A considerable part of Bayazid's reign was spent in war. When Mohammed II. died, the Ottoman empire was engaged in a conflict with Venice. Bayazid found it necessary in 1482 to conclude a peace which secured considerable advantages to the republic. In the same year, Keduk Ahmed Pasha, a military commander to whom the empire owed many important victories, was murdered by Bayazid's command.

In 1485 Bayazid declared war against Kaitbai, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt. Karagos-Pasha, the commander of the Ottoman army, suffered two signal defeats, and in 1491 a peace was negotiated upon terms by no means advantageous or creditable to the Ottoman arms. In the same year the fortresses of Depedelen and Bayendera in Albania were taken by the Osmani. Bayazid was himself engaged in this expedition, and near Depedelen had a narrow escape from an assassin who had approached him in the disguise of a monk. This incident, M. von Hammer observes, gave rise to the rule ever since most strictly observed at the Ottoman court, that no one bearing any weapon is admitted into the presence of the sultan.

The year 1490 is remarkable in Turkish history for the first treaty concluded between the Ottoman government and that of Poland ; and in 1495 we find recorded the first diplomatic relations between the sultan and the czar of Moscow.

In 1499 another war broke out between the Ottoman Empire and Venice. A Venetian fleet was defeated in a battle near the island of Sapienza, July 28, 1499; and Lepanto (Naupactos), Modon, Coron, and Navarino, were besieged and taken by the Osmans, while Iskandar Pasha, with a land army, invaded and laid waste the country along the river Tagliamento in the north of Italy. A combined Venetian and Spanish fleet took possession Cephalonia, and captured twenty Turkish galleys. By the treaty of peace, which was concluded in December, 1502, the Venetians were obliged to leave the island of Santa Maura in the hands of the Turks, but they kept possession of Cephalonia, and obtained .the privilege of appointing a consul at Constantinople, and of trading in the Black Sea.

Bayazid was induced to yield a peace upon such conditions by the rapid rise of the Persian power on the eastern frontier of his dominions, under Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavi (commonly called the Sofi) dynasty. Shah Ismail had encroached upon the Ottoman territory near Tokat, and when forced to retreat by the governor of the province, had taken possession of Marash. About the same time, Korkud, Bayazid's eldest son, disgusted at the contemptuous treatment which he experienced from Alt Pasha, the grand vizier, quitted the empire and went to Egypt. Ahmed, though younger than Korkud, had been appointed by Bayazid his successor on the throne. Selim, a younger brother of Ahmed, dissatisfied with the preference thus given to the latter, revolted against his father (1511), at the same time that an alarming rebellion, headed by Kuli Shah, also named Sheitan Kuli, broke out in Asia Minor. Kuli Shah was soon obliged to retire, and his adherents became dispersed ; but the conflict between the princes, Korkud, Selim, and Ahmed, continued, till at last Selim prevailed. Bayazid was obliged to resign the government in his favor, and Selim, supported by the Janissaries, and the great mass of the people of Constantinople, ascended the throne April 25, 1512. Bayazid quitted the capital, in order to spend the remainder of his life in peaceful retirement at Demitoka, his birth-place; but he died on his journey thither at Aya, near Hassa, May 26, 1512. (Joseph von Hammer's Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs, vol. ii. p. 250, &c.)

THE PENNY CYCLOPAEDIA OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

VOLUME IV. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE STREET MDCCCXXXV.