Chapter XI: Manuel II to the Fall of Constantinople (1)

[1391-1453 A.D.]

MANUEL II (1391-1399 A.D.)

The emperor Manuel was at Brusa[89] when he heard of his father’s death. He was generally esteemed, being neither destitute of talent nor personal courage, while his disposition was mild and conciliatory. Before Bajazet was informed of the death of Joannes V the new emperor had made his escape, and reached Constantinople in safety; but the sultan treated him as a rebellious vassal in consequence of his secret departure. Joannes Palæologus, the son of Andronicus, who had succeeded his father in the appanage of Selymbria, was encouraged to claim the empire in virtue of the treaty of 1381, by which the succession had been secured to his father and himself. A body of Turkish troops was instructed to ravage the Greek territory up to the very walls of Constantinople; but other matters calling for Bajazet’s care, he accepted the submission of Manuel, and the Greek emperor again appeared as a vassal at the Sublime Porte.

The ambition of Bajazet was unbounded, and his love of war was inflamed by an inordinate confidence in his own military talents, and in the power of the Ottoman army. He despised the Christians, and considered it his first duty to reduce them to the condition of subjects, if not of slaves. The position of Manuel was therefore as dangerous as it was degrading; for although the spectacle of a Roman emperor standing as a suppliant before his throne soothed the pride of Bajazet, it was apparent that his vanity would readily yield to his ambition, if an opportunity presented of gaining Constantinople.

[Sidenote: [1395-1399 A.D.]]

For several years Bajazet was employed consolidating his dominions both in Europe and Asia, and he was compelled to watch the movements of the western powers, which threatened him with a new crusade. At last, when Sigismund, king of Hungary, was about to invade the Ottoman dominions, the sultan convoked an assembly of the Christian princes who were then his vassals, in order to prevent their combining to assist the invaders. Manuel, the Greek emperor, Joannes, despot of Selymbria, Theodore, despot of the Peloponnesus, Stephen, king of Servia, Constantine Dragazes, the son of Tzarco, prince of the valley of the Vardar, and several Greek, Servian, Bulgarian, and Albanian chiefs of less importance, who were already independent, appeared in the Ottoman camp at Serres. Circumstances induced the emperor Manuel and the despot Theodore to believe that their correspondence with the pope was known to the sultan, and that their lives were in danger. They both fled, and gained their own states in safety. Joannes of Selymbria remained to profit by the flight of his uncles; but Bajazet could only attend to the Hungarian war. His brilliant victory at Nicopolis in 1396 taught all Europe that the discipline of the janizaries was more than a match for the valour of the chivalry of France, and left him at liberty to punish the Greek princes for their desertion. He immediately turned his arms against the despot Theodore, and marched in person into Thessaly. The bishop of Phocis was the first traitor who joined the Mussulmans, and urged them to conquer Greece. The Wallachians of Thessaly and the widow of the count of Galona submitted to the terms imposed on them; and the sultan, seeing that no resistance would be offered to his troops by the Greeks in the Peloponnesus, turned back to Thrace. His generals, Yakub and Evrenus, took Corinth and Argos; while Theodore shut himself up within the walls of Misithra, and contemplated the ruin of his subjects without making an effort to save them. The Ottoman army, after ravaging great part of the peninsula, retired, carrying away immense booty and thirty thousand prisoners, whom they sold as slaves.

As Bajazet was not master of a sufficient naval force to attempt blockading Constantinople, he resolved to undermine the power of Manuel in such a way as would be least likely to awaken the jealousy of the commercial republics of Italy. He fanned the flames of family discord, which shed their lurid light on the records of the house of Palæologus by acknowledging Joannes, despot of Selymbria, as the lawful emperor of Constantinople and supplying him with a Turkish army to blockade Manuel by land.

The emperor Manuel, as soon as he saw that war with Bajazet was inevitable, had sent an ambassador to solicit assistance from Charles VI king of France. The marshal de Boucicault, who had already served with distinction in the East, and had been taken prisoner by Bajazet at Nicopolis, was appointed to command the forces which Charles VI sent to assist the Greek emperor. Boucicault sailed from Aigues-Mortes, and after some delay effected his junction with a fleet composed of eight Genoese, eight Venetian, two Rhodian galleys, and one of Mytilene, and proceeded to Constantinople, where he arrived in 1398. The arrival of Boucicault and his little army, which consisted of six hundred men-at-arms, without horses, six hundred infantry soldiers, and one thousand archers and cross-bowmen, revived the courage of the Greeks. The Genoese and Venetians were well acquainted with the Ottoman coast, and all under the direction of Constantinople carried on a succession of plundering incursions along the Asiatic coast, from the gulfs of Nicomedia and Mudania to the shores of the Black Sea. It was evident that this system of warfare could not long uphold the empire, and Boucicault, finding the Greeks incapable of making any exertions in their own defence, advised Manuel to seek assistance from the western nations. This advice would have in all probability arrived too late, had not the Ottoman power at this moment been threatened by the great Tatar conqueror, Timur. The sultan was therefore as much inclined to conclude a temporary peace as the emperor. The pretensions of Joannes of Selymbria were the only obstacle, and Manuel overcame this difficulty by a generous resolution. He opened communications with his nephew, whom he easily convinced that, if he entered Constantinople with Turkish troops, his reign would prove of short duration. He then offered to receive Joannes as his colleague, and invest him with the government, while he himself visited western Europe. The marshal Boucicault guaranteed these arrangements, and a French force remained in the capital to protect the interests of Manuel during his absence. On the 4th of December, 1399, Joannes entered Constantinople, and was proclaimed emperor, and on the 10th, Manuel quitted his capital with Boucicault to present himself as a suppliant at the European courts.

