Chapter XI: Manuel II to the Fall of Constantinople (2)

Muhammed himself sat on horseback on the beach to encourage their valour by his voice and presence, by the promise of reward, and by fear more potent than the fear of the enemy. The passions of his soul, and even the gestures of his body, seemed to imitate the actions of the combatants; and, as if he had been the lord of nature, he spurred his horse with a fearless and impotent effort into the sea. His loud reproaches, and the clamours of the camp, urged the Ottomans to a third attack, more fatal and bloody than the two former; and we must repeat, though we cannot credit, the evidence of Phrantzes, who affirms from their own mouth that they lost above twelve thousand men in the slaughter of the day. The Christian squadron, triumphant and unhurt, steered along the Bosporus, and securely anchored within the chain of the harbour.

The reduction of the city appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made from the harbour as well as from the land; but the harbour was inaccessible; an impenetrable chain was now defended by eight large ships, more than twenty of a smaller size, with several galleys and sloops; and instead of forcing this barrier, the Turks might apprehend a naval sally, and a second encounter in the open sea.

In this perplexity, the genius of Muhammed conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast, of transporting by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosporus into the higher part of the harbour. The distance is about ten miles; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with thickets; and, as the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, their free passage or total destruction must depend on the option of the Genoese. But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favour of being the last devoured; and the deficiency of art was supplied by the strength of obedient myriads. A level way was covered with a broad platform of strong and solid planks; and to render them more slippery and smooth, they were anointed with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light galleys and brigantines of fifty and thirty oars were disembarked on the Bosporus shore; arranged successively on rollers; and drawn forward by the power of men and pulleys. Two guides or pilots were stationed at the helm and the prow of each vessel; the sails were unfurled to the winds; and the labour was cheered by song and acclamation. In the course of a single night, this Turkish fleet painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real importance of this operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired; but the notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations. A similar stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients.

As soon as Muhammed had occupied the upper harbour with a fleet and army, he constructed, in the narrowest part, a bridge or rather mole of fifty cubits in breadth, and one hundred in length; it was formed of casks and hogsheads, joined with rafters linked with iron and covered with a solid floor. On this floating battery he planted one of his largest cannon, while the fourscore galleys, with troops and scaling-ladders, approached the most accessible side, which had formerly been stormed by the Latin conquerors. His vigilance prevented the approach of the Greek ships; their foremost galliots were sunk or taken; forty youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece, were inhumanly massacred at his command; nor could the emperor’s grief be assuaged by the just though cruel retaliation, of exposing from the walls the heads of 260 Mussulman captives.

After a siege of forty days, the fate of Constantinople could no longer be averted. The diminutive garrison was exhausted by a double attack; the fortifications which had stood for ages against hostile violence, were dismantled on all sides by the Ottoman cannon; many breaches were opened; and near the gate of St. Romanus, four towers had been levelled with the ground. For the payment of his feeble and mutinous troops, Constantine was compelled to despoil the churches, with the promise of a fourfold restitution; and his sacrilege offered a new reproach to the enemies of the union. A spirit of discord impaired the remnant of the Christian strength; the Genoese and Venetian auxiliaries asserted the pre-eminence of their respective service; and Justiniani and the grand duke, whose ambition was not extinguished by the common danger, accused each other of treachery and cowardice.

During the siege of Constantinople, the words of peace and capitulation had been sometimes pronounced; and several embassies had passed between the camp and the city. The Greek emperor was humbled by adversity; and would have yielded to any terms compatible with religion and royalty. The Turkish sultan was desirous of sparing the blood of his soldiers; still more desirous of securing for his own use the Byzantine treasures; and he accomplished a sacred duty in presenting to the _gabours_ the choice of circumcision, of tribute, or of death. The avarice of Muhammed might have been satisfied with an annual sum of one hundred thousand ducats; but his ambition grasped the capital of the East; to the prince he offered a rich equivalent, to the people a free toleration, or a safe departure; but after some fruitless treaty, he declared his resolution of finding either a throne, or a grave, under the walls of Constantinople.

