mans : but after him commenced a deplorable period in the
CHAP. V.] GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453 TO 1494. 65
history of the papacy. During more than half a century
the pontiffs, many of whom were, however, remarkable for
their genius, forgot the interests of Christianity to think
only of their family or their temporal dominions. We have
seen the efforts of Sixtus IV. (1471-84) to create a
sovereignty for his nephew. The feeble Innocent VIII.
(1484-92) did not make the pontificate enter upon better
ways. After him the Church had the grief and shame of
seeing in the chair of St. Peter Alexander VI., the second
Pope of the Borgia family. His election was disgraced by
the most flagrant simony, his pontificate by debauchery,
cruelty, and perfidy. He was not deficient, however, in skill
and penetration ; he excelled in council, and knew how to
conduct important affairs with marvelous address and
activity. It is true he always played with his word, but
the Italy of that day held integrity and good faith in ex-
ceedingly small esteem.
The Roman state was then a prey to a crowd of petty
tyrants and desolated by their bloody rivalries. There
were wars, assassinations, and continual poisonings. At the
very doors of Rome the Colonnas and Orsinis boasted
that they were the handcuffs of the Pope. Alexander VI.
succeeded by means of ruse and cruelty in destroying or
subjugating all these lords. In this undertaking no one
seconded him better than his son, Caesar Borgia, who had
chosen as device, " Aut Caesar, aut nihil." Handsome, edu-
cated, and brave, but corrupt and evil, this man, capable of
striking off the head of a bull with a single blow of his saber,
and of pursuading everything he wished by the enchant-
ment of his speech, used hardly any weapons except lying,
poison, and the dagger. He meditated his blows calmly,
took his time, and acted in silence ; secretissimo, says
Machiavelli, his secretary and panegyrist. "What has not
been done by noon," he often repeated, " will be done in the
evening." No crime was repugnant to him ; he contributed
more than any other to merit for Italy the surname " the
Poisonous " given her by the writers of the time. However,
he could not reap the fruit of his efforts. Scarcely had he
acquired the Romagna when his father died. Says Machi-
avelli, " He had prepared everything, foreseen everything,
save that he was to be at death's door at the moment when
his father was dying." . The father and the son had drunk
by inadvertence a poison which they destined for a cardinal.
66 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER.
As he had betrayed everyone so he was betrayed ; impris-
oned some time by Ferdinand the Catholic, he lived after-
ward as an adventurer, and was slain before a paltry town
of Navarre.
In the kingdom of Naples the victory of Troja in 1462
had placed the crown upon the head of Ferdinand I., but
this prince apparently endeavored to rouse a new revolution
by reviving hatred instead of effacing the marks of civil
strife. The harshness of his government having excited his
nobles against him, he deceived them by promises, invited
them to a festival of reconciliation, and at his own table had
them seized and then butchered. The people were not
better treated than the grandees. Ferdinand monopolized
for himself all the commerce of the kingdom ; he sold
bishoprics and abbeys, made money out of everything, and
knew not how to employ this money in defense of the
state : thus he permitted the Ottomans to seize Otranto in
1480, to massacre its population, and to saw its governor in
two. In 1484 the Venetians also captured Gallipoli and
Policastro on the shores of his kingdom. Such an admin-
istration rendered a catastrophe inevitable and imminent.
At the end of the fifteenth century Italy was a country
of rich and corrupt civilization ; the marvels of the arts
and the splendor of letters poorly concealed its precocious
decline. War was made only by the arms of the condottieri,
who displayed scientific tactics in the skirmish, where blood
flowed little, and who gained their pay as cheaply as pos-
sible. Fatal sign for a people is the loss of military virtues :
to live well one must be ready to die well ; and Italy
trembled before a sword ; so she held in honor the ruse,
the perfidy, and the lie. With poison or the poignard,
questions were resolved which elsewhere or in other times
would have been cut with the sword. Italian diplomacy
was a school of crimes. Surfeited with riches and given
up to anarchy, the peninsula was a prey reserved to him
who should dare to seize it first. Charles VIII. wished to
take it, but before leading him thither let us behold other
conquerers who also were approaching its shores.
CHAPTER VI.
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE FROM 1453 TO 1520.
Mohammed II. (1451-81). Baiezid II. and Selim I. (1481-1520).
FOR the Ottomans the capture of Constantinople had
guaranteed their domination in Europe.
