CHAPTER XX

CONCLUSION: THE CAPTURE EPOCH-MARKING; ALARM IN EUROPE; DISASTROUS RESULTS; UPON CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS AND ON EASTERN CHURCHES; DEMORALISATION OF BOTH; POVERTY THE PRINCIPAL RESULT; DEGRADATION OF CHURCHES: TWO GREAT SERVICES RENDERED BY THE CHURCHES; RESULTS ON TURKS: POWERLESS TO ASSIMILATE CONQUERED PEOPLES OR THEIR CIVILISATION.

The capture of Constantinople marked an epoch in the world’s history. The dispersion of its scholars and its treasures of learning leavened Western thought; the lessons gained from Turkish warfare, from the discipline of the Janissaries and the mobility of the army were learned by European states. These results entitle the event to be regarded as of importance, but another, the conviction, namely, brought home to Europe of the significance of the capture, helps still further to entitle it to be regarded as epoch-marking. The Slavic and Teutonic as well as the Greek and Latin races had been developing for centuries, unchecked by any external influence, in the direction of human progress which we understand by the word ‘civilisation.’ From Ireland to Constantinople and even to the banks of the Euphrates all the peoples had accepted Christianity, a religion which had not been substantially changed either in dogma or discipline by any of the various races included in the above area, a religion which had aided them to develop the morality, the habits and customs, the thoughts and ideals, which are comprehended in the modern conception of civilisation. The capture of Constantinople was the intrusion into this Christian area of a foreign force, with a different morality, and with a tendency hostile to the habits, customs, and aspirations which it encountered. The capture was the latest step in a series of successful efforts to detach a large mass of territory from the area of European civilisation. As large sections of the empire had during successive centuries been lost, Constantinople came to stand in her loneliness as the representative of European ideals of Christianity. When the city was taken, Western statesmen were compelled to recognise that the remaining European area of civilisation was face to face with an Asiatic, a non-Christian, and a necessarily hostile movement. The European peoples, for the first time during centuries, were awakened from their dream of security and saw the possibility of the advance of races professing the creed which had been held by those who in the early days of Islam had utterly rooted out the civilisation and Christianity of North Africa. The shock and alarm were universal.

[Sidenote: Alarm created in Europe.]

The military reputation of the Turk was enormously increased by the capture of Constantinople. Hallam justly observes that though the fate of the city had been protracted beyond all reasonable expectation, the actual intelligence operated like that of a sudden calamity. ‘A sentiment of consternation, perhaps of self-reproach, thrilled to the heart of Christendom.’[561] Those who knew what the progress of the Turks had been and how numerous and mobile were the hordes at the disposal of the sultan were the most anxious regarding their further progress. The podestà of Pera, writing within a month after the capture, declares that Mahomet intended to become lord of the whole earth and that before two years were over he would go to Rome and ‘By God, unless the Christians take care, or there are miracles worked, the destruction of Constantinople will be repeated in Rome.’[562] Other contemporary writers express the like dismay. Aeneas Sylvius, in the presence of the diet of Frankfort, pointed out that by the capture of Constantinople Hungary lay open to the conqueror, and declared that if that country were subdued Italy and Germany would be open to invasion.

The rapid extension of their power by sea as well as by land was soon a constant source of anxiety to the nations whose territory bordered on the Mediterranean. Piratical expeditions upon their shores with the object of carrying off slaves kept them in perpetual alarm. When Don John of Austria, in 1571, defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, the dread of the victorious Turk was so acute and the relief at the completeness of his victory so great that the Venetians congratulated each other with the cry that the Devil was dead, and the pope commemorated the great triumph by preaching from the text ‘There was a man sent from God whose name was John.’

From the capture in 1453 until John Sobieski relieved Vienna, upwards of two centuries later, the universal topic of European politics, quiescent for a few years but constantly becoming paramount, was the progress made by the Grand Turk. During the whole of this period he had continued to be the terror of Europe.

La Brocquière, who had noted the traffic in Christian slaves by the Turks and the oppression of their Christian subjects, remarked that it was a shame and scandal to Europe to allow herself to be terrorised by such a race. A succession of travellers from the West, who, one after another, observed the sufferings of the Christians, the misgovernment of the Turkish empire, its rapid increase, and the widespread terror of the Turkish name, vainly endeavoured to show how the Turks might be defeated; but their victorious progress was unchecked until 1683.[563]

The results of the destruction of the empire were of a uniformly disastrous character. Constantinople, which had been the heart of the empire and for centuries the great bulwark of European civilisation, became the stronghold of the professors of a hostile creed. After aiding Europe by resisting the long encroachments of the Turks, it had first become an isolated outpost of Christianity surrounded by hostile hordes, and then, after a century of struggle, not altogether inglorious, had been overwhelmed by them. By its capture Europe lost all that its citizens might have contributed to civilisation. The philosophy, art, theology, and jurisprudence which had emanated from its schools had, happily, leavened Western lands--happily, because after the conquest the city ceased to exercise any influence on European thought. Under the rule of its new masters it was destined to become the most degraded capital in Europe, and became incapable of contributing anything whatever of value to the progress of the human race. No art, no literature, no handicraft even, nothing that the world would gladly keep, has come since 1453 from the Queen City. Its capture, so far as human eyes can see, has been for the world a misfortune almost without any compensatory advantage.

[Sidenote: Results upon Christian subjects.]

The disastrous results of the conquest fell with greatest force upon the conquered subjects of the empire. The great cry which went up from the Christians who had fallen under Turkish rule, and which has never ceased to be justified among their descendants to the present hour, was that the new rulers failed in the primary duty of government--to render life and property secure. Tried by a higher standard of good government, as an institution which should secure to its subjects justice, the rule of the Turk fell immeasurably short. The Christians became _rayahs_ or cattle, and as such were legally incapable of possessing the same rights as Moslems. While an analogy to such inequality might be found in other countries, in Turkey the Christians found that the rights which even the law of the conquerors accorded them were denied. Their property was arbitrarily seized. They were constantly harassed and pillaged by their Mahometan neighbours and no redress could be obtained in the law courts, for Christian testimony was not admissible against the word of a Moslem. The effects of this legal inequality were soon apparent and have continued to the present day. The Christians were tillers of the ground, artificers, or merchants. Their earnings exposed them to the envy of their Moslem neighbours, who, being less experienced in agriculture or less skilful in trade, less energetic and less intelligent, were unable, as they are still, to compete with them successfully. Their superior power of creating wealth, rather than the fanaticism of a hostile creed, has from the time of the conquest led to fierce outrages upon the Christians and to raids upon their property, and when combined with such fanaticism has produced the periodical massacres which have occurred during nearly every decade in Turkish history.

The difficulties of the Christian traders and agriculturists were greatly increased by the conduct of the conquerors in allowing the great roads and bridges to get out of repair. Turkish ignorance, contempt for industry and commerce, belief that such matters were only of interest to unbelievers, led even the governing class to allow the public works which they had found in the country to fall into ruin. The traveller in Asia Minor and in European Turkey finds everywhere the remains of roads once well constructed and well preserved, which the Turks have made few or no efforts to maintain, reconstruct, or replace. The destruction or decay of the means of communication coupled with the want of security soon made it useless for the Christian tiller of the soil to engage in agriculture or even increase his flocks and herds. The surplus over what was necessary to supply his own wants could not be taken to market. Abundance of evidence shows that the Christians in almost every part of the empire had possessed large flocks and herds of cattle. These, indeed, formed a special temptation to the Turks, who at all times since their entry into Asia Minor and Europe were given to making raids on neighbouring Christian lands. After the conquest it soon became useless for the Christians to attempt to keep a form of property which was so easily carried off. Those who in spite of all obstacles contrived to save a few hundred aspers became objects of envy to their Moslem neighbours and carefully hid their little savings. The want of security and the absence of roads were evils which the Christian shared, though to a less extent, with the Turk. All inducements to the accumulation of wealth, but especially for Christians, were removed, till at length all alike ceased to save or do more work than was necessary to keep body and soul together. Nor can it be said that the condition of the population under Turkish rule has in this respect greatly improved at the present day. In the interior of the empire the man who has acquired a little wealth is careful not to appear better off than his neighbours. In the capital and a few seaports, Christians had a somewhat better chance, but even there the practice of squeezing a wealthy Greek or Armenian merchant and stripping him of his property lingered into the last century and is even yet not altogether extinct.

[Sidenote: Population impoverished,]

Poverty as the consequence of misgovernment is the most conspicuous result of the conquest affecting the population of the empire. Lands were allowed to go out of cultivation. Industries were lost. Mines were forgotten. Trade and commerce almost ceased to exist. Population decreased. The wealthiest state in Europe became the poorest; the most civilised became the most barbarous.

[Sidenote: and demoralised.]

The demoralisation of the conquered people and of their churches resulting from the conquest and especially from the poverty it produced were not less disastrous than the injury to their material interests. The Christians lost heart. Their physical courage lessened. In remote districts, and especially in mountainous regions, where the advantage of natural position counterbalanced the enormously superior numbers of the enemy, the Christians continued to resist. The Greeks in Epirus gave a good account of themselves during centuries, while the Armenians round about Zeitoun and the inhabitants of Montenegro even continued to keep something like independence. But the Greek, Bulgarian, and Armenian populations, all of whom had fought well in resisting the Turks, became less virile. Grinding poverty and constant, though usually petty, oppression even more than the periodical massacres took away from them much of their manliness.

[Sidenote: Degradation of Church.]

The influence of the conquest upon the Orthodox Church was purely mischievous. The ecclesiastical revenues were seized. The priests had to eke out a living on the miserable pittances they could obtain from performing the services of the Church for an impoverished people, and soon came to be chosen from the peasant class. Poverty of the flock meant poverty throughout the hierarchy. Learning declined and disappeared. The parish priest knew his office by heart, but in course of time hundreds of priests were unable to understand the classic words and phrases with which the liturgy of Chrysostom and others employed in the Eastern Church abound. The most commodious churches were transformed into mosques. The libraries perished. Thousands of precious manuscripts were destroyed. The means of obtaining an educated clergy no longer existed. The voice of the preacher was regarded with suspicion, and the Orthodox Church as a power for the education of its congregations became almost valueless. There were no longer any heresies or dissensions which invited discussion, for people and clergy were alike sunk in ignorance. The art of preaching was forgotten. Religious teaching or expression of thought in or out of the Church almost ceased to exist. The Church of Chrysostom was condemned to silence. To all appearances, there was little or no consciousness of lofty ideals or aspirations towards them. Piety, as understood in the West, seemed for centuries to be unknown. A book like the ‘Imitatio’ or even the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ would have been unintelligible. Churches as well as people had become sordid and destitute of aspiration. Ignorance and other causes, due to the conquest, reduced the Churches to a stagnant level of uniformity, superstition, and spiritual death.

With the substitution of an ignorant for a learned priesthood the influence of the Church upon Western Europe ceased. Down to the conquest it had not only claimed an equality with the Latin Church, but its learning was respected by popes, cardinals, and scholars, who recognised that it merited gratitude for its guardianship of Christian learning and for the succession of scholars who had expounded the treasures of its literature.

[Sidenote: Benefits conferred by Church.]

Yet amid all the meanness and debasement of the Christian Churches it should ever be remembered that they rendered to their people two inestimable services. They helped to preserve family life and to keep the great mass of their members from abandonment of the Christian profession. However abject the Church, however subservient at times its leaders became to the Ottoman rulers, and however we of the twentieth century may despise priestly pretensions and the claims of any body of men to have a supernatural commission, it is a duty to recognise that the service rendered by the Churches to the Christian subjects of the sultan, and indeed to humanity, in preserving the habits of family life was immeasurably great. One may fully admit that the priests were ignorant, and that the Church became more than ever saturated with pagan superstition; but it safeguarded the idea of Christian marriage based upon the union of the husband for life with one wife. Children were reared in the companionship of a father and mother to each of whom chastity and the necessity of forsaking all others was not merely a tradition and an ideal, but a duty enjoined by the universal teaching of the Church. The results of the education of children amid such teaching, tradition, and environment can only be appreciated when they are compared with those which are produced among their Moslem neighbours, where, under a system fatal to family life, the mother holds a position immeasurably inferior to that of the father.

[Sidenote: Inducements to renounce Christianity.]

The Church also helped to prevent the Christian population from abandoning their religious belief, and, to the philosophical student of religions hardly less than to Christians, this result should be regarded as pure gain. The Christians were permitted to have their own religious services, and the attempt was seldom made forcibly to convert them to Mahometanism. The teaching of Mahomet that the ‘People of the Books’ were not to be molested so long as they submitted and paid tribute, usually secured a contemptuous toleration of their worship. There was little formal interference with their religious practices. Their processions, rites, and ceremonies only encountered opposition from the fanatical brutality of individuals, though Christian worshippers were constantly exposed to petty persecutions from persons in authority who expressed their dislike and loathing of Christianity in a thousand different ways. But it must always be remembered to the credit of the Christians that abandonment of their faith would at any time have saved them from all persecution and have placed them on an equality with their conquerors. The singularly democratic creed and practice of Islam at once open every preferment to the convert. The negro, the Central Asiatic, no less than the Christian rayah, once he has pronounced the _Esh-had_, is on an equality in theory and in practice with the descendant of the Prophet. Turkish history abounds with instances of renegades or their sons rising to the highest positions in the state. A Christian who accepted Islam had every career open to him. The Christian subjects of the empire have always been aware of their own superiority in intellectual capacity to their Turkish neighbours. This superiority is manifest in every country where Moslems and Christians live side by side. It is mainly due to the inferior position assigned in practice in every Mahometan country to woman, a position illustrated by the custom of repudiation--which the husband may exercise in lieu of divorce--by the lack of family life in which children are nurtured in the companionship of both parents, and even by the absence of a family name.[564]

It would indeed have been remarkable if with the unspeakable advantages of family life on their side the Christians had not been superior in capacity to their neighbours. But, in spite of their lively consciousness of such superiority and of the advantages to be gained by perversion, few Christians became renegades.

[Sidenote: Degradation of people.]

But, notwithstanding the fact that their refusal to abandon a higher for a lower form of religion must be accounted to them for righteousness, the Christians passed into a Slough of Despond. Disarmed and oppressed, they became demoralised and lost self-respect. Their progress and development, material, intellectual, and moral, was arrested. They fell back upon deceit and cunning and the other vices with which a subjugated people seeks to defend itself against its oppressors and which are the usual characteristics of a people held in bondage. The most disastrous result of the conquest upon the people was to create a low standard of morality, and, as in the course of time habits form character, this result endured and continues to the present day. Dishonesty, unfair dealing, bribery, and untruthfulness came to be regarded among all the Christian races of the Ottoman Empire as venial offences or as pardonable blunders. This deterioration of character was not, and is not, confined to laymen. The environment of all classes has been powerful for evil, and the standards in particular of commercial honesty generally prevalent in Christian nations have neither been preserved nor attained.

Under Turkish rule punishment often failed to follow detection. In some cases--notably, for example, bigamy--the conquering race recognises no offence and therefore awards no punishment. The Christians had and have so little confidence in their chance of obtaining justice that it is the exception to prosecute an offender. A man will rather suffer loss than waste his time in appealing to a court where he knows that he will certainly incur expense and inconvenience and that the offender, provided he can pay, can escape condemnation. It is to this impossibility of obtaining justice that must be ascribed more perhaps than to any other cause the lowering of the morals of Eastern Christians. Those who know them best, from Arab Christians in Syria to the Greeks and others in Constantinople and the Balkan Peninsula, and whose sympathies are entirely with them in the persecution they have undergone, and in their desire to shake off the oppressor’s yoke, have regretfully to confess that the reputation which they have acquired in Western Europe for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness is not undeserved. Happily, in Greece and other countries which have been freed from Turkish misrule there are abundant signs of an awakening to the necessity of regarding offences from a loftier standpoint and of presenting in the Churches a higher ideal of morality; signs, too, of the public opinion which is bringing these countries into line with Western states.[565]

[Sidenote: Effect of conquest on Turks.]