[Sidenote: [1399-1410 A.D.]]

Manuel II gained very little by his mendicant pilgrimage to Italy, France, and England. Some valuable presents were bestowed upon him by Visconti, the magnificent duke of Milan, and Charles VI of France granted him a pension of thirty thousand crowns; but he was compelled to return to Constantinople at the end of two years, with a little money and a few volunteers collected from people poorer and not more numerous than the Greeks. He learned on his way home that his enemy Bajazet had been defeated by Timur at Angora, and that the Ottoman Empire was utterly ruined. On reaching Constantinople he deprived his nephew Joannes, who had ruled during his absence, of the imperial title, and banished him to Lemnos. Joannes had already placed the Greek Empire in a state of vassalage to the Tatar conqueror; Manuel ratified the treaty, and paid to Timur the tribute which he had formerly paid to Bajazet. Rarely has the world seen a more total defeat than that sustained by the Ottoman army. Bajazet died a captive in the hands of Timur.

Rarely has so great a victory produced so little effect on the fate of the vanquished. For a moment, indeed, the Ottoman power was humbled, and an opening formed for the revival of the Greek Empire; but no energy remained in the political organisation of the Hellenic race beyond the confined sphere of local and individual interests; while the institutions of Orkhan, surviving the defeats and civil wars of the Ottomans, soon restored power to their central government, and rendered the sultan again the arbiter of the fate of Greece.

The civil wars among the sons of Bajazet had no small influence in prolonging the existence of the Greek Empire. The Ottoman historians reckon an interregnum of ten years after the battle of Angora, during which four of the sons of Bajazet contended for the sovereignty. Suleiman, Isa, and Mousa successively perished, and the youngest of the family, Muhammed I, at last reunited all his father’s dominions, and was regarded as his legitimate successor and the fifth sultan of the Ottomans, including Osman, the founder of the dynasty.

After the battle of Angora, Suleiman sought safety in Constantinople, where he concluded a treaty with the emperor Manuel in the year 1403, by which he yielded up Thessalonica, the valley of the Strymon, Thessaly, and the coast of the Black Sea, as far as Varna, to the Greeks. Joannes of Selymbria was recalled from Lemnos, and established at Thessalonica with the title of emperor; but the control of the government was vested by Manuel in the hands of Demetrius Leontaris, a Byzantine noble. In return for the cession of these provinces, the emperor furnished Suleiman with money to collect an army and to establish his authority over the remainder of the Ottoman dominions in Europe.

[Sidenote: [1410-1421 A.D.]]

But the debauchery of Suleiman at last induced the janizaries to join Mousa, and Suleiman was slain in attempting to escape to Constantinople, 1410 A.D. The close alliance which had existed between Suleiman and Manuel induced Mousa to turn his arms against the Greek Empire. He reconquered all the towns in Macedonia and Thessaly which his brother had ceded to Manuel, with the exception of Thessalonica and Zeitounion. Mousa then laid siege to Constantinople; but his operations were paralysed by the destruction of a naval armament he had fitted out. The emperor had strengthened the imperial fleet, the command of which he had entrusted to his natural brother, named also Manuel, a man of courage and military talents. The admiral gained a complete victory over the Ottoman fleet; but his brilliant success excited the jealousy of his imperial brother. On returning to receive the thanks of his country, he was thrown into prison on an accusation of treason, and remained a prisoner during the life of his brother. The siege of Constantinople was merely a succession of skirmishes under its walls, in which several Greek nobles were slain; and the attention of Mousa was soon exclusively occupied by the attacks of his brother Muhammed.

Mousa rendered his government as unpopular by his severity as Suleiman by his debauchery, and many of the Ottoman officers in Europe invited Muhammed to seize the throne. The emperor Manuel agreed to furnish transports to convey the Asiatic troops over the Bosporus; but he refused to admit them into Constantinople, though he allowed them to form their camp under its walls. The first operations of Muhammed were unsuccessful: but at last he forced Mousa to retire to Hadrianopolis, who, in the end, was deserted by all his followers and slain, 1413 A.D. Little more than ten years had elapsed from the day that Muhammed, then a mere youth, fled from the field of Angora with only one faithful companion, until he reunited under his sway nearly all the extensive dominions which had been ruled by his father. Timur had not perceived the fact that, the tribute of Christian children being the keystone on which the whole fabric of the Ottoman power rested, its resources were really much greater in Europe than in Asia.

The Greek Empire enjoyed an uninterrupted peace during the reign of Muhammed I, which lasted until the year 1421; and Manuel devoted his attention during this period to restoring some order in the public administration, and to re-establishing the sway of the central authority in the distant provinces of the empire. After completing his reforms in the civil, financial, military, and ecclesiastical departments of Constantinople, he found it necessary to visit the provinces in person, in order to reduce the local power of the Greek archons within reasonable bounds. He quitted Constantinople in the month of July, 1413, and commenced his operations by reducing the island of Thasos, the citadel of which resisted his little army for two months. The emperor then visited Thessalonica, where it appears that he remained more than a year. His nephew Joannes, who was governor of the city, assumed the monastic habit; but whether he was compelled by the emperor to adopt this step, in order to allow the new reforms to be carried into execution, is uncertain. The despot Andronicus, the emperor’s second son, was appointed governor of Thessalonica. After his father’s death he sold the city to the Venetians for the sum of fifty thousand sequins.

