Constantinople: A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, A.D. 1453.
HETHER Constantine was to be really the last of the Roman emperors, or whether the poor shrunken remains of what had been the grandest of empires were still fated to prolong their feeble and precarious existence, hung, it would seem, on two contingencies. If the Turk could not be permanently withstood, he might perhaps be stayed for a time, in the event of the sword of Othman passing into the hands of a weak or unambitious sovereign. To a barbarian power in its early advance, the character and capacity of a ruler are all important. The great and valiant Amurath, who had shaken with his artillery the walls of the city of the Cæsars, and had struck down on the field of Varna a Christian host led by the heroic John Huniades, died in 1451, and, as has often happened, might leave his sceptre to a weak and contemptible successor. There was another possibility. The Christian league which Pope Eugenius had formed, and which Amurath had baffled, might be revived, and who could say that this time it might not be successful? There would seem to be strong motives for such an effort. The Turk, with his savagery and unbelief, was, alike to Greeks and to Latins, the immediate precursor of that awful Antichrist of whose advent in the latter days prophets and apostles had so plainly warned the Church of Christ. And Constantinople, though its grandeur and glory had faded, and though its faith in Western opinion was tainted with heresy, might still, especially at such a crisis as the present, claim to be regarded as Sion—the city of God—as well as the heir of Roman traditions and civilisation. Rome could never quite disown her as a daughter, though she might have been disobedient and refractory; still less could she see her trampled under foot by the infidel without a sense of humiliation and self-reproach.
Nor could there be much doubt that Europe possessed resources amply sufficient to save the city, and even to push back the Turk into his proper home in Asia. When we look back upon the situation, we may well accept Gibbon's opinion, that "a moderate armament of the maritime states might have saved the relics of the Roman name, and maintained a Christian fortress in the heart of the Ottoman Empire." But one soon sees that there were many substantial reasons why the effort was not made. Europe was very different from what it had been three centuries ago. The thoughts and ideas of men had greatly changed. The religious enthusiasm which had responded to the preaching of Peter the Hermit had yielded before a new class of impulses. Social and political movements were coming to the front and stirring the popular mind. It would have been difficult for an eminently zealous and spirited pope to unite the Western States in anything like a Crusade against a power which as yet was not a direct menace to any one of them. There was a greater disposition to count the cost of an enterprise than there had been in the simpler and more credulous days of old. Nor was the papal throne filled by a man of any conspicuous vigour and enthusiasm. The Roman pontiff of the period, Nicholas V., in many respects worthily represented his high office; but he had neither ability nor inclination to make that supreme effort which alone could ward off the huge calamity impending over Christendom. He was not a man of action; he was a scholar, and a patron of scholars; and he spent the eight years of his pontificate in quietly collecting manuscripts of the classics, and in forming a library. He seems indeed to have felt that it was his duty to do something for the Greeks in their distress, and "he had it in his mind"—so it is courteously expressed by a writer of the time—"to help them." But his heart was clearly not in the matter. He did not in fact like the Greeks. Their duplicity towards the Latin Church, and their unwillingness to cast off their heresy and to unite themselves with Western Christendom on the prescribed conditions, had disgusted him. He had even gone so far as to prophesy their downfall and the conquest of their capital. We have to thank him that, as soon as he saw his prophecy accomplished, he did his best to rescue the relics of the Byzantine libraries; but it occurs to us to ask, with something of reproach, whether he might not have been the means of preserving for us the contents of those libraries, so far as they had survived the rough treatment of the city at the hands of the Latin Crusaders? Nor can we avoid the reflection that, had he acted—as was surely his duty—with more decision and promptitude, we might possibly have been spared that entail of perplexity and misery which we describe, and perhaps shall long have to describe, as "the Eastern question."
It may, however, be fairly admitted that Nicholas V. could not have seen much to encourage him in the general sentiments and attitude of Europe. He could hardly have appealed with much effect to England or to France. England, even if its people could have been brought to see and understand the nature of the crisis, which, in the absence of a powerful wave of religious enthusiasm, would have been hardly possible, was in the agony of a civil strife that absorbed all its energies. The rival Houses of York and Lancaster were infinitely more to the English people than the peril of a remote city on the Bosporus, which to nine-tenths of them must have been a mere name, could possibly be. France, indeed, might have been reasonably expected to feel that she had some interest, if not a very direct one, in saving Christendom from infidels and barbarians; and the French generally would have been fairly well acquainted with the name of Constantinople, and able in some degree to appreciate what the city represented, and the duty and importance of its preservation. Such an enterprise, if urged and encouraged by the pope, might have seemed to them honourable and glorious, and we can imagine that they might have been persuaded to embark on it. It is true that they were no longer animated by the old spirit of the Crusades, but French chivalry was still formidable and famous, and French volunteers, at the bidding of Pope Eugenius, had fought side by side with Poles and Hungarians in the battle of Varna. France, however, was thoroughly occupied with its own affairs. It had been brought very low by its recent struggle with England, and by its great defeat at Agincourt. Now it was recovering itself. England's domestic calamities during the Wars of the Roses were France's opportunity. Normandy from this time became once for all French territory, and King Charles VII. had the satisfaction of seeing his kingdom strengthened and consolidated. With this he was content, and having plenty of occupation at home, he was not likely to be moved to undertake a costly foreign expedition, which must have been a grievous hindrance to the progress his country was now making. Had the pope called on France for an effort, we may be sure that only a few French knights and gentlemen would have answered his appeal. Might he not have looked to Germany? There indeed was a country which could have sent forth a numerous and well-equipped host, powerful enough, we should suppose, to have thrust the Turk out of Europe; but it was a country divided into a number of kingdoms and principalities, and its people, though brave and warlike, were slow to move. The thing might perhaps have been accomplished if a man of spirit and energy had been its head. In the thirteenth century, when European civilisation was threatened by the Tartar hordes, and the barbarian inroads had reached Austria, the emperor, Frederic II., had very plainly pointed out to the kings of Europe and to the German princes the expediency of uniting their arms against the common enemy. Before the chivalry of France and Germany the savage multitude fell back into the remote wilds of Russia, and Western Europe was saved. It could hardly be said that the present peril was less pressing. Should the Turk wrest Constantinople from the Greeks, he would at once be entrenched in a position from which he would be able at any time to disquiet and alarm Christendom, and from which it would be next to impossible to dislodge him. But from Germany little was to be expected. It had a head no way fitted for the occasion. The emperor, Frederic III., was himself as tame and peace-loving as the Roman pontiff. Indeed, his chief claim to distinction is that he was the last of the German emperors who, by being crowned at Rome, acknowledged the pope's right to confirm the imperial title.