The conquest of Constantinople had but little effect on the mass of the Turkish population. The Turks ceased to be mainly a nomadic people, and great numbers of them took possession of the arable lands of the conquered races. But in other respects their habits and characteristics remained unchanged. They had and have their virtues. They are brave and hardy, and, except when under the influence of religious fanaticism, are hospitable and kindly. Their religion inculcates cleanliness and sobriety. While its teaching must stand condemned in regard to the treatment of non-Islamic peoples and, judging by the universal experience of Moslem countries, in regard to the position, fatal to all progress, which it assigns to woman, it has nevertheless helped to diffuse courtesy and self-respect among its adherents. Unhappily, the Turkish race has never had sufficient continuous energy to be industrious nor enough intelligence to desire knowledge.

Fortunately for the populations under the rule of the Turk, his religious intolerance has only become virulent at intervals; for when his fanaticism is awakened, corruption and cruelty in the administration of government show themselves at their worst. It is so in Morocco now, where the fiercest Moslem intolerance and perhaps the most cruel and corrupt government in the world co-exist. It has been so at various periods under Turkish rule. Sultans have alternated in their government between periods of lethargy, sloth, and sensuality and those of spasmodic activity. But the periods of fanaticism have been those not only of massacre and exceptional cruelty but of want of patriotism, and the worst corruption in the administration of government.

In Greece and Italy more vigorous physical races in earlier times had triumphed over peoples further advanced in civilisation. But the conquerors profited by the civilisation of the vanquished and the latter became more virile. The two races coalesced and formed a united people. No such results followed 1453. The Turkish nation was unable to assimilate the civilisation of the peoples it subdued, and its work has been simply to destroy what it could not take to itself. It has fallen so far short of reconciling the conquered races and welding them to itself so as to form one people that the assertion may safely be made that every century since 1453 has widened the gulf between it and the Christians.

In one respect only has the Turk been able to appreciate the progress made by his neighbours and, in part at least, to appropriate their development--namely, in the art of war. He knows and cares nothing about art, science, or literature. He has made a miserable failure of government. His civil administration is probably more corrupt than it was four centuries ago. He admits that, since his defeat at Lepanto in 1571, Allah has given the dominion of the seas to the Giaours. But as a soldier he has always been ready to learn from European nations.

That the heavy weight of misrule has hindered and still continues to hinder the progress of the Christian races is attested by all who are acquainted with Turkey. Condemned to constant persecution and a sordid poverty which leaves on travellers an overpowering sense of human misery, and living amid a hopeless and dispiriting environment, they passed into the blackest night which ever overshadowed a Christian people. It is true that they were not utterly destroyed, as other Christian nations have been, but, except for the feeling of solidarity arising from community of race and of religious belief and for the hope which the Churches aided them to keep alive, their night was without a single ray of light. They and their countrymen who had escaped into foreign lands looked in despair and in vain for the signs that the night would pass. It is barely a century ago since the keener-sighted watchmen observed indications of dawn. The daylight has arisen upon Roumania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and other countries once under Turkish rule, and signs of dawn are visible, though with indications of blood-red, in Macedonia and Armenia. Sooner or later, but as surely as light overcomes darkness, the Christian and progressive elements in the Turkish empire will see the day and rejoice in it.

The friends of the liberated territories have often complained of the vagaries, the inconstancy, and the slow rate of progress of the re-established states. They are apt to forget that to shake off the effects of centuries of bondage is a task which has never been accomplished in a single generation. All historical precedents, from the time when Moses led the children of Israel into the desert, teach the same lesson. But it is satisfactory to note that while each of the states that have obtained emancipation was, a century ago, far behind the civilisation even of Constantinople, it is now far ahead of it. If the traveller who eighty years ago spoke contemptuously of the collection of mud huts which fanatics are pleased to call Athens, while they refer to their barbarian occupants as Greeks, could now be placed on the Acropolis, he would see the well-built and prosperous capital of a country which, in spite of financial difficulties, is flourishing in agriculture, trade, and commerce; the chief city of a people which has recovered its self-respect, is full of patriotism, of zeal for education, and of intellectual life, and whose Church has awakened to the necessity of an educated priesthood and a higher standard of morality. A like prosperity could be noted in every other land which has escaped from Turkish bondage. Wherever, indeed, the dead weight of Turkish misrule has been removed, the young Christian states have been fairly started on the path of civilisation and justify the reasonable expectations of the statesmen, historians, and scholars of the West who have sympathised with and aided them in their aspirations for freedom.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

NOTE ON ROMANUS GATE AND CHIEF PLACE OF FINAL ASSAULT

Some doubt exists as to the position of the Romanus Gate mentioned by the historians of the siege, and as this position determines those of the great gun, of the stockade, and of the principal place of the final assault, it is desirable to endeavour to set such doubt at rest.

What I desire to show may be summed up in the following propositions.

(1) That contemporary writers agree in stating that the principal place of attack and the final assault was at or near the Gate of St. Romanus.

(2) That the present Top Capou had long been known as the Gate of St. Romanus.

(3) That there is evidence to demonstrate that the final assault was not at or near Top Capou but in the Lycus valley.

(4) That the Pempton is the Gate referred to by contemporary writers as the Romanus Gate.

Among the evidence showing that the principal place of attack was at or near the Romanus Gate is the following:

Barbaro (p. 21) states that four great guns were ‘alla porta de San Romano dove che sun la piu debel porta de tuta la tera. Una de queste quatro bombarde che sun a la porta da San Romano’ was the big gun cast by Orban. On p. 16 he speaks of an attack as being against ‘le mure da tera de la banda de San Romano.’ On p. 26 he mentions the destruction of a tower, presumably the Bactatinean, spoken of by Leonard. This tower was ‘de la banda de San Romano.’ It was destroyed by the big gun with a portion also of the wall (‘con parechi passa de muro’). On p. 27 he describes the repair of the walls going on at the Gate called San Romano. On p. 40 he again says that the weakest place in the landward walls was at San Romano, ‘dove che iera roto le mure.’ On p. 53 he adds that the Turks fought furiously ‘da la banda da tera, da la banda de San Romano dove che iera el pavion’ of the emperor. On the same page he describes them again as still fighting ‘da la banda de San Romano.’ On p. 55 he describes the entry of the Turks into the city as being ‘da la banda de San Romano,’ and on p. 57 he states that the emperor was killed at the entry which the Turks had made ‘a la porta de San Romano.’ According, therefore, to Barbaro, the Romanus Gate is the central place of attack and of capture.

But Barbaro was a Venetian, and probably did not know the city well. Phrantzes and Ducas, however, were citizens. The first, on p. 254, says that Justiniani took charge of the defence ἐν τοῖς μέρεσι τῆς πύλης τοῦ ἁγίου Ῥωμανοῦ, which the Bonn editor translates correctly by saying that he defended the ‘regionem ad portam Sancti Romani.’ Phrantzes further identifies the place by saying it was where the Turks had stationed their largest gun because the walls were convenient for attack and because the sultan’s tent was pitched opposite. As to the position of the sultan’s tent Phrantzes and others say that it was opposite the Romanus Gate. Ducas, however, states that it was opposite the Chariseus or Adrianople Gate. Phrantzes, p. 287, says further that the emperor and many soldiers fell ἐν τῷ τόπῳ ἐκείνῳ πλησίον τῆς πύλης τοῦ ἁγίου Ῥωμανοῦ where the Turks had built their wooden tower and stationed their largest gun. Ducas says that the Turks placed this big gun near (πλησίον) the Romanus Gate. He further describes the destruction of the tower (presumably the Bactatinean mentioned by Leonard) which was near the Romanus Gate. Other authors could be cited who use similar expressions.

In fact, all the evidence is in favour of my first proposition, that the principal place of attack was at or near the Romanus Gate.

(2) It is undisputed that Top Capou (that is, Cannon Gate) was known in early times as the Gate of St. Romanus. It is mentioned under that name, for example, in the ‘Paschal Chronicle’ in the time of Heraclius, and again in the reign of Andronicus the First by Nicephorus Gregoras (ix. ch. 6), and as late as the middle of the fourteenth century by Cantacuzenus (p. 142, Ven. ed.).

(3 & 4) The evidence to show that the final assault was not at or near Top Capou is abundant.

Owing, however, to the constant mention of St. Romanus and the undoubted association of that name with Top Capou, it has been naturally assumed that the chief place of attack was at or near the latter Gate. Even Paspates was driven to disregard the evidence of his own eyes and to fix the assault on the steep part of the slope near Top Capou (Πολιορκία, p. 186).

But all observers who have studied the question on the spot, with the exception of Paspates, are now agreed that the chief place of assault was in the Lycus valley. In such case it necessarily follows that the name Romanus was given during the siege to some other gate than Top Capou.

The late Dr. Dethier was the first to suggest that the Gate spoken of by the contemporaries of the siege as St. Romanus was the Pempton. Let us examine the evidence. It is worthy of note that Phrantzes places Justiniani in the ‘region’ or district of the Romanus Gate. The Italian writers, knowing less of the city, say ‘at’ such Gate.

Now what was the Pempton? Each of the two Civil Gates on the landward side which we need here regard--namely, Top Capou and the Adrianople Gate--crowned a hill on one side of the Lycus valley and was exceptionally strong. They formed, in fact, with their towers and barbicans two of the strongest positions in the landward walls. The bridges across the foss opposite these and the other Civil Gates were intended to be broken down during a siege, and in fact were broken down when Mahomet’s siege commenced.[566] The Military Gates which led from the city to the Peribolos were then opened, though they were generally walled up in times of peace. The Pempton or Fifth Military Gate or Gate of the Fifth (for both forms of names are found) was the one which gave access to the Enclosure in the Lycus valley. It was known also in early times as the Gate of St. Kyriakè, from a neighbouring church, and as the Gate of Puseus from a Latin inscription still existing upon it, dating probably from the time of Leo the First, recording that Puseus had strengthened it.[567]

It is a remarkable fact that no writer who was either a witness of the siege or subsequently wrote upon it mentions the Pempton either under that name or by those of Kyriakè or Puseus. It is impossible to believe that it was not used. It was built for the express purpose of giving access to the troops into the Peribolos within which, beyond all doubt, the most important fighting took place. To admit that Justiniani and the soldiers under him were stationed between the Outer and the Inner Walls in this part and yet to suggest that the Pempton was not used is altogether unreasonable. Dethier’s suggestion is, that when the Civil Gates were closed people gave to the Military Gate the name of the nearest Civil Gate. Probably the earlier names given on account of their numbers were generally unknown. The latest instance I have found of the use of Pempton is in the ‘Paschal Chronicle.’

In support of this view it is important to note that many contemporaries speak of another place where the cannonading was severe as at the Pegè Gate (as, for example, Barbaro and Philelphus), whereas no one doubts that the present condition of the walls affords conclusive evidence that the writers intended to indicate Triton--that is, the Third Military Gate between the Pegè and the Rhegium Civil Gates.

The suggestion that the Pempton was commonly called the Romanus Gate explains various statements which are otherwise irreconcilable. We have seen that Ducas says that the sultan was encamped opposite the Chariseus Gate, while Phrantzes places him opposite the Romanus. Dr. Mordtmann urges[568] that from the small knoll where, according to Ducas and Critobulus, Mahomet’s tent was pitched, an observer might fairly describe its position as opposite either, but if the Pempton were called Romanus, such a suggestion would be much more plausible. Again, Barbaro, as already quoted, places the great gun opposite the San Romano Gate because this was the weakest gate of all the city. But on p. 18 he uses the same phrase in stating that the ‘Cressu’ or Chariseus was the weakest gate in all the city, the explanation being, I think, that as the Pempton was about midway between the Romanus and the Chariseus Civil Gates he heard it called indifferently by either name. Tetaldi, the Florentine soldier who was present at the siege, states that two hundred fathoms of Outer Wall were broken down during the last days. Now, although the Inner Wall was repaired by Mahomet[569] and continued fairly complete, no attempt appears to have been made to rebuild the Outer.[570] The spectator has little difficulty in distinguishing where the twelve hundred feet of Outer Wall of which Tetaldi speaks was destroyed. It was opposite the Pempton and, judging from the condition of the walls, certainly not opposite the present Top Capou. But the same writer says that it was ‘à la porte de Sainct Romain.’[571] The Moscovite or Slavic chronicler says that the great cannon were placed opposite the station of Justiniani ‘because the walls there were less solid and very low,’[572] a description which would not apply to those near Top Capou, but which, like all the descriptions given, does apply to the lower part of the Lycus valley. Here, in the phrase of Professor van Millingen, was the heel of Achilles, the Valley of Decision.[573] The weakness of this portion of the walls is illustrated by the fact that when Baldwin the Second expected an attack by Michael he walled up all the landward gates ‘except the single one near the streamlet where one sees the church of St. Kyriakè’--that is, except the Pempton.[574] In other words, the walls being there the weakest, it was anticipated that there would be the attack, and the entry into the Peribolos must be kept open to defend the Outer Wall. In the ‘Threnos’ the siege is described as being at the ‘Chariseus Gate,’ now St. Romanus, which is called Top Capou.[575] Apparently the confusion in this description is hopeless, but if the Pempton were called indifferently, as by Barbaro, Romanus and Chariseus, it becomes intelligible.[576]

A statement by the ‘Moscovite’ (ch. vii.) also points to the Pempton as the chief point of attack. He mentions that on April 24 a ball from the great cannon knocked away five of the battlements and buried itself in the walls of a church. The only church in the neighbourhood either of Top Capou or the Pempton was one dedicated to St. Kyriakè, which was in the Lycus valley near the Pempton. But the attack is always stated to be against the Romanus Gate.

Near the Pempton the Peribolos is now about twenty feet higher than the level of the ground on the city side of the Great Wall. Beyond doubt this is largely due to the accumulation of refuse and broken portions of the wall, but, allowing for this, an observer will probably conclude that the Peribolos was at the time of the siege several feet higher than the level on the city side. This same discrepancy of level did not exist--if, indeed, any existed--at Top Capou. Hence when the small gate was opened from the city by Justiniani to give easier access to the stockade, men had to ascend to it. This is what Critobulus implies they had to do. The gate was opened to lead ἐπὶ τὸ σταύρωμα (lx. 2).

Critobulus states that Mahomet drew up his camp ‘before the _Gates_ of Romanus.’[577] The argument Dethier draws from the plural, ‘gates,’ is not perhaps worth much, but it is remarkable that in speaking of other gates Critobulus usually employs the singular: as, for example, in ch. xxvii. 3, ‘The Wood-Gate, as far as the gate called Chariseus.’ Gregoras also employs the plural: παρὰ τὰς πύλας τοῦ Ῥωμανοῦ (Book ix. ch. vi.).

The Turkish writers throw very valuable light on the question and show clearly that the assault was not at Top Capou, but rather nearer the Adrianople Gate.

The imaum Zade Essad-Effendi says that in the final assault Hassan mounted the broken wall where the Franks were defending it, ‘which wall was to the south of Edirne Capou’--that is, of the Adrianople Gate. The Turkish writer Sad-ud-din, who died in 1599, gives similar testimony. He states that Constantine ‘entrusted to the Frank soldiers the defence of those breaches which were on the south side of the Adrianople Gate.’ And again: ‘The Turks in the final assault did not rush to the gates but to the breaches that were made in the broken wall between Top Capou and the Adrianople Gate, and, after the capture, went round and opened the gates from the inside, the first to be opened being the Adrianople Gate.’[578] If the Venetian and Genoese soldiers had been near Top Capou the writer would not have described their position as he does. Probably he was ignorant of any name for the gate in the valley where the assault occurred, and therefore describes the breaches with sufficient accuracy as south of the Adrianople or Edirne Gate.

Lastly, Dr. Mordtmann calls attention to the fact that on old Turkish maps the Pempton is marked as Hedjoum Capou or Gate of the Assault.[579] If it were the Gate of the Assault, as I also believe, it was the gate spoken of by contemporaries as Saint Romanus, and all difficulties as to the place of the general assault, the position of the stockade defended by Justiniani, and the station of the great guns vanish.

Thereupon the description of Critobulus makes the arrangement of Mahomet’s army clear. His guards were encamped opposite the Mesoteichion and the Myriandrion--that is, opposite the whole length of walls between Top Capou and the Palace of Porphyrogenitus (ch. xxvi.). His three largest guns were stationed opposite the Pempton or Military Gate of Romanus, and his imperial tent was pitched in a place, and at a distance from the walls, where it could properly be described indifferently as opposite either the Chariseus or Romanus Gate.

