OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

J83

a useless train of seven thousand falconers was chap.either dismissed from his service, or enlisted inhis troops. In the first summer of his reignhe visited with an army the Asiatic provinces;hut after humbling the pride, Mahomet accept-ed the submission, of the Caramanian, that hemight not be diverted by the smallest obstaclefrom the execution of his great design. k

The rnahometan, and more especially the Hostile in.

7 ~ J tentions oi

Turkish casuists have pronounced that no pro- Mahomet,

• 1-11 . J 1 . . . 1 A. D. 1451 .

mise can bind the faithful against the interestand duty of their religion; and that the sultanmay abrogate his own treaties and those of hispredecessors. The justice and magnanimity ofAmurath had scorned this immoral privilege;but his son, though the proudest of men, couldstoop from ambition to the basest arts of dissi-mulation and deceit. Peace was on his lips,while war was in his heart; he incessantly sigh-ed for the possession of Constantinople ; and theGreeks, by their own indiscretion, afforded thefirst pretence of the fatal rupture . 1 Instead of

k See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas (c. 33), Phranza (1. i,c. 33, 1. iii, c. 2), Chalcocondyles (1. vii, p. 199), and Cantemir, p. 96).

1 Before I enter on the siege of Constantinople I shall observe, thatexcept the short hints of Cantemir and Leunclavius , I have not beenable to obtain any Turkish account of this conquest; such an accountas we possess of the siege of Rhodes by Solimau II. (Memoires del’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxvi, p. 723-769). I must, therefore,depend on the Greeks, whose prejudices, in some degree, are subduedby their distress. Our standard texts are those of Ducas (c. 34-42),

Phranza (1. iii, c. 7-20), Chalcocondyles (1. viii, p. 201-214), and Leo-nardos Chiensis (Historia C. P. a Turco expugnatze. Norimberghze,

1544, in quarto, twenty leaves). The last of these narratives is theearliest in date, since it was composed in the isle of Chios , the 16th ofAugust 1453, only seventy-nine days after the loss of the city, and inthe first confusion of ideas and passions. Some hints may be added

from