noble defence is said to have delayed the fall of Constantinople, and possibly to have saved the rest of Christendom by drawing away the attack of the infidels from other quarters. The event, therefore, amply vindicated the sagacity of Pope Gregory, yet not the less does it elevate the obedience of the knights to the dignity of a sacrifice. CHAPTER III. Progress of the Turks—Bajazet and Timour the Tartar—Siege and conquest of Smyrna—St. Peter’s of the Freed—Greatness of the order under Naillac—Mahomet II.—Fall of Constantinople—Threatened invasion of Rhodes—Death of Scanderbeg—Conquest of Lesbos and Negropont—Election of Peter d’Aubusson. From the period of the first settlement of the order at Rhodes the war with the Turks, though desultory, had been continual. The Turkish empire, which, under its first sultan Othman, already included many of the provinces of Asia Minor, extended itself into Europe in the reign of his son Orchan. Disputes at Constantinople between the rival emperors, John Palæologus and Cantacuzenus, led to the unhappy policy adopted by the latter of calling in the Turks to his aid. Orchan (to whom Cantacuzenus had given his daughter in marriage) did not fail to seize so favourable an opportunity of enlarging his conquests; his son Solyman crossed the Hellespont; and speedily making himself master of the northern provinces of the Greek empire, even endeavoured to gain a footing in the Morea. Orchan’s son Amurath,—for Solyman had died in the midst of his career,—followed up his father’s victories with still greater success; and Palæologus, who in vain strove to resist the advances of the Turks, was compelled gradually to yield all his possessions to their arms, with the exception of Constantinople, Thessalonica, the Morea, and a few islands. Adrianople (at no great distance from the walls of Constantinople itself) became the metropolis of the Ottoman dominion in Europe (A.D. 1361), and the danger of the latter city became daily more and more imminent; for whilst, on the one side, Asia was in the hands of the infidels, they were, on the other, masters of all the Macedonian cities and provinces, and from their position at Adrianople were able to attack and overran the Bulgarian and Servian principalities; and thus the capital of the Greek emperors was gradually surrounded on all sides by the victorious Moslem. Two defences alone of any strength remained to the Christian arms on the shores of the Archipelago: they were the island of Rhodes and the devoted garrison of Smyrna.