Despite their conquests even to the banks of the Danube
and the shores of the Adriatic, Constantinople while
independent was for them a perpetual
(ii8o mmedn ' menace. One disaster could deprive them
of all, could hurl them back into Asia, whence
the Greeks and the fleets of Christian powers, at last con-
scious of the danger, would have prevented their coming
forth.
Constantinople having fallen, their establishment in
Europe was no longer a camp which a hurricane could
have swept away. The castle of the Seven Towers re-
placed the desert tent.
Mohammed II., the seventh Ottoman emperor, was then
obeyed from the walls of Belgrade on the Danube to the
center of Asia Minor. This empire, already formidable,
had two enemies : on the west the great body of Christian
nations who had easily remained indifferent to the fate of
the schismatic Greeks, but who would not permit them-
selves to be submerged by the invasion which now reached
their frontiers ; on the east, at the center of Asia Minor,
the Sekljoukian principality of Caramania (Koniah,
Kai'sarieh), and behind this principality after its fall
had come (1464) the Persians, animated against the Otto-
mans by the hatred which nearness often excites between
two peoples, and which religious differences envenom. We
shall see Mohammed II. and his successors hurl themselves
against these two barriers ; and the two enemies of the new
empire which menaces both Europe and Asia assist each
68 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BOOK I.
other in arresting its progress. To a success upon the
Danube often replied an attack along the Euphrates ; to
a victory in Asia, a new war in Europe. Nor let us forget
among the enemies of the Ottomans the intrepid troop of
the knights of Rhodes, of that island which hung upon the
flanks of Asia like a vigilant sentinel of Christianity.
To them let us add the raias (flocks), that is to say, the
subjects. For the moment they were docile and trembling,
but more numerous than their masters, at least in Europe.
Later they constituted a danger for the empire, inasmuch
as Mohammed II. granted them privileges which made of
them a national body, having their own laws, tribunals, and
chiefs, as also their own language and religion.*
The Ottoman government was a despotism like that of
all Asiatic peoples. The sultan, or Padishah, exercised
absolute power. His subjects were only his slaves, whom
he exalted or reduced to nothingness according to the
caprices of his will.
This despotism was limited by the forces even upon
which it rested. Thus the Koran was placed above the
sultan. The law of the Prophet was the law of all of the
master as well as of the subjects. Although the mouphti
and oulema, charged with interpreting the Book, had no
political office, the people often listened to their voice when
they invoked the sacred name of God against an iniquitous
or dangerous measure. But those whom the sultans had
most to fear were those who served them best, the Janis-
saries. This chosen soldiery had already revolted under
Mourad II. If we except the nascent army of France, the
Ottomans had at this period an incontestable superiority
over the Europeans in military affairs. They had more
discipline, a larger experience in the art of fortifying
* With a spirit of toleration none other in Europe had thus far shown,
Mohammed II. had allowed the Greeks the free exercise of their religion,
a part of their churches, their civil laws, tribunals, and schools, and had
recognized their patriarch as chief of the community or of the Greek
nation (Roum Mileti), the latter being responsible to the government for the
preservation of order in his nation, and for the payment of the kharadj, or
poll tax, and the other imposts, and being for that purpose invested with
much temporal authority. The Armenians and the Jews obtained the same
privileges and the same organization, so that below the dominant nation
there were three other regularly constituted nations. In our day this
number has been doubled, immunities having been granted to the
Catholic Armenians (1829), to the Protestant Armenians (1850), and to the
Catholics (1854).
CHAP. VI.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1453 TO 1520. 69
strongholds and of casting cannon, and in the skillful em-
ployment of field or siege artillery. Moreover, no Christian
power then had the capacity or the idea of maintaining
a standing army so numerous as that of the sultan. Let
us add to these material means the stimulating energy of
fanaticism and of martial ardor, and we shall comprehend
the rapidity of their progress. " Paradise is found in the
shadow of the sword," had said the Prophet. All the
Christian nations were still aristocratic societies; in the
Ottoman nation the most perfect spirit of equality pre-
vailed. The brave man could aspire to everything, for
even in the densest crowd and among the slaves, the sultan
sought the most courageous and most skillfur to make of
him a pasha or vizier. In all these characteristics we recog-
nize that the Ottomans possessed a great superiority over
the Christians in means of action and instruments of con-
quest. This explains their unbroken successes during a
century which is filled by three great heroes sultans
Mohammed II., Selim I., and Souleiman I. and the feeble
Baiezid II.
