Russian and Turk, from a geographical, ethnological, and historical point of view

Front matter

RUSSIAN AND TURK RUSSIAN AND TURK, FROM A GEOGRAPHICAL, ETHNOLOGICAL, AND HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW. BY R. G. LATHAM, M.A., M.D., etc., LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, LATE PEOFESSOB OF ENGLISH IN UNIVEESITY COLLEGE, LONDON; ADTHOE OF "THE VABIETIES OF MAN"; "THE NATIONALITIES OF EUBOPE " ; " THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE," ETC. LONDON: WILLIAM H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL, S.W. 1878. The Right of Translation and Reproduction in reserved. LONDON : PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN ANT. CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.

Preface

. The present work is, to a certain extent, a republi cation of an earlier one, " The Nationalities of Europe," published fifteen years ago ; this being preceded by one on a closely allied subject " The Native Races of the Russian Empire." The reader is apprised of this in order that he may understand that the forthcoming pages have by no means been extemporized on the strength of the late war and the events connected with it. On the con trary, for many years an adequate amount of inves tigation has been applied to the subject. In neither of these earlier works was there much political speculation ; but of the little that there was there is nothing that has been falsified by the sub sequent events. Of the first, the two Empires, here under notice, formed about half; but, as the object was almost wholly ethnological, a great pro portion of it was devoted to the description of numerous petty populations of little national import ance. This has been replaced by matter of a more VI

PREFACE.

. appropriate character. Still, the analysis of the com plex and various elements of the two vast Empires, rather than the history of either of them as a whole, has been the main subject of the work. Neither Turkey nor Russia, when reduced to its component parts, is exactly what it is, when considered as a unity. Hence the heterogeneous elements of which the two opposing powers consist, are exhibited in detail rather than in their action upon one another as masses. In neither of them is an analysis of this kind superfluous; and in one of them it is most especially called for. It is not necessary that a work of this kind should be written in the spirit of a partizan. Neither is it very safe to prophecy as to the future ; or to speculate as to what would have been the present result if some thing else had been done instead of what was done.

Nor yet is much to be got out of the doctrine of race ; and not much more from reflections upon the relative merits or demerits of the combatants as exhibited in their previous history. What really wants looking to is the actual amount of vice and suffering, which has its root in unjust government ; and which by better government may be abated. In respect to this it has been determined by Eng land there is more to be done by forcing reforms upon the weaker of the two parties than by trusting, or pretending to trust in the moderation, or the promises of the stronger ; that it is better to direct the Sultan, than to run the risk of being misled by the Czar. It

PREFACE.

. VII is not, however, argued that the best line of action is one upon which there can be no second opinion. In the eyes, however, of the present writer, England has much for which she may be both proud and thankful. There is no doubt that she has risked the chance of a very serious war; but by the decision with which she made known her views, and the steadiness with which she declared her resolution to act upon them if necessary, peace has ensued ; and that at a time when there was but little encouragement and no alliances. May the continuation of our interposition be conformable to the beginning of it. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

Pa-^e. Othman. Orkban. Crosses the Bosphorus and establishes himself in Europe. Amurath I. Interregnum. Mahomet I. Bajazet I. Amurath II. Mahomet II. Conquers Constantinople. Bajazet II. Selim, bis Conquests. Solyman I. First Siege of Vienna. Conquest of Rhodes. Selim II. First recorded War with Russia. Amurath III. Mahomet III. Othman I. and Mustapha II. Amurath IV. Ibrahim. Mahomet IV. The Kiuprili Viziers. Solyman II. Achmet II. Mustapha II. Battle of Zenta. War with Russia under Peter the Great. Treaty of Carlowitz 1

Chapter X

The Fin or Ugrian Family. Ugrians or Fins in Curland, Livonia, Estonia, the Governments of St. Petersburg, Novogorod. Finlanders of the Duchy of Finland. Tavastrian, Karelian, and Quain. Their early Christianity. Their present Popular Poetry. The Kalevala. The Laps ........

