In the list of heroes, John Huniades and Scanderbeg are commonly associated;* and they are both entitled to our notice, since their occupation of the Ottoman arms delayed the ruin of the Greek empire. John Castriot, the father of Scanderbeg,t was the hereditary prince of a small district of Epirus or Albania, between the mountains and the Adriatic sea. Unable to contend with the sultan's power, Castriot submitted to the hard conditions of peace and tribute; he delivered his four sons as the pledges of his fidelity; and the Christian youths, after receiving the mark of circumcision, were instructed in the Mahometan religion, and trained in the arms and arts of Turkish policy. The three elder brothers were confounded in the crowd of slaves; and the poison to which their deaths are ascribed cannot be verified or disproved by any positive evidence. Yet the suspicion is in a great measure removed by the kind and paternal treatment of George Castriot, the fourth brother, who, from his tender youth displayed the strength and spirit of a soldier. The successive overthrow of a Tartar and two Persians, who carried a proud defiance to the Turkish court, recommended him to the favour of Amurath; and his Turkish appellation of Scanderbeg (Iskender Beg), or the lord Alexander, is an indelible memorial of his glory and servitude. His father's principality was reduced into a province; but the loss was compensated by the rank and title of sanjiak, a command of five thousand horse, and the prospect of the first dignities of the empire. He served with honour in the

of Hungary, which he held till 1490. He founded the University of Buda in 1465; obtained the crown of Bohemia in 1469; and defended his territories successfully against the Turks and the emperor Frederic III.-ED.]

*They are ranked by Sir William Temple, in his pleasing Essay on Heroic Virtue (Works, vol. iii. p. 385), among the seven chiefs who have deserved, without wearing, a royal crown; Belisarius, Narses, Gonsalvo of Cordova, William first prince of Orange, Alexander duke of Parma, John Huniades, and George Castriot, or Scanderbeg.

I could wish for some simple authentic memoirs of a friend of Scanderbeg, which would introduce me to the man, the time, and the place. In the old and national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest of Scodra (de Vitâ, Moribus, et Rebus gestis, Georgii Castrioti, &c. libri 13, p. 367. Argentorat. 1537, in fol.), his gaudy and cumbersome robes are stuck with many false jewels. See likewise Chalcocondylas, 1. 7, p. 185; 1. 8, p. 229. His circumcision, education, &c.

are marked by Marinus with brevity and reluctance (l. 1, p. 6, 7).

age

wars of Europe and Asia; and we may smile at the art or credulity of the historian, who supposes that in every encounter he spared the Christians, while he fell with a thundering arm on his Mussulman foes. The glory of Huniades is without reproach; he fought in the defence of his religion and country; but the enemies who applaud the patriot have branded his rival with the name of traitor and apostate. In the eyes of the Christians, the rebellion of Scanderbeg is justified by his father's wrongs, the ambiguous death of his three brothers, his own degradation, and the slavery of his country; and they adore the generous, though tardy, zeal, with which he asserted the faith and independence of his ancestors. But he had imbibed from his ninth year the doctrines of the Koran: he was ignorant of the Gospel; the religion of a soldier is determined by authority and habit; nor is it easy to conceive what new illumination, at the of forty,* could be poured into his soul. His motives would be less exposed to the suspicion of interest or revenge, had he broken his chain from the moment that he was sensible of its weight; but a long oblivion had surely impaired his original right; and every year of obedience and reward had cemented the mutual bond of the sultan and his subject. If Scanderbeg had long harboured the belief of Christianity and the intention of revolt, a worthy mind must condemn the base dissimulation, that could serve only to betray, that could promise only to be forsworn, that could actively join in the temporal and spiritual perdition of so many thousands of his unhappy brethren. Shall we praise a secret correspondence with Huniades, while he commanded the vanguard of the Turkish army? Shall we excuse the desertion of his standard; a treacherous desertion, which abandoned the victory to the enemies of his benefactor? In the confusion of a defeat, the eye of Scanderbeg was fixed on the Reis Effendi, or principal secretary; with a dagger at his breast, he extorted a firman or patent for the government of Alba

* Since Scanderbeg died A.D. 1466, in the sixty-third year of his age (Marinus, 1. 13, p. 370), he was born in 1403 since he was torn from his parents by the Turks, when he was novennis (Marinus, 1. 1, p. 1. 6), that event must have happened in 1412, nine years before the accession of Amurath II. who must have inherited, not acquired, the Albanian slave. Spondanus has remarked this inconsistency, A.D. 1431, No. 31; 1443, No. 14.

nia; and the murder of the guiltless scribe and his train prevented the consequences of an immediate discovery. With some bold companions to whom he had revealed his design, he escaped in the night, by rapid marches, from the field of battle to his paternal mountains. The gates of Croya were opened to the royal mandate; and no sooner did he command the fortress, than George Castriot dropped the mask of dissimulation; abjured the prophet and the sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger of his family and country. The names of religion and liberty provoked a general revolt; the Albanians, a martial race, were unanimous to live and die with their hereditary prince; and the Ottoman garrisons were indulged in the choice of martyrdom or baptism. In the assembly of the states of Epirus, Scanderbeg was elected general of the Turkish war; and each of the allies engaged to furnish his respective proportion of men and money. From these contributions, from his patrimonial estate, and from the valuable salt-pits of Selina, he drew an annual revenue of two hundred thousand ducats;* and the entire sum, exempt from the demands of luxury, was strictly appropriated to the public use. His manners were popular; but his discipline was severe; and every superfluous vice was banished from his camp; his example strengthened his command; and under his conduct, the Albanians were invincible in their own opinion and that of their enemies. The bravest adventurers of France and Germany were allured by his fame, and retained in his service; his standing militia consisted of eight thousand horse and seven thousand foot; the horses were small, the men were active; but he viewed with a discerning eye the difficulties and resources of the mountains; and, at the blaze of the beacons, the whole nation was distributed in the strongest posts. With such unequal arms, Scanderbeg resisted twenty-three years the powers of the Ottoman empire; and two conquerors, Amurath the Second, and his greater son, were repeatedly baffled by a rebel, whom they pursued with seeming contempt and implacable resentment. At the head of sixty thousand horse and forty thousand janizaries, Amurath entered Albania; he might ravage the open country, occupy the defenceless towns, convert the churches into moschs, circumcise the

* His revenue and forces are luckily given by Marinus (1. 2, p. 44).

