The Turks were only constituted to contend with a barbarous people, like themselves, or with a degenerate people, like the Greeks. When they met with nations that were not corrupted, and were not deficient in bravery or patriotism, their career was checked. It is a circumstance worthy of remark, that they were never able to make an impression upon any of the nations of the Latin Church; the only nation that was separated from Christendom by the conquests of the Turks was one that had separated itself from it. When the Ottomans were no longer able to prosecute their scheme of general invasion, all the passions which had stimulated them to conquest only served to disturb their own empire; which is the ordinary destiny of mere conquering nations. The wars they prosecuted at the same time against Christian Europe and Persia, were the principal causes of the decay of the military power of the Turks. The efforts they made against the Persians, diverted their forces from their expeditions against the Christians; and their expeditions against the Christians crippled their means for the wars in Asia. In these two kinds of war they had a very different manner of fighting. After having for any length of time contended with the warriors of the Oxus or Caucasus, they were incapacitated for making war in Europe. They were never able to triumph completely over either Persia or the Christian nations; and remained at last pressed between two enemies, equally interested in their ruin, and equally animated by religious passions. The Turks, like all the hordes from the north of Asia, brought with them the feudal government. The first thing to be done by all nomadic nations, who established themselves in conquered countries, was the division of the lands, with certain conditions of protection and obedience. From this division naturally emanated feudalism. The difference, however, which existed between the Turks and the other barbarians who conquered the West, was, that the jealous despotism of the sultans never allowed fiefs to become hereditary, or that an aristocracy should grow up round it, as in the monarchies of Christendom. Thus in the Turkish empire nothing was to be seen on one side, but the authority of an absolute master; and on the other, nothing but a military democracy. The Ottoman monarchy was thus built upon that which is weakest in political societies—the will of a single man, or that of the multitude. The Turks have been compared to the Romans. Both nations began in the same manner; for both were nothing but bands of brigands. What distinguishes them in history is, that the Turks have remained the same as they were in their origin; whilst the Romans, in their conquests, never rejected the knowledge, the customs, or even the gods of the people they conquered. The Turks, on the contrary, took nothing from other nations, and made it their pride to continue barbarians.