Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. - The book uses both Palæologus and Palælogus. - The book uses both DeStreeses and De Streeses. In both cases, both spellings have been retained as printed. Page 304: Ramedan should possibly be Ramadan. "_Your swarthy hero Scanderbeg, Gauntlet on hand and boot on leg, And skilled in every warlike art, Riding through his Albanian lands, And following the auspicious star That shone for him o'er Ak-Hissar._" LONGFELLOW THE CAPTAIN OF THE JANIZARIES _A STORY OF THE TIMES OF SCANDERBEG AND THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE_ BY JAMES M. LUDLOW, D.D. LITT.D ELEVENTH EDITION NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1886, by DODD, MEAD & CO. Copyright, 1890, by JAMES M. LUDLOW. _Electrotyped by Dodd, Mead & Co._ PREFACE. The story of the Captain of the Janizaries originated, not in the author's desire to write a book, but in the fascinating interest of the times and characters he has attempted to depict. It seems strange that the world should have so generally forgotten George Castriot, or Scanderbeg, as the Turks named him, whose career was as romantic as it was significant in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Gibbon assigns to him but a few brief pages, just enough to make us wonder that he did not write more of the man who, he confessed, "with unequal arms resisted twenty-three years the powers of the Ottoman Empire." Creasy, in his history of the Turks, devotes less than a page to the exploits of one who "possessed strength and activity such as rarely fall to the lot of man," "humbled the pride of Amurath and baffled the skill and power of his successor Mahomet." History, as we make it in events, is an ever-widening river, but, as remembered, it is like a stream bursting eastward from the Lebanons, growing less as it flows until it is drained away in the desert. Though our story is in the form of romance, it is more than "founded upon fact." The details are drawn from historical records, such as the chronicles of the monk Barletius--a contemporary, though perhaps a prejudiced admirer, of Scanderbeg--the later Byzantine annals, the customs of the Albanian people, and scenes observed while travelling in the East. The author takes the occasion of the publication of a new edition to gratefully acknowledge many letters from scholars, as well as notices from the press, which have expressed appreciation of this attempt to revive popular interest in lands and peoples that are to reappear in the drama of the Ottoman expulsion from Europe, upon which the curtain is now rising. THE CAPTAIN OF THE JANIZARIES. CHAPTER I