Bordering on Germany were the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. These had a clear interest in making a stand against Turkish encroachment and they proved an effectual barrier. But for their resolute resistance, the Turk might have considerably enlarged his dominions in Europe, and have established himself for at least a long period in Southern Germany. No people could be braver and more warlike than the Poles and Hungarians, who in this respect justified their affinity to the ancient Scythians; but their country was very poor, and a well-armed standing army was an impossibility for them. Domestic feuds, too, continually divided and distracted them, and only a king or chief of exceptional vigour could handle such material with much effect. They were able and willing to defend themselves against an invader, but it could hardly have been reasonable to expect that they would follow up and crush the invader on his own ground and rescue distant cities and countries from his grasp. For this they had not sufficient discipline and organisation. Their best arm was their light cavalry, conspicuous for its reckless dash; with this alone and unsupported they would have been no match for the strength and cohesion of such an army as Amurath could bring into the field. They had, however, at this time a brave young soldier-king in Ladislaus, and under him Poles and Hungarians were united. They had, too, a far greater man in the famous hero, John Huniades, the terror of the Turks, who has earned the everlasting gratitude of all Christian nations by his rescue of Belgrade from the clutches of the terrible conqueror of Constantinople. Christendom, shocked and dismayed by the fall of the capital of the East, and by the subsequent triumphs of the infidel, could after that achievement breathe more freely. But the resources of these Poles and Hungarians did not allow them to raise anything more than what the Romans called a "tumultuary" army, and such a force alone would clearly not have been equal to the occasion. There still remained the rich and powerful republics of Venice and Genoa. These maritime powers could do much, if they chose, and prompt and efficient aid might surely be expected from them. And they had strong motives for doing their utmost to save the last remnant of the Greek Empire. As great commercial communities, they had a direct interest in preserving for the Greeks the city which, as the principal depot of Eastern trade, was one of the main sources of their own wealth. It must, one would suppose, have been well worth their while to have strained their resources to the uttermost for the defence of Constantinople. Something indeed they did, but it was small compared with what by vigorous united action, and in the absence of jealousies and misunderstandings, might certainly have been accomplished. The decisive success which a small Genoese squadron achieved against the entire Turkish fleet during the siege, seems to imply that the will was wanting rather than the ability. Venice and Genoa might well, we are tempted to believe, have saved the city. That with the aid of the Western powers they could have done it, hardly admits of a question. But the aid was not forthcoming, and we have seen some of the reasons why it could not easily have been rendered. At the same time it was absolutely certain that Constantinople must fall without such aid, if the young sultan who succeeded Amurath was both able and aggressive.
Left to its own resources, the city was comparatively weak. Its defences had the reputation of being all but impregnable, and as a matter of fact they proved extremely formidable to the assailant. Phranza describes the landward defence as consisting of two walls, twenty-five feet in breadth, separated by an interval of thirty-two feet, and strengthened at numerous points by towers covered with a facing of lead. Approach to the outer wall was cut off by a wide and deep fosse. The inner wall was not in a thoroughly sound condition. It had been neglected, and what was worse, money intended for its repair had been misappropriated by the officials who had charge of the business. It might, it would seem, have been made an almost insuperable barrier against any enemy in the world. As it was, the walls were barely equal to sustaining the weight of the heavier pieces of ordnance which ought to have been mounted on them. Here was plain evidence of a neglect and apathy at such a time to the last degree base and criminal.
Had, however, the fortifications been perfect, there were not men in the city to garrison them. At the period of the Latin conquest the population was perhaps half a million; now it had dwindled down to a hundred thousand, and of those certainly not more than seven or eight thousand could have passed as able-bodied soldiers. The two last centuries had been centuries of a miserable decline in all respects, and the latter half of the fourteenth century in particular had been a time of very rapid decay. Of this the Greeks themselves were distinctly conscious, and, as is the way with declining nations, they adopted foreign fashions, and borrowed the manners of Italians, Genoese, Venetians, and even of Turks. What remnant of empire they still possessed was for the most part occupied by a thin and poverty-stricken population, and everything outside the city walls wore a dreary and desolate aspect. Amurath completed their ruin, and after his siege a few open villages, tenanted by small farmers, were all that was left to the Greeks. And within the city itself clearly visible the signs of feebleness and poverty, and of an utter absence of public spirit. The once magnificent streets, which amazed visitors from the West by their gorgeous display of wealth and luxury, now presented long ranges of ruined houses and palaces, from which the architectural glories of old, the marble columns and exquisite mosaics, had been purchased and carried away by the merchant princes of Venice and Genoa. Constantinople was, in fact, a ruined city. It is true, indeed that even in this period of swift and plainly-marked decay a Greek could, in a letter to the emperor, John Palæologus, boast in pompous phrases of its surviving splendour; but, as Gibbon observes, "a sigh and confession escape from the orator that his wretched country was but the shadow and sepulchre of its former self." The people, it would appear, had become too spiritless even to take common precautions against the frequent recurrence of famine and of pestilence. Between 1348 and 1418 the last-mentioned calamity is said to have afflicted the city eight times; and the first, as we might almost infer, came at frequent intervals. A specially deadly disease wrought terrible havoc among the citizens in the year 1431, some years after the siege by Amurath. After this we can hardly wonder that they had neither heart nor spirit, as indeed they had not adequate strength, for a resolute defence, should they be again menaced by such a foe.
