MAHOMET II. Sultan of Turkey, was born at Adrianople in 1430, and succeeded his father, Amurath II., in 1451. Bent upon overturning the Greek empire, he broke the truce that subsisted between the Turks and the Emperor Constantine, and in April 1453 beleaguered Constantinople with a large fleet and an army of 300,000 men. The Greeks, though only 10,000 strong, barricaded the mouth of their harbour with strong iron chains, and offered a determined resistance. The emperor himself was slain, fighting hand to hand with the besiegers. At last, however, by conveying a part of his fleet overland into the harbour, and by mounting a bridge of boats with cannon, Mahomet was able, after a siege of fifty-three days, to storm the city on the 29th May. Three days, devoted by his soldiers to massacre and pillage, rendered Constantinople desolate, and seemed to defeat Mahomet's design of making it his capital. Nevertheless, by granting to the Greeks religious toleration and the use of one-half of the churches that had survived the sack, he induced many of them to re-inhabit the city. He also restored its fortifications, and erected at the mouth of the Hellespont the forts called the Dardanelles. In 1456 Mahomet, advancing westward, laid siege to Belgrade, but was defeated and forced to retreat by John Hunyadi, general to Ladislaus, King of Hungary. More successful in his invasion of Greece, he subdued Corinth and the Morea. In 1461 he captured Trebisonde, and thus overthrew the dynasty of the Comneni. The islands of the Archipelago were added to his conquests in the following year. The Albanians, under their king Scanderbeg, had for some time successfully checked the advance of the Turks; but after the death of that prince in 1466, they too were subdued. From the republic of Venice Mahomet wrested Negropont in 1470. After taking the Crimea in 1475, he invaded Italy in 1480. No sooner, however, had he captured Otranto than he received the news that part of his forces had been foiled in their attempt to take Rhodes, by the knights who had fled thither after the sack of Constantinople. While he was preparing to retrieve that defeat he died in 1481. He was buried at Constantinople, and over his grave was written the following epitaph:—"I would have taken Rhodes and subdued Italy."