Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the originaldocument have been preserved.
The book uses both Palæologus and Palælogus.
The book uses both DeStreeses and De Streeses.
The book uses both Moesian and Mœsian
In all cases, both spellings have been retained.
Page 304: Ramedan should possibly be Ramadan.
"Your swarthy hero Scanderbeg,
Gauntlet on hand and boot on leg,
And skilled in every warlike art,
Riding through his Albanian lands,
And following the auspicious star
That shone for him o'er Ak-Hissar."
Longfellow
THE CAPTAIN OF THE JANIZARIES
A STORY OF THE TIMES OF SCANDERBEG
AND
THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE
By JAMES M. LUDLOW, D.D. Litt.D
ELEVENTH EDITION
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1886, by Dodd, Mead & Co.
Copyright, 1890, by James M. Ludlow.
Electrotyped by Dodd, Mead & Co.
PREFACE.
The story of the Captain of the Janizaries originated,not in the author's desire to write a book, but in thefascinating interest of the times and characters he hasattempted to depict. It seems strange that the worldshould have so generally forgotten George Castriot,or Scanderbeg, as the Turks named him, whose careerwas as romantic as it was significant in the history ofthe Eastern Mediterranean. Gibbon assigns to him buta few brief pages, just enough to make us wonder thathe did not write more of the man who, he confessed,"with unequal arms resisted twenty-three years thepowers of the Ottoman Empire." Creasy, in his historyof the Turks, devotes less than a page to the exploitsof one who "possessed strength and activity such asrarely fall to the lot of man," "humbled the pride ofAmurath and baffled the skill and power of his successorMahomet." History, as we make it in events,is an ever-widening river, but, as remembered, it islike a stream bursting eastward from the Lebanons,growing less as it flows until it is drained away in thedesert.
Though our story is in the form of romance, it ismore than "founded upon fact." The details are drawnfrom historical records, such as the chronicles of thevimonk Barletius—a contemporary, though perhaps aprejudiced admirer, of Scanderbeg—the later Byzantineannals, the customs of the Albanian people, and scenesobserved while travelling in the East.
The author takes the occasion of the publication ofa new edition to gratefully acknowledge many lettersfrom scholars, as well as notices from the press, whichhave expressed appreciation of this attempt to revivepopular interest in lands and peoples that are to reappearin the drama of the Ottoman expulsion from Europe,upon which the curtain is now rising.