In conclusion, I would suggest that the name Top Capou was given or transferred by the Turks, after the siege and when the Pempton was walled up, to the Civil Gate of St. Romanus. There was no need for a name among ordinary people for an unused gate, and the Turks, instead of using the name of a Christian saint, spoke of it as that near which the great cannon was placed, or shortly as Top Capou--that is, Cannon Gate. It is remarkable that Gyllius, though mentioning that there was a gate at the situation of Top Capou, calls it neither by that name nor by that of St. Romanus.[580]

APPENDIX II

WHERE DID THE SEA-FIGHT OF APRIL 20, 1453, TAKE PLACE?

The late Dr. A. D. Mordtmann,[581] and Dr. Paspates,[582] followed by M. Mijatovich,[583] and M. E. A. Vlasto,[584] answer, that it was to the west of the Marmora end of the landward walls: that is, off Zeitin Bournou. In favour of this view they give the following reasons:

(1) Because during the fight the sultan rode into the water, and he could not have done so if the fight had been on the north shore of the Golden Horn, as the shore there is too steep. The answer to this is, that the Galata shore four centuries ago was like that of the Golden Horn outside the walls of Constantinople now, and consisted of a low flat of mud, now built upon. The present Grande Rue de Galata is really the ‘Strand’ of Galata, and is all land reclaimed from the sea. This is even now obvious; but Gyllius observed the growth of this flat land and gives a curious description of it.[585] This argument therefore fails.

(2) Because Barbaro mentions that the wind dropped when the ships were ‘per mezo la citade,’ which Dr. Mordtmann considered to mean halfway along the length of the city between the end of the landward walls and Seraglio Point, or, as he puts it definitely, at Vlanga Bostan. But ‘per mezo’ means here simply alongside or opposite or abreast of the city. It is used as meaning ‘through the midst’ in the same paragraph, when Barbaro states that he is going from the city on board certain galleys ‘per mezo la citade.’

It is undisputed that a southerly wind had been blowing four days: a strong wind which had brought the ships from Chios. There would therefore be a current running northwards. Consequently if the wind had suddenly dropped opposite Vlanga Bostan the ships would have drifted toward the Bosporus and not backwards to Zeitin Bournou.

(3) Because Pusculus says that the townsfolk crowded to the Hippodrome to see the fight, and they would not have done so (because buildings intercepted the view) if the fight had been at the mouth of the Golden Horn.

The Hippodrome is four miles as the crow flies from the sea opposite Zeitin Bournou, and the spectators would not have crowded to such a place when they could have seen so much better from a hill behind Psamatia and elsewhere. If, however, the fight, or any part of it, took place opposite Seraglio Point, spectators on the Sphendone of the Hippodrome would have had an excellent view of the ships as they approached and as they passed, and of an attack made in the Bosporus before the ships passed the Acropolis. I have tested this on several occasions.

(4) Because Phrantzes says the fight took place about a stone’s-throw from the land where the sultan was and that he and his friends watched it from the walls,[586] and that the only place where these two requirements can be satisfied is Zeitin Bournou.

The mouth of the Horn satisfies both requirements equally well. Dr. Paspates observes that ships coming to Constantinople with a south wind do not keep near the walls, but keep well out; and the remark is just. They take this course to avoid the eddy current, which if they kept near the walls would be against them. If the ships were about a stone’s-throw distant from the land, they would not only be out of their usual course but taking another where their progress would be hindered.

(5) Because Ducas (who was not a witness of what he relates) says that the Turkish fleet set out to wait for the fleet off the harbour of the Golden Gate.[587]

There probably never was a harbour of the Aurea Porta. Paspates says there was a _scala_ near the Golden Gate, which, indeed is shown in Bondelmonte’s map, but the ships could not discharge at an open _scala_ in the Marmora with a south wind blowing, even if there had been depth enough of water where it existed, which, at the present day at least, there is not.

The statement of Ducas is improbable, because, as the object of the ships was to get past the boom from St. Eugenius to Galata, the ships with the wind which was blowing would have simply passed the fleet or gone triumphantly through them, if they had been waiting off the Golden Gate, and have made for Seraglio Point and the harbour.

I suggest that the words of Ducas (Χρύση Πύλη) are either an error in the copying or are a mistake made by Ducas. They may be a transcriber’s mistake for Horaia Porta--that is, the gate near Seraglio Point, on the Golden Horn. Horaia Porta and Aurea Porta are almost undistinguishable in sound, the aspirate being unpronounced. The similarity in sound had led at an early period to confusion.[588]

It may nevertheless be true that the fleet set out to await the ships off the end of the landward walls. There is not, however, the slightest evidence that it ever got there. On the contrary, as we shall see, the evidence shows that it did not. Once it is established that it never got so far, the contention that the fight was off Zeitin Bournou falls.

These are all the arguments which, so far as I know, have been urged in favour of the Zeitin Bournou position. Some of them are destructive of the others, and, with the exception of the statement of Ducas as to the Turkish fleet setting off for the Harbour of the Golden Gate, are all deductions from the evidence of the authorities rather than direct evidence. Moreover, as will be seen, important statements of witnesses testifying to what they themselves saw are either entirely overlooked or set aside without any sufficient reason.

My contention in the text is that the fight commenced at the mouth of the Bosporus off Seraglio Point; that the wind suddenly dropped while the ships were under the walls of the Acropolis at that Point; that the ships drifted towards the Galata or Pera shore, and that the most serious part of the fight took place off such shore, where it was watched by the sultan and into the waters of which shore the sultan rode. The evidence in support of this view is the following:

(1) It is agreed on all sides that the Turkish fleet was stationed at the Double Columns (Diplokionion).

(2) Leonard the archbishop says that he was a spectator from the city, and that the sultan was on the slope of the Pera hill. Leonard is a witness deserving of confidence. He was present during the whole siege. He had much to do with the people of Galata, who were, like himself, of the Latin Church. In describing this particular incident, he speaks of himself as a spectator of the fight.[589] His letter is an official report addressed to the pope within three months after the event, and therefore while its details were fresh in his memory and not like the account of Ducas, who was not present at the siege and only wrote years afterwards. His testimony, if he is to be believed--and I know no reason why he should even be doubted--is decisive. ‘The King of the Trojans’ (as he calls the Turks throughout) looked on from Pera hill.[590]

Le Beau, who took the view which I adopt, relied no doubt upon Leonard’s narrative in describing the battle. Dr. Mordtmann remarks upon Le Beau’s statement that no one standing upon the hillside at Pera could see a fight at sea beyond Seraglio Point. The observation is correct, and my deduction is that, when the ships were first attacked, they were abreast of Seraglio Point and not beyond or behind it. Dr. Mordtmann’s is that the sultan could not have been at Pera, and this notwithstanding that the archbishop says that he was there and implies that he saw him there. The archbishop further mentioned that when the sultan ‘blasphemed,’ as he rode into the water and witnessed the loss his men were suffering, it was from a hill.[591] But the archbishop does not leave his readers in doubt as to what hill he means. A few sentences later in his narrative we are told that the sultan had concluded that he would be able from the eastern shore of the Galata hill either to sink the ships with his stone cannon-balls, or at least drive them back from the chain.[592] The rest of the passage shows unmistakably that the sultan, in Leonard’s belief, was on the shore outside the Galata walls: that is, exactly where a spectator might be supposed to be who, having come from Diplokionion, wanted to see the most of a fight in or near the mouth of the Horn. Unless, therefore, within a short period after the capture of the city, the archbishop had become hopelessly muddled as to what he himself saw, we must conclude that the fight did not take place off Zeitin Bournou but in or near the mouth of the Golden Horn.

Pusculus, another spectator, says the ships entered the Bosporus and that the wind dropped while they were under the walls of the Acropolis. The account given by this writer is clear and precise. He was in the city and relates what he witnessed, and although he wrote his poem some years afterwards, when safe in his native city of Brescia, he had the broad outlines of the siege well in his recollection. His narrative is the following, and is in complete accord with that of every other eye-witness. The ships are seen approaching on the Marmora; some of the townsfolk flock to the Hippodrome where (from the Sphendone) they have a view far and wide over the sea, and can observe them taking the usual course for ships coming from the Dardanelles to the capital with a southerly wind. The Turkish admiral with his fleet has gone to meet them, and orders them to lower their sails. The south wind still blows full astern, and with bellying sails they hold on their course. The wind continues until they are carried to a position where the Bosporus strains against the shore of either land.[593] That is, as I understand the phrase, until they are at least well past the present lighthouse. ‘There the wind fails them; the sails flap idly _under the walls of the citadel_.[594] Then, indeed, began the fight; the spirits of the Turks are aroused by the fall of the wind; Mahomet, watching from the shore not far off, arouses their rage.’ My only doubt as to this interpretation arises as to the question whether the writer did not mean that the wind dropped, not merely off Seraglio Point, but within the mouth of the Horn.

Ducas says the sultan, when the ships came in sight of the city, ‘hastened’ to his fleet, and gave orders to capture them or, failing that, to hinder them from getting inside the harbour. This hastening of the sultan meant a journey of between two and three miles from his camp in the Mesoteichion to Diplokionion. Once he was there, his natural course would be to follow on shore the movements of his fleet, until he reached the eastern walls of Galata, which is exactly the place where the archbishop stations him. If it should be objected that Mahomet’s hastening to his triremes implies that they were stationed near Zeitin Bournou, the answer is twofold: first, that there would be no haste necessary, and secondly, that even Ducas implies that the fleet was in the Bosporus, as indeed Barbaro and others say that it was.

The two statements of Phrantzes--first, that the fight was about a stone’s-throw from the land where the sultan was on horseback and rode into the sea to revile his men, and, second, that he (Phrantzes) and his friends watched the fight from the walls[595]--are both reconcilable with the contention that the fight was where I have placed it. I conclude that the balance of evidence is in favour of the opinion that the fight commenced in the open Bosporus off Seraglio Point, and, the wind continuing, the ships rounded the Point, and that then the wind dropped, the general attack took place, and the ships drifted to the Galata shore.

When the question is considered ‘What position accords with all the accounts of the eye-witnesses?’ there can be only one answer. The people watch from the Hippodrome, says Pusculus, and would have a good view until the ships had rounded the point. The vessels were aiming for Megademetrius, says Ducas: which was the usual landmark for vessels to steer for when coming to the Golden Horn from the Marmora with a south wind. ‘We being spectators’ from the walls and the sultan being on the Pera slope watching the fight, says Leonard; and the vessels being about a stone’s-throw from the shore, says Phrantzes. Pusculus answers the question ‘Where were Leonard and the other spectators?’ by telling us that the wind dropped under the walls of the citadel.

There is yet another test which may be applied and which ought almost of itself to settle the question. Upon considering the position without reference to authorities upon matters of detail and upon _a priori_ grounds, an unbiassed local investigator would discard the Zeitin Bournou position and accept that of the Bosporus-Galata. Four large ships want to enter the Golden Horn, since there is no harbour on the Marmora side of the city sufficiently large into which they could enter. They are approaching with a southerly wind. The Turkish fleet consists of large and small sailing boats which are stationed nearly two miles from the Horn in the Bosporus. The object of the fleet is to capture or sink the ships, or at least to prevent them from entering the harbour. What, under these circumstances, would the commander of the fleet do? He would keep his boats well together near the mouth of the Horn and attempt to bar the passage. He would recognise that he had little chance of capturing comparatively large sailing vessels on open sea so long as they were coming on with a wind. So long as the ships were sailing, they would be attacked at a great disadvantage. Wait for them near the Horaia Porta, when they would have to stop, and they could then be fought at an advantage. If the wind suddenly dropped, the Turkish admiral would naturally give orders to attack. This is what, as I contend, actually happened. The fight would then be seen by Greeks from the walls and by Mahomet and his suite from the Galata or Pera shore. What would happen when the wind became calm, would be that the vessels would drift. I repeat what I have said in the text, that it may be taken as beyond doubt that after a strong southerly wind has been blowing in the Marmora for four or five days--and it was such a wind which had brought the ships from Chios--there would be in the Marmora and the Bosporus near Seraglio Point a strong current setting in the same direction, and the ships would drift toward the Galata shore. It would then be quite possible to have got within a stone’s-throw, as Phrantzes relates, and for their crews to have heard the reproaches of the sultan.

APPENDIX III

NOTE ON TRANSPORT OF MAHOMET’S SHIP. WHAT WAS THE ROUTE ADOPTED?

In commenting on the story of the transport of Mahomet’s ships overland from the Bosporus into Cassim Pasha bay, Gibbon says ‘I could wish to contract the distance of ten miles and to prolong the term of one night.’[596] I have sufficiently remarked in the text upon the time occupied in the transit. The distances given by the various authors who describe the incident are confusing, but ten miles is beyond a doubt wrong.

In order to learn what the distance was, it is necessary to determine what was the route adopted by Mahomet. Two routes have been suggested: the first is from Dolma Bagshe, across the ridge where the Taxim Public Gardens now exist and down the valley leading to Cassim Pasha; the second, from Tophana along the valley which the Rue Koumbaraji now occupies, across the Grande Rue, and down the valley commencing at the street between the Pera Palace Hotel and the Club to Cassim Pasha. It is convenient to speak of these routes as those of Dolma Bagshe and Tophana respectively. No writer who saw the transport of the ships has described the route. We may gather evidence, however, on several points which will aid us to determine it.

The evidence as to the distance traversed is the following. The archbishop speaks of it as being seventy stadia. I should agree with Karl Müller, the editor of Critobulus, that the _seventy_ stadia of Leonard is a clerical error, the figure being intended to apply to the number of ships, but for the fact that a little later Leonard speaks of the bridge built over the upper Horn as thirty stadia long and gives the distance of the Turkish fleet from the Propontis to its anchorage at the Double Columns as a hundred stadia. As both these distances are about nine or ten times too long, it is evident that by ‘stadium’ he means some other measure than the ordinary stadium, which is 625 feet long, or rather less than a furlong.[597] I therefore suggest that when Leonard speaks of seventy stadia he makes the difference traversed about eight stadia as the word is understood by his contemporaries. Critobulus in describing the overland passage of the boats says they travelled ‘certainly eight stadia’ (στάδιοι μάλιστα ὀκτώ). Probably Critobulus, writing a few years afterwards and mixing with Turks, Greeks, and Genoese in Pera itself, would have the best chance of learning the truth as to the actual road taken. ‘Certainly eight stadia’ is what an observer who did not wish to exaggerate might estimate the distance between the present Tophana and Cassim Pasha to be, and if my suggestion as to Leonard’s measure be accepted, then the two writers are substantially in accord. Barbaro gives the distance traversed as three Italian--equal to two English--miles. The evidence as to distance, therefore, is somewhere between eight stadia and two miles.

The evidence as to the place from which the ships started is important also. Barbaro states that they left the water at Diplokionion, a place which he describes as two miles from the city (say, one and a third English mile), and therefore not so far as the Double Columns; Ducas, from a place ‘below Diplokionion;’ Pusculus:[598] Columnis haud longe a geminis;’ Phrantzes, ἐκ τοῦ ὄπισθεν μέρους τοῦ Γάλατα: a phrase which certainly does not imply that the route travelled was so far from the walls of Galata as Dolma Bagshe is. Chalcondylas and Philelphus[599] say, ‘behind the hill which overhangs Galata.’

It is interesting to determine where Diplokionion or the Double Column was. It has usually been considered to be Beshiktash, and Cantemir so translates it. Professor van Millingen places it rather in Dolma Bagshe bay--say, half a mile south of Beshiktash.[600] The late Dr. Dethier says[601] that the present Cabatash and Tophana were formerly called Diplokionion and that, as he expresses it, ‘Columnae et incolae emigrarunt post adventum Turcorum in suburbium Beshiktash.’ I am unaware of his authority for this statement. It appears to me certain that the Columns were at Dolma Bagshe, which may be called the southern extremity of Beshiktash. They are so marked in Bondelmonte’s map made in 1422. It is worth nothing that none of the authors place the starting-point at the Columns except Barbaro, and that even he qualifies his statement by explaining that it was two Italian miles from the city.