In March, 1415, Manuel visited the Peloponnesus. The Roman Empire of the East had shrunk to such pitiful dimensions that the Byzantine province, which comprised only about three-quarters of that peninsula, was now its most extensive province. The first care of the emperor was to strengthen the means of defending this territory by fortifying the Isthmus of Corinth. He then directed his attention to reforming the abuses which the feudal tyranny of the Franks and the unprincipled fiscal extortions of the Greek archons had introduced into the administration. These abuses were rapidly exterminating the Greek agricultural population, and making way for the immigration of a ruder class of Albanian labourers.

When we compare the reforms of Manuel with the legislation of Orkhan, we are astonished at the great intellectual superiority displayed by the Ottomans at this period. The Greek emperor adopted only a few temporary devices to arrest the progress of social putrefaction in a diseased society. His own talents and the energies of his people were incompetent to make any bold efforts for extirpating the sources of the evil, and for infusing a spirit of honesty and patriotism into Greek society. Yet the fact that Greek society as well as the imperial government was rapidly decaying was generally acknowledged. The despot Theodore, Manuel’s brother, who died about the year 1407, had felt the task of undertaking the regeneration of Greece so hopeless, and had found the difficulty of governing the Peloponnesians so great, that he attempted to sell his province to the knights of Rhodes, after he had introduced numerous colonies of Albanians to fill up the void caused by the decrease of the native population.

From a satirist of the time, we learn that while the emperor Manuel was occupied in diminishing the power and checking the abuses of the archons of the Peloponnesus and of the Constantinopolitan officials, many of the courtiers in his household made a traffic of creating new corruptions in the administration by selling imperial decrees and golden bulls. The character of the native Greeks he declares to be equally bad. He says: “They are formed of three parts: their tongue speaks one thing, their mind meditates another, and their actions accord with neither.” There can be no good administration among an utterly demoralised people. When the emperor returned to Constantinople, he carried with him some of the most turbulent and intriguing of the Peloponnesian chiefs, who had, previous to his arrival, contrived to appropriate the greater part of the taxes levied on the people to their own use. Indeed the most important result of Manuel’s visit was the introduction of such a degree of order in the provincial administration, that a fixed sum could be regularly remitted to the imperial treasury at Constantinople. His son Theodore remained as his viceroy at Misithra.

[Sidenote: [1421-1431 A.D.]]

The death of Sultan Muhammed I in 1421 involved the empire in a contest with his son, Murad II. The self-conceit of the Greeks persuaded them that they could guide the progress of the Ottomans by their superiority in diplomacy. No experience could teach them that rhetoric and scholastic learning are feeble arms against military discipline and national courage. A pretender to the Ottoman throne resided at Constantinople, named Mustapha, who asserted that he was a son of Bajazet. He was now acknowledged as lawful sultan, and Manuel concluded with him a treaty, by which Mustapha promised to restore Gallipoli, the Chalcidice of Macedonia, and the maritime cities on the Black Sea, while the emperor engaged to furnish money and military stores. He was abandoned by his followers, taken prisoner by Murad II, and hanged, in order to convince the world that he was an impostor.

Murad resolved to punish Manuel for his intrigues. The emperor was now weakened by age, and the direction of public affairs was in a great measure entrusted to his son Joannes, who endeavoured to appease the sultan with abject apologies. Murad gave the imperial ambassadors no answer until his preparations were completed. He then marched forward and formed the siege of Constantinople, establishing his own headquarters at the church of the Fountain, and commencing his lines of circumvallation in the month of June, 1422. His lines extended from the Golden Gate to the Wooden Gate; two movable towers were built to assist the storming of the wall, and cannon were employed by the Ottomans for the first time. This early artillery, however, was so ill-constructed and ill-served that it produced little effect. A thousand of the bravest janizaries fell before the walls; while the Greeks, fighting under cover of their battlements, lost only 130 killed and wounded. Murad II did not renew his attack on Constantinople, and the last act of Manuel’s reign was to sign a treaty of peace, by which Murad left the empire in possession of a few cities in Thrace, of Thessalonica, and a few forts near the mouths of the Strymon, Mount Athos, Zeitounion, and some places in Thessaly. Manuel also engaged to pay the sultan an annual tribute of three hundred thousand aspers.

Manuel adopted the monastic habit two years before his death, and took the name of Matthew, but he continued to give his advice on public affairs. He died in July, 1425, at the age of seventy-seven, after a reign of thirty-four years.

REIGN OF JOANNES VII (1423-1448 A.D.)

Joannes VII found the Eastern Roman Empire reduced to the city of Constantinople, a few neighbouring towns, Thessalonica, and a part of the Peloponnesus. His reign of twenty-three years passed in almost uninterrupted peace; yet this long period of tranquillity was productive of no improvement. As far as the revenues both of the government and of the nation were concerned, the emperor and the people alike consumed, before the expiration of each year, all that the year had produced.

