In the line of succession were two sons, Bajesid and Djem. Bajesid managed, by rapid marching, to reach Scutari before his brother, and was proclaimed Sultan. Djem, who had occupied Broussa, proposed a division of the empire, but Bajesid refused, and defeated Djem in a decisive battle, fought at Yeni-Chchir (1481). The defeated brother took refuge first in Egypt, with the Sultan of the Mamelouks, and afterwards appeared as a suppliant at Rhodes, where the Grand Master, fearing to keep so valuable a hostage, sent him to France, where he remained for several years in captivity. Djem finally ended his life as a victim of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, who is charged with having murdered him to secure the favor of Bajesid. So long as Djem lived, Bajesid was wary of stirring up the enmity of Occidental Christendom; he feared the effect on the stability of his throne by the return of a pretender, backed up by Christian armies. He even refused to answer the appeal for aid sent him by the last King of Granada, only venturing to show ineffective sympathy by sending a fleet to cruise off the Spanish coast.

Charles VIII of France, encouraged by his successful expedition into Italy, planned a new general crusade against the Turk, and secured promises of coöperation from various Western powers. He kept in touch with the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, and even looked forward to taking the imperial throne of Constantinople by purchasing title deeds to it from the Paleologi family.

After Djem’s death, which was soon followed by that of Charles, the Sultan had a free hand. From 1492 to 1495 he warred with partial success against the Hungarians; then came the turn of Venice, whose Italian dominions again saw a Turkish army. In the Morea, also, the republic lost some of the few cities it still possessed. There Nauplia held out, but Modon, Navarino, and Coron passed into the possession of the Turks. Under Papal leadership, an anti-Ottoman league was formed, and the Christian fleet proved its prowess by destroying two Turkish flotillas and by ravaging the shores of Asia Minor.

Internal troubles in Asia Minor, defeats in Hungary, and a long, troublesome war with the Sultan of Egypt brought the warlike enterprises of Bajesid to an end. The Sultan’s sons through their dissensions darkened the close of his reign; all three rebelled. Of the three, the most successful in opposing his father’s power was Selim, who won the Janitschars over to his side, and through their interference was able to enter Constantinople in triumph, and there enforce his own conditions. Bajesid first offered large sums if Selim would withdraw to the Asiatic province, of which he was governor; finally he consented to accept him as heir and co-regent on the throne; but Selim had secured the influence of the troops, and they demanded the Sultan’s immediate abdication. Bajesid was obliged to accede to their request, and only asked that he might be allowed to withdraw to die at Demotica, the place where he was born. The third day after his abdication he died. Because of its suddenness, his death, as was so often the case in those days, was said to be due to poison.

Selim’s path after his accession was anything but smooth; the troops were not amenable to discipline, and there were a host of brothers and nephews, who were in no mood to accept him as their lord. Besides his own son, Souliman, there were ten princes who stood near the throne. All were taken and murdered. Though Selim affected to explain their executions as due to reasons of state, his acts were severely judged by his contemporaries. The Turks called him “The Inflexible,” while in the West he was entitled “The Savage.” Foscolo, the Venetian, described him as the cruelest of men, “a man who dreams only of conquests and wars.” He was a well-educated man who favored the pursuit of literature, and it was said that the only individual who was ever able to induce him to revoke a death sentence was the grand mufti, Ali Djemali. His viziers felt the implacable nature of their master; seven of them were executed, for whenever the soldiers were restless the vizier was made a victim of the Sultan’s discontent. According to an old report one of them only agreed to accept the dangerous office after Selim had beaten him with his own hands. Intractable at home, Selim, so far as Europe was concerned, proved a pacific prince, his name being recorded only in connection with one expedition against the Christians. His Christian vassals, too, were left undisturbed; all that he exacted from them was the payment of a regular tribute. To the Moslem dissenters in Persia of the Shiite sect, he showed himself an implacable persecutor, all the more because his animosity was excited by the encouragement given to his rebellious brother Ahmed and his three sons by Ismail, the master of Persia. Ismail also negotiated an alliance with the Sultan of Egypt against the Osmanlis. Selim began in his own provinces by organizing a systematic massacre of the schismatics. Then followed a holy war against the Shah, in 1513, in which Selim led an army of 140,000 warriors; and after three campaigns, in one of which a great pitched battle was fought at Tchaldiran (August 24, 1514), he extended the domains of the Ottoman far to the east, bringing to submission Georgia and Kurdistan, and overrunning Mesopotamia and the parts of Syria that were controlled by the Moslem lord of Egypt.