Having thus seen the evidence (1) as to the distance travelled and (2) as to the starting-point, we may ask What was the probable route? Dr. Paspates in his ‘Poliorkia’[602] discusses the question, and sensibly remarks that the shortest route would be preferred, unless there were exceptional difficulties. Now the difficulties by the Tophana route are decidedly less than by the other. The distance is less by half than that of the Dolma Bagshe route and the height to be surmounted is 250 feet against 350. Paspates suggests the route I have adopted--namely, from Tophana. Dr. Mordtmann adopts the Dolma Bagshe route and objects to that of Tophana because the Turkish ships could have been seen by the Christian ships at the chain and that these were strong enough to hinder the undertaking, especially as the sultan had no batteries on the eastern side to oppose the fleet.[603]

To this view--and anything suggested by so careful an observer as Dr. Mordtmann is deserving of attention--is to be opposed (1) that the point of departure adopted by him at Dolma Bagshe could also be seen from the chain, though of course not so distinctly as at Tophana; (2) that though there was no battery above Tophana, there was one above the eastern end of Galata walls, and probably, as Dethier suggests, very nearly on the site now occupied by the Crimean Memorial Church; (3) that the height to be surmounted is lower by nearly a hundred feet than by the Dolma Bagshe route; (4) that the distance to be traversed is less than half by the Tophana route than that from Dolma Bagshe; (5) that it is not by any means clear that the Christian ships could have hindered the execution of the project, since the Genoese were absolutely powerless on land outside their own walls. It may, however, be true, as Ducas asserts, that the Genoese alleged that they could have stopped the transit if they had wished. But the allegation, if true, at least implies that they knew what was going on, and, as mentioned in my text, Mahomet was ready for opposition.

The shortest distance ought to furnish one indication of the route. The evidence as to what that distance is stated to be should furnish another, and the starting-point of the expedition a third. I claim that the eight stadia of Critobulus and the eight or nine given by Leonard are not greatly at variance with the three Italian or two English miles of Barbaro, and that from the evidence of these three witnesses we may say that the distance travelled was about a mile or a little over. Now the actual distance by the Tophana route is a little over a mile and ‘certainly eight stadia.’

The indication gathered from the starting-point is that the ships left the water well below the Double Columns. But I submit that there is no place suitable for such an undertaking as that under consideration between Dolma Bagshe and Tophana. The indications, therefore, drawn from the place of departure, if they do not point to the Tophana route, are not at variance with it.

As to the precise place at which the ships arrived on the Golden Horn Critobulus is probably again the safest guide. They came to the shore τῶν ψυχρῶν ὑδάτων--that is, to the Cool Waters, otherwise called the Springs and now known as Cassim Pasha. There they were launched into the Golden Horn. The statement is confirmed incidentally by several authors who mention that the fleet was opposite a portion of the walls where stands the Spigas Gate--that is, the gate leading to the passage across.[604] Cassim Pasha itself was sometimes spoken of as Spigae.[605] Andreossi (in 1828) suggests that the ships started from Baltaliman or rather the bay of Stenia, but the only evidence in favour of this route is the statement of Ducas--who more than any other contemporary is constantly inaccurate--that they started from the Sacred Mouth (a name usually employed to designate the north end of the Bosporus but used by Ducas for the part between Roumelia and Anatolia-Hissar) and that they reached the harbour opposite the monastery of St. Cosmas which was outside the landward walls.

Dr. Mordtmann and Professor van Millingen think that the balance of evidence is in favour of the route from Dolma Bagshe. The route which Dr. Paspates and Dr. Dethier approved is that which appears to me also not only the most probable but to have the balance of evidence in its favour. The tract along which the ships were hauled formed the short arm of a cross, the long one of which was the road along the ridge now known as the Grande Rue de Péra: the two giving the modern Greek name to the city, of Stavrodromion.

APPENDIX IV

THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON GREEKS AND MOSLEMS RESPECTIVELY

In reading the contemporary authors of the period between the Latin and the Moslem conquests the following questions suggest themselves: What was the influence of the Orthodox Church upon the people of the capital and of the empire? What was its value as a national ethical force? and how did its influence as such a force compare with that of Islam?

Before attempting a reply to these questions certain facts must be noted. It must be remembered that the empire was composed of many races and languages. In the Balkan peninsula alone there were always at least half a dozen races with as many different forms of speech. In Asia Minor the component elements of the population were even still more numerous. The Church largely aided the State in the endeavour to keep these divergent elements under the rule of the empire. Her special task was to change the various races into Christians. But even when this task was completed to the extent of causing them all to profess Christianity they retained their racial characteristics and traditions. These characteristics, though widely various, may be classified in two categories. In other words, it may be said that among all the different populations of the empire there were two streams of tendency: the Hellenic and the Asiatic. The tendency and influence of each were markedly present in the church from the first days of the empire and continued until 1453. Greek influence left an indelible impress upon the Orthodox Church. But while it influenced the other races of the empire, the Greeks themselves fell to some extent under the Asiatic influence. Greek tendency was always to make of Christianity a philosophy rather than a religion. The opposite tendency, which I have called Asiatic and which corresponds fairly well to what Matthew Arnold called Hebraic, had less enduring results upon the population but was nevertheless constantly present. The two tendencies were constantly striving one against the other within the Church.

Greek influence (1) largely aided in the formation of a philosophical body of theology, (2) helped to perpetuate paganism and develop a paganistic tendency, and (3) deprived the Church of the religious enthusiasm which the Asiatic tendency might have provided and has often inspired. The service of the Greeks in reference to the formation of a body of theological philosophy is too completely recognised to require any notice. Greek influence helped to perpetuate paganism in various ways. It was naturally always most powerful in the Balkan peninsula, its chief centres being Athens and Salonica, but had great weight also in the western cities of Asia Minor. Greek polytheists in pre-Christian times were not opposed to the recognition of other gods than those worshipped by themselves. How this rational toleration, which was as utterly opposed to the exclusive spirit of Asiatic Christianity as to that of Islam itself, tended to perpetuate paganism will be best understood by recalling the early history of the later Roman empire. The population under the rule of New Rome had for the most part adopted the profession of Christianity because it was the religion of the State. Most people found little difficulty in conforming to the demands of the emperor and became Christians. Under such circumstances Christianity did not conquer paganism: it absorbed without destroying it. Just as in Central Asia many tribes who have come under the power of Russia have been ordered to elect whether they would declare themselves Christians or Moslems, so in the days of the early Christian emperors, and especially under the laws of Theodosius the choice was between a profession of the Court creed or remaining in some form of paganism where its professors would be subject to various disabilities and persecutions. The conformity which resulted was curious. The people became nominally Christians, but they brought with them into the Church most of their old superstitions. Their ancient deities were not discarded but were either secretly worshipped or came to be regarded as Christian saints: their festal days became the commemoration days of Christian events. I do not forget that something of the same kind went on in the Western Church and that the missionaries, finding themselves unable to persuade their converts to abandon their old observances, deftly adopted them into the Christian Church. But all that was done in this direction in the West was small in comparison with what went on in the East. St. George took the place of Apollo. St. Nicholas replaced Poseidon. The highest hill in every neighbourhood on the mainland and in every island of the Marmora and the Aegean had fittingly been crowned with a temple dedicated to the God of Day. The great dragon, Night, had been overcome by Helios. To this day it is almost universally true that all the peaks in question have an Orthodox church which has taken the place of the temple of Apollo and is dedicated to his successor, St. George.[606] In like manner the temples built in fishing villages to Poseidon have almost invariably been dedicated to St. Nicholas. The episcopal staff of a Greek bishop has the two serpents’ heads associated with Aesculapius. The distribution of holy bread at funerals, the processions to shrines, to sacred groves, to Hagiasmas or holy wells, and numerous other customs of the Orthodox Church, are survivals or rudimentary forms of paganism.[607]

Asiatic influence was more powerful in Constantinople than in Greece. The explanation of this fact is to be found in the remoteness of Athens from the capital; in the greater intellectual life of Constantinople; in the presence of many leaders of thought from the cities in Asia Minor under Asiatic influence, and in the traditional Roman sentiment derived from the influence of Latin rulers, literature, and tradition. The iconoclastic movement towards the end of the eighth century was a genuine attempt to get rid of pagan practices. It failed because of the base character of some of its imperial supporters, because of the opposition of the less cultured western church, and because the Empress Irene, a native of Athens and brought up among the traditions of paganism which still lived on in what was then a remote part of the empire, placed herself at the head of the Hellenic party and with her strong will was able to prevent any reformation being accomplished.

But paganism in Greece and Asia Minor lived on long after the time of Irene. The Hellenistic influence struggled hard against the Asiatic or what was not unfitly called the Roman party. When we come to the last century of the empire’s history, we find its influence triumphant, and this to such an extent that we see Plethon and his school, as the representatives of a phase of Greek thought, dreaming of the restoration of paganism. I conclude, therefore, that Greek influence helped to perpetuate paganism or at least a paganistic tendency.

Greek influence deprived the Church of the religious enthusiasm which the study of the Old Testament has often inspired. It must always be remembered that the Greeks had the New Testament in a language they could understand. Every one recognises that a large part of the intellectual movement in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was due to the translation of the sacred Scriptures into the vernacular. But there has been no period in the history of the Greek race since the compilation of the Christian record in which the Greeks have not had the advantage of a familiarity with the Gospels and the writings of St. Paul. They knew the New Testament well. Its Greek was colloquial. But they were less familiar with the Old Testament. Although frequent allusions are made to the stories in the older book by many writers during the later centuries of the Church’s history, the Septuagint was written in a language less understood by the people. Indications that the Old Testament influenced men’s conduct are lacking, and point either to a want of familiarity with it, or to some other cause which made its influence less than that which it has had on other peoples. The passionate zeal of our own Puritans, with their application of Jewish history to English politics; the political principles of the defenders of civil liberty in America; the fierce enthusiasm of the Scotch Covenanters, of the Dutch Protestants, and of the Boers, were all derived from the Old rather than from the New Testament. The influence of the more ancient book might have been great upon the Asiatic party if its writings had been as familiar as those of the New Testament. As it was, though its influence was undoubtedly felt, that derived from the New Testament became more powerful as the centuries went on, ultimately triumphed, and led to results which assist us to furnish an answer to the questions under examination.

What, then, was the general effect of the double stream of influence on the members of the Orthodox Church? The familiarity of the subjects of the empire with the text of the New Testament combined with the intellectual genius of the Greek race led them to take a delight in the study of the philosophical questions which the New Testament, and especially the writings of St. Paul, suggest. To take a keen interest in any metaphysical study is for any people a gain, and it is none the less so when the subject is theology. Now the interest of the population in theological questions was at all times absorbing.

When these questions were settled by the Church, the Asiatic influence made itself felt and produced a conservatism, a stubborn refusal to change or abandon any position, which the more fickle-minded or philosophical Greek could never have displayed. Each of the two tendencies exerted its influence upon the conduct of the Orthodox Church. Speaking generally, we may say that all its members were devotedly attached to their faith--or perhaps it would be more exact to say, to their creeds. Of political questions in the modern sense they knew little. In their ignorance of foreign nations, questions of external policy hardly interested them, but the intellectual life of the country--mostly confined to the great cities, to Nicaea, Salonica, Smyrna, and above all the capital--was fully awake to theological questions. While ready to discuss, they maintained every dogma and every article with a persistence which increased as the years rolled on. They took a keen interest in any question whenever any heretic appeared who attempted to throw doubt on what the Church had decided. They were ready to die for their faith.

The writers of the Greek Church show by abundant examples that they and the people believed in the existence of a God who lives and rules the world and the conduct of individuals. Their very superstitions afford sufficient evidence of such a belief. He was an avenging God. Black Death and Plague are described as the instruments of His vengeance. Omens and signs in a variety of forms were the means by which He, or some of the Hierarchy of Heaven, intimated to the faithful what was about to happen. The absence of omens was a sign of His displeasure or His abandonment of their cause.

The men who discussed the religious questions which arose during the later as well as the earlier centuries of the empire regarded them as tremendous realities. The discussions were not mere exchange of opinions or formulating of phrases: not mere academical disputations, among the learned of the time, of metaphysical abstractions, but were often careful attempts to solve the insoluble. The results were of supreme importance. If you believed aright, you would be saved. If you disbelieved or believed wrongfully, you would be damned in the next world and, as far as the believers could accomplish it, in this also. Unless the eagerness, the passion, the deadly Asiatic earnestness of the religious discussions or wranglings be realised, no true conception can be formed of fourteenth and fifteenth century life in Constantinople.

Contemporary writers supply abundant and indisputable evidence that, from the patriarch downwards, the members of the Greek Church attached overwhelming importance to the correctness of their orthodoxy. The utmost care about correct definitions was taken by the Church to check paganism. The miscreant was a worse offender than the man who disregarded the ordinary laws of morality. Souls were to be saved by right belief. As in the Western Church, whosoever would be saved, it was necessary before all things that he should accept the right formulas. But the Eastern gave greater prominence to the formulas than even the Western. While the Roman Church attached most importance to its Catholicity and to the necessity of propagating the faith, the Greek Church always prided itself rather on its Orthodoxy. If the question were whether the empire was Christian, and if the test of being a Christian nation were the jealous guardianship of every dogma in the precise manner that it had been formulated by the Councils of the Church, then the Orthodox Church, to which the inhabitants of the capital and empire belonged, would take a very high rank among Christian nations.

It is not possible to doubt that the keen interest taken in the discussion of religious questions quickened the intellectual development of the population, and in this respect the influence of the Church was purely beneficial. To suggest, as did the historians of the eighteenth century, that the Greeks were at once profoundly theological and profoundly vile is not only to ask that an indictment should be framed against a whole people, but is contrary to general experience and to fact. In spite of the occasional conjunction of theology and immorality in the same individual, the nation which takes a lively interest in the former is not likely to be addicted to the latter.

A strong and, I think, an unanswerable case might be made out to show that the religion of the Orthodox Church beneficially influenced the conduct of men and women in their individual capacity and in their relations one with another. All believed in the doctrine of eternal punishment and in the divine gifts granted to the Church by which punishment might be avoided. In their constant efforts to take advantage of the graces at the disposal of the Church, and in their endeavours to attain the ideal of Christian philosophy, men and women were led by their religion to be more moral, more honest, and more kindly one to another, than they would otherwise have been. The denunciations of those who had been guilty of unclean conduct, and the constant praise of almsgiving, lead to the conclusion that the Church had so far exercised influence for good. It had given the citizens of the empire a higher standard of family and social life. The very stubbornness which the Asiatic tendency supplied, and which led all to resist every attempt to change the formulas of the faith, came in itself to stand the population in good stead after 1453. Their wranglings on religious questions helped to form a public opinion which prevented any considerable number of Christians from abandoning their religion. We may safely conclude, therefore, that the Orthodox Church had aided in developing intellectual life, in raising and maintaining a high tone of morality, and in so attaching its members to their religion that when the time of trial came they remained faithful. It had done more. While accomplishing these objects it had raised a whole series of heterogeneous races to a higher level of civilisation and had largely contributed to make the empire the foremost and best educated state in Europe. It had checked the Greek tendency to attachment merely to the city or province and had made patriotism and brotherhood words of wider signification than they possessed in Greece.