Chapter XVI

Rise and progress of the Russian Empire. Early piracy. Probable Russians. The name R6s. The early historical period. Conquests of Vladimir the Great, and his successors, in the direction of the Baltic. Conquests of Ivan IV. the Terrible. Peter the Great. The Czarinas Anne and Catherine. Conquest of the Crimea. Incorporation of Lithuania. Conquest of Finland. The Treaty of Vienna

Chapter XVII

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire. After Mahomet II. too large for practical Administration. Mahomet II. 's Conquest of the Crimea. Selim I.'s Conquests in Armenia, Persia, Syria, Egypt. Soliman I., the Barbary Regencies. No permanent Impression made on Germany. Injurious Effects of the Ottoman Attacks upon Persia. Natural Antagonism on the part of Russia. Peter the Great as an Enemy ; and less formidable than Anne or Catherine. Value of Sweden as an Element in the Balance of Power of Poland. Decline of the Influence of both. The subsequent conditional integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Retrospect .... RUSSIAN AND TURK.

Chapter I

The Ottoman Turks. From a.d. 1288 to a.d. 1699. Othman. — Orkhan. — Crosses the Bosporus and establishes himself in Europe. — Amurath I. — Interregnum. — Mahomet I. — Bajazet I. — Amurath II. — Mahomet II. — Conquers Constantinople. — Bajazet II. — Selim, his Conquests. — Solyman I. — First Siege of Vienna. — Conquest of Rhodes. — Selim II. — First recorded War with Russia. — Amurath III. — Mahomet III. — Othman I. and Mustapha II. — Amurath IV. — Ibrahim. — Mahomet IV. — The Kiuprili Viziers. — Solyman II. — Achmet II. — Mustapha II. — Battle of Zenta. — War with Russia under Peter the Great. — Treaty of Carlowitz. Or Turkish kingdoms there have been many, and some of them may claim the more ambitious title of Empire. But the Turkish Empire of the present day is that of the Osmanlis, or Ottoman, Turks.

And the distinction is important. At the present moment the Sultan in Constantinople is an Ottoman in every sense of the word ; but the Khedive in Egypt is scarcely an Ottoman in any sense; neither are his subjects Turks. In deed, the term " Turk " is one of inordinate generality and extent. More than a third of Central Asia is Turk, and in Russian, Chinese, and Independent Turkestan, the name presents itself; while the great majority of Tatars are merely Turks under another name. Further northwards we find Turks in Siberia ; and, in the far east, along the banks of the Lena, a Turk dialect is spoken as far as, and beyond, the Arctic Circle. / — OTHMAN. Then there are the Turcomans of the parts between the Caspian and the western extremity of the Himalayas. In every one of these instances the Turk occupancy is continuous ; the Turks are the dominant population ; and, except in certain districts on the Persian frontier, the Turkish is the vernacular language.

There are Turks along the coast of the Arctic Sea, and there are Turks within the western boundaries of China. Neither is the name Ottoman an old one, though the name Turk occurs as far back as the sixth century, when the ruler of the Turks sent an embassy to the Emperor Justinian ; these being the Turks of the parts to the east and north of Lake Aral. It is not, however, in these parts that we must look for any such names as Ottoman ; neither, except as the proper name of an individual, do we hear of either Ottomans or Osmanlis until after the Fourth Crusade, and the conquest of Constantinople by the Franks. The Osman, or Othman, that gave to his dynasty its name, died no earlier than A.D. 1326. This is what we know about the name and the bearer of it. But the father of Othman was Ertogrul, and the father of Ertogrul was Solyman Shah, and higher than this we have no continuous genealogy ; nor is the exact personality of Solyman beyond a doubt.

The history of Ertogrul, of his brother Dundar, and of his son Othman, is as follows : — At some time subsequent to the Mongol invasion of Asia Minor, and apparently not far from the middle of the thirteenth century, and on some spot somewhere between the Armenian frontier and the Egean, an armed force of four hundred and forty-four horsemen under the captaincy of Ertogrul, or the Right-hearted man, as they were moving westwards, came in sight of a battle-field, in which one of the two armies was manifestly the weaker one. This was enough for Ertogrul, who immediately led his followers in defence of it, and so won the battle for no less a potentate than Alaeddin, the Sultan of Iconium, and against an enemy no less formidable than the Mongols. A grant of land — we may call it a fief was Ertogrul's reward, and, as he was an efficient captain on other occasions afterwards, other fiefs were added to it; and OTHMAN. — ORKHAN. with these Ertogrul was contented.