A sense of honour, and the fear of universal reproach, forbade Palæologus to resign the city into the hands of the Ottomans; and he determined to abide the last extremities of war. Several days were employed by the sultan in the preparations of the assault; and a respite was granted by his favourite science of astrology, which had fixed on the 29th of May as the fortunate and fatal hour. On the evening of the 27th he issued his final orders. A crowd of dervishes visited the tents, to instil the desire of martyrdom, and the assurance of spending an immortal youth amidst the rivers and gardens of paradise and in the embraces of the black-eyed virgins. Yet Muhammed principally trusted to the efficacy of temporal and visible rewards. A double pay was promised to the victorious troops; “The city and the buildings,” said Muhammed, “are mine; but I resign to your valour the captives and the spoil, the treasures of gold and beauty; be rich and be happy. Many are the provinces of my empire: the intrepid soldier who first ascends the walls of Constantinople, shall be rewarded with the government of the fairest and most wealthy; and my gratitude shall accumulate his honours and fortunes above the measure of his own hopes.” Such various and potent motives diffused among the Turks a general ardour, regardless of life, and impatient for action; the camp re-echoed with the Moslem shouts of “God is God, there is but one God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God;” and the sea and land, from Galata to the Seven Towers, were illuminated by the blaze of their nocturnal fires.

Far different was the state of the Christians; who, with loud and impotent complaints, deplored the guilt, or the punishment, of their sins. The celestial image of the virgin had been exposed in solemn procession; but their divine patroness was deaf to their entreaties; they accused the obstinacy of the emperor for refusing a timely surrender; anticipated the horrors of their fate; and sighed for the repose and security of Turkish servitude. The noblest of the Greeks, and the bravest of the allies, were summoned to the palace, to prepare them, on the evening of the twenty-eighth, for the duties and dangers of the general assault. The last speech of Palæologus was the funeral oration of the Roman Empire: he promised, he conjured, and he vainly attempted to infuse the hope which was extinguished in his own mind. In this world all was comfortless and gloomy; and neither the Gospel nor the church have proposed any conspicuous recompense to the heroes who fall in the service of their country. But the example of their prince, and the confinement of a siege, had armed these warriors with the courage of despair; and the pathetic scene is described by the feelings of the historian Phrantzes,[f] who was himself present at this mournful assembly. They wept, they embraced; regardless of their families and fortunes, they devoted their lives; and each commander, departing to his station, maintained all night a vigilant and anxious watch on the rampart. The emperor, and some faithful companions, entered the dome of St. Sophia, which in a few hours was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the sacrament of the holy communion. He reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations; solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured; and mounted on horseback to visit the guards, and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine cæsars.

THE FINAL ASSAULT

In the confusion of darkness, an assault may sometimes succeed; but in this great and general attack, the military judgment and astrological knowledge of Muhammed advised him to expect the morning, the memorable 29th of May, in the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the Christian era. The preceding night had been strenuously employed. Under pain of death, silence was enjoined; but the physical laws of motion and sound are not obedient to discipline or fear; each individual might suppress his voice and measure his footsteps; but the march and labour of thousands must inevitably produce a strange confusion of dissonant clamours, which reached the ears of the watchmen of the towers. At daybreak, without the customary signal of the morning gun, the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land; and the similitude of a twined or twisted thread has been applied to the closeness and continuity of their line of attack.

The foremost ranks consisted of the refuse of the host, a voluntary crowd, who fought without order or command; of the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse drove them onwards to the wall: the most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated; and not a dart, not a bullet, of the Christians was idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their strength and ammunition were exhausted in this laborious defence; the ditch was filled with the bodies of the slain; they supported the footsteps of their companions; and of this devoted vanguard, the death was more serviceable than the life.

Under their respective pashas and sanjaks, the troops of Anatolia and Romania were successively led to the charge; their progress was various and doubtful; but, after a conflict of two hours, the Greeks still maintained and improved their advantage. In that fatal moment, the janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator and judge of their valour; he was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic troops, whom he reserved for the decisive occasion; and the tide of battle was directed and impelled by his voice and eye. His numerous ministers of justice were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, and to punish; and if danger was in the front, shame and inevitable death were in the rear of the fugitives. The cries of fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and attaballs; and experience has proved that the mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour. From the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke, which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Roman Empire.

