MOHAMMED MOHAMMED ALL 



13 



stantinople. The Christian powers in Europe re- 

 mained quiet spectators. April 6, 1453, Mohammed 

 appeared before Constantinople, to which he laid 

 siege with an army of 300,000 soldiers, and by 

 water with 300 galleys and 200 small vessels. The 

 besieged had drawn strong iron chains before the 

 harbour, and made a brave resistance, though they 

 had but about 10,000 men to oppose so great a 

 force. But Mohammed, having contrived to get a 

 part of his fleet over land into the harbour, and 

 caused a bridge of boats to be constructed and occu- 

 pied with cannon, the Greeks were overcome, after 

 a defence of fifty-three days, and the empire came to 

 its end. The city was taken by storm on the 29th 

 May, and abandoned to pillage. The emperor Con- 

 stantine Palaeologus fell, at the commencement of the 

 assault, sword in hand. In a few hours, the conquest 

 of the city was completed. The conquerors gave 

 themselves up to all cruelty and excess. During 

 the sack, a young princess, named Irene, was brought 

 to Mohammed, and for three days he compelled her 

 to satisfy his passion. Some janizaries murmured, 

 and a vizier even dared to reprove him. Mohammed 

 immediately sent for the captive, took her by the 

 hair, and murdered her before the discontented, with 

 the words, " Thus Mohammed deals with love." 

 When he entered the city, he found it desolate ; but 

 as he designed it for the principal seat of his empire, 

 he strove to attract new inhabitants by promising 

 the Greeks full religious liberty, and permitting them 

 to choose a new patriarch, whose dignity he himself 

 increased. Constantinople under him soon became 

 again flourishing. He restored the fortifications, 

 and, for greater security, caused the forts called the 

 Dardanelles (q. v.) to be erected at the mouth of 

 the Hellespont. Mohammed pursued his conquests, 

 which were checked for a time by Scanderbeg, prince 

 of Albania, who was favoured by the mountainous 

 character of the country. The sultan finally con- 

 cluded peace with him, but after Scanderbeg's death, 

 in 1466, soon subjugated all Albania. His further 

 advances into Hungary were prevented by the cele- 

 brated John Hunniades, who obliged him, in 1456, to 

 raise the siege of Belgrade, in which he had lost 

 25,000 men. and had been himself severely wounded. 

 The son of the great Hunniades, king Matthias 

 Corvinus, also kept the Turks from Hungary, and 

 even took from them Bosnia. On the other hand, 

 Mohammed conquered, in a short time, Servia, 

 Greece, and all Peloponnesus, most of the islands of 

 the Archipelago, and the Greek empire of the 

 Comneni, established in the beginning of the thir- 

 teenth century, at Trebisond, on the coast of Asia 

 Minor. The Christian powers began to be appre- 

 hensive of the progress of his arms, and at the 

 instigation of pope Pius II., in 1459, a crusade 

 against the Turks was resolved upon at Mantua, 

 which was never, however, executed, on account of 

 the bad constitution of most of the European states. 

 From the republic of Venice Mohammed tore Negro- 

 pont, in 1470. He also stripped them of other pos- 

 sessions, and took Caffa from the Genoese, in 1474. 

 Frequent wars with the Persians prevented the fur- 

 ther prosecution of his enterprises against the Chris- 

 tian powers. In 1480, he attacked the island of 

 Rhodes, but was repulsed by the knights with great 

 loss. He now turned his anus against Italy, took 

 Otranto, and would probably have pursued his 

 conquests in this country but for his death, in 1481, 

 on an expedition against Persia. During his reign 

 of thirty years, he liad conquered twelve kingdoms 

 and upwards of 200 cities. On his tomb he ordered 

 the words to be affixed, " I would have taken Rhodes 

 and conquered Italy," probably as a stimulus to his 

 successors. His character was distinguished by 



talents, ambition, courage, and fortune, and disgraced 

 by cruelty, perfidiousness, sensuality, and contempt 

 of all laws. He spoke Greek, Arabic, and Persian; 

 understood Latin ; drew and painted ; had a know- 

 ledge of geography and mathematics, and of the 

 history of the great men of antiquity. In short, he 

 would have been a hero, had not his cruelties 

 blackened his reputation. Policy sometimes kept 

 in check the impetuosity of his character ; but he 

 was too often the slave of passions, though all the 

 cruelties ascribed to him are not to be credited. 



MOHAMMED IV., born in 1642, was raised to 

 the throne while a boy of seven years, his father, 

 Ibrahim, having been murdered in an insurrection of 

 the janizaries. His grandmother, an ambitious wo- 

 man, managed the government, but perished in a 

 revolution of the seraglio. The celebrated grand- 

 vizier Mohammed Kuperli (or Kuprili) was now 

 placed at the head of the government. To this 

 great minister, and to his equally great son and suc- 

 cessor, the Turkish empire was indebted for the 

 consequence which it maintained till the end of the 

 seventeenth century. Mohammed was himself an 

 insignificant personage, whose principal passion was 

 the chase. Kuperli turned his chief attention to 

 the restoration of the internal tranquillity of the 

 empire, to which he sacrificed a great number of 

 persons. The war begun in 1645 against the Ven- 

 etians, mainly respecting the island of Candia, was, 

 therefore, but weakly prosecuted. But, in 1667., 

 Achmet Kuperli, one of the greatest Turkish generals, 

 undertook the famous siege of this island (see Candia), 

 which lasted two years and four months. The cap- 

 itulation was signed September 5, 1669, at the same 

 time with the terms of peace between Venice and 

 the Turks. A war had already broken out (1660) 

 with the emperor Leopold, on account of Transyl- 

 vania. The Turks had made considerable progress 

 in Hungary, when they were totally defeated, August 

 3, 1664, by Montecuccoli, at St Gothard. Never- 

 theless, to the astonishment of all, the emperor 

 accepted the disadvantageous truce of Temeswar, of 

 twenty days, proffered by the Turks. Never had 

 the Turks approached so near the boundaries of 

 Germany as now. The anarchy which prevailed in 

 Poland under king Michael, and the disturbances of 

 the Cossacks, gave occasion, in 1672, to a war of 

 the Turks against Poland, which had to purchase 

 peace on ignominious conditions. But the great 

 Polish general John Sobieski revenged the ignominy 

 of his nation by a decisive victory at Choczim, in 

 1673, and, in 1676, obtained from the Turks an 

 honourable peace. Sobieski also contributed most 

 essentially to the relief of Vienna, which was besieg- 

 ed for more than six weeks by the grand vizier 

 Kara Mustapha, with 200,000 men, in the war caused, 

 in 1683, by the malcontents in Hungary. The 

 Turks were attacked in their camp, September 2, 

 by the allied Christian army, and defeated, with ex- 

 traordinary loss. The grand-vizier atoned for his 

 ill success with his life. The emperor, Poland, 

 Russia, and Venice, now concluded an alliance 

 against the Turks, who suffered losses in every quar- 

 ter : for example, they were utterly defeated at 

 Mohacz by Charles, duke of Lorraine. As all these 

 misfortunes were attributed to the effeminacy and 

 inactivity of the sultan, Mohammed IV., he was 

 deposed in 1687, and died, in prison, in 1691. 



MOHAMMED ALI (also MEHEMMED ALI) 

 Pacha, viceroy of Egypt, is of Turkish origin, and 

 was born at Cavala, in Macedonia, in the year 

 1769. His life, like that of his contemporary, Maii- 

 mond II., is so intimately connected with the modern 

 history of the East, that we shall here take a brief 

 view of it, although death has riot yet marked out 



