The history of Djem, brother and competitor of Bajazet II., forms part of the history of the Ottomans. But after the disaster of this prince, at Jenischyr, the scene of his misfortunes is no longer in Turkey; it is in France or in Italy. The recital of the events of Turkey, and of the adventures of Djem in Europe, would have crossed each other diametrically, and perplexed the history of the two brothers. We have preferred, for the perspicuity as well as interest of the drama, to relate without confusion and without interruption the reign of the one, and the life of the other. To the intellect as to the senses, it is the separation of the objects, that is to say analysis, that gives order; it is order that gives perspicuity, that light of the intellect; it is perspicuity that gives interest, that heat of the memory.

We refer, then, to the following book the history of Djem, this great outlaw of the Ottomans, this sport of fortune, and this victim of the politics of Europe.

BOOK SIXTEENTH.

I.

THE Empire had had for a moment two Emperors.

It will be remembered, that after the victory of Jenischyr, obtained by Bajazet II. over his brother and his rival, the young Emperor of Asia, Djem, had taken refuge, with his mother, his wife, and his children, at the court of the Sultan of Egypt. It is remembered that, received as a Sultan by that sovereign, Djem, whether through discouragement, or piety, or policy, had left his family at Cairo, to accomplish, almost alone, across the deserts, the pilgrimages of Jerusalem, of Mecca, and of Medina, the three sacred cities of the Arabs and of the Ottomans. This Sultan and a Sultana, daughter of Mahomet, are the only members of the imperial family of Turkey, who have made, according to Mouradgea, the pilgrimage of the tomb of the Prophet.

His friends and his enemies lost sight of him for nearly two years in those distant peregrinations, wherein the camel of a pilgrim bore, under the costume of a Bedouin, the son of Mahomet II., and the second Emperor of the Ottomans.

II.

His mother and his young wife, daughter of a Turcoman prince of Caramania, saw him return the 4th of February, 1482. He appeared to have accepted religiously and philosophically his defeat; he resigned himself to live in Egypt in a contemplative obscurity. His treasures, sufficient for a private life in a foreign land, the respect with which he was surrounded by the Mamelukes, his affection for his mother and for his wife, the fidelity of some friends, companions of his boyhood, of his grandeur, of his reverses; but above all,

his taste and his talent for poetry, which rescues the unhappy from the sentiment of the reality to transport him into imaginary regions-all these rendered exile and oblivion of the throne more easy to him, than to the ambitious, without genius and without virtue. Although scarcely twenty-four years of age, Djem had already, in Turkey, in Persia, and in Arabia, the renown of a hero, and the celebrity of one of the most accomplished poets of Islamism. The blood of Mahomet II., his beauty and his agility of body, his pilgrimages, his exploits, and his reverses, added still to the dignity of his misfortunes. He condemned himself to inaction; but his friends, his partisans in Caramania and the enemies of his brother, did not resign themselves to his absence. Their fortune was his. They did not hesitate to gamble it anew upon his life, and to ruin him to save themselves.

III.

Kasim-Beg, that outlawed son of Ibrahim-CaramanOghli, who had devoted himself to the cause of Djem against Bajazet II., to recover his dominions, by this service rendered to the more popular and so the more promising of the two pretenders to the throne, had remained, after the defeat of Jenischyr, wandering, but still armed, among his former subjects in the inaccessible cliffs of the Taurus. He thence agitated the valleys, the plains, the cities: he sent incessantly to Djem, to conjure him to come and rekindle by his presence a cause dearer than ever to the Caramanians. Another partisan of Djem, as considerable as Kasim, Mahmoud-Beg, governor of Angora, and generalissimo of the Janissaries under Mahomet II., ready to betray Bajazet II. through resentment for his displacement, promised likewise to Djem, to deliver him Angora, and a part of the army of his brother, at the moment he should land on the coast of Caramania.

