This chapter, containing the hearsay account of transactions which took place at a considerable distance from the kingdom of France abounds, as it might be expected, with errors, the correction of which, as they occur, would be a task equally laborious and unprofitable. Whoever wishes to make himself acquainted with the details of the siege and capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II. may peruse the 68th chapter of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.] [Footnote 164: Morbesan. Mahomet II. son to Amurath or Morad II.] [Footnote 165: Palendrins,--Palendric,--a flat boat.----Du Cange's Glossary.] [Footnote 166: Sangombassa. Q.] [Footnote 167: Melse Mondagarin. Q, the sea of Marmora?] [Footnote 168: Albitangoth. Q.] [Footnote 169: Colombassa. Q.] [Footnote 170: Siglardy. Q.] [Footnote 171: Galigaria. Q. Galata?] [Footnote 172: 'Constantinople had long been aimed at by the turkish power; but the diversions formed by Huniades and George Castriot had retarded an event, which the effeminacy and profligacy of both rulers and people had rendered inevitable. Constantine Drakoses, the last emperor, merited a better fate, if there could be a better, than dying for his country. When he found Mohammed determined to besiege his city, he raised what force he could, which amounted to no more than three or four thousand men; nor could the imperial treasury afford to continue in its pay a celebrated german engineer, who, on his stipend being lessened, went in disgust to the Turks, and cast those immense pieces of cannon which are still the wonder of the Dardanelles. 'To Giustiniani, a Genoese, who, with five hundred men, came to defend the city, Constantine gave the chief command, promising to make him prince of Lemnos if he drove off the Turks. Meanwhile the citizens sat like ideots determined to suffer the extremities of war, and expose their wives and children to violation and slaughter, rather than support an emperor who they knew wished to unite the greek with the latin church. 'Mohammed had four hundred thousand men in arms around the city; but though his fleet was large, he could not approach the walls by the harbour, and had even been witness to the success of five ships from Genoa, who had forced their way through his numerous navy. To remedy this, he contrived by engines, and an immense strength of hands, to draw a vast detachment of galleys over a peninsula into the harbour, and then the blockade was complete. The cannoneers, too, of the Turks were instructed by an hungarian ambassador (moved by a foolish prophecy that Christendom would never thrive until Constantinople was taken,) how to do the most damage to the old and ruinous fortifications of the devoted city.