Connected with all his achievements there is the stain of blood. Many contemporary writers speak of him as a monster of cruelty. We may discredit the statement that he caused Christians to be put to death while he feasted, as insufficiently proved. But even Critobulus, who is usually an apologist, has, as a faithful historian, to speak of his cruel deeds. When Castrion surrendered, he killed every man in the garrison and sent the women and children into slavery. When Gardikion submitted, its defenders were treated in a similar manner.[524] Von Hammer dismisses as unfounded the story of Mahomet having the bodies of fourteen pages ripped open to find who had eaten a poor woman’s cucumbers, and the singularly dramatic story of the slaughter of Irene in order to demonstrate to his troops that though he loved the most beautiful woman in the world he was yet master of himself, justly remarking that the massacre of garrisons faithful to their trust, the execution of the members of the imperial family of Trebizond and of the king of Bosnia, cry sufficiently aloud without need of exaggeration. Resistance to his lusts or even to his lawful desires was punished relentlessly by death.[525] He executed his grand vizier Mahmoud because of his independence. He tortured and then put to death his old tutor and vizier Halil Pasha. He sawed five hundred prisoners in halves whom he had captured in Achaia. ‘He was more cruel than Nero, and delighted in bloodshed,’ says Tetaldi. Probably it would be impossible to find a contemporary writer who does not employ similar language. Many of his acts are without the shadow of excuse. They are the result of wild impulse which had never been under control, and deserve to be classed as wanton cruelties inflicted by a man who was reckless of human suffering. There are others which may be put down to what he probably regarded as the exigencies of his position. If in his opinion the assassination of a brother, the slaughter of a great number of his enemies in war, and the murder of those of his subjects who opposed him were necessary to the accomplishment of his objects, he never hesitated. Like other great military rulers, Caesar yesterday, Napoleon to-day, Mahomet regarded men as so many counters, to be kept so long as they were useful in his game, to be cast aside when no longer wanted. Belonging to a family accustomed to absolute rule of the Eastern type, to a race which has never valued life as against military success, and having been reared amid dangers where his struggle for power and even for life was almost daily, he swept away every man who opposed him. His enemies would have dealt hardly with him, and he never appeared to doubt that he was justified in dealing hardly with or getting rid of them. It was part of the game of war. _Vae victis!_ And yet this man seems occasionally to have sympathised with the suffering he had caused, and even to have exercised rigorous justice. Critobulus, after