The emperor, John Palæologus, was obliged to yield to Amurath, the Turkish Sultan, all his lands except Constantinople, Thessalonica, and that part of the Morea which still clung to the empire, and the Turks set up their capital at Adrianople, whence they spread their conquests up to the very walls of Constantinople; but the Greek mountaineers, especially those of the mountain land of Epirus, now called Albania, had something of the old spirit among them, and fought hard. The Venetians used to take troops of them into their pay, since all Christians made common cause against the Turks; and these soldiers, richly armed, with white Albanian kilts, the remnant of the old Greek tunic, were called Stradiots, from the old Greek word for a soldier, Stratiotes. The bravest of them all was George Castriotes, a young Albanian, who had been given as a hostage to the Mahommedans when nine years old. He had been kept a prisoner, and made to fight in the Turkish army, and was so brave there that the Turks called him Skanderbeg, or the Lord Alexander. However, when he thought of the horror of being a Mahommedan, and fighting against the Christian faith and his own country, he fled into Albania, raised all the Greeks, killed all the Turks in the country, and kept it safe from all the further attempts of the Sultan as long as he lived, although, at Varna, a great crusade of all the most adventurous spirits in Europe, to drive back the Turks, was wofully defeated in the year 1446. [Picture: Mount Helicon] CHAP. XLII.—THE TURKISH CONQUEST. 1453–1670. [Picture: Decorative chapter heading] The last Emperor of the East was the best and bravest who had reigned for many years. Constantine Palæologus did his best against the Turks, but Mahommed II., one of the greatest of the Ottoman race, was Sultan, and vowed that Constantinople should be either his throne or his tomb. When the besieged Christians heard the Turks outside their walls chanting their prayers, they knew that the city would be assaulted the next day, and late at night Constantine called his friends together, and said, “Though my heart is full, I can speak to you no longer. There is the crown which I hold from God. I place it in your hands; I entrust it to you. I fight to deserve it still, or to die in defending it.” They wept and wailed so that he had to wait to be heard again, and then he said, “Comrades, this is our fairest day;” after which they all went to the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and received the Holy Communion together. There was a crowd around as he came out, and he stood before them, begging them to pardon him for not having been able to make them happier. They answered with sobs and tears, and then he mounted his horse and rode round the defences. [Picture: Cathedral of St. Sophia]