We have a description of the state of Constantinople and its neighbourhood from a traveller who went thither in the following year. This was a knight from Burgundy, one Bertrandon de la Brocquière, who, as he was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visited the famous city. Its fortifications struck him as formidable and imposing, but the interior distinctly revealed the most deplorable poverty and desolation; while without, the country was waste, and almost bare of inhabitants. Of the Greeks who yet remained, he gives anything but a flattering picture. "All with whom I have had any concern," he says, "have only made me more suspicious, for I have found more probity in the Turks." The race, there cannot be a doubt, had become wretchedly demoralised. From want of energy and industry they had let their trade slip from them into the hands of the Genoese, Venetians, and Italians, and frittered away their time in those petty trifling amusements which have a charm only for the weak and frivolous. Their ancestors delighted in the games of the hippodrome: these degenerate people found abundant pleasure in staring at royal processions and elaborate religious ceremonies. In their way, indeed, they were religious, and they prided themselves intensely on their orthodoxy. They were as exclusive as were the Pharisees. Latins and all Western Europeans they contemned as heretics; and one of their highest nobles, the Grand Duke Notanas, a typical Greek, declared that the turban of the sultan would be a more welcome sight to him in Constantinople than the tiara of the pope. They were infinitely too conceited to think that they might with advantage learn a few new lessons. They certainly might with considerable profit to themselves have taken a hint from their enemies, the Turks, whom their great Sultan Amurath had at least taught truth and honesty, as well as valour, by his own noble example. The Turk of those days was undoubtedly a favourable contrast to the Greek, and this was the conviction even of many Christians. The princes of the House of Othman really owed their successes, in part at least, to the superiority of their moral qualities. A Greek official was pretty sure to be greedy and corrupt. If he was proud of his city, he would hardly serve it or fight for it in an honest way. The state was miserably poor, but there were vast hoarded treasures in the possession of a few rich and selfish people, who paraded their fine furniture and wardrobes, and buried their superfluous wealth deep in the earth. In the very last struggle, the emperor could not find the means to pay his troops. He had to ransack the churches for plate and jewels, though his Greeks pretended to believe that their cathedral, St. Sophia, had been desecrated by the celebration within its sacred walls of the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The people who grudged their blood and treasure in defence of the city of which they boasted as pre-eminently holy and divine, wrangled angrily with the Latins concerning the bread of the Lord's Supper, whether it should be leavened or unleavened, at the very moment when the common enemy of Christendom was thundering at their gates. "They would not have listened," says the historian Ducas, "to an angel from heaven, bidding them be at peace with Rome." It would seem that the popular and monastic sentiment was fanatical to a degree which even those who are most familiar with the extremes of religious bitterness would find it hard to realise. Some, indeed, of the higher ecclesiastics, who were no doubt men of culture, were free from this shocking infatuation, but the general tone of the citizens rendered patriotism impossible, and almost compels us to believe that they thoroughly deserved their fate.
The "great destroyer," as Gibbon calls Mahomet II., succeeded to his father Amurath at the age of twenty-one. To the emperor, who knew something of his tastes and character as a boy, he did not at first seem likely to be very formidable or dangerous. Constantine underrated his capacity, and perhaps now and then flattered himself with the idea of a brief respite for his city. He was soon undeceived. The young sultan began his reign with the murder of an infant brother, and with the maturer wisdom of his later years he obtained from his legal advisers a formal sanction of the practice of imperial fratricide for "his illustrious descendants, in order to secure the repose of the world." Then, it is said, he went on to murder certain ministers who had dissuaded his father from trusting him with power during his own lifetime. He could be, it was clear, savagely cruel, and it might be fairly presumed that he would be unscrupulous and perfidious; and now it began to be whispered that bad times were in store for the feeble and unfortunate Greeks. He had, too, a cool head, and it was said of him that he was "as wise as his elders both in home affairs and in war." In his fashion he was fond of learning, and he at least liked the society of learned men, and could talk pleasantly with them, and if necessary discuss theology with a Christian patriarch. We might have expected that such a man's attainments would be prodigiously exaggerated. The story is told, but is hardly to be believed, that he was well acquainted with the Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and Chaldee languages. He is also said to have been a very diligent reader, and to have delighted in the lives of Alexander, Augustus, Constantine, and Theodoric. Astrology, an important science at that time, and not necessarily repugnant to powerful intellects, was a study to which he was partial, and in which he had made great progress. He used to say that he knew by the planetary movements that he was destined to be a great conqueror. We may well believe that with his shrewd sagacity was mingled an alloy of superstition. Certain it is that in his early youth he developed that extravagant ambition which is often found to be combined with a firm belief in fate and destiny. Equally certain is it that the fury of his passions knew no restraint, and so foul was his licentiousness, that it is hard to admire his undoubted ability and farsightedness. To Phranza, after the fall of the city, he seemed almost a devil. To the historian Ducas he stood in marked contrast to his father Amurath, who "never wilfully destroyed any city or state, but was really averse to war, and a lover of peace." The son from childhood, he goes on to say, was "a dissembler, a wolf in sheep's clothing, an Antichrist before the final Antichrist, transformed, like Satan, into an angel of light." It was Mahomet's perfidy and cunning, more than his other vices, which seem to have scandalised the Greeks of his time. The Latin archbishop of Mitylene, Leonard of Chios, writing the story of the fall of the city three months afterwards in a letter addressed to the pope, saw in him the unmistakable instrument of Divine vengeance on those perverse Greeks who would not let themselves be cordially united to Rome. If the Greeks deserved their doom ever so much, we at any rate must number their conqueror among "the destroyers rightly called, and plagues of men."
There would seem to be no good reason for classing Mahomet with the few men of first-rate military genius who have appeared in the world. His great achievement, the conquest of Constantinople, was comparatively easy with the vast resources at his command. The way, as we have seen, had been thoroughly well prepared for him, and he had only to put a finishing stroke to a work which had long been in progress. While we may fairly credit him with immense energy and boundless ambition, we cannot justly compare him with an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Hannibal. "He was," says Gibbon, "doubtless a soldier and possibly a general," and beyond this he does not seem worthy to be extolled. His conquests no doubt were on a considerable scale, and are said with Oriental exaggeration to have embraced ten kingdoms and two hundred cities. He certainly annexed to the Ottoman dominions the islands of Chios, Lesbos, Xante, and Cephalonia, and a part of Servia, while in his attacks on Cyprus and Rhodes he was unsuccessful. It must be remembered that he always had the advantage of vastly superior numbers, and yet he received more than one decisive check. He was driven in utter rout from the walls of Belgrade by Huniades. But as the conqueror of the city of the Cæsars he has won an everlasting fame, though one with which his actual exploits hardly seem commensurate.
The young sultan's position on his accession to power was not a very easy one. At the time of his father's death he was governing the province of Magnesia, but he was then instantly recalled to his European dominions by a message which showed plainly that a vigorous hand was at once needed in the new ruler. The janissaries had already assumed a threatening attitude. Mahomet lost no time in crossing the Hellespont and in hurrying to Adrianople. His promptitude had the desired effect; the janissaries were overawed and submissive, and both army and people welcomed as their sovereign the son of the great Amurath. Ambassadors came from the Western courts with courteous congratulations. The treaty with the emperor was solemnly renewed and ratified. The new sultan gave the impression that he intended to be a man of peace, and a scrupulous observer of all treaty obligations. Constantine must have breathed again, and had hopes that he might after all be spared the humiliation of witnessing the end.
