Note 73 — Chapter I · OSMAN A NEW RACE APPEARS IN HISTORY

See Bosio, ii. 37 f., and Vertot, i. 101 f. With a view to glorifying the Order, and also the Duke of Savoy, this fiction has been fabricated and perpetuated. Even such a serious work as that of Muralt gives, upon the strength of Raynaldus, who merely quotes Bosio, Osman as leader of this attack upon Rhodes: see Chronographie Byzantine, ii. 507. During the recent war between Italy and Turkey, when it was a question of Rhodes, more than one leading Italian newspaper revived this story of the founder of the Italian royal house defeating the founder of the Ottoman royal house. There is, of course, no foundation whatever for the statement.