Christian youths, and punish with death his adult and obstinate captives; but the conquests of the sultan were confined to the petty fortress of Sfetigrade; and the garrison, invincible to his arms, was oppressed by a paltry artifice and a superstitious scruple.* Amurath retired with shame and loss from the walls of Croya, the castle and residence of the Castriots; the march, the siege, the retreat were harassed by a vexatious, and almost invincible adversary ;t and the disappointment might tend to imbitter, perhaps to shorten, the last days of the sultan. In the fulness of conquest, Mahomet the Second still felt at his bosom this domestic thorn; his lieutenants were permitted to negotiate a truce; and the Albanian prince may justly be praised as a firm and able champion of his national independence. The enthusiasm of chivalry and religion has ranked him with the names of Alexander and Pyrrhus; nor would they blush to acknowledge their intrepid countryman; but his narrow dominion, and slender powers, must leave him at an humble distance below the heroes of antiquity, who triumphed over the East and the Roman legions. His splendid achievements, the bashaws whom he encountered, the armies that he discomfited, and the three thousand Turks who were slain by his single hand, must be weighed in the scales of suspicious criticism. Against an illiterate enemy, and in the dark solitude of Epirus, his partial biographers may safely indulge

* There were two Dibras, the upper and lower, the Bulgarian and Albanian the former, seventy miles from Croya (1. 1, p. 17), was contiguous to the fortress of Sfetigrade, whose inhabitants refused to drink from a well into which a dead dog had traitorously been cast (1. 5, p. 139, 140). We want a good map of Epirus. [The territory held by Scanderbeg, extended from the lake of Labeatis, or Scroda, and the Montenegro in the north, to the river Aous, now Voïoussa, and the Acroceraunian promontory in the south. It was divided into three provinces: Zenta, north of the river Drin; Dibra, comprising the central region; and Musaki, between the lake Ochrida and the Hadriatic. The second of these was the seat of the brave and civilised tribe of the Mirdites, to which Scanderbeg belonged; its capital, Croya, was his birth-place and Lissus, now Alessio, at the mouth of the Drin, still contains his tomb. Koeppen, p. 205.-ED.]

Compare the Turkish narrative of Cantemir (p. 92), with the pompous and prolix declamation in the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of the Albanian priest, who has been copied by the tribe of strangers and moderns. In honour of his hero, Barletius (1. 6, p. 188-192) kills the sultan, by disease indeed, under the walls of Croya. But this audacious fiction is disproved by the Greeks and

the latitude of romance: but their fictions are exposed by the light of Italian history; and they afford a strong presumption against their own truth, by a fabulous tale of his exploits, when he passed the Adriatic with eight hundred horse to the succour of the king of Naples.* Without disparagement to his fame, they might have owned that he was finally oppressed by the Ottoman powers; in his extreme danger he applied to pope Pius the Second for a refuge in the ecclesiastical State; and his resources were almost exhausted, since Scanderbeg died a fugitive at Lissus on the Venetian territory.† His sepulchre was soon violated by the Turkish conquerors; but the janizaries, who wore his bones enchased in a bracelet, declared by this superstitious amulet their involuntary reverence for his valour. The instant ruin of his country may redound to the hero's glory; yet, had he balanced the consequences of submission and resistance, a patriot perhaps would have declined the unequal contest, which must depend on the life and genius of one man. Scanderbeg might indeed be supported by the rational, though fallacious, hope, that the pope, the king of Naples, and the Venetian republic, would join in the defence of a free and Christian people, who guarded the sea-coast of the Adriatic, and the narrow passage from Greece to Italy. His infant son was saved from the national shipwreck; the Castriots were invested with a Neapolitan dukedom, and their blood continues to flow in the noblest families of the realm. A colony of Albanian fugitives obtained a settlement in

Turks, who agree in the time and manner of Amurath's death at Adrianople. *See the marvels of his Calabrian expedition in the ninth and tenth books of Marinus Barletius, which may be rectified by the testimony or silence of Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. xiii. p. 291), and his original authors. (Joh. Simonetta de Rebus Francisci Sfortiæ, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xxi. p. 728, et alios.) The Albanian cavalry, under the name of Stradiots, soon became famous in the wars of Italy. (Mémoires de Comines, 1. 8, c. 5.) Spondanus, from the best evidence and the most rational criticism, has reduced the giant Scanderbeg to the human size (A.D. 1461, No. 20; 1463, No. 9, 1465, No. 12, 13; 1467, No. 1). His own letter to the pope, and the testimony of Phranza (1. 3, c. 28), a refugee in the neighbouring isle of Corfu, demonstrate his last distress, which is awkwardly concealed by Marinus Barletius (1. 10). * See the family of the

Castriots, in Ducange. (Fam. Dalmaticæ, &c. 18, p. 348-350.)