Living at this time at the imperial court was a descendant of Sultan Bajazet's eldest son, who received a liberal pension for his maintenance from the Turks. The emperor requested, or rather demanded, that this allowance should be increased; and intimated that in the event of refusal he would let him leave Constantinople, and encourage him to set up a rival claim to the Turkish throne. It was almost an act of direct hostility, and one to which the new sultan, if a man of any spirit, could hardly be expected to submit. The old grand vizier of the late sultan, Khalil, who was still alive, and had a friendly feeling towards the Greeks, saw the danger. He well knew the temper of the young Mahomet, and he solemnly warned the emperor. "The scrupulous Amurath," he said to the imperial envoys, "is no more; his throne is occupied by a young conqueror whom no laws can bind and no obstacles can resist." Khalil seems to have been a just and peace-loving man, and as he gave good counsel to the emperor, so too he exerted his influence in endeavouring to dissuade the sultan from his designs against the Greek empire. Mahomet, himself, meanwhile showed no signs of wrath, but was as bland and conciliatory as ever. The emperor's envoys were dismissed with peaceful assurances and promises that Greek interests should be respected. But the sultan had seen his opportunity, and his plans were already formed. He had resolved from the first to complete his father's work, and to possess himself of Constantinople.
His first step was to put an end to the pension received by the Ottoman prince at the imperial court. Next, he virtually began the siege of the city. A fortress had been erected by his grandfather Bajazet on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, where its waters are narrowest, and his father Amurath is said to have vowed, after his victory at Varna, the erection of a similar fortress to confront it on the European shore. Mahomet determined to fulfil this vow. He would thereby have a safe and easy passage from Europe to Asia, and thus his dominions in the two continents would be securely linked together. He would be free from apprehension as to the approach of an enemy's fleet from the west. As however the spot was but five miles distant from Constantinople, a fortress on it would be a direct menace to the city. It was natural that the emperor should remonstrate. The act could not possibly be reconciled with the sultan's peaceful professions. In his reply to the emperor's ambassadors Mahomet showed very clearly what was in his heart. "Have you the right or the power to contest my actions on my own ground?" It was his ground because, as he went on to say, "as far as the shores of the Bosporus Asia was inhabited by the Turks, and Europe deserted by the Europeans." He regarded it, it would seem, as bought with Turkish money, in consideration of the pension paid to the Ottoman prince, and as therefore Turkish property. "My resolutions," he added, "surpass the wishes of my predecessors." There could no mistake about the meaning of such language. The emperor saw now that he might as well draw the sword at once, and he would have done so, for he was a man of high spirit, but he was persuaded by his craven ministers to look on quietly while his perfidious enemy was surely preparing the means of his ruin.
The sultan was a man whom nothing could turn from a purpose once formed. In the spring of 1452 he began his fortress, for which abundant materials had been transported by a host of zealous labourers from the forests and quarries of the neighbouring regions of Asia Minor. He presided himself over the work, and inspired the vast multitude of workmen with his own enthusiasm. When it was completed it presented a triangle, with a tower at each of the angles. Two of the towers faced the main land, the third and loftiest looked seaward. Their walls, which were covered with lead, were thirty feet in breadth, while the intermediate fortifications were twenty-two feet, and thus it was a fortress of the first class, on which the heaviest artillery then in use could easily be mounted. Mahomet had now an admirable base of operations. While the work was in progress, some trifling acts of hostility had occurred, sufficient, however, thoroughly to alarm the city. The emperor had asked that his subjects in the outlying villages might have the protection of a Turkish military guard, while they were gathering in their harvest, as otherwise they would be at the mercy of the savage and fanatical host which was ransacking the country far and wide for whatever might be of use in the construction of the fortress. The result was a fray between the retinue of an Ottoman chief and some Greek villagers, and blood was shed on both sides. The emperor had the city gates closed, and sent the sultan a final message, in which he declared his resolve to defend his people to the last. The sultan's reply was equally defiant, and in the autumn of 1452 war was in fact begun. A few slight attacks were made on the outworks of the city, with the view of ascertaining and testing its real strength. Having so far acquainted himself with the nature of the work on which he was about to enter, Mahomet, on the first of September, retired to Adrianople. There in good earnest he prepared for the siege, which he meant to begin in the following spring.
Two of the emperor's brothers were then in the Peloponnese, still under Greek control, and were ruling it with the title of "despot." They had a force under their command, which the sultan determined to hold in check, lest it should come to the succour of the city. A numerous army was marched into the country under one of his pashas, and the resistance of the princes, though spirited, was unavailing. From that quarter there was no help for the emperor in his distress. The sultan could forthwith pursue his plans and preparations throughout the winter without fear of interruption. His whole time was passed in taking counsel with his military and engineering officers, and in sounding the temper of his soldiers, among whom he is said to have frequently wandered in disguise. His chief minister, Khalil, saw that it was useless to attempt to turn him from his purpose, and when suddenly summoned into his presence, trembling perhaps under the consciousness that his friendship for the Greeks made him almost a traitor to his master, replied to the eager sultan, who had asked from him the gift of Constantinople, that "God, who had already given him so much of the Roman empire, would not deny the remnant and the capital."
One of the most remarkable features of the siege of Constantinople was the strange blending which it witnessed of the methods of ancient and modern warfare. It was by this time clearly evident that artillery was destined to play a great part in the wars and sieges of the future. But as yet the discovery was not sufficiently perfected to enable combatants to dispense with those old engines of the Greeks and the Romans, the catapult and the ballista. These were used with effect on the present occasion. Amurath, as we have seen, had however employed a few pieces of ordnance in his assault on the city in 1422. It has ever been the instinct of the Turk to utilise promptly the newest and most efficient instruments of destruction. Mahomet made a special study of artillery, and secured the assistance of foreign genius in rendering this arm more powerful than it had hitherto been made. Neither Turk nor Greek had as yet acquired the art of casting large guns, such as would be serviceable for the purposes of a siege. For this they were obliged to resort to the foreigner. One Urban, a Wallachian, an adept in this new science, had been in the Greek service, but he seems to have been poorly remunerated, and his pay had even fallen into arrears, and so he was now tempted to leave the Greek for the Turk. The sultan was sure to be a good paymaster. "Can a cannon," he asked, "be cast capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient size to batter the walls of Constantinople?" On the strength of the engineer's favourable reply, a foundry was established at Adrianople, and a great gun cast, with a mouth exceeding two and a half feet in diameter, and capable of projecting to the distance of about a mile a missile of six hundred pounds weight. Other cannon, it is said, were cast for bullets of a hundred and fifty pounds. Mahomet, we may be certain, provided himself with as effective a train of artillery as the skill of his day was able to create. His great piece of ordnance was dragged rom the foundry to its position before the walls of Constantinople on a framework of thirty carriages by sixty oxen, two months being consumed in the journey. By the 6th of April, 1453, the siege had fairly begun.
