On the death of the Emperor in 1448 the Despot Constantine succeeded to the imperial title; and it is a picturesque fact that the last Emperor of Constantinople was crowned at Mistra, where his wife still lies buried, near that ancient Sparta which had given so many heroes to Hellas. His previous government was bestowed on his youngest brother Demetrios, with the exception of Patras, which was added to the province of Thomas. The new partition took place in Constantinople, where the two brothers solemnly swore before God and their aged mother to love one another and to rule the Morea in perfect unanimity. But no sooner had they arrived at their respective capitals of Mistra and Patras than they proceeded to break their oaths. Thomas, the more enterprising of the two, attacked his brother; Demetrios, destitute of patriotism, called in the aid of the Turks, who readily appeared under the leadership of Turakhan, made Thomas disgorge most of what he had seized, and on the way destroyed what remained of the Hexamilion. The object of this was soon obvious. As soon as the new Sultan, Mohammed II, was ready to attack Constantinople, he ordered Turakhan to keep the two Palaiologoi busy in the Morea, so that they might not send assistance to their brother the Emperor. The old Pasha once again marched into the peninsula; but he found greater resistance than he had expected on the Isthmus. He and his two sons, Achmet and Omar, then spread their forces over the country, plundering and burning as they went, till the certainty of Constantinople’s fall rendered their presence in the Morea no longer necessary. But as Achmet was retiring through the Pass of Dervenaki, that death-trap of armies, between Argos and Corinth, the Greeks fell upon him, routed his men and took him prisoner. Demetrios, either from gratitude for Turakhan’s recent services to him, or from fear of the old warrior’s revenge, released his captive without ransom. It was the last ray of light before the darkness of four centuries descended upon Greece.

The news that Constantinople had fallen and that the Emperor had been slain came like a thunderbolt upon his wretched brothers, who naturally expected that they would be the next victims. But Mohammed was not in a hurry; he knew that he could annihilate them when he chose; meanwhile he was content to accept an annual tribute of 12,000 ducats. The folly of the greedy Byzantine officials, who held the chief posts at the petty courts of Patras and Mistra, had prepared, however, a new danger for the Despots. The Albanian colonists had multiplied while the Greek population had diminished; and the recent Turkish devastations had increased the extent of waste land where they could pasture their sheep. Fired by the great exploits of their countryman, Skanderbeg, in Albania, they were seized by one of those rare yearnings for independence which meet us only occasionally in Albanian history. The official mind seized this untoward moment to demand a higher tax from the Albanian lands. The reply of the shepherds was a general insurrection in which 30,000 Albanians followed the lead of their chieftain, Peter Boua, “the lame.” Their object was to expel the Greeks from the peninsula; but this, of course, did not prevent other Greeks, dissatisfied, for reasons of their own, with the rule of the Despots, from throwing in their lot with the Albanians. A Cantacuzene gained the support of the insurgents for his claims on Mistra by taking an Albanian name; the bastard son of Centurione emerged from prison and was proclaimed as Prince of Achaia. Both Mistra and Patras were besieged; and it soon became clear that nothing but Turkish intervention could save the Morea from becoming an Albanian principality. Accordingly, the aid of the invincible Turakhan was again solicited; and, as Mohammed believed in the policy—long followed in Macedonia by his successors—of keeping the Christian races as evenly balanced as possible, the Turkish general was sent to suppress the revolt without utterly destroying the revolted. Turakhan carried out his instructions with consummate skill. He soon put down the insurgents, but allowed them to retain their stolen cattle and the waste lands which they had occupied, on payment of a fixed rent. He then turned to the two Despots and gave them the excellent advice to live as brothers, to be lenient to their subjects, and to be vigilant in the prevention of disturbances. Needless to say, his advice was not taken.

The power of the Palaiologoi was at an end; and the Greek archontes and Albanian chiefs did not hesitate to put themselves in direct communication with the Sultan when they wanted the confirmation of their privileges. But the Despots might, perhaps, have preserved the forms of authority for the rest of their lives had it not been for the rashness of Thomas, who seemed to be incapable of learning by experience that he only existed on sufferance. In 1457, emboldened by the successes of Skanderbeg, he refused to pay his tribute. Mohammed II was not the man to submit to an insult of that sort from a petty prince whom he could crush whenever he chose. In the spring of the following year the great Sultan appeared at the Isthmus; but this time the noble fortress of Akrocorinth held out against him. Leaving a force behind him to blockade it, he advanced into the interior of the peninsula, accompanied by the self-styled Albanian leader in the late revolt, Cantacuzene, whose influence he found useful in treating with the Arnauts. The Greeks, whom he took, were despatched as colonists to Constantinople; the Albanians, who had broken their parole, were punished by the breaking of their wrists and ankles—a horrible scene long commemorated by the Turkish name of “Tokmak Hissari,” or “the castle of the ankles.” Mouchli, at that time one of the chief towns in the Morea, near the classic ruins of Mantinea, offered considerable resistance; but lack of water forced the defenders to yield, and then the Sultan returned to Corinth. His powerful cannon soon wrecked the bakehouse and the magazines of the citadel; provisions fell short; and the fact was betrayed by the archbishop to the besiegers. At last the place surrendered, and its gallant commander was deputed by Mohammed to bear his terms of peace to Thomas. The latter was ordered to cede the country as far south as Mouchli, and as far west as Patras; this district was then united with the Pashalik of Thessaly, the governor of the whole province being Turakhan’s son Omar, who remained with 10,000 soldiers in the Morea. The other Despot, Demetrios, was commanded to send his daughter to the Sultan’s harem.

