288 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY from the short and sharp attack of Tamerlane. In 142 1 a grandson of Bajazet succeded to his five uncles as Amurath II., and during his capable reign of thirty years, the Turkish Empire reconstituted itself alike in Europe and in Asia Minor. The capture of Constantinople, though attempted by Amurath in 1422, was reserved for his successor, Mohammed II. The town was taken by the Turks on the 29th of May 1453, and with it fell the Christian Empire of the East. St. Sophia became a Turkish mosque. The throne of Constantine and his successors became the seat of Islam. There was at that time no power in Christendom which could dislodge the Turk from the almost impregnable position of Constantinople. It was in vain that the feeble heirs of the family of Paleologus sold their imperial rights to European sovereigns. Before the end of the fifteenth century the Greek Empire in Europe and Asia had passed into Turkish hands, and the sack of Otranto by the Turks in 1481 convulsed the Christian world with fear that the conquest of Rome might be added to that of Constantinople.

But Mohammed died in 1481, and his successors turned their attention rather to the east and south. The Turkish fleets which had been created during the reigns of Amurath and Mohammed, and numbered no less than 250 galleys, under the command of the famous Barbarossa scoured the African coasts. Algiers and Tripoli became Turkish strongholds in the opening years of the sixteenth century. Egypt and Syria, which had continued to exist under the Mamelukes during the period of European conquest, were taken by Selim I. in the year 151 7. The Knights Templars were driven out of the island of Rhodes on Christmas Day of 1522. Tunis was captured in 1534, Gibraltar was sacked in 1539, and though the fortress was held for Spain, the Turkish fleet sailed round the coast, pillaging the Spanish towns as they went. Thus, from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, Turkish corsairs became the terror of the