The diminution of the Greek population contrasted strangely with the rapid increase of the Ottomans, while their decline in wealth and industry offered a still more unfavourable point of comparison with the Genoese colony of Galata. The trade of the Greeks had passed into the hands of the Italians; the power of the Byzantine emperors was transferred to the Ottoman sultans. The loss of personal dignity and courage followed the loss of national honour and power. Plague and pestilence, as often happens, came as attendants on neglected police, bad government, and social disorder. In the year 1431 a contagious disease of fearful mortality decimated the population of Constantinople; and it was the ninth return of pestilence since the great plague of 1347. Nations, however, are rarely sensible of their own degradation, and at this time the Greeks looked on the Latins with contempt as well as hatred; they despised the western Europeans as heretics, and the Turks as barbarians. Court processions, religious ceremonies, and national vanity amused and consoled them as they hastened along the path of degradation and ruin.

All the fortified posts had been destroyed by Murad II when he besieged Constantinople, and the country, as far as Selymbria, was inhabited only by a few Greeks engaged in agriculture, who dwelt in open villages. The Greek empire ended at Selymbria. The frontier territory of the Ottomans was a similar scene of devastation, the land being tilled by a few Christian peasants for their Turkish masters.

BRIEF UNION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES

[Sidenote: [1430-1440 A.D.]]

The conquest of Thessalonica by Sultan Murad in 1430, the quarrels of the despots Theodore, Constantine, and Thomas in the Peloponnesus, and the insolence of the Genoese of Galata, who attacked Constantinople on account of some disputes relating to the Black Sea trade, warned the emperor Joannes VII that, unless he could secure some efficient military aid from strangers, the Ottoman power would soon overwhelm the Greek Empire. The pope was the only sovereign who possessed sufficient power and influence to obtain effectual aid for the Eastern Empire: but there was no probability that he would exert that influence, unless the emperor Joannes consented to the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and recognised the papal supremacy. In this critical conjuncture the statesmen and ecclesiastics of rank at Constantinople decided that the political exigencies of their situation authorised their truckling even with the doctrines of their church.

In the year 1438 the emperor Joannes and the Greek patriarch made their appearance at the council of Ferrara. In the following year the council was transferred to Florence, where, after long discussions, the Greek emperor and all the members of the clergy who had attended the council, with the exception of the bishop of Ephesus, adopted the doctrines of the Roman church concerning the procession of the Holy Ghost, the addition to the Nicene Creed, the nature of purgatory, the condition of the soul after its separation from the body until the day of judgment, the use of unleavened bread in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and the papal supremacy. The union of the two churches was solemnly ratified in the magnificent cathedral of Florence on the 6th of July, 1439, when the Greeks abjured their ancient faith in a vaster edifice and under a loftier dome than that of their own much-vaunted temple of St. Sophia.

The emperor Joannes derived none of the advantages he had expected from the simulated union of the churches. Pope Eugenius, it is true, supplied him liberally with money, but his holiness forgot his promise to send a fleet to defend Constantinople.

On his return Joannes found his subjects indignant at the manner in which the honour and doctrines of the Greek church had been sacrificed in an unsuccessful diplomatic speculation. The bishops who had obsequiously signed the articles of union at Florence, now sought popularity by deserting the emperor, and making a parade of their repentance, lamenting their wickedness in falling off for a time from the pure doctrine of the orthodox church. The only permanent result of this abortive attempt at Christian union was to increase the bigotry of the orthodox, and to furnish the Latins with just grounds for condemning the perfidious dealings and bad faith of the Greeks. In both ways it assisted the progress of the Ottoman power.

[Sidenote: [1440-1448 A.D.]]

The emperor Joannes, seeing public affairs in this hopeless state, thought only of keeping on good terms with the sultan. His brother Demetrius, however, who had accompanied him to Florence, shared his apostasy, and partaken of the papal bounty, now basely attempted to take advantage of the popular dissatisfaction with the union. He claimed the throne as being the first child of Manuel who was a Porphyrogenitus, but he trusted to gain his ends by the aid of Turkish troops rather than by the merits of his title or the preference of the Greeks. Collecting a large force composed of the Turkish nomads, who were ready to join any standard that offered them an opportunity of plundering and enslaving the Christians, Demetrius marched to besiege his brother in Constantinople. Sultan Murad took no direct part in the contest, but he allowed Demetrius to enrol Turkish troops without opposition, and viewed with satisfaction a rebellion which tended to weaken the empire. When called upon to choose between the two brothers, the Greek people acknowledged the superiority of the reigning emperor. Demetrius, after plundering the suburbs of Constantinople, saw his army melt away, and was happy to find that his brother’s moderation and love of peace was so great that he was allowed to retain his principality at Mesembria with the title of despot.

The deeds of Joannes (Janos) Hunyady might have awakened the Greeks from their lethargy, had any warlike spirit survived in the nation. The victory of the Hungarian army at the pass of Isladi, and a war with the sultan of Karamania, threatened the Ottoman Empire with serious danger; but the victory of Varna re-established the glory of the sultan’s arms. Neither the successes of the Hungarians nor the presence of a papal force in the Hellespont, which at last made its appearance under the command of Cardinal Gondolmieri, could induce Emperor Joannes to unite his cause with that of the western powers. He had obtained too many proofs of the instability and imprudence of their counsels. The moment he heard of the great victory of Sultan Murad at Varna, he sent an embassy to congratulate his suzerain, and solicit a renewal of their alliance, which the sultan immediately granted. Joannes even contrived to avoid taking part in the war carried on against the sultan by his brother Constantine in Greece, and succeeded in preserving uninterrupted peace until his death in 1448. During his inglorious reign of twenty-three years he never forgot that he was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. He proved precisely the temporising manager of the state that circumstances required; and his pliancy averted, during his lifetime, the calamities which were ready to overwhelm the Greek Empire.