The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed to the bullet, or arrow, which pierced the gauntlet of John Justiniani. The sight of his blood, and the exquisite pain, appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsels were the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew from his station in quest of a surgeon, his flight was perceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor: “Your wound,” explained Palæologus, “is slight; the danger is pressing; your presence is necessary; and whither will you retire?” “I will retire,” said the trembling Genoese, “by the same road which God has opened to the Turks;” and at these words he hastily passed through one of the breaches of the inner wall. By this pusillanimous act, he stained the honours of a military life; and the few days which he survived in Galata, or the isle of Chios, were embittered by his own and the public reproach.[92] His example was imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries; and the defence began to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled vigour. The number of the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps a hundred, times superior to that of the Christians; the double walls were reduced by the cannon to a heap of ruins; in a circuit of several miles, some places must be found more easy of access, or more feebly guarded; and if the besiegers could penetrate in a single point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. The first who deserved the sultan’s reward was Hassan the janizary, of gigantic stature and strength. With his scimitar in one hand, and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortification; of the thirty janizaries who were emulous of his valour, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve companions had reached the summit; the giant was precipitated from the rampart; he rose on one knee, and was again oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the achievement was possible; the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks; and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes.

(After De Montfaucon)]

Amidst these multitudes, the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen, and finally lost. The nobles, who fought round his person sustained, till their last breath, the honourable names of Palæologus and Cantacuzenus; his mournful exclamation was heard, “Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?” and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple; amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain.

After his death, resistance and order were no more; the Greeks fled towards the city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner wall; and as they advanced into the streets they were soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbour. In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged that they should immediately have given quarter, if the valour of the emperor and his chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of the capital.

It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the chagan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Muhammed II. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors.

THE SACK OF CONSTANTINOPLE

On the assurance of the public calamity, the houses and convents were instantly deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets, like a herd of timid animals, as if accumulated weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope, that, amid the crowd, each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the capital they flowed into the church of St. Sophia; in the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with the multitudes of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins; the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on the prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor, that one day the Turks would enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine, in the square before St. Sophia; but that this would be the term of their calamities; that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand, and would deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a poor man seated at the foot of the column. “Take this sword,” would he say, “and avenge the people of the Lord.” At these animating words the Turks would instantly fly, and the victorious Romans would drive them from the West, and from all Anatolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this occasion, that Ducas,[g] with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and obstinacy of the Greeks. “Had that angel appeared,” exclaims the historian, “had he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to the union of the church, even then, in that fatal moment, you would have rejected your safety, or have deceived your God.”

While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the doors were broken with axes; and, as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth attracted their choice; and the right of property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of the church; and young men of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common captivity the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder: and the inexorable soldier was careless of the father’s groans, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar with naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair; and we should piously believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils of the harem to those of the monastery.

Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows. At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations of the capital; nor could any place, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty thousand of this devoted people were transported from the city to the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold, according to the caprice or interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude through the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phrantzes, first chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved, with his family, in the common lot. After suffering, for months, the hardships of slavery, he recovered his freedom; in the ensuing winter he ventured to Hadrianopolis, and ransomed his wife from the _mir bashi_, or master of horse; but his two children, in the flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of Muhammed himself. The daughter of Phrantzes died in the seraglio, perhaps a virgin; his son, in the fifteenth year of his age, preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the royal lover.

The pride or cruelty of Muhammed would have been most sensibly gratified by the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity of Cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he escaped from Galata in a plebeian habit. The chain and entrance of the outward harbour was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war. They had signalised their valour in the siege; they embraced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dissipated in the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail, the beach was covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of transportation were scanty; the Venetians and Genoese selected their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and embarked with their most precious effects.

In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity; the same effects must be produced by the same passions; and when those passions may be indulged without control, small, alas! is the difference between civilised and savage man. Amidst the vague exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or immoderate effusion of Christian blood; but according to their maxims (the maxims of antiquity) the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom of his captives of both sexes. The wealth of Constantinople had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. But as no regular division was attempted of the spoil, the respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards of valour were stolen away by the followers of the camp, who had declined the toil and danger of the battle. The narrative of their depredations could not afford either amusement or instruction; the total amount, in the last poverty of the empire, has been valued at four millions of ducats; and of this sum, a small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation; but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in idle ostentation, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country.

The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God, was despoiled of the oblations of ages; and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind. After the divine images had been stripped of all that could be valuable to a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood, was torn, or broken, or burned, or trod under foot, or applied, in the stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses.

