170

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

LXVII.

permitted to negotiate a truce; and the Albanianprince may justly be praised as a firm and ablechampion of his national independence. Theenthusiasm of chivalry and religion has rankedhim with the names of Alexander and Pyrrhus :nor would they blush to acknowledge their intre-pid countryman: but his narrow dominion, andslender powers, must leave him at an humble dis-tance below the heroes of antiquity, who triumph-ed over the East and the Roman legions. Hissplendid achievements, the bashaws whom heencountered, the armies that he discomfited, andthe three thousand Turks who were slain by hissingle hand, must be weighed in the scales ofsuspicious criticism. Against an illiterate ene-my, and in the dark solitude of Epirus, his par-tial biographers may safely indulge the latitudeof romance: but their fictions are exposed bythe light of Italian history; and they afford astrong presumption against their own truth, by afabulous tale of his exploits, when he passed theAd riatic with eight hundred horse to the succourof the king of Naples." Without disparagementto his fame, they might have owned that he wasfinally oppressed by the Ottoman powers: in hisextreme danger, he applied to pope Pius the se-cond for a refuge in the ecclesiastical state; andhis resources were almost exhausted, since Scan-

u Sec the marvels of his Calabrian expedition in the ninth and tenthbooks of Marinin Barletins, which may be rectified by the testimonyor silence of Muratori (Annali dTtalia, tom.xiii, p. 291), and his origi-nal authors (Joh. Simonetta de Rebus Francisci Sfortioe, in Muratori,Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xxi, p. 728, et alias)- The Albanian cavalry,nnder the name of Stradiott, soon became famous in the wars of Italy (Memoires de Comines, 1. viii, c. 5).