REIGN OF CONSTANTINE XIII (1448-1453 A.D.)

Constantine XIII, the last of the Greek emperors, was residing in his despotat at Sparta when his brother Joannes VII died. As he had been recently engaged in hostilities with the sultan, it was doubtful whether Murad would acknowledge him as emperor, and Demetrius availed himself of these doubts to make another attempt to occupy the throne. The deficiency of truth, honour, and patriotism among the Greek aristocracy during the last century of the Eastern Empire is almost without a parallel in history; but Demetrius was too well known and too generally despised to find a large party even in that worthless aristocracy disposed to espouse his cause, while Constantine, on the other hand, was known to possess both candour and energy, and was respected by all except the most bigoted among the orthodox Greeks.

[Sidenote: [1451 A.D.]]

Sultan Murad II died in February, 1451, after a prosperous reign of thirty years, and was succeeded by his son Muhammed II, who was only twenty-one years old. Muhammed II was a man of great ambition and great talents; he united with extraordinary activity and courage a degree of judgment rare in his high station, and still rarer at his early age.

The conquest of Constantinople was the first object of his ambition. It was by nature the capital of his dominions, and as long as it remained in the hands of the Greeks the Ottoman Empire lay open to the invasions of the western Christians. Having concluded a truce for three years with John Hunyady, the young sultan crossed over into Asia to suppress the hostile proceedings of Ibrahim, the sultan of Karamania.

Constantine, who appears to have formed a very erroneous idea of the talents and character of Muhammed, took this opportunity of insulting him in the most sensitive manner by sending an embassy to demand an augmentation of the pension of three hundred thousand aspers, which the Ottoman court had accorded to the Greek for the maintenance of Orkhan, the grandson of Suleiman. The ambassadors were instructed to insinuate that, if the demand were not granted, Orkhan might be allowed to lay claim to the Ottoman throne.

(From a medallion in the Royal Muenz Cabinet, Berlin)]

Such an insult was not likely to be ever forgotten by a haughty and ambitious prince. The wary young sultan, however, dismissed the ambassadors with courtesy. But as soon as his Asiatic campaign was finished, he ordered the imperial agents to be expelled from the territory in the valley of the Strymon which had been assigned for the maintenance of Orkhan, and stopped all further payments. Shortly after, without informing Constantine of his intention, he constructed a fortress on the Greek territory at the narrowest part of the Bosporus, opposite a fort which had been constructed by Bajazet I on the Asiatic shore. The distance between the two forts is about three-quarters of a mile, and a rapid current flows between. The sultan had made every preparation for completing the work with extraordinary celerity. An ample supply of materials had been collected before his object was known, and as soon as the plan of the fortress was marked out, a thousand masons and two thousand labourers worked incessantly to complete the walls.

Constantine had good reason to consider the construction of this fortress on his territory, within five miles of his capital, and commanding its approach from the Black Sea, as an infraction of the treaty between the two empires, but he was too weak to resent this signal revenge for his own recent threats. He complained of the hostile invasion of the Greek territory, but Muhammed treated his reclamations with contempt, observing that the ground on which the fortress was built, having been purchased and paid for, was Turkish property, and the emperor of Constantinople, being a vassal of the Porte, had no right to dispute the will of the sultan.

The first open resistance was offered by some Greeks, who endeavoured to prevent Muhammed’s engineers from carrying off the marble columns from a church. These pious Christians were cut to pieces by the Ottoman troops. As the work advanced the sultan’s aggressions increased. His soldiers were allowed to plunder; quarrels ensued in which blood was shed, and then the Turks attacked the Greeks who were getting in the harvest, and slew the reapers. Constantine in alarm closed the gates of Constantinople, cut off all communications between the Greeks and the Ottomans, and sent another embassy to the sultan to ask redress. Muhammed replied by a formal declaration of war.

WAR WITH MUHAMMED

[Sidenote: [1451-1452 A.D.]]

Both parties now began to prepare for the mortal contest. The siege of Constantinople was to be the great event of the coming year. The sultan, in order to prevent the emperor’s brothers in the Peloponnesus from sending any succours to the capital, ordered Tourakhan, the pasha of Thessaly, to invade the peninsula. He himself took up his residence at Hadrianopolis, to collect warlike stores and siege artillery. Constantine, on his part, made every preparation in his power for vigorous defence. He formed large magazines of provisions, collected military stores, and enrolled all the soldiers he could muster among the Greek population of Constantinople. But the inhabitants of that city were either unable or unwilling to furnish recruits in proportion to their numbers. Bred up in peaceful occupation, they probably possessed neither the activity nor the habitual exercise which was required to move with ease under the weighty armour then in use.

So few were found disposed to fight for their country, that not more than six thousand Greek troops appeared under arms during the whole siege. The numerical weakness of the Greek army rendered it incapable of defending so large a city as Constantinople, even with all the advantage to be derived from strong fortifications. The emperor was, therefore, anxious to obtain the assistance of the warlike citizens of the Italian republics, where good officers and experienced troops were then numerous. As he had no money to engage mercenaries, he could only hope to succeed by papal influence. An embassy was sent to Pope Nicholas V, begging immediate aid, and declaring the emperor’s readiness to complete the union of the churches in any way the pope should direct. Nicholas despatched Cardinal Isidore, the metropolitan of Kieff, who had joined the Latin church, as his legate. Isidore had represented the Russian church at the council of Florence; but on his return to Russia he was imprisoned as an apostate, and with difficulty escaped to Italy. He was by birth a Greek; and being a man of learning and conciliatory manners, it was expected that he would be favourably received at Constantinople.