He was simply the vassal and lieutenant of the Sultan. Othman, his son, is this and something more. The nucleus of his territory is the classical range of Mount Olympus, and its chief town is Brusa. This he had won from the Greeks, against whom he fought his first regular battle in 1301. This was the battle of Baphæum, near Nicomedia. Here he was victorious. The Greeks, however, held the towns which were of primary importance — Brusa, Nicomedia, and Nicæa. For these Othman was content to wait patiently. His son Orkhan promised to be, like his father, a conqueror ; and, of the three great cities, it was the first (Brusa) that was taken during Othman's lifetime. Othman bore himself as an independent prince — probably as an Emir of an Emirate — rather than as a mere officer of the Sultan. It is manifest that if Constantinople is to be conquered from Asia, the Bithynian Emirate of Othman is just the district from which the conquerors are to be expected.

Orkhan, like his father, is an Emir — not a Sultan. In the first year of his reign he takes Nicomedia, and four years after wards Nicæa ; both in Bithynia, both won from the Greeks. Pergamus, with Mysia, is won, six years later, from a Turkish Prince. This is in Asia — what Orkhan did in Europe was but little ; still, it was in Orkhan's reign that the first steps were taken towards Constantinople, and they were taken in the near neighbourhood of the capital itself. Cantacuzen, a usurper, in spite of the difference of religion, was his father-in-law; for Orkhan had married his daughter, and had assisted him against the legitimate Palæologi in return. This was one alliance. On the other hand the Genoese had the suburb of Galata, and the Venetians that of Pera ; but the Venetians were the allies of Cantacuzen, the Genoese of Orkhan.

With complications like this, with ambition, with opportunity, with nothing against them but the weak tie of relationship by marriage, the friend ship between Cantacuzen and Orkhan came to an end : indeed John Palæologus, like Orkhan himself, was a son-in-law of Cantacuzen. In a Genoese bark, Soliman, the son of Orkhan, 1 * — AMURATH I. crossed the Bosphorus and surprised Tzympe. Instead of re covering it, Cantacuzen asked the aid of Orkhan. This was administered by Orkhan, and the forces of Palæologus routed. Money was offered by Cantacuzen for Tzympe, but before it was paid circumstances had changed, and Gallipoli was taken and fortified. It was with Orkhan's son and successor, Amurath I., that the career of ambitious, systematic, and continuous conquest began. He it was who reduced Adrianople, and made it, until the taking of Constantinople, the Ottoman capital.

He it was, too, who first fought against enemies more formidable than the degenerate Greeks, viz., the Bulgarians and Servians. Of these the former had been, upon the whole, the more inveterate enemies of the Empire ; for they were the first of the barbarians who threatened the walls of Constantinople, and for nearly nine hundred years their name had been formidable. The Servians, as a separate nation, had not been known by name so long ; but, with varying relations to Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Albania, they, also, had long been formidable. Under their great king, Stephen Dushan, in the thirteenth century, they held, for a short time, a wider dominion than the Bulgarians. These were the first Slavonians that were conquered by the Ottomans, and Servia and Bulgaria are the oldest of the Ottoman provinces.

There are two battles of Kossova, and the first was the one which Amurath I. won against the Servians; and it was on the field of Kossova, and while the battle was going on, that Amu rath I. was stabbed by a Servian noble who presented himself to him as a deserter. He died on the field. Under Bajazet I. Wallachia was constrained to pay tribute, and the wars against Bosnia and Hungary commenced. It was not until this latter kingdom was threatened that, in the eyes of the Popes and the Crusaders, the difference between Christianity and Mahometanism seems to have been recognised. The heretics of Servia and Bulgaria found no sympathy amono the Franks ; but the attack on a Romanist kingdom like Hun gary was answered by a voice from the Vatican, and Pope Boniface IX. proclaimed a crusade. The heretic Servians re- BAJAZET I. — MAHOMET I. — AMURATH II. mained faithful to their conquerors, and, for the first time on European ground, the flower of European chivalry was igno miniously defeated at the great battle of Nicopolis.

Bajazet I. died A.D. 1403, the year after his defeat near Angora, and in 1405 died his conqueror Timor. This was the time when, in spite of its conquests in Europe, the Ottoman Empire was in greater peril than it has ever been before or since. For eleven years there was an interregnum : and, after that, Mahomet I. reigned till 1421, and Amurath II. , who succeeded him, till the middle cf the century. It was Amurath II. who first laid siege to Constantinople, A.D. 1422. We know that he did not complete it, but there is no exact ex planation of the motives that led him to abandon it. There is the belief that the Panagia, or Holy Virgin, came down from Heaven for the protection of the sacred maidens of Constanti nople ; and there is the belief that counter-movements and conspiracies elsewhere called the Sultan into Asia Minor, and that, as he could afford to let the capital stand over for a future day, he chose to abandon it rather than neglect a civil war.

