donia were surrendered to the emperor. One of Bajazet's sons, Mousa, who with his father had been taken prisoner at the battle of Angora, did indeed threaten Constantinople both by land and sea. But his fleet was defeated, and his attempt on the city by land resolved itself into nothing more than a few skirmishes under the walls, and could not be called a siege. Manuel, however, was by no means hopeful as to the future, and in speaking about his son to his chief minister, Phranza, the last of the Byzantine historians, he intimated that the time for an emperor was past, and that "a cautious steward was needed for the relics of empire." Acting on this principle, he tried to secure some advantages by a cunning diplomacy, and to recover Gallipoli by supporting the designs of Mustapha, a pretended son of Bajazet, then at Constantinople. His idea was to undermine the strength of the Ottoman by encouraging dynastic quarrels. But his arts failed him. Mustapha, having got Gallipoli, would not cede it to the emperor, saying that he could not give up what was now a Mussulman town. After some successes he was deserted by his partisans, and was taken prisoner and hanged by Amurath. Manuel's unfortunate intrigue soon brought trouble on him. Amurath laid siege to Constantinople with an army, it is said, of 200,000 men, and with some rude specimens of artillery, now used by the Turks for the first time. The city's defences had been strengthened, it appears, by the late Emperor John, and it was now well able to defy the sultan's clumsy cannon, and an assault headed by a famous dervish was repulsed with very trifling loss
