THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION 249 Syria and Palestine, and over Egypt, where the rule of the Mamelukes was overthrown ; and he compelled the last de- scendant of the Abbasid kaliphs to yield the kaliphate to him, thus claiming for himself the spiritual as well as the secular supremacy over the Mohammedan world, though this supremacy was not recognised by the Shiites or by sundry other sects. His fleets gave him possession of the African ports in the Mediterranean, and Christendom was still too much occupied with its own quarrels to do more than talk about arming against the Turk. Selim's Suleiman, successor, Suleiman the Magnificent, captured Belgrade on the Danube, where John Hunyadi had stayed the Turkish advance half a century before ; and when, after a long siege and a heroic defence, he mastered Rhodes, hitherto successfully held as a Christian outpost of the Knights of St. John, Western Europe did nothing to save it. Half Hungary was inclined to accept the Turkish sovereignty ; and Lewis, the last Polish King of Hungary and Bohemia, fell in a desperate struggle in which the Turks were victorious at Mohacs. The Crown of Hungary and Bohemia passed to Ferdinand of Austria, the brother of Charles v. Suleiman warned him that Vienna was doomed. In 1528 Suleiman appeared before its walls with a vast army; yet the vigour of the defence, small though the garrison was, compelled him to raise the siege. The disunion of the empire continued to prevent the organisation of the counter-attack, which circumstances demanded, but the Turks were unable to make themselves masters of additional territory, although they were actually dominant over the greater part of Hungary. A check was given to the Turks. Charles v. defeated their corsair admiral, Chaireddin Barbarossa, and took possession of Tunis ; but the French king sought this opportunity Charles V. for forming alliances with every possible enemy of and the the emperor, including the Grand Turk himself, Turks - the German Protestant princes, and King Henry of England, who was carrying out his own ideas of a reformation in this country. But the German princes and Henry regarded the friendly offers of Francis with suspicion. The intrigues,