This he soon extinguished; but he did not renew the siege. Other cities, however, were surrendered, and an annual tribute was paid to him by the Emperor. Under Amurath II. the war against the Christians took a more serious form than it had done hitherto. It was an easy matter to fight against the Greek and the Imperial soldiers, and it was not very difficult to overrun such countries as Bulgaria, Servia, and Bosnia, all three of which were separate kingdoms, and by no means friendly to one another. But with states like Hungary, Poland, and Venice it was no light matter to enter into conflict. They always pre sented a solid resistance ; and when, in addition to the vis inertiæ of their mass, there was the vis viva of skilful and ad venturous generals, there was much to retard the progress of even warriors like Amurath.

This means that his days were also the days of a great general and of an unrivalled party warrior — Huniades and Scanderbeg, the former for Hungary and Wallachia, the latter for his native land, Albania. Of these it i3 safe to say that, at the very least, they gave the Turks — MAHOMET II. much trouble; that they foreshadowed for them the difficulties that would attend any over-ambitious attempt against Western Europe, and, above all, delayed the final capture of Constanti nople. Both fought obstinately and with varied success, and both made their names pre-eminently formidable to their common enemy, and both pass for one of the few great heroes of their respective countries. Before the death of Amurath, Huniades was beaten in the second battle of Kossova ; and before the death of Mahomet II. , Albania became a Turkish province.

Amurath II. was the father of Mahomet II. On the 29th of May 1453, Mahomet II. took possession of Constantinople ; in other words, the reduction of the capital of the eastern empire was the first of his conquests. Like his father he reigned thirty years, and during the whole of that period he either effected fresh conquests or completed and con solidated those of his predecessors. " Mahomet IL/' writes Sir Edward Creasy, " was but twenty-three years of age when he took Constantinople, being one year older than Alexander was when he fought the battle of the Granicus, and three years less than the age of Napoleon, when he commanded at Lodi. The succession of wars and victories which filled the thirty years of Mahomet's reign, might, perhaps, bear comparison with the exploits of the other two imperial conquerors whom we have mentioned.

The fragments of the Greek empire, which had lingered for a while unconnected with the central power of the emperor, were speedily subdued by the new ruler of Constanti nople. The Peloponnesus was conquered in 1454, and Trebizond in the following year." The same writer when describing the Institutes of Mahomet, for he was a legislator as well as a conqueror, compared the military tenures which were granted to his followers in the countries they had conquered with the feudal system of Western Europe; and added that, like the barons of the time alluded to, they, the grantees of the Ziamets and Timars, aggrandized themselves, as in mediæval Christianity, at the expense of both the monarchy and the commonalty. How this began, we have seen in the notice of Othman, and the state, in his time, of Asia Minor.

How long it lasted we shall see when we come to the history of the present century ; for it was not until lately that the power of the descendants of these feudal nobles, the Deri Beys, or Lords of the Valleys, were put down ; and, even at the present time, their power, whether for good or for evil, is still but incompletely abolished. On the Turkish ground, then, it was natural ; and, in Greece, which is now es pecially under notice, though it was not aboriginal, it had been thoroughly acclimatized ; for the Franks, and the descendants of the fourth campaign, had made Greece as feudal as England was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is difficult to believe that the following extract from Finlay applies, not to the soil of Spain, France, or Italy, but to that of Greece, as it was in the fourteenth century.

During the period the duchy of Athens was possessed by the Sicilian branch of the house of Aragon, the Catalans were engaged in wars with all their neighbours. # # # # The lieutenants general of the dukes, who arrived from Sicily, were always compelled to bring with them fresh supplies of mercenary troops. The lieutenants of the Sicilian dukes mentioned in history are, Berenger d'Estanot, and Alphonso, the natural son of King Frederic IL, who governed in succession during the life of Manfred. Roger de Lauria, son of the renowned admiral, represented Frederic of Randazyo. Afterwards, Frances George, Marquis of Boudonitza, Philip of Dalmas, and Roger and Antonia de Lauria, sons of the preceding Roger, ruled the duchy. During the government of Roger and Antonio de Lauria, Louis, Count of Salon, son of the Regent Alphonso, died, leaving an only daughter as his heiress.

