CHAP. I.]

FREDERICK III. CLAIMS HUNGARY.

93

barrassed with the affairs of his hereditary dominions, as well as anxious to seize the Crown of Hungary, he agreed in 1459 to invest Podiebrad with the Bohemian Kingdom, and concluded with him a defensive alliance against all enemies but the Pope.

In Hungary the large party opposed to the Hunyad family favoured the pretensions of Frederick III., who, in February, 1459, caused himself to be crowned at the Neustadt with the crown of St. Stephen, pledged to him by Queen Elizabeth, which still remained in his possession, an object regarded by the Hungarians with superstitious veneration.1 Frederick shortly afterwards entered Hungary with an army, but the hostilities which ensued are devoid of any events of importance, and were concluded in 1463 by a peace, mediated through the Papal Legates, Cardinals Bessarion and Carvajal. Frederick delivered to Matthias the crown of St. Stephen on receiving 60,000 ducats; but he retained the title of King of Hungary, and stipulated for the succession of his son to that Kingdom in the event of Matthias dying without heirs. In the same year Matthias consummated his marriage with Podiebrad's daughter, who, however, died before the end of it in bringing forth a dead child. Matthias was crowned with the Holy Crown at Alba Regalis, or Stuhlweissenburg, March 29th, 1464.

Meanwhile an insurrection, occasioned by bad government, had broken out in Austria. Wolfgang Holzer, son of a cattle dealer, assisted by the Emperor's brother, Albert the Prodigal, who reigned in Upper Austria, excited the people of Vienna to rebellion and got possession of that capital (July, 1462); and Frederick, who had hastened thither in alarm for the safety of the Empress and his son Maximilian, was kept waiting three days outside the gates till he had signed a capitulation. He was entirely at the mercy of the insurgents, till Podiebrad marched to his relief and mediated a peace between the brothers, by which Albert obtained Lower Austria, with the city of Vienna, for a term of eight years. But his extravagance and tyranny soon became so intolerable that the Lower Austrians regretted the sway of the tame and phlegmatic Frederick. Holzer, now burgomaster of Vienna, directed the fury of the populace against Albert; but he contrived to persuade them that Holzer was playing them false, and the demagogue was tortured and put to death.

1 Mailath, Gesch. der Magyaren, B. iii. S. 40.

94

PROGRESS OF MAHOMET II.

[CHAP. I. The war which again arose between the brothers was terminated by the sudden death of Albert, December 2nd, 1463; and Frederick re-united all the Austrian lands, except Tyrol, under his immediate dominion.

Occupied with these domestic quarrels, Frederick could bestow little attention on the affairs of the Empire, which was torn by domestic wars. These disturbances, and the contest between the Emperor and Matthias Corvinus, favoured the progress of Mahomet II., who had vowed to take vengeance for his defeat at Belgrade. In 1458 he overran nearly all Servia, and carrying a great part of the population into slavery, supplied their place with Osmanlis. Henceforward Servia remained a Turkish province. Mahomet next turned his views towards Bosnia. Stephen Thomas, King of Bosnia, was already a tributary of the Porte; but disgusted with Turkish tyranny, he had appealed to a Hungarian Diet held at Szegedin' in 1458, which agreed to protect him, and invested his son with the portion of Servia that still remained unconquered. For the next three or four years Mahomet left Bosnia without much molestation, and in 1462 employed himself in reducing Wallachia. The Voyvodes, or Hospodars, of Wallachia, had been vassals of Poland, but after the fall of Constantinople became, like other neighbouring Princes, tributary to the Porte. Here had reigned since 1456 the cold-blooded tyrant Bladus, son of Drakul. Mahomet himself is related to have shuddered with horror, when, on arriving with his army at Praylab, he beheld the place of execution, a plain more than two miles in extent, planted with stakes, on which upwards of 20,000 persons, men, women, and children, are said to have been impaled by this inhuman monster." In the following year (1463) the Turks overran Herzegovina, reduced the Voyvode of Montenegro, and renewed their attempts on Bosnia. In the last-named country, King Stephen Thomas fell a victim to his own ill-timed generosity and the crimes of his unnatural son. Mahomet II., in the disguise of a monk, had penetrated into Bosnia to inspect its fortresses. He was discovered and brought before Stephen, who, neglecting the opportunity which fortune had thrown in his way, honourably dismissed the Sultan. A large

