his inheritance by absorbing the lands of other people that he became the terror of his neighbors.  He had laid the foundation of the Ottoman empire and was the first of a line of thirty-five sovereigns, extending down to the present time.  It is the descendant of Othman and of Etrogruhl the adventurer who sits to-day at Constantinople blocking the path to the East and defying Christendom.  These Ottoman Turks were going to accomplish what Russian Princes from the time of Rurik and Oleg had longed and failed to do.  They were going to break the power of the old empire in the East and make the coveted city on the Bosphorus their own.  In 1453, the successor of Othman was in Constantinople.

The Pope, always hoping for a reconciliation, and always striving for the headship of a united Christendom, had in 1439 made fresh overtures to the Greek Church.  The Emperor at Constantinople, three of the Patriarchs, and seventeen of the Metropolitans—­including the one at Moscow—­at last signed the Act of Union.  But when the astonished Russians heard the prayer for the Pope, and saw the Latin cross upon their altars, their indignation knew no bounds.  The Grand Prince Vasili so overwhelmed the Metropolitan with insults that he could not remain in Moscow, and the Union was abandoned.  Its wisdom as a political measure cannot be doubted.  If the Emperor had had the sympathy of the Pope, and the championship of Catholic Europe, the Turks might not have entered Constantinople in 1453.  But they had not that sympathy, and the Turks did enter it; and no one event has ever left so lasting an impress upon civilization as the overthrow of the old Byzantine Empire, and the giving to the winds, to carry whither they would, its hoarded treasures of ancient ideals.  Byzantium had been the heir to Greece, and now Russia claimed to be heir to Byzantium; while the head of Russia was Moscow, and the head of Moscow was Ivan III., who had just settled himself firmly on the seat left by his father, “Vasili the Blind” (1462).

Christendom had never received such a blow.  Where had been before a rebellious and alienated brother, who might in time be reconciled, there was now—­and at the very Gate of Europe—­the infidel Turk, the bitterest and most dangerous foe to Christianity; bearing the same hated emblem that Charles Martel had driven back over the Pyrenees (in 732), and which had enslaved the Spanish Peninsula for seven hundred years; but, unlike the Saracen, bringing barbarism instead of enlightenment in its train.

The Pope, in despair and grief, turned toward Russia.  Its Metropolitan had become a Patriarch now, and the headship of the Greek Church had passed from Constantinople to Moscow.  A niece of the last Greek Emperor, John Paleologus, had taken refuge in Rome; and when the Pope suggested the marriage of this Greek Princess Zoe with Ivan III., the proposition was joyfully accepted by him.  After changing her name from Zoe to