Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/140

  ambition. Of this we have the most extraordinary proof in the letter addressed by Pope Pius II. to Mahomet II. shortly after the capture of Constantinople. The pontiff exhorts the victorious sultan (1461) to embrace Christianity, and not only promises, upon that condition, to confer on him, by virtue of his own apostolical authority, the legitimate sovereignty of all the countries he had conquered from the Greeks, but engages to use him for the re-establishment over those countries of the supremacy of the papal chair. "Tuum brachium" he says, "in eos imploraremus, qui jura Ecclesiæ Romanæ nonnunquam usurpant, et contra matrem suam cornua erigunt" Such was the consolation administered, on the Christian side and from the highest quarter, to those crushed under the calamity of Ottoman domination. It was their peculiar fate to be smitten on one cheek because they were Christians, and on the other because they were not Latin Christians. Had it not been, says Dr. Pichler, the learned historian of the schism, for the religious division of East and West, the Turks never could have established their dominion in Europe. Finlay tells us that Greeks, prosecuting their calling as merchants in the West, used actually to assume the disguise of Turks, in order to secure for themselves better treatment than they could have received as Eastern Christians. And yet we learn from the same author, that they suffered heavily for their supposed identity of religious profession with the Latins. The Moors, expelled from Spain, and taking refuge in the East, might not unnaturally pay off, when they found themselves in the ascendant, some of their old scores; part, at least, of what they had suffered from the victorious Christians of Spain. But the Jews also migrated in large numbers at the same time to the same quarter, and took a very high social position in the East as merchants, bankers, and physicians.


 * They were eager [says Finlay] to display their gratitude to the Ottomans, and the inhuman cruelties they had suffered from the Inquisition made them irreconcilable enemies of the Christians.

Nor was this all. The Turks did not long enjoy a maritime superiority corresponding with their military power by land. They had not nautical in the same high degree as soldierly aptitudes, and they were greatly dependent for manning their ships on the Greeks, of whom they had twenty-five thousand in the fleet defeated at Lepanto. Therefore the seas afforded the means of constant irregular attack on Turkey. They were covered with pirates; and the religious orders of St. John and St. Stephen found it a meritorious as well as profitable occupation to pursue buccaneering practices on the coasts of the countries and islands, which were mainly inhabited by the Greek race; as in so doing they were assailing the territories of the infidel, and diminishing his power. The Greeks were commanded into Turkish, and kidnapped into Christian, galleys. Barbary competed in these lawless practices. Devastation was spread over the coasts of Greece, which often became uninhabitable; and this plague was not extirpated, until the epoch of political redemption came.

Nor was this singular complication of calamities materially relieved by the fact, that Greek intelligence had been largely drawn upon to bring up to par the scantier supply of Turkish brains. Among the viziers and other governing Turks no small numbers were of Greek extraction or mixed blood, but no trace of this relationship seems easily perceivable in their conduct. Still more remarkable was the creation of the class of Phanariots, so called from the Phanar, a quarter of Constantinople which they inhabited; an artificial aristocracy, in whom selfish interests left little room for the growth of traditional feelings, so that their services to themselves were boundless, but to their nation rare. The opening for promotion tended to stir the desire for education so congenial to Hellenes, but as tax-gatherers the official Greeks were often the instruments of tyranny in detail; and a numerous body, possessed of influence, while on the whole they used it somewhat to alleviate oppression, at least in Greece, yet acquired an interest in supporting that Ottoman domination, upon which they personally throve. To the Greek race at large, these calamities were not only of an afflicting, but also of a most corrupting character. The song of Homer witnesses that the mild slavery of the heroic ages took away half the manhood of a man. But the slavery