The cardinal arrived at Constantinople in November, 1452. He was accompanied by a small body of chosen troops, and brought some pecuniary aid, which he employed in repairing the most dilapidated part of the fortifications. Both the emperor and the cardinal deceived themselves in supposing that the dangers to which the Greek nation and the Christian church were exposed would induce the orthodox to yield something of their ecclesiastical forms and phrases. It was evident that foreign aid could alone save Constantinople, and it was absurd to imagine that the Latins would fight for those that treated them as heretics, and who would not fight for themselves. The crisis, therefore, compelled the Greeks to choose between union with the church of Rome or submission to the Ottoman power. They had to decide whether the preservation of the Greek Empire was worth the ecclesiastical sacrifices they were called upon to make in order to preserve their national independence.

CHURCH DISSENSIONS

[Sidenote: [1452-1453 A.D.]]

In the meantime, the emperor Constantine celebrated his union with the papal church, in the cathedral of St. Sophia, on the 12th of December, 1452. The court and the great body of the dignified clergy ratified the act by their presence; but the monks and the people repudiated the connection. In their opinion, the church of St. Sophia was polluted by the ceremony, and from that day it was deserted by the orthodox. The historian Ducas declares that they looked upon it as a haunt of demons, and no better than a pagan shrine. The monks, the nuns, and the populace publicly proclaimed their detestation of the union; and their opposition was inflamed by the bigotry of an ambitious pedant, who, under the name of Georgius Scholarius, acted as a warm partisan of the union at the council of Florence, and under the ecclesiastical name of Gennadius is known in history as the subservient patriarch of Sultan Muhammed II. On returning from Italy, he made a great parade of his repentance for complying with the unionists at Florence. He shut himself up in the monastery of Pantocrator, where he assumed the monastic habit, and the name of Gennadius, under which he consummated the union between the Greek church and the Ottoman administration.

At the present crisis he stepped forward as the leader of the most bigoted party, and excited his followers to the most furious opposition to measures which he had once advocated as salutary to the church, and indispensable for the preservation of the state. The unionists were now accused of sacrificing true religion to the delusions of human policy, of insulting God to serve the pope, and of preferring the interests of their bodies to the care of their souls. In place of exhorting their countrymen to aid the emperor, who was straining every nerve to defend their country--in place of infusing into their minds the spirit of patriotism and religion, these teachers of the people were incessantly inveighing against the wickedness of the unionists and the apostasy of the emperor.

So completely did their bigotry extinguish every feeling of patriotism that the grand duke Notaras declared he would rather see Constantinople subjected to the turban of the sultan than to the tiara of the pope. His wish was gratified; but, in dying, he must have felt how fearfully he had erred in comparing the effects of papal arrogance with the cruelty of Mohammedan tyranny. The emperor Constantine, who felt the importance of the approaching contest, showed great prudence and moderation in his difficult position. The spirit of Christian charity calmed his temper, and his determination not to survive the empire gave a deliberate coolness to his military conduct. Though his Greek subjects often raised seditions, and reviled him in the streets, the emperor took no notice of their behaviour. To induce the orthodox to fight for their country, by having a leader of their own party, he left the grand duke Notaras in office; yet he well knew that this bigot would never act cordially with the Latin auxiliaries, who were the best troops in the city; and the emperor had some reason to distrust the patriotism of Notaras, seeing that he hoarded his immense wealth, instead of expending a portion of it for his country.

PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE

The fortifications were not found to be in a good state of repair. Two monks, who had been entrusted with a large sum for the purpose of repairing them, had executed their duty in an insufficient, and, it was generally said, in a fraudulent manner. The extreme dishonesty that prevailed among the Greek officials explains the selection of monks as treasurers for military objects; and it must lessen our surprise at finding men of their religious professions sharing in the general avarice, or tolerating the habitual peculation of others.

Cannon were beginning to be used in sieges, but stone balls were used in the larger pieces of artillery; and the larger the gun, the greater was the effect it was expected to produce. Even in Constantinople there were some artillery too large to be of much use, as the land wall had not been constructed to admit of their recoil, and the ramparts were so weak as to be shaken by their concussion. Constantine had also only a moderate supply of gunpowder. The machines of a past epoch in military science, but to the use of which the Greeks adhered with their conservative prejudices, were brought from the storehouses, and planted on the walls beside the modern artillery. Johann Grant, a German officer, who arrived with Justiniani, was the most experienced artilleryman and military engineer in the place.

A considerable number of Italians hastened to Constantinople as soon as they heard of its danger, eager to defend so important a depot of eastern commerce. The spirit of enterprise and the love of military renown had become as much a characteristic of the merchant nobles of the commercial republics as they had been, in a preceding age, distinctions of the barons in feudal monarchies. All the nations who then traded with Constantinople furnished contingents to defend its walls.