It was by a decree of this Diet that the troops called Hussars were created. The twentieth man of all the vassals of the nobles was ordered to be armed as a trooper, who, from husz, signifying in Hungarian twenty, and the suffix ar, obtained the name of Huszar. Engel,

3

Gesch. des ungar. Reiches, B. iii. S. 229
Aum.

2 Chalcocondyles (lib. ix. p. 513 sq. ed. Bonn).

3 Schimek, Politische Gesch. des Königreichs Bosnien und Rama, ap. Zinkeisen, B. ii. S. 142.

CHAP. I.]

ZEAL OF POPE PIUS II.

95

party of the nobles, displeased with this act, joined the party of Stephen's son, who was in open rebellion against his father, and soon after murdered him. Bosnia was now torn by the factions of three claimants of the Crown: that of the murderer, of Ban Radivoi his brother, and of Catharine, Stephen's widow—a state of things which enabled Mahomet to attack that country with advantage. These movements of the Turks were a principal reason with King Matthias for concluding with Frederick III. in 1463 the peace already mentioned. In September of that year, having assembled his vassals at Peterwardein, Matthias crossed the Save into Bosnia, drove the Turks before him, and after a siege of three months recovered the important fortress of Jaicza. At Christmas, having been forced to retire by a want of provisions, he entered Buda in triumph, followed by a long train of Osmanli prisoners clad in purple dresses.1 In 1464, however, Jaicza, after a memorable defence and in spite of the attempts of Matthias to relieve it, was captured by Mahomet; when all Bosnia, except a few fortresses and a small northern district, fell into the hands of the Turks. Matthias made Nicholas of Ujlak King of the unconquered portion.

During these struggles Matthias Corvinus had in vain looked around for help. The accession of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini to the pontificate in 1458, under the title of Pius II., had, from his well-known zeal in the cause, awakened an expectation that something would be effected against the Infidels. One of that Pontiff's first steps was to assemble a council at Mantua (August 1459) for the purpose of organizing a crusade; but in spite of the eloquence of Cardinal Bessarion, little was done. The complaints of the Hungarian envoys, that the Emperor left them no repose to turn their arms against the common enemy were hushed by Pius himself, Frederick's friend and former minister. On adding up the promises of aid when the council was dissolved in January, 1460, an army of 88,000 men appeared upon paper; but on paper it remained. The crusade was evidently a pious chimera: yet it continued to be talked of; the Emperor had the vanity to procure himself to be declared generalissimo, and the Pope sent him a sword and hat which he had blessed! Yet the zeal of Pius II. was unaffected, and continued till his death, which indeed it contributed to hasten. He was even enthusiastic enough to fancy that his exhortations might work on a hardened and ambitious

Matthias has himself described this expedition in a letter to Pope Pius II. (in Katona, t. xiv. p. 666 sqq.)

96

VENETIAN AND TURKISH WAR.

[CHAF. I. conqueror like Mahomet, and in a remarkable letter (1461) he exhorted the Sultan to be baptized; promising in reward for his compliance to salute him as Emperor of the East, and to confer on him by right what at present he held only by force!1 But the resistance against the Turks, which flagged under the stimulus of religious zeal, was at length roused by the avidity of commerce and the plans of secular ambition. Scarcely had Servia, Wallachia, and Bosnia been conquered by the Turks when a war broke out between them and the Venetians, which during some years diverted the Moslem arms from any formidable attempts against the rest of Europe.