What the actual strength of Mahomet's force was, when it sat down to the siege, we cannot say with any certainty. Certain it is, however, that it was such as to preclude all reasonable hope of a successful defence in the absence of foreign aid. Amurath's army is said to have numbered two hundred thousand, and Gibbon thinks it probable that Mahomet's may have been quite as numerous. He may well have had in addition to his regular troops a vast swarm of volunteers, attracted by zeal in a holy cause and the hope of boundless plunder. Phranza, who ought to have had some means of knowing, but who, no doubt, might be tempted to exaggerate, speaks of an army of two hundred and fifty-eight thousand, and subsequent writers magnify it into three or four hundred thousand. An incredulous Greek,[1] indeed, has stated that in his belief all the Turkish forces, horse and foot, could not have exceeded eighty thousand, and he describes them as a mere pitiful handful of barbarians. Finlay, we observe, accepts this estimate. It may not be easy to see how Mahomet could possibly have provided for the needs of a much larger army, but we must remember that he was utterly reckless of human life so long as he could attain his ends, and we rather incline to think it possible that he may have entered on the siege with at least a hundred thousand men. He had a numerous, though not by any means a formidable, fleet. It was, in fact, for the most part simply made up of transport vessels and half-decked coasters, which, as the events proved, were no match for Genoese and Venetian galleons. At first he had, it is said, thirty triremes or regular warships and a hundred and thirty other vessels; but by the fifteenth of April, a few days, that is, after the commencement of the siege, his fleet had been largely reinforced, and numbered in all four hundred and twenty vessels of various description. The city was now closely beleaguered both by land and sea. The enemy's entrenched lines extended from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn, while the suburb of Pera or Galata was threatened by another army. Here were congregated the Genoese, who were not only reluctant to spend their blood and their treasure in defence of the city, but who could not even be thoroughly trusted. Far the best of the sultan's troops for such a work as he had in hand were the janissaries. These numbered about twelve thousand, and were drawn up under the sultan's own eye before the gate of St. Romanus, in the centre of the great wall.
This now famous force had already decided more than one doubtful struggle in favour of the Turks, and had bid fair to become "the arch of Ottoman greatness." Its composition was such as to make it as far as possible a pure military caste, which knew nothing but its master's orders, and was wholly free from the ordinary sympathies and sentiments of mankind. The janissary, like the Jesuit, was an isolated being: he was a simple soldier, without a single home tie, devoted heart and soul to the cause in which he was enlisted. Taken in early childhood by conscription from among the offspring of Christian parents captured in war by the Turks, or purchased, it might be, in the slave-market of Constantinople, he was bred and trained a Mahometan for the special service of his masters. It was probably Orchan, the second prince of the House of Othman, who first exacted from the conquered peoples a tribute of children, and thus, as has been said, turned their strength against themselves. The janissaries were invariably supported by the religious orders of Turkey, with whom from their education they were brought into the closest sympathy. Thus they were felt to represent the Turkish people, and to be, in fact, a national guard, always prepared to stand up for the nation's rights, and thoroughly identified with its history and traditions. To their devotion the Ottoman dynasty long owed its stability. In after times, that which had been the empire's strength became its weakness. The janissaries would not hear of the slightest change or reform, and so, when a new military system, adapted to modern warfare, was necessary for Turkey, Sultan Mahmoud, early in the present century, had to clear them out of the way by a coup de main. At the time of which we are speaking they had deservedly won a great reputation, and were, in all probability, the best and most highly trained infantry in Europe.
Let us now see what resources the emperor, "the solitary and indigent prince," as Gibbon calls him, had for defence of his ancient and venerable city. One resource, as we have already seen, was conspicuously absent. Of genuine patriotic spirit among the Greeks there was scarce a spark. Rich men would swear they were penniless, rather than contribute to the pay of the mercenaries on whom in their dire extremity they had mainly to depend. In former sieges the luxurious pleasure-loving Byzantine could arm himself and serve on the ramparts, and even endure the miseries of a protracted blockade. But of all this hardly a trace was left. He could repeat prayers and wrangle about the bread in the sacrament and drink confusion to the pope and his satellites in his tavern, but, with the infidel at his gates, he could not shake off the wretched cowardice which he tried to dignify with the name of resignation to the Divine will. The emperor was indeed in a piteous plight. A good and brave man himself, uniting old Roman virtue with Christian faith and fortitude, he would have held his city against the foe, but for the scanty and miserable material with which he had to work. Some of the citizens, both nobles and people of the lower class, had fled from the city before the siege began. The remaining inhabitants would seem to have been for the most part an unwarlike crowd of mechanics, monks, women, and children.
The emperor directed his minister, Phranza, to make diligent search through the city, and to ascertain to the best of his ability how many of the citizens were really able or willing to fight in its defence. The result was deplorable. Phranza, with shame and grief, had to tell Constantine that he could not muster in this great emergency more than four thousand nine hundred and seventy-three volunteers for garrison duty out of the entire population. No more Romans, as Phranza styled these degenerate Greeks, were to be found to defend the city of the Cæsars. To these were to be added about two thousand regular soldiers. Of Greeks there were thus barely seven thousand in arms during the siege. Constantinople, however, was not quite left to its own unaided resources, or the struggle would have very quickly been ended. There was hardly a nation which had any commercial dealings with the city which did not do something, however small, for it in its time of need. Italian volunteers hurried thither, feeling that their own interests were bound up with its safety. Three large galleons and a small body of troops were furnished by the resident magistrate of the Venetians for the special defence of the harbour. The same officer also was charged with guarding the great imperial palace. The consul of the Catalans was likewise among the defenders. Cardinal Isidore, too, a Greek himself by birth, and the metropolitan of Kief, had been sent by Pope Nicholas as his legate in the November of the preceding year, and he also brought with him a small body of troops. But the mainstay of the defence was a brave and noble warrior from Genoa, John Giustiniani, who all his life had been renowned for his daring spirit. Many were the occasions on which he had distinguished himself. Once the king of Aragon, when defeated, had, in admiration of his courage, requested leave to surrender his sword to him in person. Giustiniani came with two large ships and three hundred picked soldiers. John Grant, too, from Germany, an experienced engineer officer, rendered good service. In all, the foreign force in Constantinople numbered about two thousand. Its defence thus rested with a garrison not exceeding nine thousand, yet the emperor had to man a line of wall landwards of five miles in extent, which at every point could be directly assailed by the enemy. Other lines of fortification by the port and on the Sea of Marmora, several miles in length, had to be defended. The task was certainly one beyond human power. Of artillery the emperor is said to have had a hundred and thirty pieces, but these were generally very inferior to the Turkish ordnance. His fleet was good and powerful by comparison, but it was not numerous, consisting only of fourteen ships in addition to the Venetian galleons above mentioned. Of the walls and their capacity for resistance we have already spoken. Their defence was divided and arranged in twelve portions, of which two only were entrusted exclusively to the Greeks. In the remainder the Greeks merely shared the work with the strangers who had come to their aid.