Thomas at once complied with his conqueror’s demands; but his ambition soon revived when Mohammed had gone. Fresh victories of Skanderbeg suggested to him the flattering idea that a Palaiologos could do more than a mere Albanian. Divisions among the Turkish officers in his old dominions increased his confidence—a quality in which Greeks are not usually lacking. Early in 1459 he raised the standard of revolt; but, at the same time, committed the folly of attacking his brother’s possessions. Phrantzes, who, after having been sold as a slave when Constantinople fell, had obtained his freedom and had entered the service of Thomas, has stigmatised in forcible language the wickedness of those evil counsellors who had advised his master to embark on a civil war and to “eat his oaths as if they were vegetables.” Most of Thomas’ successes were at the expense of his brother, for, of all the places lately annexed by the Turks, Kalavryta alone was recovered. But the Albanians did far more harm to the country than either the Greeks or the Turkish garrison by plundering both sides with absolute impartiality and deserting from Thomas to Demetrios, or from Demetrios to Thomas, on the slightest provocation. Meanwhile the Turks attacked Thomas at Leondari, at the invitation of his brother; and the defeat which he sustained induced the miserable Despot to go through the form of reconciliation with Demetrios, under the auspices of Holy Church. This display of brotherly love had the usual sequel—a new fratricidal war; but Mohammed II had now made up his mind to put an end to the Palaiologoi, and marched straight to Mistra. Demetrios soon surrendered, and humbly appeared in the presence of his master. The Sultan insisted upon the prompt performance of his former command, that the Despot’s daughter should enter the seraglio, and told him that Mistra could no longer be his. He therefore ordered him to bid his subjects surrender all their cities and fortresses—an order which was at once executed, except at Monemvasia. That splendid citadel, which had so long defied the Franks at the zenith of their power, and boasted of the special protection of Providence, now scorned to surrender to the infidel. The daughter of Demetrios, who had been sent thither for safety, was, indeed, handed over to the Turkish envoys, and Demetrios himself was conducted to Constantinople; but the Monemvasiotes proclaimed Thomas as their liege lord, and he shortly afterwards presented Monemvasia to the Pope, who appointed a governor.

Having thus wiped the province of Demetrios from the map, Mohammed turned his arms against Thomas. Wherever a city resisted, its defenders were punished without mercy and in violation of the most solemn pledges. The Albanian chiefs who had defied the Sultan at Kastritza were sawn asunder; the Albanian captain of Kalavryta was flayed alive; Gardiki was once more the scene of a terrible massacre, ten times worse than that which had disgraced Turakhan thirty-seven years before. These acts of cruelty excited very different feelings in the population. Some, especially the Albanians, were inspired to fight with the courage of despair; others preferred slavery to an heroic death. From the neighbourhood of Navarino alone 10,000 persons were dragged away to colonise Constantinople; and a third of the Greeks of Greveno, which had dared to resist, were carried off as slaves. The castles of Glarentza and Santameri were surrendered by the descendants of Guillaume de Villehardouin’s Turks, who experienced, like the Albanians, the faithless conduct of their conquerors. Meanwhile Thomas had fled to Navarino, and, on the day when the Sultan reached that place, set sail with his wife and family from a neighbouring harbour for Corfù. There the faithful Phrantzes joined him and wrote his history of these events—the swan-song of free Greece.

Another Palaiologos, however, Graitzas by name, showed a heroism of which the Despot was incapable. This man, the last defender of his country, held out in the castle of Salmenikon between Patras and Aigion till the following year, and, when the town was taken, still defied all the efforts of the Turks, who allowed him to withdraw, with all the honours of war, into Venetian territory at Lepanto. In the autumn of 1460 Mohammed left the Morea, after having appointed Zagan Pasha as military governor, with orders to install the new Turkish authorities and to make arrangements for the collection of the capitation tax and of the tribute of children. Thus the Morea fell under Turkish rule, which thenceforward continued for an almost unbroken period of three hundred and fifty years. Save at Monemvasia, where the papal flag still waved, and at Nauplia, Argos, Thermisi, Koron, Modon, and Navarino, where Venice still retained her colonies, there was none to dispute the Sultan’s sway.

