XXIII.

Such a pontiff could with as much propriety sell the head of an exile, as he had bought the Church. Bajazet II. sent Mustapha-Pasha to Rome with a letter. This letter, which the archives of the Vatican preserve, it is said, copied literally by the hand of the apostolical prothonotary Patriarchis, was conceived in these terms:

"The Sultan Bajazet II., son of the Sultan Mahomet, to Pope Alexander, pontiff of the Church of Rome.

"Your legate has reported to me that the king of France had the design of claiming my brother Djem, who is in your hands. This desire on his part is as contrary to my interests as it is hurtful to yours, and to those of all Christendom.

"I think, and your legate thinks as I do, that it concerns your tranquillity, the increase even of your power, as of my satisfaction, that my brother, whom you have in your hands, and who must die some day, may be brought to that end without delay. His death becoming the event the most agreeable to me, will become the most useful to you. May it please you then to aid in having Djem, as soon as possible, delivered from the miseries of this life; that his soul may, through your intercession, be conveyed into another abode, where it will enjoy a much more secure repose. If you fulfil my wishes, if you send me the body in any place beyond the sea, which you may be pleased to indicate, I will send you in advance, and to a place agreed upon, the sum of three hundred thousand gold ducats, with which you will be able to purchase estates for your children. I promise, besides, as long as I live, to maintain with you relations of good and solid friendship, and to refuse you nothing which you may desire of me. I promise that no hurt shall be done to any Christian, of any condition or quality whatsoever, by land or by sea, whether by me or by any of my subjects, unless in case of provocation. And that you may form no doubt of my promises, I swear to fulfil the conditions which I propose, by the name of the true God who created the heavens and the earth, and all which they contain, this God, whom both you and I believe in and adore."

Vor. II.-11*

XXIV.

Borgia was at no loss to understand from such insinuations the value of the hostage which Innocent VIII. had left in his hands. With the craft which then characterized the Romish policy of his house,-a policy of which his son, Cæsar Borgia, accomplished the crimes, while the historian Machiavel was inditing the theory--the Pope gave neither too much hope nor too much despair to Bajazet II. For the first time, the sovereign pontiff, vicar of Christ at Rome, sent an ambassador to the sovereign who was vicar of Mahomet. This ambassador of Alexander VI. to Constantinople, was George Bocciardo, grand master of ceremonies of the Popes. The contemporary annalists, Ottoman and Italian, relate that Bocciardo offered to Bajazet II., either the perpetual imprisonment of Djem at the price of forty-five thousand ducats yearly, payable by the Sultan to the Pope during the life of the captive, or the immediate death of Djem for three hundred thousand ducats, payable on delivery of his corpse. Despite the authority of Sveadeddin, of Guichardin, and of Sismondi, impartial history must call in doubt this compact of murder for three hundred thousand ducats. Subsequent events, and the survival itself of Djem belie it. Bajazet II., as has been seen by his letter, would not be likely, in a matter involving the security of his vast empire, to higgle about a few thousand ducats. But between criminals of this class, blood weighs more than gold. The treaty was concluded, on condition of the forty-five thousand ducats to be paid annually, for the perpetual captivity.* The chivalry of Rhodes, and the Christianity of Rome, trafficked infamously their services towards the master of the Ottoman empire. Bajazet II. was so well satisfied with the

* What seems strange is that the Pope should not have given up the live body, and accepted the collective sum. He would thus have the price offered for the death of the prince, without incurring the religious guilt, or the public odium of the crime; the fine of 10,000 ducats to be paid to France was but a small deduction, and would have doubtless been at all events indemnified by Bajazet. Nor was there any direct compact with the captive to trammel Borgia, as in the case of his predecessor, and more expressly of the Knights of Rhodes. On the other hand, he risked by the alternative of imprisonment, to keep the odium of the act alive, and to lose the profit from day to day, in being obliged by the king of France to free the captive, as he was eventually. Our author has not sounded this transaction to the bottom.-Translator.

hired services of Alexander, that he felt warranted in asking a cardinal's hat for the Romish ambassador, Bocciardo, negotiator of this treaty between the two courts.

He

Djem, for fear he would escape from Rome, and disquiet his brother on the frontiers of Hungary, was confined by the Pope in the castle of St. Angelo, the tomb of the Emperor Adrian, since become the capitol, the citadel, the palace and the prison of the Popes of modern Rome. languished here for two years, in a captivity, sometimes splendid, sometimes sordid, according as the Borgias, the Pope and his two sons, found their advantage in decorating or degrading their hostage.

XXV.

Charles VIII. advanced with a French army towards Rome, against the king of Naples, an ally of the Borgias. The Pope was uncertain whether the young French conqueror would respect in him the supreme pontiff of Christendom, or whether he came to repress his ambitions, and to chastise his crimes. In this doubt, he shut himself up with his son, Cæsar Borgia, and his troops, in the castle of St. Angelo, the prison of Djem, to let the French torrent pass by.