Louis was proprietor of a very large portion of the duchy, and the disputes that arose concerning the marriage of his daughter, caused the ruin of Catalan power, and the conquest of Athens by Nerio Acciaiuoli, the Governor of Corinth. The Catalans were the constant rivals of the Franks of Achaia, and, as Nerio Acciaiuoli, as Governor of Corinth, was the guardian of the principality against their hostile projects, the marriage of the young Countess of Salona involved the two parties in war. The mother of the bride was a Greek lady ; she betrothed her daughter to Simeon, son of the Prince of Vallachian Thessaly ; and the Catalans, with the two Laurias at their head, supported this arrangement. But the bozans of Achaia, headed by Nerio Acciaiuoli, pretended that the feudal suzerain of Athens and Achaia was entitled to dis pose of the hand of the Countess, though the race of Baldwin II. was extinct ; for Jacques de Baux, the last titular Emperor of Romania, died before the war between the Catalans and the Governor of Corinth commenced.

Nerio was nevertheless determined to bestow the young Countess, with all her immense possessions, on a relation of the Acciaiuoli family, named Peter Sarrasin. The wars concerning the Countess of Salona and her heritage appears to have commenced about the year 1386. The Catalans were defeated, and Nerio gained possession of Athens, Thebes, and Livadea ; but a few of the Spanish proprietors, and the remains of the military force attached to the Viceroys, continued for some years to offer a most determined resistance in other parts of the duchy, and rallied round them a body of Navarrese troops in the service of the last Spanish governors. Again — it was much the same in the islands. They suited the Venetians better than a territory on the mainland ; and it is in the hands of a Venetian that we find them ; although the transaction which put him in possession of them is obscure or unknown.

Mark Sanudo was the first Duke of Naxos and of those islands of the Archipelago to which it was the political centre, viz. : Paros, Antiparos, Ios, Sikinos, Polykandros, Kimolos, Melos, Amorgos, Thera or Santorin, and Anaphe. Of these, Melos plays a part of some importance ; whilst Ios commands notice from the fact of its having been depopulated by an invasion of the Turks to such an extent as to lose the bulk, if not the whole, of its Greek population, which was made good by a colony from Albania ; so that, at the present moment, Ios, like so many districts on the continent, is an actual Albanian occupancy. A principle, not unlike the one upon which our Indian empire was allowed to develop itself in the hands of a private company of merchant adventurers, was adopted by the Venetians in respect to its territory in the islands.

Private individuals were allowed to reduce certain islands, archipelagoes, or parts of islands, on condition of holding them as fiefs under the Republic. In this way Marco Dandolo and Jacomo Viaro occupied Gallipoli. Marino Dandolo . . . Andros. The Ghisi family . . .j Tenos Mykone. Skyros, I Skiathos. and Skopelos. The Justiniani and Michieli . Keos. The Navigajosas . . . Lemnos. The Quiiini .... Astypalæa. But Mark Sanudo was more powerful than all the rest put together ; and the Naxian archipelago was the true representative of Venice in the Ægean. The first onslaught, however, made on Greece was by Bajazet, and, in the parts north of the Morea, it was an effective one. Mahomet II. reduced the Morea, and partitioned into fiefs — Ziamets and Timars — the whole country, not only on the mainland, but in Labæa, and the Ionian islands, and Albania.

This he divided into Sandjaks. Ziamets. Timars. The Sandjak of the Morea . . . .109 342 Negropont ... 12 188 Thessaly .... 60 344 Epakto (Naupactus) . . 13 287 Karlili (Ionian islands) . 11 119 Yanina (Albania) . . 62 345 267 1625 The tribute of children (one-fifth of the males) he instituted as the means of recruiting his army. Immediately after his conquest of Greece, Mahomet turns his arms against Trebizond, a pretensious empire, famous in romance rather than in real history. Until the discovery by Fallermayer of the books of Cardinal Bessarion preserved at Venice, of the Chronicle of Michael Panaretos, the little that was known of the details of the history of Trebizond was col lected from the works of the Constantinopolitan writers ; who could scarcely have been either accurately informed or impartial.