By the expansion of his empire in this direction he soon came into conflict with the Sultan of the Mamelouks. Aleppo was taken, and, when Selim entered the city, he was hailed in the great mosque as the guardian of the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a title which gave the Ottoman Sultan almost the rank of the Khalif of the faithful. Damascus also fell into his hands, and so rapid were the successes of the Ottomans, that early in the year 1517 Selim found himself within sight of Cairo. The Mamelouks made an heroic resistance; protected by their coats of mail they charged into the center of the Turkish position, killing the vizier and ten generals. But here, as so often, the superiority of the Turks in artillery decided the day, and Cairo was taken after a prolonged and desperate struggle. Selim proclaimed an amnesty in favor of the Mamelouks; 500 of them, trusting in the conqueror’s promises, surrendered and were decapitated, and 50,000 of the citizens of Cairo were massacred. Touman, who led the Egyptian forces, was finally taken and hanged.

Egypt was allowed to retain its ancient organization, with its irregular force, the Mamelouks, and its twenty-four Begs as military commanderies; but the direction of the government was placed in the hands of the Ottoman Pasha. With the possession of Egypt Selim became lord of Yemen, its dependency, and so exercised actual control over the holy places of the Moslem faith. At Cairo he had found a sheik, an obscure and neglected personage, called Elmo-stansir-bi-illah, who was reputed to be in the direct line of descent from the second branch of the Abbasides Khalifs. Selim kept him in confinement until, on the promise of securing his liberty, and for a small money payment and a pension, he agreed to transfer to the Turkish ruler all his claims to the Khalifate.

Selim’s victories made a great impression. Venice, whose commercial interests were affected, sent ambassadors to Cairo to arrange for paying the tribute that was due to the Sultan of Egypt for the island of Cyprus. Hungary asked to have the truce prolonged between the two powers, and the Shah of Persia sent gifts and congratulations. Selim died on September 22, 1520, while he was preparing for an expedition against the island of Rhodes. He was succeeded by his only son, Souliman, a ruler whose long reign, from 1520 to 1566, makes him a contemporary of the great European leaders of the sixteenth century, a fact which Paul Veronese recognized when he placed him in his celebrated painting, “The Marriage at Cana,” along with the chief sovereigns of the day.

As the lines of expansion in the East and in Africa had been closed by the remarkable achievements of Selim, Souliman’s hands were free to take up the traditional line of aggressive progress of Turkish power. Hungary was attacked on the ground that the payment of tribute was refused. In 1521, after two important battles, Belgrade was besieged by the Sultan; the fate of the city was decided by the defection of its Servian and Bulgarian allies. Twenty assaults were made, and there were only 400 able-bodied men in the garrison, when a mutiny among the inhabitants forced the town to capitulate on August 29, 1521.

The conquest of Rhodes, the center of Christian resistance in the East, was now not long delayed. A large navy of 200 vessels appeared off the island with a summons to the grand master, Villiers de l’lsle Adam, to surrender. Souliman had collected an army of 100,000 men to undertake the siege, but the defenders were not terrified. Every assault made on the great bastions of the citadel caused enormous losses among the Turks; but their prolonged artillery fire and the new supplies of men, drawn constantly from Asia, showed the mere handful of defenders that their struggle could have only one outcome. In December, 1522, the island capitulated on terms that were favorable to the heroic defenders; even the Sultan appreciated the tragedy, for he is recorded to have said to his favorite Ibrahim, that he was loath to force this Christian commander, in his old age, to leave his house and his goods.

The next field of Souliman’s military enterprise was Persia, where the Shah, by the defection of an Ottoman official, had recovered some of the territory taken by Selim. Souliman, appearing with a large force, received the submission of many of the Shah’s vassals, and, after a long march to the East, during which his cannon had to be abandoned, entered the ancient capital of the Khalifate, Bagdad, in 1535. But several other campaigns were required to establish definite possession of the country. Finally, after many victories, peace was signed at Amasia, on the 29th of May, 1555, a step which implied that the Sunnite Turks acknowledged the legitimacy of a Shiite monarchy. In the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan the extension of Ottoman power encountered serious obstacles. Native chieftains and princes followed their own caprices and their own interests in changing their allegiance to Shah or Sultan. There was constant guerrilla warfare, without any notable advantage to Turkish arms. In the southern regions at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Ottoman power was firmly established; Turkish vessels were to be seen now in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Aden was occupied and the control of Yemen made effective. But the chief effort of Souliman was directed against the King of Hungary and the Emperor Charles V. A curious and novel development of European diplomacy was seen, when Francis I, the French King, appealed to the Sultan in his difficulties, after his defeat at the hands of Charles in Italy. Souliman sent a gracious message assuring the imprisoned monarch of his support, and spoke of his own throne as the refuge of the world; “night and day,” he added, “our horse is saddled and our sword girded.” In 1526 the Sultan marched from his capital to give battle to Charles, the “hated head of the infidels,” with an army of 100,000 men and 300 cannon. There was a great battle with the Hungarian troops at Mohacs (August 28, 1526). After a hot engagement of two hours, the Christians left on the field 20,000 foot and 400 horse, and of the prisoners 400 were put to death.

