To the Eastern Roman Empire, with Constantinople as its capital, and with the Greeks as its dominant population, and to the medieval kingdoms of the Bulgars and Serbs, had succeeded by the year 1500 the empire of the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Turks were a tribe of Asiatic Mohammedans who took their name from a certain Othman (died 1326), under whom they had established themselves in Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. Thence they rapidly extended their dominion over Syria, and over Greece and the Balkan peninsula, except the little mountain state of Montenegro, and in 1453 they captured Constantinople. The lands conquered by the arms of the Turks were divided into large estates for the military leaders, or else assigned to the maintenance of mosques and schools, or converted into common and pasturage lands; the conquered Christians were reduced to the payment of tribute and a life of serfdom. For two centuries the Turks were to remain a source of grave apprehension to Europe. ADDITIONAL READINGS THE NATIONAL MONARCHIES ABOUT 1600. A. F. Pollard, _Factors in European History_ (1907), ch. i on "Nationality" and ch. iii on "The New Monarchy"; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I, ch. xiv, xii, xi; _Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. xiii, iv, v; _History of All Nations_, Vol. X, ch. xii-xvi; A. H. Johnson, _Europe in the Sixteenth Century_ (1897), ch. i, ii; Mary A. Hollings, _Renaissance and Reformation_ (1910), ch. i-v. On England: A. L. Cross, _History of England and Greater Britain_ (1914), ch. xviii; J. F. Bright, _History of England_, Vol. II, a standard work; James Gairdner, _Henry VII_ (1889), a reliable short biography; Gladys Temperley, _Henry VII_ (1914), fairly reliable and quite readable; H. A. L. Fisher, _Political History of England 1485-1547_ (1906), ch. i-iv, brilliant and scholarly; A. D. Innes, _History of England and the British Empire_ (1914), Vol. II, ch. i, ii; William Cunningham, _The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times_, 5th ed., 3 vols. (1910-1912), Vol. I, Book V valuable for social conditions under Henry VII; William (Bishop) Stubbs, _Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History_, ch. xv, xvi; F. W. Maitland, _The Constitutional History of England_ (1908), Period II. On Scotland: P. H. Brown, _History of Scotland_, 3 vols. (1899-1909), Vol. I from earliest times to the middle of the sixteenth century; Andrew Lang, _A History of Scotland_, 2d ed., 4 vols. (1901- 1907), Vol. I. On France: A. J. Grant, _The French Monarchy, 1483- 1789_, 2 vols. (1900), Vol. I, ch. i, ii, brief and general; G. B. Adams, _The Growth of the French Nation_ (1896), ch. viii-x, a suggestive sketch; G. W. Kitchin, _A History of France_, 4th ed., 3 vols. (1894-1899), Vol. I and Vol. II (in part), dry and narrowly political; Lavisse (editor), _Histoire de France_, Vol. V, Part I (1903), an exhaustive and scholarly study. On Spain and Portugal: E. P. Cheyney, _European Background of American History_ (1904), pp.