THE DECLINE AND FALL

166

CHAP.

LXVII.

a proud defiance to the Turkish court, recom-mended him to the favour of Amurath; and hisTurkish appellation of Scanderbeg (Iskenderbeg), or the lord Alexander, is an indelible me-morial of his glory and servitude. His father’sprincipality was reduced into a province: butthe loss was compensated by the rank and titleof sanjak, a command of five thousand horse,and the prospect of the first dignities of the em-pire. He served with honour in the wars ofEurope and Asia; and we may smile at the artor credulity of the historian, who supposes thatin every encounter he spared the Christians,while he fell with a thundering arm on his mussulmanfoes. The glory of Huniades is without re-proach; he fought in the defence of his religionand country; but the enemies who applaud thepatriot have branded his rival with the name oftraitor and apostate. In the eyes of the Chris-tians, the rebellion of Scanderbeg is justified byhis father’s wrongs, the ambiguous death of histhree brothers, his own degradation, and theslavery of his country; and they adore the ge-nerous, though tardy zeal, with which he assert-ed the faith and independence of his ancestors.But he had imbibed from his ninth year the doc-trines of the koran; he was ignorant of the gos-pel; the religion of a soldier is determined byauthority and habit; nor is it easy to conceivewhat new illumination, at the age of forty, p could

r Since Scanderbeg died A. D. 1466, in the 03d year of his age (Ma-rinus, 1. xiii, p. 370), he was born in 1403; since he was torn from hisparents by the Turks when he was noienes (Marinos, 1. i, p. 1, 0), thatevent must have happened in 1412, nine years before the accession of

Amurath