Bajazet, fierce and proud, warlike and bloodthirsty (in the above battle ten thousand prisoners were put to death by his order), acquired the name of Ylderum, ‘lightning,’ on account of his energy and quickness of action. “Elated by his successes, he contemplated a campaign into the heart of Europe, and boasted that he would one day feed his horse at Rome with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter’s.”[64] He who has the destinies of men in His hand, had differently mapped the career of Bajazet, the Ylderum. The lame Temur with his immense army moved westward, and Bajazet eastward to meet the Tatar warrior. The latter fully confident of a victory courted an encounter with the former. Their armies met one another on the plains of Angora. Fierce must have been the conflict. There is always some reason, or excuse for a defeat. It is said that Bajazet was ill at the time and though he was riding on one of the fleetest horses in the field, he could not effect his escape. He was captured and his army scattered in 1402. It is supposed that he died in the following year from natural causes, “aggravated by his inability to brook a reverse of fortune so signal and complete.” For a few years Temur, the lame, was the lord of Asia and the master of the original seat of the Ottoman. He returned with an immense number of captives and the plunder to the ancient city of the caliphs; there in Samarcand, he was preparing for another campaign into China, when he was removed to the presence of the eternal Judge, the King whose laws he had violated and whose creatures he had destroyed. He died in 1405, in his capital Samarcand, and his vast empire quickly crumbled into small fragments. The magnificent city of Constantinople, after being the metropolis of a Christian nation over eleven centuries, fell into the hands of the barbarian Turks (1453). In vain, and too late, did the Greeks realize their critical condition, and struggle against the angel of death. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks filled the European nations with consternation. The following is a portion of the letter of Pius II, the Pope who tried to raise a crusade against the Turks: “The strait of Cadiz has been passed, and the poison of Mohammed penetrates even into Spain.... In other directions, where Europe extends eastward, the Christian religion has been swept away from all the shores. The barbarian Turks, a people hated by God and man, issuing from the east of Scythia, have occupied Cappadocia, Pontus, Bithynia, Troas, Pisidia, Cilicia and all Asia Minor. Not yet content, counting on the weakness and dissensions of the Greeks, they have passed the Hellespont and got possession of nearly all the Grecian cities of Attica ... Achaia, Macedonia, and Trace.