It is when we pass from the influence of the Church on the conduct of the individual, to ask what was the value of its ethical teaching in regard to national life, whether it ever set before the nation a lofty national ideal, or whether it ever caused a wave of religious enthusiasm which influenced the nation as a whole, that we find the Orthodox Church during the later centuries of its history greatly lacking. Religion was to guide the conduct of the individual and to save him from eternal punishment. There was little or no conception of it as an aid to national righteousness. There was no inspiration for national action, such as a study of the Old Testament has often supplied. There was never any great religious fervour for the accomplishment of an object because it was believed to be the divine will. I am not thinking of such religious enthusiasm as led to the abolition of the slave trade or of slavery, to the temperance movement or to that for the diminution of crime and the reform of criminals or for the bettering the condition of the labouring classes and the like. These are social developments belonging to later years, which may be credited, in part at least, to the account of Christianity. It is in the contemporary religious movements of other portions of the Christian world that the measure of the national religious life of the empire must be taken. The series of Crusades enables a comparison of this kind to be fairly made, though other standards of comparison suggest themselves. The empire under the rule of Constantinople had a greater interest in checking the progress of the Moslems in Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor than had the Western nations. But in the whole course of Byzantine history, though the empire steadily resisted the Mahometan armies, there was no display of religious enthusiasm to lend its aid at any time comparable with that which was shown in the West. An Eastern Peter the Hermit could not have aroused the members of the Orthodox Church. No Godfrey de Bouillon could have found statesmen in the East to have espoused his cause. If leaders had been forthcoming, followers would have been wanting. Though the statesmen of the West were influenced by many motives to join in the Crusades, they, too, were largely under the sway of religious fervour. The nations of which they were the leaders did display such fervour for the accomplishment of objects which were believed to be in conformity with the divine will. As for the great mass of crusaders, it cannot be doubted that they took the cross mainly because they believed that they were doing the will of God. Absence of precaution, deficiency of organisation, unreasoning fanatical zeal, unreasonable and senseless haste to come into conflict with the infidel, the army of child crusaders, the sacrifices men made of their property, most of the incidents, indeed, which make up the narratives of the Crusades, show that the Soldiers of the Cross were steeped in religious fervour, and were in a condition of pious exaltation. They were, as they called themselves, an army of God. They were willing to face any danger, and to go to certain death for their Master’s cause.

The Greek was always ready to defend a dogma. He entertained a profound dislike and contempt for Christian heretics who were usually less well informed than he and were generally fanatically in earnest, but he was more tolerant of heresy than the men of the West, who in the Middle Ages bestowed on heretics a fanatical hatred and contempt greater even than that felt towards the infidel, and like that entertained in the present day towards anarchists as enemies of the human race.

No cause ever presented itself to the Greek as capable of arousing such fervour as the soldiers of the West displayed. Religion having become a New Testament philosophy, and the Old Testament inspiration in national life having been lost, there was little care for its propagation. The missionary age of the Orthodox Church in the empire, as soon as the Hellenic influence triumphed over the Asiatic, had passed away. Since the days of Cyril and Methodius, the great apostles of the ninth century, the Church could show few conversions and few serious attempts at conversion. That the Church should be orthodox was apparently enough. There was no attempt to enlarge its area. Christianity appeared to be regarded by one party as the best system of philosophy, and by the other, much as the Jew regarded his religion, as a sacred treasure to be kept for his own use and not to be offered to outside unbelievers. His religion in the later centuries never really moved the Greek to engage in missions. Except in regard to personal conduct, to almsgiving, kindness to his fellow-members of the Orthodox Church, and personal and commercial morality, he was incapable of religious sentiment. Something due to his race, something to his traditions, and something to his theological training, made Christianity, except as a philosophical system, sit lightly upon him and failed to make it a powerful national force. Then, as now, the Greek members of the Orthodox Church could not sympathise with or even comprehend the religious sentiment which has led the men of the West, whether acknowledging the jurisdiction of Rome or not, to undertake great movements, or even war, in defence of an object whose only recommendation was that it had right on its side.

In spite of the fact that in the empire and throughout Asia Minor nationality and religion were, as indeed they are to this day, always confounded or regarded as synonymous terms, Orthodox Christianity was unable to add a powerful religious sentiment to the defence of the empire. As a force inducing them to resist the encroachments of Islam, like that which influenced our fathers against Spain or the Ironsides against Charles, I doubt whether it was ever of much value. We have seen a patriarch writing apparently with great satisfaction that the Church was allowed to retain its liberty under Turkish rule. Throughout the long centuries of struggle against Islam, there were many Christians who transferred themselves to the jurisdiction of the sultans in order that they might live in peace. The individual aspect of Christianity was regarded, not the national.

It is when the influence of the Church upon the spirit of the population of the empire is compared with that of Mahometanism upon the Turkish hordes that its weakness as a dynamic force is most plainly seen. Mahometanism, like Christianity in Western lands and in Russia, is a missionary faith. Islam as a fighter’s religion, with its fatalism, its rewards of the most sensual pleasures that a barbarian is capable of conceiving, and its ennobling teaching that fighting the battles of the faith is fighting for God, has produced the most terrible armies that have ever come out from among any of the races among which its converts have been made. Islam in the twentieth century has spent much of its original force, because doubt as to its divine origin has entered into the hearts of its ablest members. Those among them who have seen or have otherwise learned the results of Christian civilisation instinctively and almost unconsciously judge the two religions by their fruits. Such men either become entirely neglectful of the ceremonious duties which their religion imposes, or, if they profess to have become more intent in their religious convictions than before, perform their ceremonies with a sub-consciousness that their religion is not better than that of the unbelievers. In whichever category they fall they lose their belief in the exclusively divine character of their creed. Nor do the studies in astronomy, medicine, geology, and other modern sciences fail to implant a similar and even a greater amount of scepticism in the Mahometan than they have done in the Christian mind. While visits to foreign countries and scientific studies are undertaken by few, their influence as a leaven is great.

In the centuries preceding the Moslem conquest of Constantinople scepticism was absent among both the Christian and Mahometan masses. The Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, more perhaps than at any other time, were full of the zeal of new converts. They were in a period of conquest which stimulated them. Many, perhaps most of them, believed in their divine mission. They were the chosen people, whose duty it was to give idolaters the choice of conversion to the one true faith or of death, to subdue all nations who accepted either the Old or the New Testament but refused to accept the prophethood of Mahomet, and to treat them as rayahs or cattle. Their spiritual pride caused them to think of those who professed any form of Christianity as being inferior and divinely predestined to occupy a hopelessly lower plane, as having only the privilege that their lives should be spared so long as they paid tribute and accepted subjection. Their central, overpowering belief was that they had a mission from God and the Prophet, and the result of such belief was fearlessness of danger. It was their duty to kill idolaters and subjugate Christians. Whatever happened to them in the fulfilment of this duty was not their business but God’s. He would bring about the predestined victory or the temporary defeat; but in either case it was well with them. If they lived, the plunder of their enemies was their reward; if they died, then heaven and the houris.

When this attitude of mind is compared with that which existed among the members of the Orthodox Church, we see at once great divergences between the two forms of faith as national ethical forces. On the one hand, the student of comparative religions must give that Church credit for having aided the growth of the population in the Christian virtues, for having given them an inspiration enabling them to suffer and to hope, for having preserved learning, developed national intelligence, cultivated exact thought, for having promoted philosophical studies and in various ways guarded the treasures of classic times until the rest of Europe was ready to receive them. On the other hand, such student, while recognising that Mahometanism prevents progress by assigning an inferior position to woman, by inculcating a spirit of fatalism which mischievously affects almost every act of the believer’s life and keeps the Turkish race in poverty, and by presenting a lower ideal of life, will have to admit that its influence as a religious force, with its ever-present sense of a Supreme Power, omnipotent to save or to destroy, was far greater than that of the Orthodox Church, and that the Church failed to supply the stimulus of a national inspiration comparable with that of the hostile creed, or with that furnished by Christianity to the men of the West.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, edited by J. B. Bury, M.A. Whenever Gibbon is quoted in the text of this volume it is from Professor Bury’s edition.

[2] Vol. vii. p. 163, Gibbon’s note.

[3] The principal of these works are:

1. ‘Belagerung und Eroberung Constantinopels im Jahre 1453.’ Von Dr. A. D. Mordtmann (Stuttgart, 1858).

2. ‘Die Eroberungen von Constantinopel im dreizehnten und fünfzehnten Jahrhundert.’ Von Dr. Johann Heinrich Krause (Halle, 1870).

3. ‘Les Derniers Jours de Constantinople.’ Par E. A. Vlasto (Paris, 1883).

4. Πολιορκία καὶ Ἁλωσις τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως. By A. G. Paspates (Athens, 1890).

5. ‘Constantine, the last Emperor of the Greeks.’ By Chedomil Mijatovich, formerly Servian Minister at the Court of St. James (London, 1892).

6. Two valuable papers by Dr. A. Mordtmann (the son of Dr. A. D. Mordtmann) entitled _Die letzten Tage von Byzanz_, in the ‘Mitteilungen des deutschen Exkursions-Klubs in Konstantinopel,’ 1895.

[4] _Giornale dell’ Assedio di Constantinopoli_, di Nicolo Barbaro, P.V., corredato di note e documenti per Enrico Cornet (Vienna, 1856).

[5] Βίος τοῦ Μωαμὲθ βʹ.

[6] Herr Müller’s preface is dated 1869, but I am not aware that it was published before it appeared in _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_, vol. v. The dedicatory epistle to Mahomet was published from another and a somewhat longer version by Tischendorf in 1870 in his _Notitia Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici_ (Leipzig).

[7] ‘Informacion envoyée (en 1453) tant par Francisco de Franco au très révérend père en Dieu Monsgr le Cardinal d’Avignon que par Jehan Blanchin et Jacques Tetaldi marchand Florentin sur la prinse de Constantinoble à laquelle le dit Jacques estoit personellement.’ One version is published in _Chroniques de Charles VII roi de France, par Jean Chartier_, vol. iii., edited by Vallet de Virivalle (Paris, 1858). Another, published by Dethier with several important differences, is stated to be taken from _Thesaurus novus Anecdotorum_ (Paris, 1717). Though his narrative was printed in France early in the eighteenth century, it appears to have been generally unknown and is not alluded to by Gibbon.

[8] _Ubertini Pusculi Brixiensis Constantinopoleos_: in _Analekten der mittel- und neugriechischen Literatur_, by J. A. Ellisen (Leipzig).

[9] _Esquisse Topographique de Constantinople_ (Lille, 1892).

[10] _Byzantine Constantinople: the Walls of the City and adjoining Historical Sites_ (published by John Murray, 1899).

[11] See authorities quoted in Sathas, _Documents Inédits_, i. p. xii.

[12] For example, Sir John Maundeville speaks of ‘Constantinople, where the Emperor of Greece usually dwells,’ _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 130 (Bohn’s edition).

[13] See valuable remarks on the name of the empire in the Preface to Professor Bury’s _Later Roman Empire_, and in the Introduction to _Documents Inédits relatifs à l’Histoire de la Grèce_, by Sathas.

[14] Villehardouin, ch. lxxxvi.

[15] The soldiers are those who received the _soldi_ or pay, as distinguished from the Crusaders, who were supposed to fight only for the cause of the Cross.

[16] La Sainte Chapelle in Paris was built to receive these treasures.

[17] Πύλη τῆς πηγῆς, so called because it led to the Holy Well, is better known as the Silivria Gate. See Professor Van Millingen’s _Byzantine Constantinople_, p. 75.

[18] P. 191. Pachymer, writing fifty years afterwards, adds that they placed ladders against the walls; and Nicephorus Gregoras, writing a century afterwards, speaks of a secret entry by an old subterranean passage for water, through which fifty men passed. Gibbon makes the mistake of saying that the entry was at the Golden Gate. Strategopulus had the Gate of the Fountain--that is, the Silivria Gate--opened for his troops. The Emperor Michael subsequently entered by the Golden Gate; possibly, as Dethier suggests (iii. 605), by the ancient gate of that name in the Constantine Walls, which was still used for ceremonial purposes.

[19] It is unlikely that at this time there were any foreigners among the fighting men other than Frenchmen. The pope’s demands for the defence of the empire do not appear to have been responded to outside France.

[20] _Epist. Inn._ viii. 133.

[21] Pachymer, iii. 10. Greg. iv. 4.

[22] Pach. iii. 19.

[23] Ibid. iv. 1.

[24] Pach. iv. 6. Pachymer took part in these proceedings, and was in fact one of the clerks of the court.

[25] The Holy Gates are in the middle of the Iconostasis or screen which separates the bema or chancel from the nave.

[26] Raynoldus and Vadingus.

[27] Ch. v. 9. It should be remembered that Pachymer had himself joined the Latin Church.

[28] Pach. v. 18.

[29] Pach. vi. 24 and 25.

[30] I have relied mostly for this account of the attempt at Union on Pachymer (I agree with Krumbacher’s high estimate of the value of this author’s history):

‘Pachymeres ragt durch seine Bildung und litterarische Thätigkeit über seine Zeitgenossen empor und kann als der grösste byzantinische Polyhistor des 13. Jahrhunderts bezeichnet werden. In ihm erblickt man deutlich die Licht- und Schattenseiten des Zeitalters der Paläologen. Es fehlt dem Pachymeres nicht an Gelehrsamkeit, Originalität und Witz.’ _Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur_, p. 289. Pachymer was himself a Greek, born in Nicaea but a member of the Latin Church. He deals with the doings of the emperor and the Greek ecclesiastics in a fair spirit. His History is essentially that of his own times and covers the period from 1261 to 1308.

[31] Pach. part 2, ii. 18.

[32] The following table of descent will illustrate the text:

Baldwin II., emperor of Constantinople, fled the city 1261, died 1272. | Philip, married Beatrice, daughter of Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, | died 1288. | Catherine, married in 1301 Charles of Valois, son of Philip III. of France; | Charles died 1308. | +-----------------+-----------------------------------+----------+ | | | | John, Catherine married Philip of Tarentum, Joanna Elizabeth died without son of Charles of Sicily. Philip issue. died 1322: Catherine in 1346.

[33] Pachymer indeed states that the Pope ordered Roger to be given up.

[34] Dr. Koëlle has in my opinion satisfactorily demonstrated that ‘Tatar’ is an incorrect spelling, due mainly to the fact that this form of the word comes to us from the Chinese, who cannot pronounce the letter _r_.

[35] _The Mahommedans_, by J. D. Rees, C.I.E., 1894.

[36] Pach. ii. 25.

[37] ‘Roum’ is still the Turkish form of ‘Rome,’ and exists in the names Erzeroum, Roumelia, &c.

[38] Pach. iv. 27.

[39] _Early Travels in Palestine_, Bohn’s edition, p. 241.

[40] Maundeville in Syria met Christians from Prester John’s country, p. 189. See Col. Yule’s _Marco Polo_, i. 275, a book which is a model of good editing.

[41] When, therefore, Mr. Billinski speaks of the Turks of to-day having ‘millions of confederates in the heart of Russia’ ready to obey the commands of the Mussulman pontiff, he is, I believe, entirely mistaken. The Mahometans under Russian rule are a comparatively insignificant part of her population, and there is no reason to believe that any but a very small portion of them would think it a religious duty to fight against the Czar at the bidding of the Sultan. It should also not be forgotten that the majority of them are Shiahs, who have never shown any disposition to aid the Sunnis, who acknowledge the caliphate of Constantinople. _Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1891, p. 731.

[42] Maundeville in 1322, or a year or two later, discussed Mahometanism with many of its professors, and goes so far as to say, ‘Because they go so nigh our faith, they are easily converted to Christian law.’ _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 196.

[43] See _ante_, p. 28.

[44] Pach. iv. 3.

[45] _Ibid._ iv. 6.

[46] That this aversion to agriculture, and contentment amid poverty, of the Turkish peasant are not merely the result of Mahometanism, is evidenced by the fact that the Pomaks--that is, the Bulgarians who have accepted Islam--and the Mahometans of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who have emigrated into Asia Minor since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, are noticed everywhere to be distinguished by their comparative energy and by the success they are achieving in various forms of agricultural pursuits.

[47] Pach. vi. 21.

[48] iv. 21.

[49] Gregoras states that the Turkish ships employed by Andronicus plundered all the coasts and the islands (viii. 10). Chalcondylas claims that Othman with eight thousand Turks who occupied the Thracian Chersonesus was entirely defeated.

[50] It is usually impossible to arrive at the correct estimate of the numbers of the invaders, but it may be said once for all that, while they were undoubtedly very large, the figures given by the Greek authors are seldom trustworthy.

[51] Sir John Maundeville, who visited Constantinople in 1322, remarks on the diminution of the empire: ‘For he was emperor of Romania and of Greece, of all Asia the Less, and of the land of Syria, of the land of Persia and Arabia, but he hath lost all but Greece’ (_Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 130).

