HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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double streights were guarded by ships and fortifications ; and they separatelywith-held the transport which Timour demanded of either nation, under the-pretence of attacking their enemy.

An, alliance so politically preposterous could be neither cordial nor lasting.Within the space of a very few years, the ancient spirit of animosity becamerenewed with tenfold vigour. The rapid strides made by the Ottoman army,served to augment instead of allay the thirst of dominion, and nothing short ofthe complete annihilation of the Greek empire, to be finally effected by theconquest of Constantinople itself, seemed capable of glutting the ambition ofthe Turk. Mahomet the Second was the mighty conqueror who perfectedthis great design, which had in all probability regularly held a place for manygenerations in the minds and intentions of the Sultans, as though magicallyconferred by the weight and splendour of the imperial turban. As a preludeto his design, he began to erect a fortress on the European shore of the Hel-lespont, or passage leading into the Propontis, which, as he already possessedone opposite to it on the. Asiatic side, gave him the complete command of thatnarrow streight, and enabled him to prescribe laws to all nations whateverthat wished to extend their commerce thither. Scarcely was the fortressfinished, the completion of which the Emperor of the East had by every pos-sible use of entreaty and persuasion that anxiety could suggest, in vainattempted to deprecate, ere he gave a signal proof of his severe intentions,and the peremptory measures he intended to adopt towards all countrieswhatever who presumed to act in defiance of his commands, and approachwithin the reach of his cannon, a tremendous and then newly invented enginefor military annoyance. At Venetian merchant vessel, rashly contemning theorders of a despot, whose naval strength his countrymen affected, at that time,to hold in contempt, fell a sacrifice- to its temerity, being, sunk by a cannonshot, and its master, together with all his peopLe, who in vain attempted tomake their escape in the boat, were inhumanly put to death as rebels, or traitors,that presumed to offend against the imperious will of a savage master.

Avery frivolous dispute, in the year 1452* furnished Mahomet with whathe considered a sufficient pretext to commence his hostile operations, nor didhe hesitate publicly to avow his intention of annihilating the empire of theEast. The indolence of the Greeks themselves, the intestine religious feudswhich subsisted between them and the Franks, and the tardy conduct of those

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