his men that Gibbon calls the funeral oration of the Roman Empire, and rode out to die. He stood, surrounded by his guard, near the Gate of St. Romanos, defending while he lived the city he could no longer save. Fighting valiantly with his back to the wall, he fell in the tumult of the assault, as the last heir of the Roman name should fall, fighting for Christ and Rome and adorning the Imperial purple with the glory of his heroic blood.[1] Constantine Cæsar Augustus Palaiologos was the 80th Roman Emperor since Constantine the Great, the 112th since Cæsar Octavian. With him the old Empire died.
The barbarians burst into the city, carrying death and havoc, and the day that had begun with the chant of that last sad liturgy ended with the shrieks of a hideous massacre. Then Mohammed the Conqueror rode his white horse up the Hippodrome, and gradually the news spread throughout the distant lands of the Franks that at last the impossible had happened, that Constantinople had fallen; facta est quasi vidua domina gentium.[2]
- ↑ His body was afterwards found and recognized by the golden eagles on his shoes. Mohammed let him be buried near the Mosque of Suleiman, and a lamp is always kept burning near his tomb. As far as they dare, the Greeks still make the grave of the last Autocrat of the Romans a place of pilgrimage. But they have not canonized him; is it because he was a Catholic? However, he does not need the doubtful honour of Byzantine canonization. Saint and hero he rests in peace in the city he guarded till death, and all over the Christian world his glorious memory is honoured. In pace Christi quiescas Auguste Cæsar.
- ↑ For the fall of Constantinople see Gibbon, chap. 68, with Bury's notes. There is a good account also in De la Jonquière: Hist. de l'Empire ottoman, chap. 8, pp. 156–162. The rival Empire at Trebizond just outlived the one at Constantinople, and lasted till 1461. At that time David Komnenos was reigning, and when the Moslem armies surrounded his city, he, now utterly cut off from the rest of Christendom, promised to surrender it, if he and his family were given a safe passage to Europe. The Turk swore to do so, and David believed him. As soon as the Moslems entered the city they seized the Emperor and his seven sons and offered them the choice of Islam or death. The end of the last Komnenos was as glorious as that of the last Palaiologos. The youngest son did indeed apostatize, but David and the other six chose rather to die than to renounce their faith. So they were murdered. The Empress Helen then, valiantly defying the tyrant's command, herself dug a grave and buried her husband and sons. So the end of this rather absurd little Empire was dignified and glorious, and the memory of the martyrs' blood has brought it far more honour than it could have gained had it lasted.