[52] Cant. ii. 9, 14, 15; Greg. ix. 10, xiii. 3; Ducas, vi.

[53] Ducas, i. 6.

[54] Cant. iv. 3.

[55] Vol. vii. p. 30, edition of Dr. J. B. Bury. The Tartars were still in the Balkan peninsula, and Orchan in 1347, probably just after the marriage of John, sent six thousand Turks to aid Matthew, son of Cantacuzenus, in fighting against the kral of Serbia.

[56] Greg. xxvii. 49.

[57] Cant. iv. 5 and 6.

[58] ἕνεκα ἀσφαλείας πράττειν, iv. 3.

[59] Even Gibbon (vii. 30) says, ‘It was in the last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzenus inflicted the deep and deadly wound which could never be healed by his successors and which is poorly expiated by his theological dialogue against the prophet Mahomet.’ But the Moslems, both from the north and south, had been fighting in Europe fifty years earlier, sometimes on the side of the Greeks, oftener, as with the Catalans, against them.

[60] Heyd’s _History of Commerce in the Levant_.

[61] The Black Death (πανούκλα) was the terrible disease which spread throughout Europe and depopulated most of its large cities between 1346 and 1370. Cantacuzenus, whose son Andronicus fell a victim, gives a vivid and terrible picture of its symptoms, and of its effect upon the population (iv. 8). Dr. Mordtmann, who is not merely distinguished as an archæologist well acquainted with the Byzantine writers, but as a physician of great experience, believes it to have been a black form of smallpox, and not what is usually known as plague, and a well-known specialist in plague, to whose attention I have submitted the account of Cantacuzenus, is disposed to accept the same view.

[62] The walls of Galata, both before and after this enlargement, which doubled the area of the city, may still be traced.

[63] The demand for slaves, and especially for girls for the harems, was always great. Slaves, indeed, usually formed the most valuable part of the booty in a raiding expedition.

[64] Cant. iv. 39.

[65] _Ibid._ iv. 37.

[66] _Ibid._ iv. 37.

[67] The statement that he visited Italy and Germany is made by Ducas (i. 11), but it is remarkable that Cantacuzenus makes no mention of it. Muralt (p. 640) suggests that he left Tenedos in the spring of 1352. But Cantacuzenus, writing of the events of 1254, represents John as having passed a whole year in Tenedos. Possibly this would be a year terminating in January 1355.

[68] Gregoras, xxix. 25.

[69] Rayn. iv. lxiii.

[70] iv. 9.

[71] The History of Nicephorus Gregoras, as written by an enemy, is a useful corrective. Krumbacher in his account of Byzantine literature speaks of Gregoras as ‘die Hauptperson des 14. Jahrhunderts’ (p. 19). His narrative is described by Cantacuzenus as stamped with ignorance, partiality, and falsehood. Its chief accusation against him is not merely false but improbable (iv. 24). In his own History Cantacuzenus declares that he has never departed from the truth either on account of hatred or the desire to say pleasant things (iv. concluding chapter). What he finds most fault with in Gregoras is the statement that, even during the lifetime of Andronicus, Cantacuzenus had become possessed of a burning desire to become emperor, and that he had consulted certain monks at Mount Athos who were supposed to have the power of divination, in order to learn whether he would accomplish his desire. The story, he declares, is absolutely false. It is brought up because he as emperor protected Palamas in his religious controversies where Gregoras took the opposite side.

[72] iv. 9.

[73] iv. 24.

[74] iv. 28.

[75] iv. 17.

[76] Greg. xi. 10.

[77] _Ibid._

[78] The Bogomils still exist in Eastern Rumelia. One may be sceptical as to the doctrines in which, according to their enemies, they believed. Apparently they were quietists, searchers after the Inner Light, who would have nothing to do with the worship of Eikons, were possibly Unitarians, and had a tendency in many directions towards what may be called reformation principles. Their teaching was imbued with the Slavic mysticism which is characteristic to-day of Russian literature.

The Bogomils became first noticeable in Bulgaria in the days of King Peter (927–968). Even a few years earlier they are alluded to as certain ‘Pagan Slavs and Manichaeans.’ Later on the Bogomils are spoken of as Paulicians. In Bosnia they became so powerful that the whole country was described as Bogomil. The pope in 1407 promised help to Sigismund against the ‘Manichaeans and Arians’ in Bosnia, and they were beaten and the kingdom dismembered in 1410–11. The Council of Bâle received a deputation from the Bogomils in 1435 and dealt at the same time with them and with the Hussites. In 1443 they lent valuable aid to Hunyadi against the Turks. Persecuted by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, many of the magnates who had been forced to become Catholics in order to retain their lands turned Mahometans, and their example was largely followed by the smaller landholders. Among the Mahometans of Bosnia there still exist many customs of Christian origin. Mr. Evans, in _Through Bosnia and Herzegovina_, states that there are still many thousands of Bogomils in these countries. Herr Asboth, who has been over the country, declares the statement to be too general, and says that he was never able to find any, although he admits that they recently existed. Subject in Bulgaria to persecution from the Orthodox Church, many of them sought escape about a century ago by joining the Church of Rome. Bogomilism spread from Bosnia into Europe, where it gave rise to the Cathari or Albigenses, who acknowledged the Church of Dragovitza in Macedonia as their mother Church. The best account I know of the Bogomils in Bosnia is in J. de Asboth’s _Official Tour through Bosnia and Herzegovina_, London, 1900.

[79] Vol. vii. p. 87.

[80] Raynaldus, N. xxxii., professes to give the text of his submission. If his text is genuine it shows that John was under the same delusion as Michael had been: namely, that he could force the Orthodox Church to accept what he wanted.

[81] Ducas, xii. Chalcondylas makes a similar statement (i. 45); Canale says that a Genoese doctor restored sight to Andronicus.

[82] Sauli, _Colonia dei Genovesi in Galata_, ii. 260.

[83] Urban the Sixth died in 1389.

[84] Ducas, xiii.

[85] This was in 1097, when, on the invitation of Godfrey de Bouillon, Alexis had reached the city on its water side by taking his boats, in part at least, overland from the Gulf of Moudania to the lake. The object of Godfrey was to prevent the Crusaders being exposed to the demoralisation of plundering a hostile city.

[86] Greg. ix. 2 says the Turks had carried off three hundred thousand Christian captives. The Turks fought well, but were exterminated.

[87] Cant. iv. 16.

[88] Cant. iv. 39.

[89] I reserve my description of the Janissaries for a later chapter.

[90] Ch. xxiii.

[91] Chalc. i. 51, and Phrantzes, i. 11.

[92] Du Cange, _Familiae Dalmaticae_, 230, Venetian edition. The story of this battle is fully described in _Die Serben und Türken im XIV. und XV. Jahrhundert_ of S. Novakovich (Semlin, 1897) and also in Ireček’s _History of the Bulgarians_ (p. 430). Ireček states that as late as the seventeenth century the stone monument of the despot Uglisha’s tomb still existed. Uglisha was one of the three brothers.

[93] Chalc. i. 44 says that the sultan immediately beheaded his son; Ducas, that Countouz was blinded (xii.).

[94] Cossovo-pol, the Plain of Blackbirds, is between Pristina and Prisrend, to the north-east of Uskub. The town of Cossovo is due south of Prisrend, and about thirty miles distant.

[95] Novacovich, p. 335. ‘Gleichwie durch den Krieg an der Maritza das Schicksal Ost-Bulgariens und der serbischen Staaten in Macedonien, ebenso ist durch die Schlacht aus Kossovopolje, den 15. Juni 1389, das Schicksal der nördlichen serbischen Länder und des westlichen Bulgarien entschieden worden, namentlich der Länder des Fürsten Lazar und Buk Brancovic’s.’

[96] Sad-ud-din. See also Halil Ganem’s _Les Sultans Ottomans_, Paris, 1901. Upon the assassination of Murad the custom grew up, which continued till about 1820, of not allowing any Christian belonging to a foreign state to enter the presence of the sultan except with Janissaries holding each arm.

[97] Now called Anatolia-hissar. The word _hissar_ means castle.

[98] The version of Ducas differs from those of Chalcondylas and Phrantzes, the first of whom knows nothing of the arrangement suggested, but states that Manuel left the city for Italy, while Phrantzes declares that John, having lost the favour of Bajazed, fled to his uncle, who entrusted the city to him during his absence (Phr. pp. 61–3.)

[99] Ducas, xx.; Chalc. iv. p. 183. Phrantzes, p. 89, praises Mahomet very highly.

[100] Ducas, xxiii.

[101] Mersaite declared he failed because of the presence of a noble lady, evidently the Holy Virgin, walking upon and guarding the walls.

[102] According to another version he withdrew on account of the famine and plague which prevailed in his army. It is, however, certain that the Turkish revolt in favour of Mustafa took place, and in the following year, 1423, Murad captured the leader, Elias Pasha, and bowstrung both him and the young Mustafa at Nicaea. Before the end of the year he returned to Thrace and took possession of Adrianople.

[103] See _ante_; and also Pachymer, iii. 10 to iv. 25.

[104] ‘The Greek Church has had a fossilised aversion to change; boasting that it follows the doctrines and practices of the Apostolic Church, it believes that it has no need of reform.’ _Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church_, by Rev. A. H. Hore, p. 553 (Jas. Parker & Co.: London, 1899).

The expression ‘fossilised aversion’ is perhaps too strong, though I should be prepared to admit that the Eastern _non possumus_ was at least as obstinate as the Western. The Orthodox Church in countries where it is free, as in Greece and Russia, shows signs of growth, and therefore hardly deserves the adjective ‘fossilised.’ Since 1453 in Turkey it has been comatose.

[105] Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, 3rd edition, vol. viii. p. 348.

[106] While the rival representatives were in Constantinople Murad suggested to John that his friendship under the circumstances would be of greater value than that of the pope. Chalc., Syropulus, and Phrantzes.

[107] Phrantzes, pp. 181–6.

[108] Vol. vii. p. 108.

[109] Second Council of Nicaea, in 787.

[110] The copies sent to London and Karlsruhe, as well as the diptych of Rome (the official record) consulted by Niches, signed by the emperor of Constantinople and by thirty-six Latin prelates, contain on this point only the following: ἔτι ὁρίζομεν τὴν ἁγίαν ἀποστολικὴν καθέδραν καὶ τὸν ῥομαϊκὸν διάδοχον εἶναι τοῦ μακαρίου Πέτρου. The pope and forty-two Latin prelates, on the other hand, signed the following: _Item definimus S. Ap. sedem et romanum pontificem in universum orbem tenere primatum et ipsum pontificem romanum successorem esse S. Petri_.

[111] Many of the towers near the Golden Gate bear inscriptions showing that they were repaired during John’s reign. For the inscriptions see Paspates’ Βυζαντιναὶ Μελέται.

[112] Caramania was the Turkish state which remained longest outside Ottoman dominion. At one period it extended from the river Sangarius to Adana. Ordinarily its boundaries did not extend further north than Konia. See Stanley Lane-Poole’s _Mohammedan Dynasties_, p. 134.

[113] The island of Chios had for several years been held by a Commercial Company, mostly if not exclusively of Genoese, each of whose members was, apparently, known by the name of Justiniani.

[114] Gibbon suggests, on the authority of the _Hist. Anonyme de St-Denys_, that the French had murdered their Turkish prisoners on the eve of the engagement, and that the sultan was merely retaliating (Gibbon, vii. 37).

[115] Chalc. ii. 807.

[116] Chap. xv.

[117] The word _timour_ is the same as the ordinary Turkish word for iron, _demir_.

[118] Leunclavius, 250.

[119] Leunclavius, pp. 250–1, Ven. edition, makes the conquest of Damascus in 1399; Chalcondylas and others, in 1402; the Turkish authors quoted by Von Hammer, in 1401. The statement of the hindrance due to locusts I take from Muralt, 772, who quotes as his authority ‘Bizar,’ a name unknown to me.

[120] The Crescent, which Gibbon and other writers assert to have only been employed by the Turks after the capture of Constantinople, had probably been used by them for many centuries previously. It is true that it had been made use of in Constantinople at an early period, and figures on several coins of Constantine, but I doubt whether it was used as the symbol of Constantinople in the later centuries of its history. The Crusades are not incorrectly described as wars between the Cross and the Crescent. The symbol is an ancient one and figures with the star on several coins belonging to about 200 B.C. The Abassid dynasty so used it. Professor Hilprecht considers it a remnant of moon-worship and connects it with the subsequent cult of Ashtaroth, Astarte, or Aphrodite.

[121] Though the Turks were a branch of the Tartar race, the Greek authors by this time had acquired the habit of calling the nation which Othman had formed Turks, and all others from Central Asia Tartars, and it is convenient to follow this nomenclature.

[122] Von Hammer has shown conclusively that the story of an iron cage is a mistake. It arises from the misinterpretation of the Turkish word _Kafés_, which has the two significations given above. Two contemporary authors made the blunder, Phrantzes and Arab Schah. A Bavarian, who was made prisoner at the battle of Nicopolis, named Schildberger, and who was present at the battle of Angora, has given a detailed account of the massacre of the Christians, but he does not mention the cage. (His travels between 1394 and 1427 have been translated and published by the Hakluyt Society, 1879.) Neither do Ducas, Chalcondylas, or Boucicaut, though they state that Bajazed died in irons, which he had to wear every night after his attempt at escape. Six Persian authors who wrote the history of Timour are silent about the cage. The oldest Turkish historian recounts, upon the evidence of an eye-witness, that Bajazed was carried about in a palanquin ‘like a Kafés,’ or in the usual kind of grilled palanquin in which ladies of the harem travelled. Sad-ud-din, one of the most exact of Turkish historians, states that the story of the iron cage given by many Turkish writers is a pure invention.

[123] I have relied for the account of the battle of Angora and the subsequent progress of Timour, mainly upon Von Hammer (vol. ii.), who is at his best in describing this period of Turkish history. The authorities are carefully given by him. Zinkeisen, in his _History of the Turks_, calls attention to the deterioration of the Ottoman armies during the reign of Bajazed, and attributes it to the profligacy of the sultan.

[124] Chalc. iv. p. 170. Ducas says he disappeared in Caramania; Phr. p. 86, that he was bowstrung. There was, according to Chalcondylas, another son of Bajazed, the youngest, also named Isa, who was baptised and died in Constantinople in 1417. This was probably the son given over as hostage to Manuel.

[125] Ducas, xix.

[126] Chalc. iv.; Phr. i. 29; Ducas, 19.

[127] _Official Tour in Bosnia and Herzegovina_, by J. de Asboth.

[128] i. 37.

[129] Ducas, xxiv.

[130] Phr. i. 38.

[131] In reference to this passage across the Dardanelles, Ducas (ch. xxvii.) gives an interesting piece of information as to the size of the Genoese vessels. There were seven large ships. Murad was in the largest, which contained 1,300 Turkish and Frank soldiers. These ships ‘covered the sea like floating cities or islands.’

[132] Ducas mentions expressly that in the same year three Mustafas died, first, the pretender, who claimed to be the son of Bajazed; second, his brother, and, third, the grandson of Atin (ch. xxviii.).

[133] De la Brocquière, whose narrative was finished in 1438, states that, when in Galata, the ambassador of the duke of Milan, the protector of the Genoese, told him that ‘to do mischief to the Venetians he had contributed to make them lose Salonica taken from them by the Turks;’ and he adds, ‘Certainly in this he acted so much the worse, for I have seen the inhabitants of that town deny Jesus Christ and embrace the Mahometan religion.’ _Early Travels_, pp. 335–6.

[134] Halil was the one Turkish leader in 1453 friendly to the Greeks. Even at this early date he showed a similar spirit. Chalc. 136, Venetian edition.

[135] Phr. ii. 13, p. 180.

[136] Possibly Hungary was not mentioned, with the object of leading the Turks to believe that the place of attack would not be nearer than Constantinople.

[137] Callimachus, who describes the battle, took part and was wounded in it.

[138] I have followed here the version of Ducas (xxxii.). It is doubtful, however, whether this expedition into Caramania ought not to be placed a year earlier. See the authorities quoted by Muralt, p. 856.

[139] Chal. vi.; Ducas, xxxii. The latter states that Hunyadi refused either to sign or to swear.

