The province of Anatolia was desolated; the cities without walls or palaces, without treasures or rulers: while the open country was overspread with hordes of shepherds of Tartar or Turcoman origin. The five living sons of Bajazet were soon fighting for the spoils of their father's empire: finally the favorite son Mohammed I., stood forth as the sole heir of the empire. He obtained Anatolia by treaty and Roumania by force of arms and the eight years of his peaceful reign were spent in banishing the vices of civil discord and placing on a firmer basis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. The wisest Turks were devoted to the unifying of the empire and from Anatolia to Roumania one spirit seemed to animate them all. The Christian powers of Europe might have emulated their example, but the bitter schism between the Greek and the Latin divisions of the church, the factions and the wars of France and England, blinded them to the danger that was threatening in the East. Had a confederate fleet occupied the straits of the Dardanelles and a strong fort been built on the west side at Gallipoli, the Ottoman power must speedily have been annihilated; but as it was the dissensions and the indifference of the other powers of Europe first yielded up the Greek Empire to the Turks as they have since sustained it--an alien power--race and religion in one of the fairest regions of the earth. In sheerest folly did Manuel the Emperor of Constantinople enter into an alliance with Mohammed I., whereas his policy should have been to prolong the division of the Ottoman powers. The Sultan and his troops were transported over the Bosphorus, and were hospitably entertained in the capital. Not long after he unsheathed a sword of revenge in delivering the true or the false Mustapha, real or pretended son of Bajazet I., on his promise of delivering up the keys of Gallipoli, or rather of Europe, so soon as he was placed on the throne of Roumania. But no sooner was he established than he dismissed the Greek ambassadors with a smile of contempt, saying in a pious tone that at the day of judgment he would rather answer for the violation of an oath than for having delivered up a Mussulman city into the hands of an infidel. The Emperor was thus at once the hated of the two rivals for the Ottoman throne; and the victory of Amurath over Mustapha was followed by the siege of Constantinople, the following spring (A. D. 1422, June 10, Aug. 24). The strength of the walls successfully resisted an army of two hundred thousand Turks for some two months, when the army was drawn off to quell some domestic revolt, and the fall of the city was delayed for thirty years under the disgraceful conditions of the payment of tribute to Turkey.