This solemn event--the fall of Constantinople--accomplished, there was no need of any reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches. The sword of Mohammed had settled their dispute. Constantinople had submitted to the fate of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage. [Sidenote: Terror of Christendom at the fall of Constantinople.] Christendom was struck with consternation. The advance of the Turks in Europe was now very rapid. Corinth and Athens fell, and the reduction of Greece was completed. The confines of Italy were approached A.D. 1461. The Mohammedan flag confronted that peninsula along the Adriatic coast. In twenty years more Italy was invaded. Otranto was taken; its bishop killed at the door of his church. At this period, it was admitted that the Turkish infantry, cavalry, and artillery were the best in the world. Soliman the Magnificent took Belgrade A.D. 1520. [Sidenote: Progress of the Turks.] Nine years afterwards the Turks besieged Vienna, but were repulsed. Soliman now prepared for the subjugation of Italy, and was only diverted from it by an accident which turned him upon the Venetians. It was not until the battle of Lepanto that the Turkish advance was fairly checked. Even as it was, in the complicated policy and intrigues of Europe its different sovereigns could not trust one another; their common faith had ceased to be a common bond: in all it had been weakened, in some destroyed. Æneas Sylvius, speaking of Christendom, says, "It is a body without a head, a republic without laws or magistrates. The pope or the emperor may shine as lofty titles, an splendid images; but they are unable to command, and no one is willing to obey." But, during this period of Turkish aggression, had not the religious dissensions of Christendom been decently composed, there was imminent danger that Europe would have been Mohammedanized. A bitter experience of past ages, as well as of the present, had taught it that the Roman Church was utterly powerless against such attacks. Safety was to be looked for, not in any celestial aid, but in physical knowledge and pecuniary resources, carried out in the organization of armies and fleets. Had her authority been derived from the source she pretended, she should have found an all-sufficient protection in prayer--indeed, not even that should have been required. Men discovered at last that her Litanies and her miracles were equally of no use, and that she must trust, like any other human tyranny, to cannon and the sword.