To the first is due the glory of having completed the con-
quest of the Greek Empire. He ma.de himself master of
the duchy of Athens, of Corinth, and of almost the whole
Morea (1458). In 1461 he took Trebizond, the following
year the island of Lesbos, and two years later the princi-
pality of Caramania, whose chief, through his attacks upon
the Ottoman rear in Asia Minor, had often arrested their
progress in Europe. The Ottomans resembled then a for-
midable advancing tide beating alternately its opposite
shores ; an ocean, dried up to-day.
Venice, which, as we have seen, openly avowed that she
put her interests above those of Christianity, had obtained
from Mohammed II. (1454) a treaty favorable to her com-
merce. Thus she made small efforts to second Pope Pius
II., who succeeded, however, in uniting the Italian powers
against the Ottomans, but who died of fatigue at Ancona
at the moment of embarkation (1464). At last Venice,
alarmed by their progress, commenced the war on her own
account, but with no result save ravaging the enemy's
coasts.
Against Italy a serious attack was difficult. But Hungary,
situated on the very highway of invasion, had everything to
fear; she accepted the struggle ; Huniadi, her regent, shut
70 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BOOK I.
himself up in Belgrade at the confluence of the Save and
the Danube ; all the forces of Mohammed II. broke them-
selves against it (1456). This valiant man fell in the midst
of his triumph. His son, Mathias Corvinus, replaced him
worthily. Elected king in 1458, he defended the line of the
Danube with success against all the attacks of the sultan.
Hungary owes him her first standing army (the Black
Guard), her cannon foundries, and her university at Buda.
He was the greatest of her kings (1458-93). He would
perhaps have inflicted signal disaster upon the Ottomans if
he had not wasted his strength in an impolitic struggle
against Bohemia and against Frederick III. of Austria, who
refused to restore to Hungary the crown of St. Stephen, and
whose capital, Vienna, Mathias occupied for five years.
Arrested at the north by the Hungarians, who defended
energetically the passage of their rivers, and by the Rou-
manians, who intrenched themselves in their immense for-
tress the Carpathians, Mohammed II. returned southward
and attacked Albania. Its conquest became easy when
Scanderbeg died (1467). This intrepid chieftain, who by
his courage had made himself Prince of Albania (Epirus),
had during twenty-three years repulsed all the Ottoman
attacks and gained over them twenty-two victories. After
his death the Ottomans divided his bones to wear them at
their necks as amulets (1468). Croia, his principal fortress,
did not surrender until ten years later. In 1470 an
immense fleet disembarked an Ottoman army in the Vene-
tian island of Negropont. After four terrible assaults the
capital of the island, which bore the same name, was carried
by storm ; not one of its defenders or of its inhabitants was
spared. Happily Mohammed II. was then called to the
other extremity of his empire by the Tartar Ouzoun Hassan,
who had just founded in Persia the dynasty of the White
Sheep, and whom Pope Paul II. stirred up to attack the
Ottomans. Hassan was beaten (1473). This diversion
had none the less its desired effect. The Moldavians, com-
manded by Stephen IV., the " athlete of Christ," defeated
an Ottoman army near Racovitz (1475) m Albania and
Greece the Ottomans failed in two attacks against Scutari
and Lepanto. Mohammed II. was not accustomed to
defeat. His pride was roused. On the one side he launched
his fleet against Caffa, a rich Genoese emporium on the
Black Sea, which was ruined ; and on the other a countless
CHAP. VI.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1453 TO 1520. 7 1
cavalry penetrated as far as the Piave and cast terror
throughout all Italy (1477).
Humbly Venice demanded peace, and obtained it by
restoring Scutari, and by an annual tribute wherewith she
purchased the liberty of carrying on commerce in the Black
Sea (1479). 1 h e following year an Ottoman fleet seized
Otranto, on the coast of the kingdom of Naples. But this
city was recaptured, and the Grand Master of the Knights
of St. John, Pierre d'Aubusson, defended Rhodes against
the Grand Vizier, who after three months of ineffectual
efforts raised the siege. Mohammed II. none the less
formed the most redoubtable plans. He wished to march
against the Mamelukes of Egypt, swore to feed barley to
his horse upon the altar of St. Peter at Rome, and, when
hearing of the ceremony whereby the Doge of Venice
espoused the Adriatic, promised " to send him quickly to
the bottom of that sea in order to consummate his marriage."
