“In tracing the circumstances of Mohammed’s sickness, we look in vain for any proofs of that meek and heroic firmness which might be expected to dignify and embellish the last moments of the apostle of God. On some occasions he betrayed such want of fortitude, such marks of childish impatience, as are in general to be found in men only of the most ordinary stamp; and such as extorted from his wife Ayesha, in particular, the sarcastic remark, that, in herself or any of her family, a similar demeanor would long since have incurred his severe displeasure. He said that the acuteness and violence of his sufferings were necessarily in the proportion of those honors with which it had ever pleased the hand of Omnipotence to distinguish its peculiar favorites.”[200] Immediately after the death of Mohammed, his disciples pushed their conquests with amazing energy. In the course of a few centuries, they overran all of Egypt and of Asia Minor, and established the most stern and unrelenting despotism earth has ever known. Their military organization and prowess were such, that they could bring into the field a more powerful army than any other nation. They crossed the Bosphorus into Europe, and stormed Christian Constantinople with six hundred vessels of war and an army of three hundred thousand troops. Sixty thousand of the inhabitants of Constantinople were massacred in cold blood. The Christian maidens were dragged shrieking into the Moslem harems. The boys of tender age were compelled, under the blows of the scourge and of the cimeter, to adopt the religion of the Prophet, and to enlist under his banner. Thus the whole Eastern or Greek empire was soon blotted out. The crescent of Mohammed supplanted the cross of Christ over all the towers of the imperial city. The head of the Christian was crushed by the heel of the Turk. The conqueror, assuming the title of Mohammed II., prepared to invade Italy. It was his boast that he would feed his horse from the altar of St. Peter’s, in Rome. He crossed the Adriatic, took Otranto, and was in the onward career of victory, with every prospect of annexing Italy to the Mohammedan empire, when he died. There was then a short respite for imperilled Christendom. But soon the flood of Mohammedan invasion rolled up the Danube in surges of flame and blood. Year after year, and generation after generation, the valley of this majestic stream was but a constant battle-field, where Christian and Moslem grappled each other in the death-struggle.