Note 136 — Chapter I · —How the King of France cajoled the English after the Duke of Burgundy’s Death, for fear they should have interrupted him in the Conquest of the Territories belonging to the said Duke.—1477. (continued 2)

Djem, or Zizim, brother of Bajazet II., on hearing of his father’s death, resolved to make a vigorous effort for the empire; but finding that his forces were far inferior to those of his brother, he applied to the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes for assistance, who resolved to concede his demands, and sent a squadron to escort him to Rhodes, where he was received with all the honours due to a powerful sovereign. Bajazet, in great alarm, hastened to negotiate a treaty with the Order; the Knights, however, dared not violate the laws of hospitality by giving up Zizim; but the Grand Master concluded a secret compact with the Sultan, in which, for the annual pension of 45,000 ducats, he engaged to detain the prince a prisoner. The subsequent fate of the unfortunate captive was truly calamitous. He was held in durance for a long time in France, constantly mocked with false hopes, until Pope Innocent VIII. bribed the Grand Master D’Aubusson with a cardinal’s hat to resign to him the guardianship of his profitable prisoner. In 1489 Zizim was removed to Rome, where he was tormented by frequent proposals to change his religion, all of which he peremptorily rejected. When Alexander Borgia ascended the papal throne, he sent an embassy to the Sultan, demanding the continuation of the pension for the custody of Zizim, and offering also to put him to death for 300,000 ducats, paid in one sum. Before an answer could arrive from Constantinople, the Pope was forced to resign his prisoner to Charles VIII., King of France; but Borgia soon procured the death of the unfortunate prince by poison. After ten years’ captivity among Christians, he was murdered in 1495.