The example of sacrilege was imitated, however, from the Latin conquerors of Constantinople; and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and the saints had sustained from the guilty Catholic, might be inflicted by the zealous Mussulman on the monuments of idolatry. Perhaps instead of joining the public clamour, a philosopher will observe that in the decline of the arts the workmanship could not be more valuable than the work, and that a fresh supply of visions and miracles would speedily be renewed by the craft of the priest and the credulity of the people. He will more seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion; 120,000 manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We may reflect, with pleasure, that an inestimable portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time and barbarism.

From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth hour of the same day; when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizirs, pashas, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of oriental architecture. In the Hippodrome, or _atmeidan_, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace, or battle-axe, the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city.

At the principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted from his horse, and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him, with his scimitar, that if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque; the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity.

On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the _muezzin_ or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the _ezan_, or public invitation in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Muhammed II performed the _namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider hath woven his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.”

Yet his mind was not satisfied; nor did the victory seem complete, till he was informed of the fate of Constantine--whether he had escaped, or been made prisoner, or had fallen in the battle. Two janizaries claimed the honour and reward of his death; the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged with tears the head of their late emperor; and, after exposing the bloody trophy, Muhammed bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. Clemency was extended to the principal officers of state, of whom several were ransomed at his expense; and during some days he declared himself the friend and father of the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and before his departure the Hippodrome streamed with the blood of his noblest captives. His perfidious cruelty is execrated by the Christians; they adorn with the colours of heroic martyrdom the execution of the grand duke and his two sons; and his death is ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children to the tyrant’s lust. Yet a Byzantine historian has dropped an unguarded word of conspiracy, deliverance, and Italian succour; such treason may be glorious, but the rebel who bravely ventures, has justly forfeited his life; nor should we blame a conqueror for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the 18th of June the victorious sultan returned to Hadrianopolis; and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the Christian princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the Eastern Empire.

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune. Brusa and Hadrianopolis, the ancient seats of the Ottomans, sank into provincial towns; and Muhammed established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the same commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. The fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the Latins, were prudently destroyed; but the damage of the Turkish cannon was soon repaired. As the entire property of the soil and buildings, whether public or private, or profane or sacred, was now transferred to the conqueror, he first separated a space of eight furlongs from the point of the triangle for the establishment of his seraglio or palace. In the new character of a mosque, the cathedral of St. Sophia was endowed with an ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains, for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. The same model was imitated in the _jami_ or royal mosques; and the first of these were built, by Muhammed himself, on the ruins of the church of the holy apostles and the tombs of the Greek emperors.

Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian; nor shall we enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters; the population was speedily renewed; and before the end of September, five thousand families of Anatolia and Romania had obeyed the royal mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of death, to occupy their new habitations in the capital. The throne of Muhammed was guarded by the numbers and fidelity of his Moslem subjects; but his rational policy aspired to collect the remnant of the Greeks; and they returned in crowds as soon as they were assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. In the election and investiture of a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated. With a mixture of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the sultan on his throne; who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office; who conducted the patriarch to the gate of the seraglio, presented him with a horse richly caparisoned, and directed the vizirs and pashas to lead him to the palace which had been allotted for his residence. The churches of Constantinople were shared between the two religions, their limits were marked; and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of Muhammed, the Greeks enjoyed above sixty years the benefit of this equal partition.[93]

END OF THE COMNENI AND PALÆOLOGI

[Sidenote: [1453-1481 A.D.]]

The final extinction of the last two dynasties which have reigned in Constantinople terminates the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the East. The despots of the Morea,[94] Demetrius and Thomas, the two surviving brothers of the name of Palæologus, were astonished by the death of the emperor Constantine, and the ruin of the monarchy. Hopeless of defence, they prepared, with the noble Greeks who adhered to their fortune, to seek a refuge in Italy, beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first apprehensions were dispelled by the victorious sultan, who contented himself with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and while his ambition explored the continent and the islands in search of prey, he indulged the Morea in a respite of seven years. But this respite was a period of grief, discord, and misery. The _hexamilion_, the rampart of the isthmus, so often raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three hundred Italian archers; the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks; they returned from their summer excursions with a train of captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain. The Albanians, a vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with rapine and murder; the two despots implored the dangerous and humiliating aid of a neighbouring pasha; and when he had quelled the revolt, his lessons inculcated the rule of their future conduct.

