Fourteen years after, the infuriated Tartars collecting an army of no less than three hundred thousand men, renewed their assaults. Armenia was at this time not only harassed on all sides by Greeks, Saracens, and Persians, but rent by the internal dissensions of its own princes; so that it now fell a prey to Toghrul, who massacred, in cold blood, 140,000 of the inhabitants, carrying many also into captivity. The most flourishing provinces in due time were added to the conquests of the Turkomans, by Alf-arslan the nephew and successor of Toghrul. Their empire was greatly extended by the son of Alf-arslan, Melik-Shah, and was subsequently divided among three branches of the house of Seljuk. Suleyman, the third in descent from Melik-Shah, was the first Turkoman prince who governed Asia Minor. Er-Toghrul, or Orthogrul, the son of Suleyman, having by his assistance on a certain occasion, secured a victory to Ali-ed-din, the sultan of Babylon, Kara-Hissar in Bithynia, was bestowed upon him, and there he settled with his family, which consisted of three sons. Osman, the eldest son and successor of his father, Orthogrul, was left by the death of Ali-ed-din, the ally of his father, without a rival in the government of Syria; he was accordingly proclaimed sultan. In the year 1,300 he made Neapolis the capital of his dominions, and from thence is dated the foundation of the present Ottoman empire. Osman was so distinguished by his conquests, and became so endeared to his subjects, that ever since his time, the appellation of Osmanlis has been adopted by them; and the word Türk, or Turk, so indiscriminately applied to them by the Europeans, is not only inappropriate, but of a disagreeable signification, for it is only used among themselves as an epithet of opprobrium. In the twenty-sixth year of his reign, Osman took the city of Broossa, in Asia Minor, which his son Orkhan, who succeeded him, made the capital of his dominions. The desire, however, to possess the city of Stamboul, was transferred with increasing ardor from sultan to sultan; but the glory of its conquest was reserved for Mohammed II. The effeminate condition of the Greeks favored his design; for out of a population of 200,000 men, there were scarcely 8,000 ready to defend their capital; and on the 29th of May, 1453, Constantinople fell into the hands of the Osmanlis, or descendants of Osman, who have held it in possession until the present day. It is evident that the Osmanlis are the descendants of the Scythians, or one of the Tartar tribes; but who those Scythians originally were, may be questioned. A very curious, but plausible theory is advanced by some persons, that the Tartars are of the Jewish race. Tarat-har or Tartar, in the Syrian language, signifies the remnant of a people.