Constantine, Palaeologos Dragozes, besieged by three hundred thousand Turks, after having appealed in vain for aid to the whole of Christendom, had not been willing to survive the loss of his empire, and had been found in the midst of the dead, close to the Tophana Gate; and on the 30th of May, 1453, Mahomet ii had made his entry into Constantinople, where, after a reign which had earned for him the surname of ‘Fatile’, or the Conqueror, he had died leaving two sons, the elder of whom had ascended the throne under the name of Bajazet ii.

The accession of the new sultan, however, had not taken place with the tranquillity which his right as elder brother and his father’s choice of him should have promised.  His younger brother, D’jem, better known under the name of Zizimeh, had argued that whereas he was born in the purple—­that is, born during the reign of Mahomet—­Bajazet was born prior to his epoch, and was therefore the son of a private individual.  This was rather a poor trick; but where force is all and right is naught, it was good enough to stir up a war.  The two brothers, each at the head of an army, met accordingly in Asia in 1482.  D’jem was defeated after a seven hours’ fight, and pursued by his brother, who gave him no time to rally his army:  he was obliged to embark from Cilicia, and took refuge in Rhodes, where he implored the protection of the Knights of St. John.  They, not daring to give him an asylum in their island so near to Asia, sent him to France, where they had him carefully guarded in one of their commanderies, in spite of the urgency of Cait Bey, Sultan of Egypt, who, having revolted against Bajazet, desired to have the young prince in his army to give his rebellion the appearance of legitimate warfare.  The same demand, moreover, with the same political object, had been made successively by Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, by Ferdinand, King of Aragon and Sicily, and by Ferdinand, King of Naples.

On his side Bajazet, who knew all the importance of such a rival, if he once allied himself with any one of the princes with whom he was at war, had sent ambassadors to Charles viii, offering, if he would consent to keep D’jem with him, to give him a considerable pension, and to give to France the sovereignty of the Holy Land, so soon as Jerusalem should be conquered by the Sultan of Egypt.  The King of France had accepted these terms.

But then Innocent viii had intervened, and in his turn had claimed D’jem, ostensibly to give support by the claims of the refugee to a crusade which he was preaching against the Turks, but in reality to appropriate the pension of 40,000 ducats to be given by Bajazet to any one of the Christian princes who would undertake to be his brother’s gaoler.  Charles viii had not dared to refuse to the spiritual head of Christendom a request supported by such holy reasons; and therefore D’jem had quitted France, accompanied by the Grand Master d’Aubusson, under