Sickness arrested all these designs. He died at Nicomedia
at the age of fifty-three (1481).
Bai'ezid II., a savant rather than a soldier, had to struggle
against his brother Zizim, or Djem, who disputed the power.
BaVezid ii Thanks to the genius of his Grand Vizier,
and seiim i'. . Achmet, Bai'ezid gained the day. Not long
(1481-1520). after he strangled him to whom he owed the
empire. The conquered Zizim fled to Rhodes. The
knights gave him a brilliant reception. But to avoid a
war with the sultan Pierre d'Aubusson consented, in
return for an annual tribute of 40,000 sequins, to prevent
Zizim from returning to Turkey. He was confined in a
commandery of Poitou. From there he fell into the hands
of Pope Alexander VI. Charles VIII. during his Italian
expedition exacted that this brother of Bai'ezid should be
given up to him. Zizim could aid him in the conquest of
Constantinople. The unfortunate prince was delivered
up, but had been already poisoned. The rumor spread
that the sultan had promised 300,000 ducats to the sover-
eign pontiff if he would rid him of his brother.
Despite his pacific inclinations the sultan was obliged
to occupy the Janissaries ; he conquered Bosnia, Croatia,
and Moldavia. The Ottomans, already masters of Wal-
lachia, then dominated the two banks of the Danube (1489).
But Bai'ezid soon returned to his favorite tastes, the study
of letters, and a short war against Venice alone troubled
72 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER. [BoOK I.
the repose of this indolent and voluptuous prince. He was
deposed by his discontented soldiers. Selim, his fourth son,
girded on the saber and commenced his reign by parricide;
he poisoned his father, then murdered his brothers and
their children, so there should be left no rivals for him to
fear (1512).
The movement of conquest, interrupted under Baiezid II.,
recommenced with Selim the Ferocious. To his warlike
ardor Selim owed the affection of the Janissaries and conse-
quently the power. He justified their hopes ; two Grand
Viziers were successively put to death for having asked him
in what direction his imperial tent should face ; that is to
say, toward what country he was to direct his arms. A
third arranged the tents toward the four corners of the
world. " That is the way," said he, " I wish to be served."
During the eight years of his reign without cessation he
led his Janissaries to new enterprises. First he attacked
Persia, where Ismail had just founded the Sophi dynasty.
There was not only political rivalry between the two peo-
ples, but also religious hate ; the Persians are Schiites ; that
is to say, they acknowledge no legitimate successor of the
Prophet save Ali, the fourth caliph, and his descendants ;
the Ottomans recognize the legitimacy of Aboubekir,
Omar, and Othman, and defer to their theological explana-
tions ; they accept, in a word, the tradition, or Sunna,
whence their name Sunnites. It is among them a popular
saying that the death of a single Schiite is more agreeable
to God than that of seventy Christians ; so before entering
upon the campaign the sultan did not fail to make in his
empire a rigorous search after heretics ; he found 40,000,
who were all put to death. This horrible massacre inau-
gurated the war. The two armies met near Tauris in Ader-
bai'djan and engaged in a terrible battle. The Ottomans
conquered, thanks to their artillery ; but they had lost 40,000
men, and this day is still for them a day of mourning (1514).
The Janissaries compelled Selim to retire ; the only result
of the bloody victory was the temporary possession of
Tauris.
The Mamelukes had ruled for more than two centuries
in Egypt and Syria. This powerful military republic was
an object of disquietude and jealousy to the Ottomans.
Selim passed the Taurus at the head of 150,000 men and
penetrated into Syria, which was opened to him by the trea-
CHAP. VI.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1453 TO 1520. 73
son of the Governor of Damascus and Aleppo. A great
battle was fought near the latter city ; the conquered
Mamelukes lost their sultan, the heroic Kansou-Al-Gouri,
who died of exhaustion and rage after having slain with
his own hand forty enemies.
Syria submitted to the sultan (1516). The victory of
Gaza and another near Cairo gave him Egypt, where he was
received as liberator by the native population. The Copts
delivered to him more than 20,000 Mamelukes, whom he
slaughtered in a single day and whose dead bodies were
thrown into the Nile. Despite this massacre Selim was
obliged to employ a part of the Mameluke beys in the new
administrative organization which he gave Egypt ; and the
Copts as well as the fellahs gained from the Ottoman con-
quests only an aggravation of their misfortunes (1517).
