Mahomet II., son of Amurath II., "finished the work of his predecessors; he made the Ottoman power in Europe what it has been ever since. He gave a systematic form to the customs of his house and to the dominion which he had won. His first act was the murder of his infant brother, and he made the murder of brothers a standing law of his Empire. He overthrew the last remnants of independent Roman rule, of independent Greek nationality, and he fixed the relations which the Greek part of his subjects were to bear both towards their Turkish masters and towards their Christian fellow-subjects. He made the northern and western frontiers of his Empire nearly what they still remain. The Ottoman Empire, in short, as our age has to deal with it, is, before all things, the work of Mahomet the Conqueror. The prince whose throne was fixed in the New Rome held altogether another place from even the mightiest of his predecessors. Mahomet had reigned two years, he had lived twenty-three, on the memorable day, May 29th 1453, when the Turks entered the city of the Cæsars and when the last Emperor, Constantine, died in the breach. … See CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1453. And now that the Imperial city was at last taken, Mahomet seemed to make it his policy both to gather in whatever remained unconquered, and to bring most of the states which had hitherto been tributary under his direct rule. Greece itself, though it had been often ravaged by the Turks, had not been added to their dominions. The Emperors had, in the very last days of the Empire before the fall of Constantinople, recovered all Peloponnesos, except some points which were held by Venice. Frank Dukes also reigned at Athens, and another small duchy lingered on in the islands of Leukas and Kephallenia and on the coasts of Akarnania. The Turkish conquest of the mainland, again saving the Venetian points, was completed by the year 1460, but the two western islands were not taken until 1479. Euboia was conquered in 1471. … The Empire of Trebizond was conquered in 1461, and the island of Lesbos or Mitylene in 1462. There was now no independent Greek state left. Crete, Corfu, and some smaller islands and points of coast, were held by Venice, and some of the islands of the Ægean were still ruled by Frank princes and by the Knights of Saint John. But, after the fall of Trebizond, there was no longer any independent Greek state anywhere, and the part of the Greek nation which was under Christian rulers of any kind was now far smaller than the part which was under the Turk. While the Greeks were thus wholly subdued, the Slaves fared no better. In 1459 Servia was reduced from a tributary principality to an Ottoman province, and six years later Bosnia was annexed also. … One little fragment of the great Slavonic power in those lands alone remained. The little