With these very inadequate resources Constantinople had to be held against an army sufficiently numerous at the outset, and doubtless reinforced from time to time by accessions of strength from the Turks in Asia. Mahomet drew his lines, as Amurath, his father, had done, from the harbour to the sea, and erected fourteen batteries at the weakest points of the first of the two landward walls, which, when he had thoroughly battered it, he meant to carry by assault. The most powerful of these batteries were directed against the Charsian Gate and the gate of St. Romanus, and it was at this latter gate that the monster gun was planted. Here, it would seem, the chief assault would be made. Mahomet's lines consisted of earthworks, which screened his men from the enemy's fire, and checked their sorties. He had, indeed, shown from the beginning singular forethought. Among his troops he had some experienced miners, who had been brought from the mines of Novoberda in Servia. He had also a multitude of archers, and his somewhat rude artillery was supplemented, as we have noted, with the battering apparatus of ancient warfare. Not a precaution had been omitted which a great organising genius could devise in order to insure success. Nevertheless, all at first was failure. The great cannon, which could be fired only seven times a day, burst, with a terrible destruction of life. The miners were baffled by the superior skill of the Greek and Latin engineers. The wall, indeed, was here and there broken and shattered, but the great fosse, though again and again filled with fascines and timber and innumerable bodies of slaughtered Turks, so as to afford a passage to the besiegers, was as often cleared by the resolute energy of the garrison under the direction of the emperor and Giustiniani. A wooden portable turret, such as was used in the sieges of antiquity, after having been advanced with much labour during the day against the hostile ramparts, was burnt the following night, and the tower of the gate of St. Romanus, which had been beaten down, was that same night rebuilt, and again defied the fury of the assailant.
Another disaster soon befell the besiegers. It is quite enough to show that the city might even yet have been saved. Four ships, with supplies and military aid, were preparing early in April to sail from Chios to its relief, but were detained in harbour by contrary winds. One bore the Greek, three the Genoese flag. After a while, however, they reached the Bosporus, now wholly blockaded by the Turkish fleet in overwhelming numbers. It might well seem madness to attempt to force a passage. The shores on either side at this critical moment were lined with a multitude of anxious spectators, both Turks and Christians. The hearts of the latter must have sunk within them when they saw the apparent hopelessness of the situation. But the five ships were strong and lofty, and armed with artillery, and handled by men familiar with the sea and with naval warfare. They dashed fearlessly among the frail Turkish craft, pouring out on them their Greek fire, and sinking them with their guns, till the sultan, who had been watching the conflict on horseback from the beach, was beside himself with rage. Twice had the Turks attacked, and twice been driven off in utter discomfiture, when he shouted at them his angry reproaches, and insisted on a renewal of the conflict. It was all in vain; again his vessels were scattered in disorderly flight, while the brave little relieving squadron rounded the point of St. Demetrius, and entered the harbour in triumph. It seemed, indeed, thus early in their history, as if God had denied to the Turks the empire of the sea, and reserved it for the unbelievers, as they themselves, even in the days of their power, have been ready to confess. Mahomet would have impaled his admiral on the spot, but for the resolute intervention of the janissaries. He had to satisfy his wrath by laying a hundred strokes on the man's back with a ponderous golden rod. The Greeks meanwhile became hopeful, and counted on further and more powerful aid. But nothing more was done for them. It may be that the indifference of Christendom was in some degree due to a superstitious belief said to have been in the air, that the Turkish conquests would end with Constantinople. It admits, however, as we have seen, of another and an adequate explanation.
The sultan, with all his resolution, was seriously discouraged by the discomfiture of his fleet, and had half a mind to relinquish the siege. Fate, it seemed, was against him. The Turks were dismayed by vague rumours of aid said to be advancing from Hungary and from Italy to the rescue of the Greeks. Terror and rage provoked them to say that they had been dragged from their homes to a hopeless enterprise by a despot who would be the ruin of his race. Mahomet's counsellors were depressed and anxious. One of them, Khalil, the chief vizier, we have had occasion to mention. He was at first glad to see the changed temper of his master, and he urged him finally to abandon his design, which, he hinted, would be soon baffled and confounded by a combination of the Western powers. Khalil is said at this time to have been still carrying on a correspondence with the imperial court. This may have been known, or at least suspected, by another minister in the sultan's service, Zagan, a fierce enemy of all Christians, whose steadily warlike counsels in the end prevailed. "Your arms," he is reported to have said to Mahomet, "are far greater than Alexander's ever were. I do not believe in the fleet from Italy which Khalil has said is on the way, nor is there any chance of union among the Western princes, who, from their numbers and clashing interests, cannot agree long together." This was advice much more to the sultan's heart, though for the time he was wavering, than that of the rather timid, if not actually treacherous, Khalil.
Some new mode of attack must, it was clear, be devised. The attempts on the land fortifications had been disastrously repulsed. To penetrate the harbour, defended as it was by a strong chain and several ships, would seem, after the Turks' recent experience of sea fighting, an utter impossibility. It occurred to Mahomet, however, that it might be possible to convey some of his light vessels overland, and launch them in the inner part of the harbour, where, in the smooth and narrow waters they would by force of numbers be more than a match for the enemy's more powerful but far fewer ships. The Venetians, as he would have heard, had lately transported some of their galleys from the river Adige to the lake of Garda; and if he was, as has been supposed, a student of ancient history, his imagination may have been fired by reading of a similar feat which had been accomplished by Augustus after the battle of Actium, and attempted by Hannibal at the siege of Tarentum. The only way in which the sultan's idea could be carried out would be by beginning the work from some point on the Bosporus north of the city. The road would have to be constructed behind the suburb of Pera, occupied by the Genoese. The thing, it was evident, would require the persevering co-operation of a vast multitude, but this Mahomet could command. The space to be traversed was about five miles of hilly wooded ground, and over this a passage for the ships was made, covered with planks that had been carefully greased with the fat of sheep and oxen. The arduous work of transport began, it seems, at Dolma-Baghtché, and ended on the top of the ridge by the cemetery of Pera, and thence down the slope a numerous flotilla was launched in the Golden Horn. There, in comparatively shallow water, the vessels were safe from attack from the huge Greek galleys, while they threatened the city in a new quarter. But the sultan's work was not yet finished. He had now a fleet and an army in the harbour's innermost recess, where the Greeks were particularly assailable, but it was still necessary to connect his ships with the shore by means of a bridge, on which his men might advance to the assault. The bridge was constructed under the very eyes of the Greeks, and on it was mounted one of the sultan's largest pieces of artillery. We are not to suppose that the garrison quietly allowed all this to be done without any attempt at resistance. But they were far too few in number to resist effectually, and such guns as they had were overpowered by the Turkish fire. In fact, as soon as they had to meet a really formidable assault at a fresh point, their fate was sealed. One desperate effort by night to burn both bridge and ships was made by a gallant band of noble Greek and Italian youths, but it was discovered and frustrated. All were taken and slain. The infamous deed was quickly avenged by the slaughter of two hundred and sixty Turkish prisoners, whose heads were displayed on the walls. The emperor, we should imagine, was the last man to approve in his heart of this horrible retaliation.