[140] The treaty was made in June. According to Muralt, it was broken in the same month. If so, the account of Ducas is incorrect. Murad was informed by George of Serbia of the renewal of war and again took the government into his own hands ‘at the beginning of summer, when the dog-days were commencing.’ Ducas, xxxii.

[141] _Early Travels_, pp. 346–347.

[142] Lonicerus, p. 18, speaking of the cardinal, does not go so far. He says, ‘qui Pontifici licere juramenta praesertim hostibus Christiani nominis praestata rescindere contendebat.’ Thurocz (quoted by Von Hammer, p. 307, vol. ii.) and Cambini, p. 13, make similar statements.

[143] _Liber Jurium_, xxii. 57, xxvi. 24, 26. Chalc. vi. Aeneas Silvius states that Eugenius, when he was informed of the treaty, wrote to Cardinal Julian that it was null as having been signed without the papal sanction; that he ordered Ladislaus to disregard it, and that he gave him absolution for so doing. At the same time, he directed the cardinal to do his best to renew the war, in order that the great preparations he had taken in hand might not be fruitless. The statement may be true, but it is difficult to believe that the report of the signature could have reached Rome and that his answer could have arrived to the cardinal before war was declared.

[144] The Turkish accounts agree that the crossing was at the Bosporus. Barletius, Book II. p. 38, with whom Leunclavius agrees, says: ‘Si vera est fama,’ merchant vessels transported the army over the Bosporus, receiving a gold coin per man. Bonfinius likewise gives this story of payment and says it was made to the Genoese. Lonicerus, p. 18, says the fleet crossed the Dardanelles. Ducas, whose account I have adopted, states that the fleet only crossed with great difficulty and against the will of the emperor. Chalcondylas makes the transit take place at Hieron, near the Dardanelles (Chalc. 135); one writer, at Asomaton. There is a church of the Asomatoi (the Bodiless, _i.e._ of Angels) at Arnaoutkeui still existing. See _The Constantiade_, where the Patriarch gives an account of it. Phrantzes identifies the position on the Bosporus (namely, opposite Anatolia-Hissar) by saying that it was near the narrow part of the Bosporus above the village of Asomaton or Arnaoutkeui: κατὰ τὸ στενὸν ἐγγὺς τοῦ ἀνωτέρου μέρους τῆς τῶν Ἀσωμάτων κώμης (Ph. ch. II. p. 223), which is conclusive as to the locality he wishes to indicate. Ducas also in several places gives the name of Hieron to the straits between Anatolia and Roumelia-Hissar. It is therefore clear that two places on the Bosporus were known as Hieron. The safest passage would be at the Hieron below the Giant’s Mountain.

[145] Callimachus.

[146] ‘Morbo detentus,’ Lonicerus, 18. Chalc. and others also mention his illness. He was suffering from an abscess in the thigh.

[147] On the opposite shore of the lagoon now runs the railway from Varna to Rustchuk.

[148] _Early Travels_, 361.

[149] _Early Travels_, 366.

[150] Chalc. p. 138. The account by Phrantzes, p. 198, of the interview between Hunyadi and the king is very well given.

[151] Bonfinius states that it was at this moment also that he unfurled the treaty of Szegedin.

[152] Leunclavius, 256.

[153] Eton’s _Travels_, p. 332.

[154] Gibbon adopts the statement of Chalcondylas (145) that Murad joined the dervishes after Varna, though on other matters regarding his life he relies upon Cantemir, who by implication discredits the story. Chalcondylas states that in the crisis of the battle of Varna, the sultan had vowed that if he were successful he would abdicate and join one of these religious orders. Von Hammer knows nothing of the story, and the whole course of Murad’s life is against the belief that ‘the lord of nations submitted to fast and pray and turn round in endless rotations with the fanatics who mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the Spirit’ (Gibbon, VII. p. 140). Neither Phrantzes nor Ducas mentions his having become a dervish, as they probably would have done if the fact had been known to them. Indeed, the one point in favour of the story was unknown to Gibbon: namely, that some of the dervish sects are liberal or philosophical. They are all religious or pietistic, but many claim that their tenets are independent of Islam. Their explanation of the turning or dancing is that they first look towards Mecca and reflect, God is there; then they make a turn and reflect, He is there also; and so in the complete circle. It should be noted also that there are many dervishes who neither turn nor dance in their devotions. On the subject of the dervishes in Turkey, two useful books are _The Dervishes_, by J. P. Brown (London, 1868), and, better still, _Les Confréries Musulmanes_ par le R. P. Louis Petit, supérieur des Augustins de l’Assomption à Kadikeuy (Constantinople, 1899).

[155] Kroya or Croia, now called Ak-Hissar or the White Castle, is a few miles to the north of Durazzo and a short distance from the Adriatic.

[156] Aeneas Sylvius gives the number at 200,000; Chalcondylas at 15,000, which Von Hammer reasonably suggests is an error for 150,000.

[157] Bonfinius makes Murad state in a letter to Corinth that eight thousand Hungarians were left dead on the plain: a much more likely number.

[158] Von Hammer gives the numbers I have adopted.

[159] For the siege of Belgrade see a paper in the _English Historical Review_, 1892, by Mr. R. N. Bain.

[160] ‘Novit majestas imperatoria, Turcorum, Assyriorum, Aegyptiorum gentem: imbelles, inermes, effaeminati sunt, neque animo neque consilio martiales; sumenda erunt spolia sine sudore et sanguine.’ Oratio Romae habita anno 1452 de passagio Cruce signatorum contra Mahometanos suscipiendo. Edita apud Reynaldum [by Dr. Dethier].

[161] La Brocquière, 366.

[162] Θρῆνος, line 720.

[163] According to Scholarius and Manuel the Rhetorician, John shortly before his death declared against the Union. In such a matter, however, both these witnesses are suspect.

[164] La Brocquière, p. 341.

[165] _Ibid._ p. 340.

[166] La Brocquière, p. 339.

[167] Perhaps it could be contended successfully that the relaxing climate of Constantinople had much to do with the enervation of its population, and that every race which has possessed the city has suffered from the same cause.

[168] Mr. D. G. Hogarth in _The Nearer East_ (London, 1902), on pp. 280–1, speaks of the country as a ‘Debateable Land distracted internally by a ceaseless war of influences, and only too anxious to lean in one part or another on external aid.’... ‘Macedonia has been torn this way and that for half a century.’ The whole chapter on ‘World Relation’ is valuable and suggestive. The same diversity of interests and hostility arising from differences in race and religion is well brought out in the best recent book on _Turkey in Europe_, by Odysseus.

[169] The Turkish system of occupying conquered territories by military colonies and driving away the original inhabitants excited great opposition among the Serbians and led, says Von Ranke, to the struggle which ended in 1389 on the plains of Cossovo. (_History of Serbia_, Bohn’s edition, p. 16.)

[170] Cantacuzenus, iv. 8.

[171] The tradition of its destructiveness even in England, which it reached in 1348, and the panic-struck words of the Statutes which followed it, have, says J. R. Green, ‘been more than justified by modern researches. Of the three or four millions who then formed the population of England more than half were swept away by its repeated visitations’ (Green’s _Short History of the English People_), p. 241.

[172] According to one contemporary writer, Murad had to relinquish the siege of Constantinople in 1422 on account of the appearance of plague in his army (_Historia Epirotica_). Mahomet the Second, however, according to Critobulus, attributed the necessity of raising the siege to hostility within his own family, doubtless alluding to the rising already mentioned in Asia Minor. He says, in substance, ‘The city was almost in the hands of my father, and he would certainly have taken it by assault, if those of his own family in whom he had confidence had not worked secretly against him.’ Crit. xxv.

[173] _Travels and Researches in Asia Minor_, by Sir Charles Fellows. Professor Ramsay has also the same story to tell, though his own success in identifying lost cities has been exceptionally great.

[174] La Brocquière, 340–7.

[175] _Ibid._ 337.

[176] Compare this with Villehardouin’s statement that in 1204 Constantinople had ten times as many people as there were in Paris.

[177] Phrantzes, 241.

[178] Another version says from 30,000 to 36,000 men.

[179] P. 23. The ‘not more’ is from the edition of Dethier, p. 896. The version published in the _Chronique de Charles VII_ gives 25,000 to 30,000 armed men. Dethier’s omits ‘armed.’

[180] The Superior of the Franciscans says that 3,000 were killed on May 29 (Dethier’s _Documents relating to the Siege_, p. 940).

[181] Bikelas, _La Grèce Byzantine et Moderne_, p. 153. His essays express this opinion in many other places.

[182] ‘Les schismes sont chez eux [the Greeks] la conséquence du même esprit de tous les temps; c’est la théologie soumise au contrôle de l’intelligence pure, le dogme éprouvé par le mécanisme de leur logique brillante et rapide. Ces discussions théologiques, appliquées uniquement à la recherche de l’essence divine, à l’explication du fait divin, du mystère, prennent chez eux un caractère exclusivement scientifique.’ Montreuil, _Histoire du droit byzantin_, i. 418.

[183] Krumbacher, _Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur_, p. 219, says: ‘Kein Volk, die Chinesen vielleicht ausgenommen, besitzt eine so reiche historische Litteratur wie die Griechen. In ununterbrochener Reihenfolge geht die Überlieferung von Herodot bis auf Laonikos Chalkondylas. Die Griechen und Byzantiner haben die Chronik des Ostens über zwei Jahrtausende mit gewissenhafter Treue fortgeführt.’

[184] Rambaud, _L’empire de Grèce_, p. 367. Bikelas and Finlay make the same comparison.

[185] Constantine is usually called the Eleventh. Gibbon, however, counts the son of Romanus the First as Constantine the Eighth, and thus makes the last Emperor Constantine the Twelfth. He is often spoken of as Constantine Dragases, because his mother, Irene, belonged to a family of that name. She was a South Serbian princess.

[186] Phrantzes, p. 205, represents Constantine as crowned. Apparently this ceremony was not regarded as a definite coronation, and hence Ducas calls John the last Emperor.

[187] Constantine’s wife, Catherine Catalusio, died in 1442, after being married about ten months.

[188] Ducas, xxxv.

[189] As they were opposed in philosophy, so also were they on the great question before these Councils. Pletho insisted that the Union should be effected by the submission of the Greek Church to the Latin formula, while Scholarius endeavoured to frame a form of words which could be accepted by both parties. Had his advice been acted upon, it is possible that he and his companions would on their return to the capital have been able to persuade their countrymen to accept the Union in sincerity. For the life and writings of George Scholarius, afterwards the Patriarch Gennadius, see Krumbacher’s _Geschichte des Byzantinischen Litteratur_, p. 119, and works there quoted.

[190] The MS. of Critobulus was found in the Seraglio Library about thirty-five years ago by Dr. Dethier. It was published by Karl Müller with excellent notes. Dr. Dethier also prepared an edition with notes and documents relating to the siege, which were printed by the Academy of Buda-Pest but never published. Through the courtesy of the Council and of Dr. Arminius Vambéry I have been presented with copies. They are especially valuable for their topographical criticisms.

[191] Lonicerus, p. 22.

[192] M. Léon Cahun, in his introduction to the _History of the Turks and Mongols_, says: ‘L’Islamisme est une règle qu’on respecte et qu’on défend, mais qu’on ne se permettrait pas de discuter. Les Turcs ont toujours été trop inaccessibles au sentiment religieux pour jamais devenir hérétiques; ils sont les derniers des hommes capables de comprendre _Oportet haereses esse_. Ils ne demandent pas mieux que de croire, mais ils ne tiennent pas du tout à comprendre.’

[193] Phrantzes, i. 30.

[194] Von Hammer, note iii. p. 429.

[195] Ducas, p. 129; Chalcondylas says, ‘Peremit, cum, aqua infusa, spiritum ejus interclusisset;’ Montaldo, ‘fratre obtruncato.’

[196] Von Hammer, iii. 68.

[197] Zorzo Dolfin, p. 986.

[198] Orchan was the Turkish member of the house of Othman who still remained in Constantinople and was either the son or grandson of Suliman, brother of Mahomet I.

[199] Chal. vii.; Ducas, xxxiv.

[200] Ducas, xxxiv.

[201] Crit. vii.

[202] Crit. viii. The account given by Ducas represents the reply of the sultan as much more brutal. He dismissed the ambassadors with the remark that he would not have the question reopened; he was within his rights, and if they returned he would have them flayed alive.

[203] Phrantzes, p. 233; Ducas, xxxiv.; Crit. ix.

[204] Critobulus gives the width at seven stadia. It is really half a nautical mile. Probably it is unwise to suppose that Critobulus had any means of measuring it with any degree of accuracy, or the distance given by him would be very valuable as indicating what contemporary writers meant by a stadium. It is important, however, in reference to other statements of distance given by Critobulus which will be noted later.

[205] Ducas, xxxiv.

[206] Phrantzes, 234, and Barbaro, p. 2. Barbaro was a Venetian ship’s doctor who was in the city before and during the siege and who kept a diary which is simply invaluable, though for the part written day by day, internal evidence shows that it was subsequently revised after the siege. It was published in 1856.

[207] The speech of Mahomet, of which I have given the substance, can of course only be taken as a reproduction of what Critobulus had heard or possibly of what an intelligent writer who knew the Turks well thought it probable Mahomet would say. As such it is valuable. It is of course formed by Critobulus, following the example of the Greek Byzantine historians generally, on the model of those given by Thucydides and other classical authors.

[208] Barb. p. 14.

[209] Barb. p. 11.

[210] Barb., and Crit. ch. xxv.

[211] La Brocquière says this foss, on his visit, was two hundred paces long.

[212] Barbaro says that the emperor employed an Italian to place the boom in position.

[213] The present Tower of Galata was called the Tower of Christ. See Paspates, _Meletai_, p. 180.

[214] Barb. p. 25. Tetaldi states that there were nine galleys and thirty other ships (p. 25). The fact that the Turks soon found that it was impossible to take possession of the chain or to drive away the defending fleet tends to show that the Greek fleet was respectable in number of ships. On the other hand, when it became of extreme importance to send ships outside the chain to aid ships from Genoa coming to the relief of the city, the fact that none were sent out is evidence to show that no ships could be spared from the defence of the chain or that no sufficient number of galleys, triremes, or other vessels independent of wind for propulsion were at hand to take the offensive. There were probably many smaller merchant ships and boats of which no account was taken.

[215] The elder Mordtmann makes the suggestion that the Bashi-Bazouks are in this estimate excluded, and I agree with him. The same remark applies also to Philelphus who gives 60,000 foot and 20,000 horse. Other writers include all those who were present with Mahomet and thus make the number of the besiegers very much higher. Ducas’s estimate is 250,000; Montaldo’s, 240,000 (of whom 30,000 were cavalry, ch. xxvii.). Phrantzes states that 258,000 were present; Leonard the archbishop, with whom Critobulus and Thysellius agree, gives 300,000 men, while Chalcondylas increases this to 400,000.

[216] Tetaldi’s _Information de la prinse de Constantinoble_, p. 21.

[217] Leonard and others say 15,000, but the smaller estimate is in accord with many Turkish statements that the number of Janissaries was, until the time of Suliman, limited to 12,000.

[218] The connection between the Dervish order of Bektashis and the Janissaries endured as long as the Janissaries themselves, and when the latter were massacred, in June 1826, with the cry of ‘Hadji Bektash’ on their lips, the order of Bektashis was also suppressed. _Etat militaire Ottoman_, par Djavid Bey (Constantinople, 1881), and Walsh’s _Two Years in Constantinople_ (1828).

[219] Djevad, p. 55.

[220] Permission to marry was not granted to Janissaries till the time of Suliman, a century later.

[221] When, contemporaneously with the murder of the Janissaries in 1826, the Order of Bektashis was suppressed, Sultan Mahmoud assigned as a reason that jars of wine were found in the cellars of their convents stoppered with leaves of the Koran. The statement was probably false, but was intended to create the worst possible impression against the Bektashis.

[222] _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 365. La Brocquière made a careful study of the Turkish methods of fighting and of how they might be defeated by a combination of European troops among which he would have placed from England a thousand men at arms and ten thousand archers. As his visit was in 1433, it is not improbable that Agincourt was in his mind.