A short time before the siege commenced, John Justiniani arrived with two Genoese galleys and three hundred chosen troops, and the emperor valued his services so highly that he was appointed general of the guard. The resident bailo of the Venetians furnished three large galleasses and a body of troops for the defence of the port. The consul of the Catalans, with his countrymen and the Aragonese, undertook the defence of the great palace of Bukoleon and the port of Kontoskalion. The cardinal Isidore, with the papal troops, defended the Kynegesion, and the angle of the city at the head of the port down to St. Demetrius. The importance of the aid which was afforded by the Latins is proved by the fact that, of twelve military divisions into which Constantine divided the fortifications, the commands of only two were trusted to the exclusive direction of Greek officers. In the others, Greeks shared the command with foreigners, or else foreigners alone conducted the defence.

When all Constantine’s preparations for defence were completed, he found himself obliged to man a line of wall on the land side of about five miles in length, every point of which was exposed to a direct attack. The remainder of the wall towards the port and the Propontis exceeded nine miles in extent, and his whole garrison hardly amounted to nine thousand men. His fleet consisted of only twenty galleys and three Venetian galleasses, but the entry of the port was closed by a chain, the end of which, on the side of Galata, was secured in a strong fort of which the Greeks kept possession. During the winter the emperor sent out his fleet to ravage the coast of the Propontis as far as Cyzicus, and the spirit of the Greeks was roused by the booty they made in these expeditions.

Muhammed II spent the winter at Hadrianopolis, preparing everything necessary for commencing the siege with vigour. His whole mind was absorbed by the glory of conquering the Roman Empire, and gaining possession of Constantinople, which for more than 1150 years had been the capital of the East. While the fever of ambition inflamed his soul, his cooler judgment also warned him that the Ottoman power rested on a perilous basis as long as Constantinople, the true capital of his empire, remained in the hands of others. Muhammed could easily assemble a sufficient number of troops for his enterprise, but it required all his activity and power to collect the requisite supplies of provisions and stores for the immense military and naval force he had ordered to assemble, and to prepare the artillery and ammunition necessary to insure success. Early and late, in his court and in his cabinet, the young sultan could talk of nothing but the approaching siege. With the writing-reed and a scroll of paper in his hand, he was often seen tracing plans of the fortifications of Constantinople and marking out positions for his own batteries. Every question relating to the extent and locality of the various magazines to be constructed in order to maintain the troops was discussed in his presence; he himself distributed the troops in their respective divisions and regulated the order of their march; he issued the orders relating to the equipment of the fleet, and discussed the various methods proposed for breaching, mining, and scaling the walls. His enthusiasm was the impulse of a hero, but the immense superiority of his force would have secured him the victory with any ordinary degree of perseverance.

The Ottomans were already familiar with the use of cannon. Murad II had employed them when he besieged Constantinople in 1422; but Muhammed now resolved on forming a more powerful battering-train than had previously existed. Neither the Greeks nor the Turks possessed the art of casting large guns. Both were obliged to employ foreigners. An experienced artilleryman and founder, named Urban, by birth a Wallachian, carried into execution the sultan’s wishes. He had passed some time in the Greek service; but even the moderate pay he was allowed by the emperor having fallen in arrear, he resigned his place and transferred his services to the sultan, who knew better how to value warlike knowledge. He now gave Muhammed proof of his skill by casting the largest cannon which had ever been fabricated. He had already placed one of extraordinary size in the new castle of the Bosporus, which carried a ball across the straits. The gun destined for the siege of Constantinople far exceeded in size this monster, and the diameter of its mouth must have been nearly two feet and a half. Other cannon of great size, whose balls of stone weighed 150 pounds, were also cast, as well as many guns of smaller calibre. All these, together with a number of ballists and other ancient engines still employed in sieges, were mounted on carriages in order to transport them to Constantinople. The conveyance of this formidable train of artillery, and of the immense quantity of ammunition required for its service, was by no means a trifling operation.[90]

THE SIEGE BEGINS

[Sidenote: [1453 A.D.]]

The first division of the Ottoman army moved from Hadrianopolis in the month of February, 1453. In the meantime a numerous corps of pioneers worked constantly at the road, in order to prepare it for the passage of the long train of artillery and baggage wagons. Temporary bridges, capable of being taken to pieces, were erected by the engineers over every ravine and watercourse, and the materials for the siege advanced steadily, though slowly, to their destination. The extreme difficulty of moving the monster cannon with its immense balls retarded the sultan’s progress, and it was the beginning of April before the whole battering-train reached Constantinople, though the distance from Hadrianopolis is barely a hundred miles. The division of the army under Karadja Pasha had already reduced Mesembria, Anchialus, Bizya, and the castle of St. Stephanus. Selymbria alone defended itself, and the fortifications were so strong that Muhammed ordered it to be closely blockaded, and left its fate to be determined by that of the capital.

(From a medallion in the Royal Muenz Cabinet, Berlin)]

On the 6th of April, Sultan Muhammed II encamped on the slope of the hill facing the quarter of Blachernæ, a little beyond the ground occupied by the crusaders in 1203, and immediately ordered the construction of lines, extending from the head of the port to the shore of the Propontis. These lines were formed of a mound of earth, and they served both to restrain the sorties of the besieged, and to cover the troops from the fire of the enemy’s artillery and missiles. The batteries were then formed; the principal were erected against the gate Charsiasæ, in the quarter of Blachernæ, and against the gate of St. Romanus, near the centre of the city wall. It was toward this last gate that the fire of the monster gun was directed and the chief attack was made.

