had arisen between Bajazet and his Christian neighbours. The genius of Tamerlane prevailed in the memorable battle of Angora; the sultan lost at once his kingdom and his liberty, and the conqueror established himself at Kutahiyah. The sea put a limit to his progress, and, without the means of transporting his army into Europe, he meditated at Smyrna the conquest of China, but died on his march to the Celestial empire.
Brusa became again, in 1403, the capital of the Ottoman empire, and shared with Adrianople the honours of imperial residence; but Anatolia was distracted for nearly forty years by the civil wars of the sons and descendants of Bajazet, until Muhammed II ascended the throne, in 1451, to close the existence of the Byzantine empire. Weakened and exhausted in each successive reign, and having lost one by one those rich and fertile provinces which formed the brightest gems in the imperial diadem, Constantinople was reduced to the last stage of misery, even before the Turkish host had surrounded its triple fortifications. It still breathed with convulsive throbs, like a trunk deprived of its limbs, suffering under the last pulsations of life. Some Greeks displayed at the last moments an unavailing courage, even after the enemy had scaled the walls, but it only served to exasperate the cruelty of their conquerors.
The fall of Constantinople, in 1453, and the loss of Trebizond in 1461, concluded the history of the Empire of the East. Since that period, subject to the rule and grasp of Turkish despots, the towns of Asia Minor have lost their trade and commerce, her population has been exhausted, and her fairest and richest plains have been left without care or culture. The authority of the janissaries, the despotism of the porte, and the revolts of the local governors have kept up, until within a few years, a system of hostility between the different provinces, while the uncertain tenure of their command, and their jealousy of each other, prevented the chiefs who were well disposed from checking the incursions of the nomad tribes of Turkomans and Kurds, who had settled in her central plains. These combined causes paralysed also, for many years, the energies of European travellers. Dangers and difficulties, which could neither be anticipated nor prevented, rendered a great part of the interior of Asia Minor a sealed book to the inquirer; and her many interesting records of antiquity, towns, temples, citadels, and sepulchral monuments, in various stages of decay, were long unknown. During this dark period the avarice and bigotry of the Turks systematically destroyed them, or consigned them to the chisel or the limekiln.
But there is a dawn, however faint, of happier days in the East. The bigotry of the Turk has yielded to a more frequent intercourse with the Christians, and many of the former difficulties are removed by the establishment, for a time at least, of the authority of the Porte throughout the Asiatic provinces, from the Euxine to the shores of Caramania, and from the coast of Ionia to the eastern confines of Cappadocia, and the effect of this partial improvement is visible in the crowds of eager and enterprising travellers who direct their steps to the shores of Ionia and Caria, and penetrate into the districts of Phrygia, Lydia, and Galatia.
