Note 4 — Chapter V · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.

Consequently, though the Greeks were numerically superior to the Turks in all the European provinces of the empire, the religious toleration thus granted them, and the protection of life and property they enjoyed, soon reconciled them to the change of masters and led them to prefer the domination of the Sultan to that of any Christian power. Indeed, in many parts of the country, the Ottoman conquerors were welcomed by the Greeks as their deliverers from the rapacious and tyrannous rule of the Franks and the Venetians who had so long disputed with Byzantium for the possession of the Peloponnesos and some of the adjacent parts of Greece; by introducing into Greece the feudal system, these had reduced the people to the miserable condition of serfs, and as aliens in speech, race and creed, were hated by their subjects,4 to whom a change of rulers, since it could not make their condition worse, would offer a possible chance of improving it, and though their deliverers were likewise aliens, yet the infidel Turk was infinitely to be preferred to the heretical Catholics.5 The Greeks who lived under the immediate government of the Byzantine court, were equally unlikely to be averse to a change of rulers. The degradation and tyranny that characterised the dynasty of the Palæologi are frightful to contemplate. “A corrupt aristocracy, a tyrannical and innumerable clergy, the oppression of perverted law, the exactions of a despicable government, and still more, its monopolies, its fiscality, its armies of tax and custom collectors, left the degraded people neither rights nor institutions, neither chance of amelioration nor hope of redress.”6 Lest such a judgment appear dictated by a spirit of party bias, a contemporary authority may be appealed to in support of its correctness. The Russian annalists who speak of the fall of Constantinople bring a similar indictment against its government. “Without the fear of the law an empire is like a steed without reins. Constantine and his ancestors allowed their grandees to oppress the people; there was no more justice in their law courts; no more courage in their hearts; the judges amassed treasures from the tears and blood of the innocent; the Greek soldiers were proud only of the magnificence of their dress; the citizens did not blush at being traitors; the soldiers were not ashamed to fly. At length the Lord poured out His thunder on these unworthy rulers, and raised up Muḥammad, whose warriors delight in battle, and whose judges do not betray their trust.”7 This last item of praise8 may sound strange in the ears of a generation that has constantly been called upon to protest against Turkish injustice; but it is clearly and abundantly borne out by the testimony of contemporary historians. The Byzantine historian who has handed down to us the story of the capture of Constantinople tells us how even the impetuous Bāyazīd was liberal and generous to his Christian subjects, and made himself extremely popular among them by admitting them freely to his society.9 Murād II distinguished himself by his attention to the administration of justice and by his reforms of the abuses prevalent under the Greek emperors, and punished without mercy those of his officials who oppressed any of his subjects.10 For at least a century after the fall of Constantinople a series of able rulers secured, by a firm and vigorous administration, peace and order throughout their dominions, and an admirable civil and judicial organisation, if it did not provide an absolutely impartial justice for Muslims and Christians alike, yet caused the Greeks to be far better off than they had been before. They were harassed by fewer exactions of forced labour, extraordinary contributions were rarely levied, and the taxes they paid were a trifling burden compared with the endless feudal obligations of the Franks and the countless extortions of the Byzantines. The Turkish dominions were certainly better governed and more prosperous than most parts of Christian Europe, and the mass of the Christian population engaged in the cultivation of the soil enjoyed a larger measure of private liberty and of the fruits of their labour, under the government of the Sultan than their contemporaries did under that of many Christian monarchs.11 A great impulse, too, was given to the commercial activity of the country, for the early Sultans were always ready to foster trade and commerce among their subjects, and many of the great cities entered upon an era of prosperity when the Turkish conquest had delivered them from the paralysing fiscal oppression of the Byzantine empire, one of the first of them being Nicæa, which capitulated to Urkhān in 1330 under the most favourable terms after a long-protracted siege.12 Like the ancient Romans, the Ottomans were great makers of roads and bridges, and thereby facilitated trade throughout their empire; and foreign states were compelled to admit the Greek merchants into ports from which they had been excluded in the time of the Byzantine emperors, but now sailing under the Ottoman flag, they assumed the dress and manners of Turks, and thus secured from the nations of Western Europe the respect and consideration which the Catholics had hitherto always refused to the members of the Greek Church.13