Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/462

 416 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE declared that if that country were subdued Italy and Germany would be open to invasion. The rapid extension of their power by sea as well as by land was soon a constant source of anxiety to the nations whose territory bordered on the Mediterranean. Piratical expeditions upon their shores with the object of carrying off slaves kept them in perpetual alarm. When Don John of Austria, in 1571, defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, the dread of the victorious Turk was so acute and the relief at the completeness of his victory so great that the Venetians congratulated each other with the cry that the Devil was dead, and the pope commemorated the great triumph by preaching from the text ' There was a man sent from God whose name was John.' From the capture in 1453 until John Sobieski relieved Vienna, upwards of two centuries later, the universal topic of European politics, quiescent for a few years but constantly becoming paramount, was the progress made by the Grand Turk. During the whole of this period he had continued to be the terror of Europe. La Brocquiere, who had noted the traffic in Christian slaves by the Turks and the oppression of their Christian subjects, remarked that it was a shame and scandal to Europe to allow herself to be terrorised by such a race. A succession of travellers from the West, who, one after another, observed the sufferings of the Christians, the misgovernment of the Turkish empire, its rapid increase, and the widespread terror of the Turkish name, vainly endeavoured to show how the Turks might be defeated ; but their victorious progress was unchecked until 1683. 1 The results of the destruction of the empire were of a uniformly disastrous character. Constantinople, which had been the heart of the empire and for centuries the great 1 See, for example, Cuspinianus, De Turcorum Origine ; the author was in the employ of the emperor Maximilian I. and insists again and again on the necessity of resisting the Turk and the certainty of being able to do so with success. Almost every European traveller in Turkey during two centuries, beginning with La Brocquiere and Tetaldi, made similar representations.