monks whose convents were nests on the top of rocks, some so steep that
there was no way of entering them save being drawn up in a basket. Well
was it for them that they had niched themselves into such strongholds,
for worse and worse days were coming upon Greece. The terrible nation of
Turks were making their way out of the wild country north of Persia, and
winning the old cities of Asia Minor, where they set up their Mahommedan
dominion, and threatened more and more to overthrow the Greek empire
altogether.

The emperor, John Palaeologus, was obliged to yield to Amurath, the
Turkish Sultan, all his lands except Constantinople, Thessalonica, and
that part of the Morea which still clung to the empire, and the Turks set
up their capital at Adrianople, whence they spread their conquests up to
the very walls of Constantinople; but the Greek mountaineers, especially
those of the mountain land of Epirus, now called Albania, had something
of the old spirit among them, and fought hard. The Venetians used to
take troops of them into their pay, since all Christians made common
cause against the Turks; and these soldiers, richly armed, with white
Albanian kilts, the remnant of the old Greek tunic, were called
Stradiots, from the old Greek word for a soldier, Stratiotes. The
bravest of them all was George Castriotes, a young Albanian, who had been
given as a hostage to the Mahommedans when nine years old. He had been
kept a prisoner, and made to fight in the Turkish army, and was so brave
there that the Turks called him Skanderbeg, or the Lord Alexander.
However, when he thought of the horror of being a Mahommedan, and
fighting against the Christian faith and his own country, he fled into
Albania, raised all the Greeks, killed all the Turks in the country, and
kept it safe from all the further attempts of the Sultan as long as he
lived, although, at Varna, a great crusade of all the most adventurous
spirits in Europe, to drive back the Turks, was wofully defeated in the
year 1446.

[Picture: Mount Helicon]

CHAP. XLII.--THE TURKISH CONQUEST. 1453-1670.

[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]

The last Emperor of the East was the best and bravest who had reigned for
many years. Constantine Palaeologus did his best against the Turks, but
Mahommed II., one of the greatest of the Ottoman race, was Sultan, and
vowed that Constantinople should be either his throne or his tomb