The First Seven Sultans of the Ottoman Dynasty [pp. 42-64]

OF THE OTTOMAN DYNASTY.
singular manner for nearly 300 years. It became the standard
ransom of beleaguered cities, anid all treaties of peace with foreign
powers brought this amount as an honorary backsc7ldsh, with the
promise to repeat it annually.
At the peace of Sitovorok, near Comorn, in 1606, Austria refused, and from that time forth sent no annual present to the
Porte. After this the Christian powers of Europe began to
treat on terms of equality with the terrible Sultans.
If we now ask for a philosophical explanation of the remarkable
progress of the Turks toempire, it is not to befound in the genius
of the commandelr. He led wild, and doubtless brave, but undisciplined troops. It was a fair and open fight between Christian and Moslem peoples and interests. As to the art and
materital of war, the older civilization of the Byzantine Empire
must have hlad greatly the advantage. But on the Moslemi side
was unity, on the Christian disunion. On the Moslem side, two
grand animating doctrines of natural and revealed religion, appealing to and strengthening some of the noblest principles of
our nature, the unity of God, and the supremacy of his will,
reigned in every soul, raising it above the fear of death. On
one side religion, reason, interest, and the strong passions of
ambition and conquest, were in grim and terrible harmony; on
the other all was fragmentary, without order, without cohesion,
without any moral force. Given these elements, and the result
could not be other than it was.
Thus Broosa ignobly fell in 1326. Orkhon hastened to lay
the splendid trophy at the feet of the aged Osnuan. His mother,
the once beautiful Malkatoon, had recently died. Her father,
the Sheikh Edeboli, had also recently died at the age of 120,
having witnessed such a fulfilment of Osman's dream as had
proved to him its divine origin. Osman congratulated his son
on his splendid though bloodless conquest, committed to him
his growing empire, recommended justice and clemency, and the
propagation of the true faith, wished to have his tomb made in
Broosa, and died at the age of 70, having reigned 27 years.
Orkhon conveyed his father's remains to Broosa, and having
converted the church and monastery of St. David into a Mosque,
he deposited them there; where also himself and the Princess
Niloafu, the wife of his youth, and the daughter of Andronicus,
the wife of his old age, were buried. It was a heavy marble
1874.]
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