Neither the ties of blood, nor the oaths which they repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar, nor the stronger pressure of necessity, could reconcile or suspend their domestic quarrels. They ravaged each other’s patrimony with fire and sword; the alms and succours of the West were consumed in civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage and arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker rival invoked their supreme lord; and, in the season of maturity and revenge, Muhammed declared himself the friend of Demetrius, and marched into the Morea with an irresistible force. When he had taken possession of Sparta, “You are too weak,” said the sultan, “to control this turbulent province; I will take your daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the remainder of your life in security and honour.”

Demetrius sighed and obeyed; surrendered his daughter and his castles; followed to Hadrianopolis his sovereign and son, and received for his own maintenance, and that of his followers, a city in Thrace, and the adjacent isles of Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the next year by a companion of misfortune, the last of the Comnenian race, who, after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a new empire on the coast of the Black Sea. In the progress of his Anatolian conquests Muhammed invested with a fleet and army the capital of David, who presumed to style himself emperor of Trebizond; and the negotiation was comprised in a short and peremptory question,“Will you secure your life and treasures by resigning your kingdom; or would you rather forfeit your kingdom, your treasures, and your life?” The feeble Comnenus was subdued by his own fears, and the example of a Mussulman neighbour, the prince of Sinope; who, on a similar summons, had yielded a fortified city with four hundred cannon and ten or twelve thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully performed; and the emperor with his family was transported to a castle in Romania; but on a slight suspicion of corresponding with the Persian king, David and the whole Comnenian race were sacrificed to the jealousy or avarice of the conqueror.

Nor could the name of father long protect the unfortunate Demetrius from exile and confiscation; his abject submission moved the pity and contempt of the sultan; his followers were transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty was alleviated by a pension of fifty thousand aspers, till a monastic habit and a tardy death released Palæologus from an earthly master. It is not easy to pronounce whether the servitude of Demetrius, or the exile of his brother Thomas, be the most inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to Corfu, and from thence to Italy, with some naked adherents; his name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St. Andrew entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery was prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope and cardinals. His two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in Italy; but the eldest, contemptible to his enemies and burdensome to his friends, was degraded by the baseness of his life and marriage. A title was his sole inheritance; and that inheritance he successively sold to the kings of France and Aragon. During his transient prosperity, Charles VIII was ambitious of joining the empire of the East with the kingdom of Naples; in a public festival, he assumed the appellation and the purple of augustus; the Greeks rejoiced, and the Ottoman already trembled at the approach of the French chivalry. Manuel Palæologus, the second son, was tempted to revisit his native country; his return might be grateful, and could not be dangerous, to the Porte; he was maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an honourable train of Christians and Moslems attended him to the grave. If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind; he accepted from the sultan’s liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave.

The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified in its loss; the pontificate of Nicholas V, however peaceful and prosperous, was dishonoured by the fall of the Eastern Empire; and the grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the Crusades. Had the union of the Christians corresponded with their bravery; had every country, from Sweden to Naples, supplied a just proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and money, it is indeed probable that Constantinople would have been delivered, and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the Hellespont or the Euphrates. But the secretary of the emperor, who composed every epistle, and attended every meeting, Æneas Sylvius, a statesman and orator, describes from his own experience the repugnant state and spirit of Christendom. “It is a body,” says he, “without a head; a republic without laws or magistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and none are willing to obey; every state has a separate prince, and every prince has a separate interest. What eloquence could unite so many discordant and hostile powers under the same standard? Could they be assembled in arms, who would dare to assume the office of general? What order could be maintained what military discipline? Who would undertake to feed such an enormous multitude? Who would understand their various languages, or direct their stranger and incompatible manners? What mortal could reconcile the English with the French, Genoa with Aragon, the Germans with the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small number enlisted in the holy war, they must be overthrown by the infidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion.”

Yet the same Æneas, when he was raised to the papal throne, under the name of Pius II, devoted his life to the prosecution of the Turkish War. In the council of Mantua, he excited some sparks of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when the pontiff appeared at Ancona, to embark in person with the troops, engagements vanished in excuses; a precise day was adjourned to an indefinite term; and his effective army consisted of some German pilgrims, whom he was obliged to disband with indulgences and alms.