Although by the treaty concluded with Mahomet II. after the fall of Constantinople, Venice had abandoned the common cause of Christendom, yet it might have been foreseen that the interests. of her trade and the nature and extent of her dominion, which brought her at so many points into contact with the Turks, must at no distant period involve her in hostilities with them. The treaty had already been frequently violated on both sides in some of its most important articles, when in the spring of 1463 an event that happened in the Morea rendered a war inevitable. A slave belonging to the Pasha of Athens, having robbed his master of 100,000 aspers, fled to the Venetian town of Koron, where Girolamo Valaresso, one of the magistrates, not only sheltered the fugitive, but even divided with him the booty. The enraged Pasha now appeared with a considerable force before Argos, which was betrayed to him by a Greek priest; for the hatred of those fanatics for the Latin heretics outweighed even their fear of the Mussulman yoke. At the same time Omar Bey, the Turkish Governor of the Morea, annoyed and plundered the Venetian districts of Modon and Lepanto, and an unceasing system of annoyance was kept up on both sides. Luigi Loredano, the Venetian admiral, having, according to his instructions, in vain demanded the restoration of Argos, requested his government to supply him with 20,000 men in order to make an attack upon Lesbos; an application which brought the decisive question of war or peace before the Pregadi. Pius II. used every exertion to arouse the martial ardour of the Venetians and sent Cardinal Bessarion to promise his aid. After a warm debate, war was decided on by a small majority of the Venetian Senate; and in September an alliance was concluded between Venice, the Pope,

1

Opera, p. 872, Epist. 396.

2 Sanuto, lite de Duchi, ap Muratori, SS. t. xxii. p. 1172.

CHAP. I.]

PROCEEDINGS OF THE VENETIANS.

97

and the King of Hungary, by which it was agreed to carry on the war for three years, and that none of the contracting parties should enter into a separate peace. The Venetians were to maintain a fleet of forty three-banked galleys, while the Hungarians were to infest the northern Turkish provinces; for which purpose, in consideration of a subsidy of 25,000 ducats, they were to raise an army of 25,000 men. The Venetians also contracted an alliance with the Sultan of Caramania, and with Usan Hassan, chief of a Turkoman horde in Mesopotamia, who subsequently established the dynasty of the White Sheep in Persia.

Nothing could exceed the ardour of Pius II. in this projected enterprise against the Turks. Notwithstanding his years and infirmities, he declared his intention of taking the Cross in person, and summoned the younger Cardinals to accompany him. How, it was thought, could temporal Princes hang back when they beheld their aged Spiritual Father and the Princes of the Church, men whose profession called on them to sheathe instead of draw the sword, hazarding their sacred persons in an encounter with the Infidels? Yet the example failed to produce much effect. Duke Philip of Burgundy, indeed, reiterated his promises, and, to put himself in funds, restored to Louis XI. the towns on the Somme, which had been pledged to the Duke for 40,000 ducats. Yet two ships were the sole and tardy fruits of his engagement. Ferdinand I. of Naples sent 30,000 ducatshalf the legacy destined by his father for this holy purpose. The Genoese promised eight ships. The Florentines, so far from aiding the expedition, secretly sided with the Turks, in hope of reaping those commercial advantages which the Venetians would lose by the war; and they are even said to have betrayed the Venetian correspondence to Mahomet, and to have prompted him as to the measures which he should take.1 Personally at least even the Doge of Venice, Cristoforo Moro, was against the war, and pleaded his great age in excuse for not proceeding to it; but Vittore Capello, the leader of the war party, told him plainly that if he would not go with good words he should go by force, and that the interests of the Republic were of more importance than his life. Such were the power and liberty of

the chief magistrate of Venice!

The Venetian fleet was reinforced, and unlimited power was conferred on Loredano to act for the interest of the Republic. The Venetians aimed at nothing less than the conquest of the MS. Chroniche di Firenze del Dei, ap. Hammer, Th. ii. SS. 72 und 550.