a necessarily hostile movement. The European peoples, for the first time during centuries, were awakened from their dream of security and saw the possibility of the advance of races professing the creed which had been held by those who in the early days of Islam had utterly rooted out the civilisation and Christianity of North Africa. The shock and alarm were universal. [Sidenote: Alarm created in Europe.] The military reputation of the Turk was enormously increased by the capture of Constantinople. Hallam justly observes that though the fate of the city had been protracted beyond all reasonable expectation, the actual intelligence operated like that of a sudden calamity. ‘A sentiment of consternation, perhaps of self-reproach, thrilled to the heart of Christendom.’[561] Those who knew what the progress of the Turks had been and how numerous and mobile were the hordes at the disposal of the sultan were the most anxious regarding their further progress. The podestà of Pera, writing within a month after the capture, declares that Mahomet intended to become lord of the whole earth and that before two years were over he would go to Rome and ‘By God, unless the Christians take care, or there are miracles worked, the destruction of Constantinople will be repeated in Rome.’[562] Other contemporary writers express the like dismay. Aeneas Sylvius, in the presence of the diet of Frankfort, pointed out that by the capture of Constantinople Hungary lay open to the conqueror, and declared that if that country were subdued Italy and Germany would be open to invasion. The rapid extension of their power by sea as well as by land was soon a constant source of anxiety to the nations whose territory bordered on the Mediterranean. Piratical expeditions upon their shores with the object of carrying off slaves kept them in perpetual alarm. When Don John of Austria, in 1571, defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, the dread of the victorious Turk was so acute and the relief at the completeness of his victory so great that the Venetians congratulated each other with the cry that the Devil was dead, and the pope commemorated the great triumph by preaching from the text ‘There was a man sent from God whose name was John.’ From the capture in 1453 until John Sobieski relieved Vienna, upwards of two centuries later, the universal topic of European politics, quiescent for a few years but constantly becoming paramount, was the progress made by the Grand Turk. During the whole of this period he had continued to be the terror of Europe.