The land-forces of the Turks probably amounted to about seventy thousand men of all arms and qualities; but the real strength of the army lay in the corps of janizaries, then the best infantry in Europe, and their number did not exceed twelve thousand.[91] At the same time, twenty thousand cavalry, mounted on the finest horses of the Turkoman breed, and hardened by long service, were ready to fight either on horseback or on foot under the eye of their young sultan. The fleet which had been collected along the Asiatic coast, from the ports of the Black Sea to those of the Ægean, brought additional supplies of men, provisions, and military stores. It consisted of 320 vessels of various sizes and forms. The greater part were only half-decked coasters, and even the largest were far inferior in size to the galleys and galleasses of the Greeks and Italians. The fortifications of Constantinople towards the sea afford great facilities for attack. Even though they were partly ruined by time, and weakened by careless reparations, they still offered a formidable resistance to the imperfect science of the engineers in Muhammed’s army.[c]

Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides along the sea were made inaccessible to an enemy; the Propontis by nature, and the harbour by art. Between the two waters the basis of the triangle, the land side, was protected by a double wall, and a deep ditch of the depth of one hundred feet. Against this line of fortification, which Phrantzes, an eye-witness, prolongs to the measure of six miles, the Ottomans directed their principal attack; and the emperor, after distributing the service and command of the most perilous stations, undertook the defence of the external wall. In the first days of the siege, the Greek soldiers descended into the ditch or sallied into the field; but they soon discovered that, in the proportion of their numbers, one Christian was of more value than twenty Turks; and, after these bold preludes, they were prudently content to maintain their rampart with their missile weapons. Nor should this prudence be accused of pusillanimity. The nation was indeed pusillanimous and base; but the last Constantine deserves the name of a hero; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue; and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the western chivalry.

Each day added to the science of the Christians; but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. Their ordnance was not powerful, either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion.

The great cannon of Muhammed has been separately noticed; an important and visible object in the history of the times; but that enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude; the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was mounted with 130 guns, or that it discharged 130 bullets. Yet, in the power and activity of the sultan, we may discern the infancy of the new science. Under a master who counted the moments, the great cannon could be loaded and fired no more than seven times in one day. The heated metal unfortunately burst: several workmen were destroyed; and the skill of an artist was admired who bethought himself of preventing the danger and the accident, by pouring oil, after each explosion, into the mouth of the cannon.

The first random shots were productive of more sound than effect; and it was by the advice of a Christian, that the engineers were taught to level their aim against the two opposite sides of the salient angles of a bastion. However imperfect, the weight and repetition of the fire made some impression on the walls; and the Turks, pushing their approaches to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm, and to build a road to the assault. After a long and bloody conflict, the web that had been woven in the day was still unravelled in the night. The next resource of Muhammed was the practice of mines; but the soil was rocky; in every attempt, he was stopped and undermined by the Christian engineers; nor had the art been yet invented of replenishing those subterraneous passages with gunpowder, and blowing whole towers and cities into the air.

(After De Montfaucon)]

A circumstance that distinguishes the siege of Constantinople, is the reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines for casting stones and darts; the bullet and the battering-ram were directed against the same walls; nor had the discovery of gunpowder superseded the use of the liquid and unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the largest size was advanced on rollers; the tower of St. Romanus was at length overturned; after a severe struggle, the Turks were repulsed from the breach, and interrupted by darkness. Of this pause of action, this interval of hope, each moment was improved by the activity of the emperor and Justiniani, who passed the night on the spot, and urged the labours which involved the safety of the church and city. At the dawn of day, the impatient sultan perceived, with astonishment and grief, that his wooden turret had been reduced to ashes; the ditch was cleared and restored; and the tower of St. Romanus was again strong and entire. He deplored the failure of his design; and uttered a profane exclamation, that the word of the thirty-seven thousand prophets should not have compelled him to believe that such a work, in so short a time, could have been accomplished by the infidels.

In the first apprehension of a siege, Constantine had negotiated, in the isles of the Archipelago, the Morea, and Sicily, the most indispensable supplies. Five great ships, equipped for merchandise and war, sailed from the harbour of Chios. One of these ships bore the imperial flag; the remaining four belonged to the Genoese; and they were laden with wheat and barley, with wine, oil, and vegetables, and above all, with soldiers and mariners, for the service of the capital. The Turkish fleet at the entrance of the Bosporus, was stretched from shore to shore, in the form of a crescent, to intercept these bold auxiliaries. The reader who has present to his mind the geographical picture of Constantinople, will conceive and admire the greatness of the spectacle.

The five Christian ships continued to advance with joyful shouts, and a full press both of sails and oars, against a hostile fleet of three hundred vessels; and the rampart, the camp, the coasts of Europe and Asia, were lined with innumerable spectators, who anxiously awaited the event of this momentous succour. At the first view that event could not appear doubtful; the superiority of the Moslems was beyond all measure or account; and, in a calm, their numbers and valour must inevitably have prevailed. But their hasty and imperfect navy had been created, not by the genius of the people, but by the will of the sultan; in the height of their prosperity, the Turks have acknowledged that if God had given them the earth, he had left the sea to the infidels; and a series of defeats, a rapid progress of decay, has established the truth of their modest confession. In this conflict, the imperial vessel, which had been almost overpowered, was rescued by the Genoese; but the Turks, in a distant and closer attack, were twice repulsed with considerable loss.