The submission of Egypt brought about that of the Arab
tribes ; the Shereef of Mecca came to offer to the conqueror
the keys of the Kaaba, and Selim found himself master of
the three holy cities, Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. In
1518 a successful expedition against the Persians acquired
for him the Diarbekir, or the upper part of the Tigris and
Euphrates basin.
At Cairo Selim had found Motavakkel, last descendant
of Abbas the Caliph, whom he brought to Constantinople,
where he died in obscurity. But Motavakkel had before
this intrusted to him the standard of Mohammed, and had
resigned to his hands his spiritual authority. So the sultan
became the Commander of the Faithful, the heir of the
Prophet, and held at once, in the language of the Middle
Ages, the two swords, that of temporal authority and that
of spiritual power.
The conquest of Egypt had another result. The capture
of Alexandria by the Ottomans resulted in dealing a mortal
blow to Venice ; her communications with the East were
thenceforward interrupted.
To these vast acquisitions the sultan added that of
Algiers, which a pirate, Horouk, surnamed Barbaroussa, son
of a potter of Mitylene, had in 1516 conquered from the
Spaniards. On the death of Horouk his brother, Khaired-
din, succeeded. But seeing himself too weak to resist the
Arabs and the Christians, he addressed himself to the
Porte, which in return for a formal act of submission
granted him the title of bey, together with 2000 Janissaries,
74 REVOLUTION IN THE POLITICAL ORDER.
artillery, and money. Thanks to this assistance Khaired-
din drove the Spaniards from the fort which they occupied
near the city, and by sagacious labors made the harbor of
Algiers a redoubtable place of rendezvous for his pirates.
So in a few years Selim had almost doubled the empire
of the Ottomans. Its dominion extended from the Danube
to the Euphrates, and from the Adriatic to the cataracts of
the Nile. Masters of the eastern basin of the Mediter-
ranean, where they possessed all the shores, the Ottomans
had just acquired the important port of Algiers on the
western basin of this European sea. The despotic form of
their government assured secrecy to their policy and unity
to their military operations.
Finally, no army in Europe equaled the militia of the
Janissaries. At that moment Selim died, and Souleiman
the Magnificent girded on the saber in the mosque of
Eyoub. He was to be the rival of his two great contem-
poraries, Francis I. and Charles V., the friend of the one,
the enemy of the other (1520).
BOOK II.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE POLITICAL REV-
OLUTION. FIRST EUROPEAN WARS
(1494-1559).
CHAPTER VII.
ITALIAN WARS (1494-1516).]
R/sum/ of the Preceding Period. Expedition of Charles VIII. into
Italy (1494). Louis XII. (1498-1515). New Conquest of the Milan-
ais by Francis I. (1515).
WHILE studying the history of the great European nations
during the second half of the fifteenth century we have
, , seen one general fact produced, and have be-
Resume of the , .* '
preceding pe- held society resume a form of government
which had been lost since the Roman Empire,
namely, the absolute power of kings. This is the political
side of the great revolution which was being accomplished,
and which was going to change the arts, the sciences, the
literatures, and even for half of Europe the beliefs, at the
same time that it changed the institutions.
The inevitable consequence of this first transformation
which placed the peoples with their riches and strength at
the disposition of the kings was to give the latter the
temptation of enlarging their states. The great European
wars were therefore about to succeed the feudal wars as the
kings succeeded the lords.
The second period of Modern Times is formed for us by
these first European wars, called wars of Italy, because the
possession of that country was their occasion and principal
result.
France was the first to come under the feudal regime, and
75
7^ CONSEQUENCES Of THE REVOLUTION. [BOOK It.
with her kings so feeble and her barons so haughty, with
her innumerable castles and her chivalrous literature, she
had been its most brilliant exponent ; she was also the
first to issue from it in order to put on a new and powerful
form. Louis XI., entirely occupied with his great feudal
battle, had said : " The Genoese give themselves to me and
I give them to the devil." But the battle gained and
everything well ordered within, it was essential to look
without, were it only thus to direct the activity of the nobles
and make them pliant to political obedience by accustoming
them to military discipline.
Charles VIII., it is well understood, saw nothing of all
this. He had the instinct but not the comprehension of his
role. The foreign policy of France adopted after Louis XI.
was a necessity. His son had nothing in common with those
men who resist circumstances and control them ; he went