A few days after the battle Buda surrendered to the Turks, and the Hungarian kingdom was harried by the Turkish irregular forces. Everywhere they went, their path was marked by massacre. Ten thousand captives were taken, and the result of the campaign was almost the disappearance of Hungary as an independent Christian kingdom, because, after the taking of Buda, Souliman called to him the Hungarian nobles and settled who should be their king. The kingdom was now rent by factions, some of the nobles siding with the Sultan’s candidate, John Zapolya, while others accepted Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V. When Zapolya appeared at Constantinople, because of the failure of his faction to support his claims, the Sultan, after securing from him a formal engagement as vassal, undertook to place him on the Hungarian throne. The promise was more than made good. In October, 1529, the Turks appeared before the walls of Vienna with 250,000 men and 300 cannon. To defend the city there were only 16,000 men and 70 pieces of artillery. But the defense was conducted with such spirit and intelligence that the Turkish army was compelled to withdraw. When winter approached, the extent of the ravages of the Turkish arms was marked by attacks on Regensburg and Brunn. Later on, another expedition was made into Styria, where the country suffered terrible devastations.

Under the stress of these alarms the powers of Western Europe, irrespective of religious differences, banded together to resist the enemy. Even Francis I was concerned at the rapidity of the success of his ally, the Sultan, and sent an ambassador to Constantinople to entreat Souliman to hold his hand. Finally, owing to the difficulties with Persia, the Sultan agreed to sign a treaty of peace with Hungary in 1533, by which Ferdinand was allowed to hold the land already occupied by him. But the war with Charles V, and with his ally, Venice, still went on, chiefly a contest at sea between the Turkish admiral, Kheir-ed-Din, and his Venetian antagonist, Andrew Doria, without decisive results, except the capture of many of the Venetian islands in the Ægean. In 1541 steps were taken, when dissensions arose again in Hungary between the heirs of Zapolya and Ferdinand, to make the conquest of part of the country effective. A Turkish pasha-lik was formed, with Buda as its capital, and for 147 years Buda remained an Ottoman city. Further conquests were made of Van, or Stuhlweissenburg, the city where the Hungarian kings were consecrated, and Vychegrad, where the royal crown of Hungary was kept. Owing to the valor of the people there were repeated efforts on the part of the Hungarians to renew resistance to the Ottoman domination. A treaty was made in 1567, when the aged Sultan, worn out by constant warfare, was willing to concede to the Emperor Ferdinand an arrangement for the payment of an annual tribute. Although peace was formally declared, disturbances on the frontier still continued, and the seas were not free from acts of piracy.

As Spain had not been included in the treaty of 1562, a Spanish flotilla of twenty-two ships was destroyed near the island of Djerba, which had previously been seized by Spain. Not long afterwards a Turkish armada of 191 vessels sailed against the island of Malta, with the purpose of bringing to the home of the Knights Hospitalers the ruin that had already been inflicted at Rhodes on their brethren. For four months the siege lasted, costing the assailants nearly 20,000 men. Dragut, the Turkish commander, was slain, and finally, on September 11, 1565, the undertaking was abandoned as hopeless, and the Turkish armament withdrew.

Souliman’s days were brought to an end in the midst of the siege of a Hungarian town, Sziget, one of the many events of the frontier warfare carried on without intermission, irrespective of the treaty between the heads of the two states. His death was carefully concealed from his men for fear of discouraging them in their assaults on the citadel of the town, which was being heroically defended by Zriny. Three days after the Sultan’s death, on the 8th of September, 1566, only the central tower of the fort was left in the hands of the Hungarian champion. He loaded up his cannon to the muzzle, and in the smoke of the cannonade rushed into the thick of the Turkish lines and perished. He had taken care to arrange for the blowing up of the powder magazine at the time he made his sortie. The great tower fell in ruins, burying in the débris 3000 Turks. Souliman, in his life of seventy-one years, had personally led sixteen campaigns against the Christians; despite gout and physical weakness he would not hand over to a lieutenant the work of wiping out on the battlefield the stigma inflicted on Turkish arms by the failure at Malta.