The city now had a very dismal prospect before it. The siege had lasted forty days, but it was every day becoming clearer that it could not be sustained much longer. The old walls had at last yielded at many points to the enemy's artillery. The gate of St. Romanus was in ruins, and four of its adjacent towers were demolished. Since the sultan's last success, the line of attack had been greatly extended, far, indeed, beyond the power of resistance yet retained by the small and weary garrison. There was strife between the Genoese and the Venetians, and Giustiniani and the Duke Notaras were at feud, and taunted one another with treachery. The duke was not a patriot, and though possessed of boundless wealth, would not part with a fraction of it in defence of his country. No wonder that with such an example before them the few rich citizens left in the town hoarded their treasures. The emperor, in sheer desperation, had to resort to an expedient from which his piety must have shrunk. He was forced to pay his troops out of the plunder of the churches, and this was called sacrilege by the wretched monks and ecclesiastics.
Mahomet was now in a position to assault the city with every prospect of success, and for this he made instant preparation on a great scale. He laid all his plans with the utmost care. But first he summoned the emperor for the last time to surrender. Constantine, it is almost needless to say, spurned the overtures he offered, and resolved at all hazards to cling to his capital, though it was abundantly clear that nothing short of an absolute miracle could save it. He had sworn, so he replied to the sultan, to defend the city to the last moment of his life. Mahomet's preparations occupied several days. Meanwhile there was growing terror and discontent and discord among the citizens, which the emperor sought in vain to allay. On the twenty-fourth day of May it was rumoured that the enemy was about to make a grand attack. Very possibly the sultan's vizier, Khalil, gave the emperor intimation of what he might expect. On the twenty-eighth day the Turks were bidden to prepare themselves for the final struggle. Seven times, after their manner, they bathed themselves, fasted, and listened to the exhortations of their dervishes. The delights of Paradise and the spoil of the city were promised them in the event of victory. They were filled with enthusiasm, and from their widespread camp, which was now one blaze of illumination, rose the well-known Moslem shout, "God is God, and Mahomet is His prophet!"
The Greeks now well knew that the assault was immediately impending. They were in no mood to resist it. "We," says Phranza, "could not help admiring the religious fervour of the Turks; we too fasted and prayed, and carried our sacred images in procession." On the evening of that same day the emperor addressed for the last time the scanty band of warriors which would have to bear the brunt of the terrible attack of the morrow. Phranza puts into his mouth a long and elaborate oration, which of course he never delivered. "I almost doubt," says Gibbon, with his characteristic irony, "whether it was pronounced by Constantine." That he spoke some earnest words of exhortation, and reminded them of the duty which they owed their ancient and illustrious city, we have every reason to believe. This done, he rode to the fortifications, and visited the guards, and inspected every point in the long line of defence. Then he went to the Church of St. Sophia, and there, according to the Latin form, he received his last sacrament. Finally he returned to his palace, took leave of the members of his household, and asked forgiveness for any offence he might have ever given them. And then the last of the Cæsars again mounted his horse and rode forth to the ramparts to meet his fate.
At early dawn on the twenty-ninth of May the Turkish host rushed to the assault, and Constantinople was menaced alike by sea and land. The gate of St. Romanus, the Charsian Gate, and the Blachern quarter, were the points at which the attack was fiercest. The sultan did not spare his men, and his foremost ranks were driven headlong into the fosse and slaughtered wholesale by the fire and missiles of the garrison. It was a sacrifice he could well afford. For two hours the defence was maintained, and it seemed possible that it might be ultimately successful. Above the din and tumult the emperor's voice, it is said, could be heard, urging a final and decisive effort on behalf of the city. Even at this moment we hear of strife between Giustiniani and the Duke Notaras. The latter had the control of the artillery, and for some cause or other he would not grant the urgent request of the Genoese leader for more guns for the defence of the great breach at the gate of St. Romanus. Meanwhile the famous janissaries, who had not yet been engaged, advanced under the sultan's eye to the attack, and the struggle was now at its height. The defence, it is possible, might have been prolonged, but for an unfortunate accident, to which it was usual with the Greeks to attribute the loss of their city. Giustiniani, on whose presence so much depended, was severely wounded in the hand, it would seem (though our narratives on this point vary), and felt himself obliged to quit his post on the ramparts. According to Phranza, the emperor remonstrated with him and implored him to remain, observing that his wound was but slight. His reply was, however, that he would "return by the same way which God had opened for the Turks." Certain it is that the Greeks ascribed this calamity to the cowardice of Giustiniani at this critical moment. The story was that he died in disgrace soon afterwards, a broken-hearted man, in the island of Chios. It is hardly possible for us to arrive at the truth. Gibbon takes the unfavourable view of his conduct which commended itself to Phranza and the Greeks generally, while Finlay maintains that we ought to be slow to charge a man of well-proved courage with pusillanimity. Phranza himself even speaks of him as "hard as adamant." The matter is one which cannot be explained. But had the brave Genoese still stood at his post, he never could have sustained for any length of time an attack made with such overwhelming numbers on the feeble, worn-out garrison. The fight possibly might have been prolonged. As it was, a panic seems quickly to have showed itself as the Turks rushed on with greater fury. A gigantic janissary, Hassan by name, is said to have been the first to climb the ramparts and to lead them to victory. The emperor died, we know, the death of a hero in endeavouring along with a few of his nobles to stem the advancing tide. This is all we know. The exact circumstances of his death are variously reported. His faithful Phranza was in another part of the city, and did not witness his master's end. He represents him as performing prodigies of valour and slaughtering multitudes of the foe with his own hand—like another Samson. His body lay buried under a heap of slain, but the head, says Phranza, was never found, though Mahomet made special inquiry after it. Another account tells us that the sultan sent it as a proof of victory to several of his cities in Asia. The body was ultimately recognised by the imperial golden eagles embroidered on the boots. So fell the last of the Greek emperors, the last, as he may indeed be worthily called, of the Cæsars.
