Europe was still trembling before the threatening cimeter of the Turk.  Mahomet ii., having annihilated the Greek empire, and consolidated his vast power, and checked in his career by the warlike barons of Hungary, now cast a lustful eye across the Adriatic to the shores of Italy.  He crossed the sea, landed a powerful army and established twenty thousand men, strongly garrisoned, at Otranto, and supplied with provisions for a year.  All Italy was in consternation, for a passage was now open directly from Turkey to Naples and Rome.  Mahomet boasted that he would soon feed his horse on the altar of St. Peter’s.  The pope, Sextus IV., in dismay, was about abandoning Rome, and as there was no hope of uniting the discordant States of Italy in any effectual resistance, it seemed inevitable that Italy, like Greece, would soon become a Turkish province.  And where then could it be hoped that the ravages of the Turks would be arrested?

In this crisis, so alarming, Providence interposed, and the sudden death of Mahomet, in the vigor of his pride and ambition, averted the danger.  Bajazet ii. succeeded to the Moslem throne, an indolent and imbecile sultan.  Insurrection in his own dominions exhausted all his feeble energies.  The Neapolitans, encouraged, raised an army, recovered Otranto, and drove the Turks out of Italy.  Troubles in the Turkish dominions now gave Christendom a short respite, as all the strength of the sultan was required to subjugate insurgent Circassia and Egypt.

Though the Emperor of Germany was esteemed the first sovereign in Europe, and, on state occasions, was served by kings and electors, he had in reality but little power.  The kings who formed his retinue on occasions of ceremonial pomp, were often vastly his superiors in wealth and power.  Frequently he possessed no territory of his own, not even a castle, but depended upon the uncertain aids reluctantly granted by the diet.

Gunpowder was now coming into use as one of the most efficient engines of destruction, and was working great changes in the science of war.  It became necessary to have troops drilled to the use of cannon and muskets.  The baron could no longer summon his vassals, at the moment, to abandon the plow, and seize pike and saber for battle, where the strong arm only was needed.  Disciplined troops were needed, who could sweep the field with well-aimed bullets, and crumble walls with shot and shells.  This led to the establishment of standing armies, and gave the great powers an immense advantage over their weaker neighbors.  The invention of printing, also, which began to be operative about the middle of the fifteenth century, rapidly changed, by the diffusion of intelligence, the state of society, hitherto so barbarous.  The learned men of Greece, driven from their country by the Turkish invasion, were scattered over Europe, and contributed not a little to the extension of the love of letters.  The discovery of the mariner’s