TURKEY 61 eluding its dependencies, almost closely corre- sponds to the Byzantine empire in the times of its greatest extent. It arose when the lat- ter had been stripped by Saracen and Seljuk conquest of all its possessions in Asia and Afri- ca, excepting some territories in the north and west of Asia Minor. It derives its name from Othman or Osman, the successor to the pow- er of the Seljuk sultans of Iconium or Roum, who conquered Nicsea in Bithynia (1299) and several neighboring districts. (See SELJTTKS, OTHMAN, and TURKS.) The Ottoman power was increased by his son Orkhan's capture of Brusa, the Bithynian capital (1326), and by his invasion of Thrace. Othman's grandson Amurath I. took Adrianople in 1361, regularly organized the janizaries (see JANIZARIES), van- quished the princes of Bulgaria and Servia, and was killed at the moment of his signal victory over the Serbs at Kosovo in 1389. His son Bajazet I. invaded Wallachia and Hungary, besieged Constantinople for several years and then retreated, defeated Sigismund of Hungary at Nicopolis (1396), and overran the Morea; but having previously completed the conquest of Asia Minor, he was obliged to evacuate Greece and to protect the former region against the invasion of Tamerlane, by whom he was finally defeated and captured in 1402, a year before his death. His grandson Amurath II. (1421-'51), son of Mohammed I., conquered Thessalonica and Janina. He was defeated by Hunyady at Belgrade in 1439, and on subse- quent occasions, but in 1444 achieved a great victory over Hunyady and King Ladislas of Poland and Hungary at Varna. He over- whelmed the Hungarians in a second battle at Kosovo, three years before his death. His son Mohammed II. (1451-'81) gave the final death blow to the Byzantine empire by his conquest of Constantinople, after a memorable eiege of 53 days, May 29, 1453; and in 1454 he completed the conquest of Servia. At Bel- grade he was repulsed by Hunyady (1456), but he subdued most of the Morea (1460), and soon afterward Trebizond, Wallachia, and almost all the islands of the archipelago. He was repeat- edly defeated by Scanderbeg in Albania, and subjugated that country only after the latter's death (1467). Mohammed was the founder of the greatness of Turkey, and was surnamed the Conqueror. Remarkable among his suc- cessors was Selim I. (1512-'20), son of Baja- zet II., who extended his dominion over Meso- potamia, Assyria, Syria, and Egypt, and estab- lished a regular Ottoman navy. His son Soly- man II., the Magnificent, took Belgrade in 1521 and Rhodes in 1522, defeated the Hun- garians at Mohacs in 1526, captured Buda in 1529, and marched on Vienna, where he was repulsed with great loss, and again in 1532. Subsequently he conquered Armenia, Croatia, Yemen, Shirvan, and Georgia; but his naval forces, which had extended his sway over the Barbary coast, were defeated at Malta in 1565, and in 1566 he was repeatedly repulsed by Zrinyi at Sziget, and died a few days before the last and fatal assault on that Hungarian fortress. The reign of Solyman marks the zenith of the military power of Turkey, which began to decline after his death, his son Selim II. being the first of the sultans who did not command the troops, and who led the life of a voluptuary. After conquering Cyprus, he lost in 1571 the great naval battle of Lepanto. He was succeeded by a series of still more inef- ficient rulers, under whom the janizaries be- came omnipotent despite the decline of their military organization, and murders and con- spiracies in the seraglio and revolts of pashas in remote provinces more and more frequent. The more important of these sultans were Amurath III. and IV., Mohammed IV. (who conquered Candia after a protracted struggle), and Mahmoud I., accounts of whose reigns are given under their own names. Frequent wars with Poland, Austria, Persia, Venice, and Rus- sia were waged, but rarely with success. Mon- tecuculi, Sobieski (who routed Mohammed IV.'s army before Vienna in 1683), Louis of Baden, and Prince Eugene destroyed the Turkish pow- er on the Danube ; and at the peace of Carlo- vitz in 1699 Mustapha II. surrendered nearly all his Hungarian possessions to Austria, Azov to Peter the Great of Russia, Podolia and Ukraine to Poland, and the Morea to Venice. During almost the whole of the 18th century Turkey was at war with Russia, and much of the time with Austria also. Though occasion- ally successful, as in the reconquest of the Mo- rea under Ahmed III. (1715), this protracted warfare was disastrous to Turkey, and she lost the Crimea and all her possessions N. of the Black sea, and the exclusive navigation of that sea and the straits connected with it. In other quarters, too, losses were suffered. Se- lim III. (1789-1807) was an enlightened ruler, but could not avert continuous disasters. The peace concluded with Russia at Jassy in 1792 made the Dniester the frontier between the two empires. Several provincial governors aspired to independence, and the conquest of Egypt by Bonaparte led to a war with France, which ended in considerable concessions to that power ; and wars with Russia and England and the revolt of the janizaries aggravated the critical condition of the country. Servia rose under the leadership of Czerny George (1805), and subsequently achieved its semi-indepen- dence under Milosh Obrenovitch. Selim was deposed in 1807, and Mustapha IV. was placed on the throne chiefly through the i. fluence of the janizaries, but was displaced and put to death in 1808 by his brother Mahmoud II., who after a terrible struggle finally disband- ed that body in 1826, massacring thousands of them. In the mean time he had also dis- played great energy in Albania by crushing Ali Pasha of Janina (1822), but the Greek rev- olution proved fatal; and as Mahmoud disre- garded the European remonstrances against the cruelties perpetrated in Greece by Ibrahim