In the panic and flight that followed many were crushed to death in the gate of St. Romanus. Victors and vanquished thronged in a promiscuous crowd into the streets of the city, and another multitude of the enemy had forced the fortifications on the side of the harbour, and had joined themselves to their companions who had just stormed the landward defences. On the twenty-ninth of May, 1453, Constantinople, after a siege of fifty-three days, was in the hands of the infidel. The great calamity which had long been hanging over Christendom was now finally consummated. The poor terror-stricken inhabitants, as soon as they knew the event, flocked for refuge into the Church of St. Sophia, capable, it is said, of receiving twenty thousand people. They barred the doors against the enemy, and encouraged themselves on the strength of a prophecy which declared that when the Turks had penetrated to the space before St. Sophia an angel would descend from heaven, sword in hand, and drive them from the city. Soon the enemy burst into the sacred building and claimed his prey. There was no resistance. Old and young, high-born and low-born, youths and maidens, were hurried away by ruthless hands into captivity, and all parts of the city witnessed like scenes. It is said that sixty thousand Greeks became the conqueror's spoil, and were scattered throughout his dominions. Phranza had to endure slavery for a time, though after a while he was released, and was allowed to ransom his wife; but he had the misery of seeing his children torn from him—his daughter consigned to the sultan's seraglio, and his son, a boy of fourteen, choosing death in preference to dishonour. The great Duke Notaras was the noblest and most distinguished of the prisoners. He showed the sultan, it is said, a vast hidden treasure of jewels and pearls. His fate was a hard one, though he hardly seems to deserve our pity, as it is whispered that he turned traitor after having submitted himself to the victor. At first the sultan flattered him with the hope of safety, but soon afterwards put both him and his two sons to death, thereby in Christian estimation conferring on them the glory of martyrdom. If we are to believe the Greek writers, he was false to his first promises of mercy, and revealed a hideous perfidy in the wholesale massacres which he perpetrated.
Mahomet, it is said, was profoundly impressed with the spectacle of the fallen city. Cruel and perfidious he may have been, but he would allow no wanton destruction, and he reproved with a blow of his scimitar a barbarous Turk whom he saw breaking the marble mosaics in the Church of St. Sophia. In that church, now suddenly converted into a mosque, on its high altar, he offered up his prayers and thanksgivings. In some respects the Turk, after his victory, contrasted favourably with the Latin Crusader. He was more obedient, more amenable to discipline, and his conquest was even accomplished with less bloodshed than that of the Latins, though it undoubtedly consigned the Greek race to greater permanent misery and degradation. The sultan had at least some nobility of character, though it is certain that he stained the glory of his triumphs with some very unworthy deeds. He went from the Church of St. Sophia to the imperial palace, and it was there, as he surveyed the desolate halls, that he is said to have called to mind those pathetic words of a Persian poet: "The spider's curtain hangs before the portal of Cæsar's palace; the owl is the sentinel on the watch-tower of Afrasiab."
The promised plunder could hardly have disappointed the sultan's eager and victorious soldiers. The Turk was certainly not more greedy and rapacious than the Latin conqueror had been. Constantinople, indeed, was very poor compared with what it had been in the days of its greatness. Ever since the Latin conquest its wealth and population had steadily declined. Of the spoil taken by the Turks, far the largest and most valuable portion consisted in the captives themselves. These would be sold into slavery, if they or their friends were unable to save themselves by the payment of a good ransom. There must, however, have been some richly furnished houses, and many private treasures, which the possessors had grudged the emperor, when he wanted money for his troops. The churches, too, and the monasteries must have yielded a handsome booty. We can quite understand how it came to be said of a Turk, who had suddenly grown rich, that he had been at the sack of Constantinople. The Genoese of Galata contrived to save themselves and their most valuable property. While the Turks were intent on the pillage of the city, they sailed out of the harbour and made good their escape.
The sultan had now to undo the work of destruction. Constantinople was henceforth to be the capital of his empire. For this honour "the genius of the place" had clearly marked out the city of Constantine. The character of Ottoman dominion was soon impressed on it, yet at the same time the rites of Christian worship were celebrated in several of its churches, and the patriarch was acknowledged by the sultan, and even received from his hand the crosier which symbolised his sacred office. Many a Greek felt that he could return in safety to the city of his fathers, and he was encouraged by the conqueror to do so. From Roumania and Asia Minor as many as five thousand families were summoned by his order to leave their homes and take up their abode in his new capital. What he could, the sultan certainly seems to have done, for the revival of the prosperity of Constantinople.
The fall of the city had long been expected throughout Europe, and Pope Nicholas V. had, as we have seen, actually prophesied it. It would seem, at least in many quarters, to have been anticipated without any excessive dread or sense of disgrace. Yet, when it actually occurred (though some spoke of it as a Divine judgment on persistence in heresy), it appears to have confounded Christendom with shame and horror, and men talked of another Crusade. An old and venerable fabric had been destroyed, and the gap was filled by a barbarous and infidel power, whose very nature and instinct it was to make war upon Christian faith and society. But for good and sufficient reasons the Western princes and their peoples could not be shamed or frightened into a common effort for the deliverance of Europe from the Turk. Nothing was done; nothing was likely to be done; though some feeble and fitful attempts were made soon afterwards by Pope Pius II. Yet that very pontiff, before his elevation, had himself, in a sketch of the state of Europe, spoken strongly of the hopelessness of any such project, and described Christendom as "a body without a head." For us, indeed, it has been in many ways a misfortune that the Turk was allowed to retain his prey, though perhaps it was no less difficult then than now to see who was to take his place, even if it had been practicable to dispossess him. It has undoubtedly left us a legacy of perplexity and confusion. The fall of Constantinople is, indeed, a very dark chapter in the annals of mankind. There is little to relieve the darkness. If the scattering of the city's literary treasures helped on the revival of learning, there was, we know, a woeful destruction of manuscripts, which every scholar must deplore. At this point we take leave of its history, which now becomes that of the Ottoman power in Europe.
- ↑ Philelphus, quoted by Gibbon