Identifier: modernhistoryeur00west (find matches)
Title: Modern history; Europe
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: West, Willis Mason, 1857- (from old catalog)
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Publisher: Boston, Allyn and Bacon
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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pe was saved only by the death of aMongol emperor. Soon afterward the vast Tartar realm fell into frag-ments, and the pressing danger passed away. The conquerors took on civilization, too, in China and India, from thesubject races ; but parts of Asia have hardly yet recovered from theravages of the conquest. The whole subsequent development of Russiahas felt its baleful influence; and for three centuries a Tartar state,The Golden Horde, maintained itself in southern Russia. The escapeof Western Europe, through no great merit of its own, is one of thesupremely fortunate events in history.3 1 Ancient History, §§ 72, 569-571. 2 These Mongols were not Mohammedans like their relatives the Turks(§§ 91, 169), but were heathen like the old Huns. 3 Special report: the career of Tamerlane, another great Tartar conqueror,in the fourteenth century, who for a time checked the Turks (§ 169). Thebeneficial effect of the Mongol Empire upon geographical knowledge inEurope will he noted in § 197.
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§169) TARTARS AND TURKS. 185 169. Southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Turks (Mohamme-dans). — The Greek Empire never recovered fully from its over-throw in the Fourth Crusade. In the fourteenth century, theServians (Slavs) built up a great state under their emperor,Stephen Dushan, but both Greek and Slav were soon to fallbefore a new foe. The Ottoman Turks first came to notice about 1240, whensmall bands of them from the distant Jaxartes appeared inAsia Minor, in the service of their kinsmen, the Seljuk Turks(§ 91). The newcomers soon became the ruling race, and in1346, a century after their first appearance, they establishedthemselves also on the European side of the straits, — thoughConstantinople held out for a century more, a Christian islandencompassed by seas of Mohammedanism. At the battle ofKassova (1389), the Turks completed the overthrow of theServians and other Slav peoples of the Balkan regions; and afew years later a crushing defeat was inflicted upon the Hun-garian

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