The voids which they left exercised the critical acumen of Ducange and stimulated the curiosity of Gibbon. They are now, to a great degree, filled up. They tell us much worth knowing. They leave, however, the Trebizond of history far below the Trebizond of romance. When Asia Minor, Anatolia, or Roum, became Turk, Trebi zond remained Imperial ; Imperial and, to a great extent, Greek. Whilst Constantinople was in the hands of the Crusaders, Trebizond remained what may by courtesy be called Roman. But the town itself was but a small part of the Trapezuntine remnant. To take the measure of this we must extend Asia Minor, aud carry it into Georgia, as far as Imereti, as far, perhaps, as Suaneti — at any rate beyond the Phasis. We must include the Lazic district of the wars under Justinian. We must include the ancient and mythic Colchis.

We must include a portion both of Georgia and Armenia. Whilst under the Byzantine Empire the Trapezuntines were connected with an important name, and one suggestive of more speculation than can be indulged in ; for the theme to which Trebizond belonged was the theme Chaldia, and its Dukes were the Dukes of Chaldia. The Trapezuntine wars were alliances chiefly with the Turks, under the Sultan of Iconium or Konieh, the Empire, and the Turcomans ; and, when the Sultans were strong and the Trape zuntine Emperors weak, the former took the supremacy of suzerain, whilst the latter yielded the homage of the vassal. Other political relations were with the Khans of Khawerezm, or Transoxiana, with the Temudzhinian Mongols, and with the Genoese of Kaffa, who, upon the whole, were their most formid able enemies.

In spite, however, of the dangers of its environ ment, Trebizond flourished; was never reconquered by the Emperors; and lasted as an independent State from 1204 to 1461, when it was reduced by Mahomet II. The retribution that followed the tyranny of Andronicus I. showed the weakness of the Emperor, and disorganized the em pire ; and, in doing this, suggested ideas of independence to the more distant themes. Trebizond was one of these, and a scion of the Comnenian family, on the male side, who had fair grounds for looking upon the ruling Emperor as a usurper, declared himself independent and something more. He denominated himself Emperor, and considered Trebizond to be the true capital of the Eastern Empire. As far as he was concerned he removed, in his own ambitious fancy, Constantinople to Trebi zond.

His title was The Faithful (Orthodox) King and Autocrat of all the East (Anatolia), the Iberians, the Perateia, and the Great (Grand) Comnenus — Perateia meaning a portion of the Crimea and Cherson, in which the Gothic district of Gothia was German. Trebizond itself was Greek ; Greek, at least in language, for the purposes of commerce, literature, and diplomacy. But the mass of the country, on the eastern side at least, was Georgian, and on the south Armenian, and, perhaps, Kurd. Add to this the likelihood of certain Turcomans having been included within its boundaries. Alexios I. held his own, and transmitted his sceptre to his sons and his sons' sons, Georges, Johns, Manuels, Michaels, Basils, and Andronici, as Kings ; Irenes and Theodoras, as Queens. These names are given on the strength of their truly Byzantine character, and as contrasts to the French and Italian names of Greece and the Archipelago.

As a town, or as a province, Trebizond flourished. As an em pire, it was but a small and pretentious affair. The dynasty was legitimate, and, as far as it was Greek, native. The men who formed its armies and manned its fleets were neither Italians nor French ; neither Genoese nor Catalans. They were, on the contrary, essentially Asiatics — more so than even the most Asiatic portion of the true empire. We have seen that Wallachia is already a tributary. But, where Wallachia ends, the territory of the Tatars of the Crimea begins, and it extends from the Pruth to the Cuban. To reduce these is to become master of the Black Sea, and this is a position of no slight importance ; for, though the Tatars were the lords of the land, it was the Genoese who had the commerce — we may almost say the monopoly — of the Euxine.

Their great port or emporium was Kaffa, and as the Venetian fleet was dominant in the Ægean, so was that of Genoa in the Euxine. There seems to have been nothing arbitrary in the order of Mahomet's conquests. This naturally followed that of Trebizond, but it was not made by Mahomet in person, and, what is rare in the early Ottoman history, there was a pretext for it. Whether it were not one of Mahomet's own concoction is another question. A ruler is either deposed or conspired against by his brothers, and appeals to Cæsar, and Cæsar de poses both him and his unbrotherly brethren. Three hundred years later there is the same conquest and the same pretext. The Khan of the same Crimeans, A.D. 1770, is conspired against, and, unread in the history of his predecessors, appeals to a Cæsar of a different sex; and the Tatar principality in the fifteenth century passes from its legitimate rulers to Mahomet, passes from their descendants to the Czarina Catherine.