[223] The Turks have rarely failed in obtaining able European soldiers. Moltke was in the Turkish service. The first Napoleon narrowly escaped taking a like service. (See Von Hammer.) More recently they have had in General Von der Golz one of the ablest German soldiers.

[224] Dethier suggests that the casting of the largest gun was done at Rhegium, the present Chemejie, about twelve miles from Constantinople, and that the transport spoken of by Ducas was either of smaller ones or of the brass required for the large one (p. 991; Dethier’s notes on Z. Dolfin).

[225] Phrantzes, p. 237, gives the arrival on April 2.

[226] Critobulus, xxix., gives the description of the construction of a cannon the barrel of which was forty spans or twenty-six feet eight inches long. The bronze of which it was cast was eight inches in thickness in the barrel. Throughout half the length its bore was of a diameter of thirty inches. Throughout the other half, which contained powder, the bore was only one third of that width. The σπιθαμὴ or _palmus_ or span was in the Middle Ages, says Du Cange, eight inches long. Two stone balls still existing at Top-Hana (that is, the Cannon Khan) are forty-six inches in diameter. These would answer the description of Tetaldi, that the ball reached to his waist. A great Turkish cannon which is now in the Artillery Museum at Woolwich weighs about nineteen tons. It was cast fifteen years after the siege of Constantinople and is an excellent specimen of the great cannon of the period (_Artillery; its Progress and Present Stage_, by Commander Lloyd and A. G. Hadcock, R.E., p. 19).

[227] Crit. xxi.

[228] Barbaro.

[229] Barbaro gives the arrival on April 12. Dr. Dethier maintains that Diplokionion was at Cabatash and that subsequently to the Conquest the people and the name were transferred to Beshiktash. Barbaro says it was two Italian miles, equal to one and a third English mile, from the city, which is in accord with Dethier’s view, but in presence of Bondelmonti’s map, drawn in 1422 and given in Banduri, showing the Two Columns, and of other evidence, it is difficult to credit Dethier’s statement.

[230] Phrantzes, p. 241; Ducas gives the total number as 300, Leonard as 250, Critobulus as 350. The independent accounts of two men who had been at sea, like the French soldier Tetaldi and the Venetian Barbaro, are not far apart. The first says there were 16 to 18 galleys, the second 12. The estimate of the long boats is 60 to 80 by Tetaldi, as against 70 to 80 by Barbaro; while the transport barges or parandaria are described by one as from 16 to 20, by the other as from 20 to 25. Chalcondylas (p. 158) states that 30 triremes and 200 smaller vessels arrived from Gallipoli. Leonard says that there were 6 triremes and 10 biremes.

[231] The following illustration shows the arrangement of the boats.

A.A.A.A. represent four rowlock ports, through each of which three oars pass, in the case of a trireme, pulled by three men on the seat marked with circles. It will be noticed that the second man sits a little forward of the first, and the third of the second.

[232] _Ancient Ships_, by Mr. Cecil Torr.

[233] I have been indebted to Yule’s valuable notes on Marco Polo for his researches on the construction of ships. Unfortunately, Mr. Cecil Torr’s monograph on _Ancient Ships_ (Cambridge, 1896) does not bring their history so late down as the fifteenth century. For the period of which it treats it is simply perfect.

[234] Crit. xxv.

[235] As may be seen from the note in the Appendix on the position of the St. Romanus Gate, I believe that when Top Capou, which beyond doubt had been known as the Gate of Saint Romanus, was closed, the Pempton was generally spoken of as the St. Romanus Gate. The Italians, who had the largest share in the defence in the Lycus valley, probably ignorant of any name for the Military Gate which led from the city into the peribolos, called it by the name of the nearest Civil Gate. Hence I propose to speak of the Pempton as the Romanus Gate and of the Civil Gate crowning the seventh hill by its present Turkish name of Top Capou--that is, Cannon Gate--a name which it probably acquired by a reversal of the process which had led the Italians to speak of the Pempton as St. Romanus.

[236] Crit. xxvi.

[237] Crit. xxvi.

[238] The Greek πέρα = _trans_, over or beyond.

[239] It is usually stated that Stamboul or Istamboul is a corruption of εἰς τὴν πόλιν, though Dr. Koelle disputes this derivation and considers that it is a mere shortening of the name Constantinople by the Turks, analogous to Skender or Iskender from Alexander. Koelle’s _Tartar and Turk_.

[240] In 1204 the Venetians and Crusaders under Dandolo and Monferrat entered the city by capturing the western portion of the walls on the side of the Horn.

[241] The position of the walls and gates is fully and admirably described in Professor Van Millingen’s _Byzantine Constantinople_, who, however, does not suggest that the Pempton was the Romanus Gate of the chroniclers of the siege.

[242] This was destroyed in the time of Suliman and replaced by a mosque which is called after his daughter Miramah, though the Greeks were allowed to build a church of St. George almost alongside it.

[243] Dr. Mordtmann is my authority for this statement. See note in the Appendix on the position of the Romanus Gate.

[244] Paspates claims that there was always water in the foss during a siege, though it was of no great depth. See p. 42 of his Παλιορκία τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως. It is remarkable, however, that no mention is made of water by the contemporary writers on the last siege.

[245] _Byzantine Constantinople_, p. 86.

[246] Barbaro describes it as the place ‘dove che sun la più debel porta de tuta la tera,’ p. 21. The weakest gate he calls ‘San Romano.’

[247] Quite a considerable number of towers in the Outer Wall bear inscriptions showing that they were repaired after the Turkish siege of 1422.

[248] P. 159.

[249] ‘Antemurale solum urbis vallumque sat videbatur tutari posse,’ p. 93. ‘Operosa autem protegendi vallum et antemurale nostris fuit cura,’ p. 95.

[250] Dethier argues that it was not. The Italians who were present in the city complain that the Greeks showed a want of patriotism in not being ready to give all their wealth for the defence of the empire. But the complaint is supported by very slight evidence. The Superior of the Franciscans (Dethier’s _Siege of Constantinople_, p. 490) says that the city was lost through the avarice of the Greeks, because they would not consent to pay its defenders. He instances the case of a woman who had jewels and money of the value of 150,000 ducats, and of a man whose wealth in moveables amounted to 80,000 ducats. Jagarus and Neophytus, who are mentioned by Leonard, had been charged with the repairs of the walls, for which money had been given them, but, according to him, had misappropriated it. When the city was captured, 70,000 gold pieces were discovered by the Turks. But it is noteworthy that Phrantzes, who was in a better condition to know the truth in such a matter, has nothing but praise for Jagarus (p. 225). The statement of Leonard regarding them is examined by Dethier, who suggests that the sentence regarding the finding of the coin is due to the incorporation of a marginal note. Zorzo Dolfin, whose narrative is largely copied from Leonard, gives a somewhat different version.

As stated on the preceding page, the inscriptions on the Outer Wall still show that many towers had been repaired in the interval between Murad’s siege and that of Mahomet, and two inscriptions at least, which may perhaps be taken as intended to apply to all the towers so repaired, bear the name of Jagarus himself. (Professor Van Millingen, p. 108, and Dethier’s notes on Leonard, 593–5.)

[251] Riccherio (often quoted as Sansovino, who was the editor of Riccherio and has written a bright account of the conquest) says, ‘La speranza della difesa era tutta nel antimuro.’ (Dethier’s _Siege_, p. 955.)

[252] Chalcondylas, p. 95, Ven. edition.

[253] _Ibid._ p. 159.

[254] Crit. xxviii., and Barbaro.

[255] Ch. xxvii.

[256] See Note in Appendix claiming that during the siege the Pempton was usually called the Gate of St. Romanus.

[257] Pusculus also gives these three places, but with the difference that he mistakes the Second Military Gate for the Third.

[258] Barb. p. 21.

[259] Phr. 242–47.

[260] Dolfin, p. 994.

[261] παρὰ τὰ πλάγια.

[262] See Prof. Van Millingen, 85–92. Barbaro states that the cannon were stationed at four places: opposite the Pegè Gate, by which he means the Third Military Gate (Triton); opposite the Palace, by which he probably means in the angle now occupied by the Greek cemetery opposite the Palace of Porphyrogenitus or Tekfour Serai; opposite the Cresu Gate, probably the Chariseus or Adrianople Gate, and opposite the Romanus Gate. Philelphus also mentions the Pegè Gate as one of the chief places of attack (ii. 809).

[263] Pusculus gives fourteen palms as the circumference; Phrantzes and Critobulus, twelve; while Barbaro gives thirteen to fourteen.

[264] P. 241, κοσμικούς τε καὶ μοναχούς.

[265] See _ante_, p. 193.

[266] Crit. xxv.

[267] ὅπου καὶ ἐν ἐκείνοις τοῖς μέρεσιν ἡ πόλις ἦν ἐπικίνδυνος. Phrantzes, p. 253.

[268] P. 1013. The _locus arduus_ of the Myriandrion is the highest site of the city walls. Professor Van Millingen makes it identical with the Mesoteichion (p. 85), but Critobulus distinguishes between the two places (ch. xxvi.).

[269] Leonard; but Phrantzes says, p. 253, that Manuel, a Genoese, was in command at the Golden Gate.

[270] See Professor Van Millingen as to position of this gate, pp. 230–234. There were probably two Imperial Gates on the Golden Horn.

[271] According to Pusculus, Trevisano was from the first at Aivan Serai, the extreme west of the walls on the Horn and close to the Xyloporta.

[272] Barbaro, p. 19.

[273] Phrantzes states that the reserve was under Cantacuzenus and Nicephorus Palaeologus, and that the Grand Duke was in charge of the region from the Petrion to the Gate of St. Theodosia.

[274] Leonard’s account hardly varies from that of Phrantzes and others, except that, with his strong religious prejudices, he prefers to name foreigners rather than Greeks. The distributions of the defenders of the city given by Zorzi Dolfin and Pusculus do vary, however, from those given by Phrantzes and Barbaro. These differences are set out in Dr. Mordtman’s _Esquisse Topographique_, p. 23. See also Krause’s _Eroberungen von Constantinopel_, p. 169.

[275] Dethier’s _Siege_, p. 110. Chalcondylas says that it was found that the big gun of the Greeks did more damage to them by its recoil than to the enemy.

[276] Crit. xvii. The word _machine_ is usually used by contemporary writers to designate a cannon, though here, as elsewhere, it may be employed in a general sense. What is certain is that such cannon as the Greeks possessed were few in number and of small value.

[277] _Isidori Lamentatio_, p. 676; also Christoforo Riccherio, Sansovin, p. 957: both in Dethier’s _Siege_.

[278] P. 369.

[279] P. 145. Boutell’s _Arms and Armour_.

[280] La Brocquière, p. 361, where five forts on the Save are described as well furnished with artillery. He particularly notices three brass cannon.

[281] There are still the remains of two towers in Prinkipo. I fix upon the one near the ruined monastery opposite the island of Antirobithos as the place of attack, with some hesitation. The account is given by Critobulus, xxxiii.

[282] Crit. xxxiv.

[283] Ducas says four, but he is at variance with Leonard, Barbaro, and Phrantzes, and wrote his account from hearsay years afterwards.

[284] Crit. xxxix.

[285] Phrantzes; though Ducas says from Morea.

[286] Ducas, p. 121, and Crit. xxxix.

[287] ‘Come homini volonteroxi de aver victoria contra el suo inimigod’ (p. 28).

[288] Ducas, p. 121, says, to pass τὸν Μεγαδημήτριον τὸν ἀκρόπολιν. The tower stood near Seraglio Point; Dr. Mordtmann places it on the Golden Horn side, while Paspates, in Τὰ Βυζαντινὰ Ἀνάκτορα, p. 37, thought he had identified the foundations just beyond the bridge crossing the railway line to the Imperial Treasury. To have been a conspicuous landmark for ships steering from the Marmora to the harbour, as it is represented to have been, the church must have been very lofty if in the position adopted by Dr. Mordtmann.

[289] Pusculus, 385, Book iv.

[290] Barbaro says, ‘Quando queste quatro naves fo per mezo la zitade de Constantinopli subito el vento i bonazò’ (p. 23).

[291] Pusculus iv. v. 415: ‘Deserit illic ventus eas; cecidere sinus sub moenibus arcis.’

[292] Barbaro, p. 24.

[293] I doubt whether Greek fire was so much used as it is usually asserted to have been. It was always dangerous to those who used it. When employed by the Byzantine ships it caused great damage and still greater alarm. I agree with Krause that it was very rarely employed. See _Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters_, by J. H. Krause; Halle, 1869.

[294] Pusculus, iv. 340.

[295] Phrantzes.

[296] Gyllius mentions this foreshore as existing in his time, gives its width, and vividly describes how it was utilised and increased by the inhabitants of Galata (book iv. ch. 10). In digging for the foundations of the British post office in Galata in 1895, on a site that is now upwards of a hundred yards from the water, remains of an old wooden jetty were discovered. Indeed, I think it highly probable that in 1453 the whole of what is now the main street of Galata from the bridge to Tophana was under water.

[297] Pusculus, 247.

[298] Crit. xli.

[299] Barbaro, p. 24, and Phrantzes.

[300] According to Ducas, Mahomet himself inflicted the blows: an absurd statement.

[301] Ducas, 121; Leonard, Phrantzes, and Nicolo Barbaro.

[302] Hunyadi, according to Phrantzes (p. 327), asked that Silivria or Mesembria, on the bay of Bourgas, should be given to him as the price of his aid, and Phrantzes declares that the emperor ceded the latter place, he himself having written the Golden Bull making the cession. He adds also that the king of Catalonia stipulated for Lemnos as the price of his aid. But no aid came from either.

[303] Barbaro, under April 21; Phrantzes, 246. The tower is called by Leonard Bactatanea. He afterwards writes of the breach near it as being in the Murus Bacchatureus. See, as to its situation, Professor van Millingen’s _Byzantine Constantinople_, pp. 86, 87.

[304] As the only church in the neighbourhood of the place defended by Justiniani was that of St Kyriakè near the Pempton, the information is valuable as helping to fix the locality where the great gun was stationed. The Moscovite, ch. vii.

[305] The Moscovite, ch. vii., in Dethier’s _Siege_; Barbaro, p. 27; Crit.

[306] _Zarabotane._

[307] Barbaro, p. 27. The account of the fight given by Pusculus is very full and spirited. See note in Appendix as to the question where the naval fight took place.

[308] In 1203 the Crusaders and Venetians had forced the boom tower on the Galata side and loosed the chain; but it was then outside the city walls. In the time of Cantacuzenus, Galata had been enlarged so that the end of the chain was quite safe unless Galata were taken. The walls terminated, as may still be seen by the remaining towers, near Tophana.

[309] Leonard, and Sauli’s _Colonia dei Genovesi in Galata_, p. 158. Other similar instances are cited by contemporaries, but it is not necessary to suppose that Mahomet had ever heard either of the fable of Caesar’s attack upon Antony and Cleopatra or of a like feat performed by Xerxes. The Avars had made a crossing similar to that contemplated by Mahomet. The transport of the imperial fleet into Lake Ascanius in order to take possession of Nicaea in 1097 might possibly have been known to him.

[310] Λοιπὸν ὁ ἀμερᾶς τὰς τριήρεις φέρας ἐν μίᾳ νυκτί, ἐν τῷ λιμένι τῷ πρωῒ ηὑρέθησαν: Phrantzes, 251.

[311] Dethier places them on a small plateau now occupied by the English Memorial Church. [_Note on_ Pusculus, book iv. line 482. Professor van Millingen (p. 231), in discussing the question of the position of St. Theodore, suggests that the sultan’s battery stood nearer the Bosporus than the present Italian Hospital. This suggestion is not necessarily at variance with the position indicated by Dethier.]

[312] Philelphus, book ii. line 976: ‘Genuae tunc clara juventus obstupuit.’ Ducas, however, states that the Genoese claimed to have known of the proposed transport and to have allowed it out of friendship to Mahomet.

[313] ‘Et hic quidem in superiori parte per montem navigia transportavit ... in litore stabant milites parati propulsare hostes bombardis, si accederent prohibituri deducere naves.’ Chalcondylas,