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

OF THE OTTOMAN DYNASTY.
unbridled licentiousness, and his habitual violation of his most
solemn oaths and promises. He died May 3rdcl, 1481, at the
commencement of a campaign, in the thirtieth year of his reign,
and the fifty-second of his age. Up to this point the Ottoman
power was making rapid strides, and Europe grew pale at the
resistless force with which it seemed to be endowed. But it had
reached the culminating point; for a time it remained stationary
with varied fortunes of victory and defeat, and then began slowly
to decline.
That period of the world's history to which this sketch refers,
from 1299 to 1481, 182 years, was a dark and bloody period
generally, although there were potent and living forces at work
which were ultimately to change the character of civilization
and religion. MIercy, forbearance, generosity, in high places,
existed only as rare individual virtues. There was no such
thing among MIoslems or Christians as a public conscience, a
general morality, or force of public sentiment, which could in
the least control men in power. The Christian general, Wead of
Wallachia, was a greater devil than Yilderim and the Conqueror
condensed into one, with every redeeming quality left out.
Surely the world has gained something here. The late Sultans,
of this dynasty have been men of dignity and mercy, and such
a Sultan as Bajazid Yilderim, or Mohammed the Conqueror, is
now a moral impossibility.
We have only to refer to some of the contemporaneous events
of European history, to see how different was the march of civilization and Christianity in the West. Wallace was defeated at
Falkirk in 1298, one year before Osman was acknowledged as
Sultan. The battle of Bannockburn, 1314, when Edward II. was
defeated by Bruce, saw the first Sultan still but an Asiatic chieftain. The victory of Crecy, 1346, was twenty years after Broosa
became the capital of the Osmanlee Empire. The battle of
Poictiers, when Edward the Black Prince, with 8,0C0 men, defeated
the French army of 60,000, and took le g'oi John prisoner, was
in 1356, the time that Orkhon the second of his dynasty gained
his first lodgment in Europe, by the taking of Gallipoli. The
"Hundred Years War" commenced during the reign of Orkhon
and continued to the time of M'urat II., 1336-1436.
It was at the close of the fourteenth century that the great
moral and religious movement under WVickliffe began. Follow
1874.]
63