Regardless of futurity, his successors and the powers of Italy were involved in the schemes of present and domestic ambition; and the distance or proximity of each object determined, in their eyes, its apparent magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would have taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the common enemy; and the support of Scanderbeg (Iskander Bey) and his brave Albanians might have prevented the subsequent invasion of the kingdom of Naples. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks diffused a general consternation; and Pope Sixtus was preparing to fly beyond the Alps, when the storm was instantly dispelled by the death of Muhammed II, in the fifty-first year of his age. His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour; and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the new and the ancient Rome.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[89] [The name given to ancient Prusa after it fell into the hands of the Turks.]

[90] Leonard says the balls of the large gun were eleven of his spans in circumference.

[91] [This is Finlay’s account, but Hertzberg[b] says: “The number of troops (beside the great camp following and a mass of fanatic imams, mullahs and dervishes) totalled at the lowest, and therefore the most trustworthy, estimate 165,000 men, of which, with the 15,000 janissaries, well over 80,000 were regular soldiers. The fleet, according to an apparently reliable account, numbered 145 sail, namely 12 great galleys, about 80 double-deckers, some 25 smaller coasters, and a number of brigs.”]

[92] Justiniani is defended by Finlay[c] on apparently good grounds. He demanded additional guns for the defence of the great breach; these were refused by the grand duke Notaras, who had the official control over the artillery, and Constantine was obliged to exert all his authority to prevent the two generals coming to blows. Justiniani’s wound must have disabled him; he retired to his ship to have it dressed and it was found to be mortal. His dialogue with Constantine, Finlay says, “is evidently a rhetorical invention.”

[93] [With regard to the meaning of the “fall” of Constantinople and the hope of its rise, it may be well to quote the theory of the Russophile historian, Gelzer[e]: “The month of May, 1453, had dragged the Byzantine Empire finally to its grave. The Greek supremacy had long been a thing of the past; the hollow phantom of it was now to vanish away. But Byzantium has found a mighty heir. The czar of Russia took a princess of the house of Palæologus to wife; the crown of Constantine Monomachus was placed on the head of the autocrat of all the Russias in the Kremlin. The Russian Empire is _de facto_ the sequel to the Byzantine. And if ever St. Sophia is to be restored to the true faith, and Asia Minor delivered from the hideous misrule of the Turk, it can only come to pass through the agency of the czar of Russia. None but the czar of Russia, ‘the defender of the orthodox faith,’ and inspired with a sense of the obligations involved in his great office, can become emperor of Constantinople.”]

[94] [The modern name for the Peloponnesus.]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. THE REIGN OF ARCADIUS

[b] ALBERT GUELDENPENNING, _Geschichte des Oströmischen Reichs_.

[c] GEORGE FINLAY, _Greece under the Romans_.

[d] EDWARD GIBBON, _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

[e] COUNT ZOSIMUS, _The History of Count Zosimus_.

CHAPTER II. THE REIGN OF THEODOSIUS THE YOUNGER TO THE ELEVATION OF JUSTINIAN

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] HENRY H. HOWORTH, “The Westerly Drifting of Nomads” in _Journal of Anthropological Institute, Vol. V_.

[d] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, _The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus_ (translated from the Latin by C. D. Yonge).

[e] J. B. BURY, _A History of the Later Roman Empire_.

CHAPTER III. JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA

[b] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] AGATHIAS, _Ἀγαθίου Σχολαστικοῦ Μυριναίου Ἱστορίων_ E.

[d] GEORGE FINLAY, _op. cit._

[e] PROCOPIUS, _Ἀνέκδοτα_ (Historia Arcana).

[f] PROCOPIUS, _Ἱστορία_ (Books of the Wars).

[g] PROCOPIUS, _Κτίσματα_ (The Edifices of Justinian).

[h] JOANNES MALALAS, _Χρονογραφία_.

[i] JORDANES (JORNANDES), _De Getarum origine et rebus gestis_.

[j] MAGNUS AURELIUS CASSIODORUS, _Variorum (Epistolarum) Libri XII_.

[k] JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL, _Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches_.

[l] J. B. BURY _op. cit._

[m] L. VON RANKE, _Weltgeschichte_.

[n] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, _op. cit._

CHAPTER IV. THE LATER YEARS OF JUSTINIAN’S REIGN

[b] GEORGE FINLAY, _op. cit._

[c] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[d] PROCOPIUS, _Gothic War_, _op. cit._

[e] J. B. BURY, _op. cit._

[f] E. A. FREEMAN, _General Sketch of European History_.