Negotiations were opened. Charles VIII. required that Cæsar Borgia, son and general of the Pope, should change sides, and join the French against the king of Naples. Politics did not make him forget generosity; he required further, that the Sultan Djem should be delivered up to him, to be treated as a sovereign, and not a captive, at his court. The interview which took place for this purpose in the prison, between Charles VIII., the Pope, and the Ottoman prince, attest the noble pride which the son of Mahomet II. maintained in his chains. "Prince," said the Pope to him, in presenting him to the young king, "is it true that you desire to go with the king of France, who wishes to take you with him to Naples? "If I am not treated like a prince," replied Djem, with the discouragement of wounded dignity, "it matters little whether I endure here or elsewhere the captivity which vilifies through me the supreme rank, and which vilifies in you the good faith of Christians." "God forbid," replied hastily the Pope, ashamed of appearing to be the gaoler of a free guest, "that I should consider you as my prisoner here; the king of France and you are two

great sovereigns, and I am at this moment but your interpreter."

Charles VIII. cheered the heart of the Sultan by his royal encouragements, condoled in his reverses, accused his persecutors, rescued him from the tomb of Adrian, treated him as a sovereign, and confided him, during the campaign of Naples, to the grand marshal of his court, to render him the services and the honors of a magnificent hospitality.

Djem quitted Rome the next day on horseback, in the train of Charles VIII. and of Cæsar Borgia. He attended at the short campaign of the French in the kingdom of Naples, stopped five days at Velletri, a few days at Terracina. Exile, love, imprisonment, grief, unexpected joy at his deliverance, had wasted his life; death awaited him on the threshold of his prisons. Attacked by fever at Terracina, a galley carried him dying to Naples, through the attentions of his friend, the king of France.

The Ottoman, French and Italian writers of this period, when crime was so rife in Italy that every death was ascribed to murder, agree in casting the responsibility of the malady and the death of Djem upon Alexander VI. and Cæsar Borgia, his son. They never portray these two princes but with the poniard or the poison in hand. They affirm that the day after the forced delivery of Djem by the Pope, his grand master of ceremonies, Bocciardo, and Mustapha-Pasha, ambassador of Bajazet, arrived from Constantinople at Sinigaglia, bearers of ninety thousand ducats, the tribute due for two years; that John de la Rovère, cardinal governor of Sinigaglia, an enemy of the Borgias, took possession of the ambassadors, and of the tribute; that the Pope, frustrated of his ninety thousand ducats, which he stood in need of, determined to earn the three hundred thousand ducats offered for the murder, and caused poison to be given at Terracina to the Sultan Djem, with the design to claim from Bajazet the proffered price of this tardy service.

Other ill-informed historians, confounding names, men, dates, forge the story of a barber of Bajazet II., named Mustapha, who, at the instigation of this sovereign, and with the complicity of the Pope, would have entered at Naples into the domestic service of Djem, and produced his death by shaving him with a poisoned razor.

These two fables are alike refuted by the facts, and by sound criticism. The pretended barber, Mustapha, was no

other than Mustapha-Pasha, who was one of the highest dignitaries of the court of Bajazet, and never employed in any thing like abject or domestic treacheries. As to the poisoning by the Pope, the dates and common sense belie it likewise. It has been seen that Alexander VI. had refused, three years before, to earn thus the thanks of Bajazet and 300,000 ducats, when he could dispose alone and in the dark of his victim: Djem, however, lived; nor is this all. While Charles VIII. was approaching Rome, the Pope, from whom he came to wrest the prisoner, might have hastened to get rid of him, and sent his body for the price of blood; * Djem, however, continued to live, and was delivered alive to Charles VIII. By what fatuity would the Pope have waited to strike definitively his victim, until this victim was in the hands of another sovereign? and by what title could the Pope have claimed from Bajazet II. the price of a crime, which even in his eyes, he could not have the merit of having committed? All these suppositions are revolting to common sense. Crime in the Borgias is sometimes atrocious, but it is never stupid. Without doubt this perverse pontificate is not scant of most misdeeds; but Alexander VI. did not poison Djem. Djem died of the disease of fallen monarchs-of proscription, that poison of the soul. History owes the truth to even the reprobate.

Djem expired at Naples, on the night of the 24th of February, 1495, surrounded by the faithful companions of his exile, and of the king of France, who deplored the premature end of a prince who owed him liberty, and who might, had he lived, have owed him an empire. Despite the silly popular rumors diffused through Italy, on his pretended abjuration of the law of the Prophet, he died in the faith, and even a martyr of his religion. "O, my God," cried he, some moments before his last breath, "if the enemies of the faith mean to use me for designs hurtful to the confessors of Islamism, withdraw, rather, at this instant, my soul to thyself." These final words, retained by the witnesses of his agony, belie sufficiently his abjuration of the faith of his fathers; he preferred it to ambition and to life.

Charles VIII. wept him; he had the body embalmed

*This is as bad a reason as most of the others in this embroglio; for it was evident that the French king would have held to harsh account the Pope, unable to produce the captive either dead or alive.—Translator.