TURKEY IN ASIA IS 



Christian inhabitants of the country t as gave rise to the famous cru» 

 sades, which we have mentioned more fully in the Introduction. 



It unfortunately happened, that the Greek emperors were generally 

 tnore jealous of the progress of the Christians than the Turks ; and 

 though, after oceans of blood were spilt, a Christian kingdom was 

 erected at Jerusalem, under Godfrey of Boulogne, neither he nor his 

 successors were possessed of any real power of maintaining it. The 

 Turks, about the year 1229, had extended their dominions on every 

 side, and possessed themselves, under Othman, of some of the finest 

 provinces in Asia, of Nice, and Prusa in Bithynia, which Othman made 

 his capital, and, as it were, first embodied them into a nation : hence 

 they took the name of Othmans, from that leader ; the appellation oi 

 Turks, signifying wanderers or banished men, being considered by 

 them as a term of reproach. Othman is to be styled the founder of 

 the Turkish or Ottoman empire, and was succeeded by a race of the 

 most warlike princes recorded in history. About the year 1357, they 

 passed the Hellespont, and got a footing in Europe, and Amurath set- 

 tled the seat of his empire at Adrianople, which he took in the year 

 1360: under him the order of janisaries was established. Such were 

 their conquests, that Bajazet I, after conquering Bulgaria, and de- 

 feating the Greek emperor Sigismund, laid siege to Constantinople^ 

 in hopes of subjecting all the Greek empire. His greatness and in- 

 solence provoked Timur, or Tamerlane, a Tartarian prince, who was 

 just then returned from his eastern conquests, to declare war against 

 him. A decisive battle was fought between those rival conquerors} 

 in Natolia, in the plain where Pompey defeated Mithridates ; when 

 Bajazet's army was cut to pieces, and he himself taken prisoner, and 

 shut up in an iron cage, where he ended his life. 



The successors of Tamerlane, by declaring war against each 

 other, left the Turks more powerful than ever ; and though their ca- 

 reer was checked by the valour of the Venetians, Hungarians, and 

 the famous Scanderbeg, a prince of Epirus, they gradually reduced 

 the dominions of the Greek emperors; and, after a long siege, Ma- 

 homet II, took Constantinople, in 1453. Thus, after an existence of 

 ten centuries, from its first commencement under Constantine the 

 Great, ended the Greek empire : an event which had been long fore= 

 seen, and was owing to many causes ; the chief was the total dege- 

 neracy of the Greek emperors themselves, their courts and families? 

 and the dislike their subjects had to the popes and the western church: 

 one of the patriarchs declaring publicly to a Romish legate, " that he 

 would rather see a turban than the pope's tiara upon the great altar 

 of Constantinople." But as the Turks, when they extended their 

 conquests, did not exterminate, but reduced the nations to subjection, 

 the remains of the ancient Greeks still exist, as we have already ob- 

 served, particularly in Constantinople and the neighbouring islands, 

 where, though under grievous oppressions, they profess Christianity 

 under their own patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, 

 and Jerusalem ; and the Armenians have three patriarchs, who are 

 richer than those of the Greek church, on account of their people 

 being more wealthy and more conversant in trade. It is said that the 

 modern Greeks, though pining under the tyrannical yoke of the 

 Turkish government, still retain somewhat of the exterior appear- 

 ance, though nothing of the internal principles, which distinguished 

 their ancestors. 



The conquest of Constantinople was followed by the submission of 



