firm.
The moment that the Tartars began to give ground, the Osmanlis began to
recover it. In less than twenty years they stood again in Asia as they
were before Timur's attack, and secure for the time on the east, could
return to restore their prestige in the west, where the Tartar victory had
bred unrest and brought both the Hungarians and the Venetians on the
Balkan scene. Their success was once more rapid and astonishing: Salonika
passed once and for all into Ottoman hands: the Frank seigneurs and the
despots of Greece were alike humbled; and although Murad II failed to
crush the Albanian, Skanderbey, he worsted his most dangerous foe, John
Hunyadi, with the help of Wallach treachery at the second battle of
Kosovo. At his death, three years later, he left the Balkans quiet and the
field clear for his successor to proceed with the long deferred but
inevitable enterprise of attacking all that was left of Greek empire, the
district and city of Constantinople.

The doom of New Rome was fulfilled within two years. In the end it passed
easily enough into the hands of those who already had been in possession
of its proper empire for a century or more. Historians have made more of
this fall of Constantinople in 1453 than contemporary opinion seems to
have made of it. No prince in Europe was moved to any action by its peril,
except, very half-heartedly, the Doge. Venice could not feel quite
indifferent to the prospect of the main part of that empire, which, while
in Greek hands, had been her most serious commercial competitor, passing
into the stronger hands of the Osmanlis. Once in Constantinople, the
latter, long a land power only, would be bound to concern themselves with
the sea also. The Venetians made no effort worthy of their apprehensions,
though these were indeed exceedingly well founded; for, as all the world
knows, to the sea the Osmanlis did at once betake themselves. In less than
thirty years they were ranging all the eastern Mediterranean and laying
siege to Rhodes, the stronghold of one of their most dangerous
competitors, the Knights Hospitallers.

In this consequence consists the chief historic importance of the Osmanli
capture of Constantinople. For no other reason can it he called an
epoch-marking event. If it guaranteed the Empire of the East against
passing into any western hands, for example, those of Venice or Genoa, it
did not affect the balance of power between Christendom and Islam; for the
strengt