These solicitations, and the certainty of the succor which the Mamelukes of Syria would lend the undertaking, determined Djem to try once more his fortune. He committed his family to the care of the Sultan, his ally, and, attended by the bravest of his companions, he left Cairo the 6th May, 1482, to communicate at Aleppo with his partisans of Caramania. Kasim-Beg, Mahmoud-Beg, a great number of emirs, begs, and discontented generals of the army of Bajazet II., were come to meet the young Sultan. They entered

Cilicia, exciting to insurrection in the name of Djem, all the people and the troops they met with on their way. The popularity of Djem, the legitimacy of Kasim, the military renown of Mahmoud-Beg, dear to the Janissaries, gave in a few weeks to the pretender, provinces and an army superior to that of Bajazet. Entire Asia was about to slip from the Sultan. Ahmed-Pasha, his general in Caramania, abandoned by a part of his troops, beaten twice by Mahmoud-Beg, in the plains of Koniah, had thrown hastily into the capital, a garrison commanded by Ali-Pasha, since grand vizier. He turned back himself to face the rising population, and sought to gain time, rather than victories. Djem, MahmoudBeg, and Kasim, combined before the walls of Koniah, were besieging the city, which held out only through the obstinacy of Ali-Pasha. An accident saved it.

Mahmoud-Beg, in passing to the cause of Djem, had the improvidence to leave his wife and children hostages to the Turks of Angora, in the heart of Anatolia. He left the camp of Djem with a detachment of his army, in order to rescue his family from the vengeance of Bajazet. Encountered on the way by a larger body of the Sultan's troops, he fell in the conflict, and his head sent to Bajazet revived the confidence of this prince. He advanced through all the valleys with three armies, from Constantinople, from Broussa, and from Amasia, upon Angora. Djem, weakened and discouraged by the loss of Mahmoud-Beg, his best general, fell back, with Kasim, into the mountains. This battle-field, fortified by nature, rendered him equal to the increasing forces of his brother. Bajazet, before adventuring his troops in these defiles of the Taurus, sent the second agha of the Janissaries to parley with Djem. The young prince consented to the conferences. Djem, or his ambassadors, required the full sovereignty of several provinces of Asia. Bajazet II. saw, in these conditions, the dismemberment of the empire. "Tell my brother," replied he to the envoy, "that the empire is a bride who cannot be possessed at the same time by two husbands; that I will die to defend it, and that he who really means to dispute it with me, should therefore cease to soil the feet of his horse, and the sleeves of his caftan, in the innocent blood of the Ottomans. Let him retire to Jerusalem; I will engage, if he will only reside beyond my dominions, to give him a revenue of two hundred thou

sand gold ducats, and twenty select pages, the most beautiful children of my slaves."

These propositions were rejected with indignation by Djem. "It is not gold that a prince seeks," cried he, "but empire." Ahmed-Pasha, reinforced by the numerous European and Asiatic cavalry of Bajazet, scaled then the mountains by all the gorges of Cilicia. There remained to Kasim-Beg and Djem but a few inaccessible strongholds, and some strips of beach at the foot of Mount Taurus on the sea. Kasim-Beg, who feared nothing for himself in the cliffs of the Taurus, conjured Djem to go seek an asylum and alliances among the Christian princes by passing to Rhodes.

IV.

This advice, although proceeding from a sincere attachment, ruined Djem, by diverting him from relying, rather on the faith of the Syrians, of the Egyptians, and of the Persians, which he had tried, than go to trust himself to the suspicious faith of the Knights of Rhodes, and of the Christian princes.

During the reign of his father, Mahomet II., this young prince, who then governed Caramania, had been charged to negotiate a peace with the Knights of Rhodes. Ambassadors of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, and ambassadors of Djem, had frequently had conferences on the coast of Cilicia, in presence of Djem. The son of the Sultan was known to the principal knights, and frequent intercourse had taught Djem to honor in this Christian nobility, the valor and the grace of the European warriors. He appreciated their heroism; he did not suspect their perfidy. Experience was going to teach him that barbarism and a corporate policy corrupt even heroism, religion, and virtue.

The prince, sheltered, after the disbandment of his troops, in a cavern of the cliffs of Cilicia, sent to Rhodes SouleimanPasha, one of the last and most faithful companions of his fall, to ask the grand master of Rhodes if the knights would receive on their island the son of Mahomet II., the vanquished but legitimate Sultan of the Ottomans, and if they would engage to assure him the life, the security, and liberty, which are due in all religions to voluntary and illustrious guests.