[g] THOS. HODGKIN, _Italy and her Invaders_.

[h] ISIDORUS HISPALENSIS, _Historia Gothorum_.

[i] PAULUS DIACONUS, _Historia Langobardorum_.

[j] JOHANN KASPAR ZEUSS, _Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme_.

[k] JORDANES, _De Regnorum ac temporum successione_.

[l] ROBT. ROESLER, _Romänischen Studien_.

[m] THEOPHYLACTUS SIMOCATTA, _Ἱστορία οἰκουμένη_.

[n] JOANNES MALALAS, _op. cit._

[o] AGATHIAS, _op. cit._

[p] PROCOPIUS, _op. cit._

CHAPTER V. JUSTIN II TO HERACLIUS

[b] E. GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] FLAVIUS CRESCONIUS CORIPPUS, _Corippi Africani Grammatici fragmentum carminis in laudem … De laudibus Justini Augusti Minoris_.

[d] JOHN OF EPHESUS, _The Third Book of the Ecclesiastical History_ (edited by W. Cureton).

[e] THEOPHYLACTUS SIMOCATTA, _op. cit._

[f] THEOPHANES OF BYZANTIUM, _ἱστορικῶν λόγοι δέκα_.

[g] J.B. BURY, _op. cit._

[h] H. GELZER, _Abriss der byzantinischen Kaisergeschichte_ (in Karl Krumbacher’s Gesch. der byzantinischen Litteratur).

[i] G. FINLAY, _op. cit._

[j] BARONIUS, _Annales Ecclesiastici_.

CHAPTER VI. HERACLIUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS

[b] J. B. BURY, _op. cit._

[c] G. FINLAY, _op. cit._

[d] THEOPHANES, _op. cit._

CHAPTER VII. LEO THE ISAURIAN TO JOANNES ZIMISCES

[b] G. F. HERTZBERG, _Geschichte der Byzantiner und des Osmanischen Reichs_.

[c] K. SCHENK, in _Byzantinische Zeitschrift_.

[d] H. GELZER, _op. cit._

[e] F. H. CLINTON, _Fasti Romani_.

[f] F. J. SAULCY, _Essai de classification des suites monétaires byzantines_.

[g] E. GIBBON, _op. cit._

[h] J. B. BURY, _op. cit._

[i] G. FINLAY, _op. cit._

[j] THEOPHANES, _op. cit._

[k] NICEPHORUS PATRIARCHA, _Ἱστορία σύντομος_.

[l] AUG. FR. GFRÖRER, _Byzantinische Geschichte_.

[m] KARL JOSEPH VON HEFELE, _Konciliengeschichte_.

[n] GEORGE FINLAY, _History of the Byzantine and the Greek Empires from 716-1453_.

[o] LEO DIACONUS, _Historia_.

CHAPTER VIII. THE GLORY AND DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE

[b] LEO DIACONUS, _op. cit._

[c] GEORGIUS CEDRENUS, _Σύνοψις ἱστορίων_ (_Compendium Historiarum ab Orbe Condita ad Isaacum Comnenum_).

[d] JOANNES ZONARAS, _Χρονίκον_ (_Annales_).

[e] G. FINLAY, _op. cit._

[f] H. GELZER, _op. cit._

[g] GEORGIUS MONACHUS, _Χρονίκον Βίου τῶν νεῶν Βασιλεῶν_.

[h] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[i] ANNA COMNENA, _Ἀλεξίας_.

[j] NICETAS ACOMINATUS, _Ἱστορία_.

CHAPTER IX. THE LATIN EMPIRE

[b] GEOFFREY DE VILLEHARDOUIN, _Histoire de la conquête de Constantinople_.

[c] ERNEST LAVISSE AND ALFRED RAMBAUD, _Histoire générale du IVe siècle à nos jours_.

[d] J. F. MICHAUD, _History of the Crusades_ (translated from the French by W. Robson).

[e] C. DU F. DUC CANGE, _Histoire de l’empire de Constantinople sous les empereurs français_.

[f] EDWARD GIBBON, _op. cit._

[g] GEORGE FINLAY, _The History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusaders to its Conquest by the Turks, and of the Empire of Trebizond_.