The fate of the Palaiologoi deserves a brief notice. Demetrios lived ten years at Ænos in Thrace in the enjoyment of the pension which Mohammed allowed him, and died a monk at Adrianople in 1470. His daughter, whom the Sultan never married after all, had predeceased him. Thomas proceeded to Rome with the head of St Andrew from Patras as a present for the Pope, who received the precious relic with much ceremony at the spot near the Ponte Molle, where the little chapel of St Andrew now commemorates the event, and assigned to its bearer a pension of 300 ducats a month, to which the cardinals added 200 more, and Venice a smaller sum. He died at Rome in 1465, leaving two sons and two daughters. One of the latter died in a convent on the island of Santa Maura; the other married, first a Caracciolo of Naples and then the Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia, by whom she had a daughter, afterwards the wife of Alexander Jagellon of Poland. With this daughter the female line became extinct. Of Thomas’ two sons, the elder, Andrew, married a woman off the streets of Rome, ceded all his rights, first to Charles VIII of France, and then to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and died in 1502 without issue. The younger son, Manuel, escaped from papal tutelage to the court of Mohammed II, who gave him an establishment and allowed him a daily sum for its maintenance. He died a Christian; but of his two sons (the elder of whom died young), the younger became a Mussulman, took the name of Mohammed, and is last heard of in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Though the family would thus appear to have long been extinct, a Cornish antiquary announced in 1815 that the church of Landulph contained a monument to one of Thomas’ descendants. A few years ago a lady residing in London considered herself to be the heiress of the Palaiologoi and aspired to play a part in the Eastern question[59]. But neither of these claims is genealogically sound; for there is no historical proof of the existence of the supposed third son of Thomas, mentioned in the Landulph inscription. But, after all, the world has not lost much by the extinction of this race, nor would the future of Constantinople or Greece be affected by its revival.

APPENDIX
THE NAME OF NAVARINO

Ever since Hopf published his history of mediæval Greece writers on that subject have followed his opinion that the name of Navarino was derived from the Navarrese Company, which entered the Morea in 1381 to support the claims of Jacques de Baux, titular emperor of Constantinople and prince of Achaia, and which established its headquarters at the classic Pylos. Hopf adduces no evidence in support of this derivation, which he thrice repeats[60], except that of the French traveller De Caumont, who saw at Pylos in 1418 ung chasteau hault sur une montaigne que se nomme chasteau Navarres[61]. But his opinion, mainly formed in order to controvert the anti-Hellenic theory of Fallmerayer, has been followed, also without proof, by Hertzberg[62], Tozer[63], and more tentatively by Paparregopoulos[64]. The name of Navarino, however, seems to have existed long before the Navarrese Company ever set foot in Greece. Nearly a century earlier a golden bull[65] of the Emperor Andronikos II, dated 1293, confirmed the possessions of the church of Monemvasia, among which it specially mentions τὴν Πύλον, τὸν καλούμενον Ἀβαρῖνον. A little before the date of this imperial document (1287-1289) Nicholas II de Saint-Omer, lord of half Thebes, was bailie of the principality of Achaia for Charles II of Naples, and the Greek Chronicle of the Morea[66] tells us that ἔχτισεν τὸ κάστρον τοῦ Ἀβαρίνου. Now Hopf himself thought that the French version of the Chronicle, Le Livre de la Conqueste[67] (in which the above passage runs ferma le chastel de port de Junch), was the original of the four editions which we possess. It is generally agreed that the French version was written between 1333 and 1341; but it is by no means certain that the French is the original and the Greek a translation; rather would it appear that the Greek was the original, in which case it was composed in the early part of the fourteenth century, for the one passage[68] which refers to an event as late as 1388 is regarded as an interpolation by the latest editor of the Chronicle, Dr Schmitt. Even the most recent of all the four versions—the Aragonese—was written, as it expressly says[69], no later than 1393. Therefore we have every reason for regarding the mention of the name Ἀβαρῖνος in the Greek Chronicle as a second proof that it was in common use long before the time of the Navarrese[70].

There are several other passages in which the name occurs, the date of which cannot, however, be fixed with certainty. In the Synekdemos of Hierokles[71] we have three times the phrase Πύλος, ἡ πατρὶς Νέστορος, νῦν δὲ καλεῖται Ἀβαρῖνος. Now Hierokles wrote before 535, but all these three passages occur in the lists of towns which have changed their names, and these three lists must belong, as Krumbacher points out, to a much later period than the main body of the work. The scholiast to Ptolemy[72] also makes an annotation Πύλος ὀ καὶ Ἀβαρῖνος, and in the Latin manuscripts of that passage the rendering is Pylus, qui et Abarmus (sic).