Henry IV. of England was particularly attentive to him, and almost encouraged him to believe that he would give him something more than mere sympathy. But the circumstances of Western Europe were altogether unfavourable to his views. It was the time of the great schism, when the Church was divided between rival popes at Rome and Avignon. Manuel, however, on his return, found himself delivered from his worst fears. The terrible Tartar conqueror, after carrying his destructive arms from Russia to India, had struck down the sultan—a title which Bajazet was the first of the House of Othman to assume—in a great battle in the plains round the city of Angora. Bajazet was utterly overthrown, and according to the old story which has made his name memorable, lived for years in captivity, a prisoner in an iron cage.[1] Tamerlane's victory was a piece of great good fortune for Manuel. The Ottoman conquests were stayed at least for a time, and Bajazet's five sons seemed bent on undoing the work of their father by strife among themselves. Asiatic dynasties, as Gibbon has truly observed, present "an unceasing round of valour, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay." In this instance the Ottoman power speedily recovered itself under a prince of unquestionable capacity and some really great qualities, who perhaps deserved success, Amurath II. But its temporary eclipse after the fall of Bajazet gave the empire a little breathing space, and even a transient gleam of prosperity. Some of the Ottoman conquests were lost, and a few of the cities of Thessaly and Mace-
- ↑ The cage was probably nothing but a covered litter.
