Part 39

“Among the Greeks all authority and wisdom were overborne by the impetuous multitude, who mistook their rage for valour, their numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and inspiration of Heaven. In the eyes of both nations Alexius was false and contemptible: the base and spurious race of the Angeli was rejected with clamorous disdain; and the people of Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at their hands a more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by his birth or dignity, they successively presented the purple,--by each senator the deadly garment was repulsed; the contest lasted three days, and we may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the members of the assembly, that fear and weakness were the guardians of their loyalty. A phantom, who vanished in oblivion, was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd; but the author of the tumult and the leader of the war was a prince of the house of Ducas, and his common appellation of Alexius must be discriminated by the epithet of Mourzoufle, which in the vulgar idiom expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy eyebrows. At once a patriot and a courtier, the perfidious Mourzoufle, who was not destitute of cunning and courage, opposed the Latins both in speech and action, inflamed the passions and prejudices of the Greeks, and insinuated himself into the confidence and favour of Alexius, who trusted him with the office of great chamberlain, and tinged his buskins with the colours of royalty. At the dead of night he rushed into the bedchamber with an affrighted aspect, exclaiming that the palace was attacked by the people and betrayed by the guards. Starting from his couch, the unsuspecting prince threw himself into the arms of his enemy, who had contrived his escape by a private staircase. But that staircase terminated in a prison. Alexius was seized, stripped, and loaded with chains, and after tasting some days the bitterness of death, he was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten with clubs, at the command or in the presence of the tyrant. The emperor Isaac Angelus soon followed his son to the grave, and Mourzoufle, perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime of hastening the extinction of impotence and blindness.

“The death of the emperors and the usurpation of Mourzoufle had changed the nature of the quarrel. It was no longer the disagreement of allies who overvalued their services, or neglected their obligations; the French and Venetians forgot their complaints against Alexius, dropped a tear on the untimely fate of their companion, and swore revenge against the perfidious nation which had crowned his assassin. Yet the prudent doge was still inclined to negotiate; he demanded as a debt, a subsidy, or a fine, fifty thousand pounds of gold,--about two millions sterling; nor would the conference have been abruptly broken, if the zeal or policy of Mourzoufle had not refused to sacrifice the Greek church to the safety of the state. Amidst the invectives of his foreign and domestic enemies, we may discover that he was not unworthy of the character which he had assumed, of the public champion. The second siege of Constantinople was far more laborious than the first; the treasury was replenished, and discipline was restored by a severe inquisition into the abuses of the former reign; and Mourzoufle, an iron mace in his hand, visiting the posts, and affecting the port and aspect of a warrior, was an object of terror to his soldiers, at least, and to his kinsmen. Before and after the death of Alexius, the Greeks made two vigorous and well-conducted attempts to burn the navy in the harbour; but the skill and courage of the Venetians repulsed the fire-ships; and the vagrant flames wasted themselves without injury in the sea. In a nocturnal sally, the Greek emperor was vanquished by Henry, brother of the count of Flanders; the advantages of number and surprise aggravated the shame of his defeat; his buckler was found on the field of battle; and the imperial standard, a divine image of the Virgin, was presented as a trophy and a relic to the Cistercian monks, the disciples of St. Bernard. Near three months, without excepting the holy season of Lent, were consumed in skirmishes and preparations, before the Latins were ready or resolved for a general attack. The land fortifications had been found impregnable; and the Venetian pilots represented that on the shore of the Propontis the anchorage was unsafe, and the ships must be driven by the current far away to the straits of the Hellespont; a prospect not unpleasing to the reluctant pilgrims, who sought every opportunity of breaking the army. From the harbour, therefore, the assault was determined by the assailants, and expected by the besieged; and the emperor had placed his scarlet pavilions on a neighbouring height, to direct and animate the efforts of his troops. A fearless spectator, whose mind could entertain the idea of pomp and pleasure, might have admired the long array of two embattled armies, which extended above half a league, the one on the ships and galleys, the other on the walls and towers raised above the ordinary level by several stages of wooden turrets. Their first fury was spent in the discharge of darts, stones, and fire from the engines; but the water was deep; the French were bold; the Venetians were skilful; they approached the walls; and a desperate conflict of swords, spears, and battle-axes was fought on the trembling bridges that grappled the floating to the stable batteries. In more than a hundred places the assault was urged, and the defence was sustained, till the superiority of ground and numbers finally prevailed, and the Latin trumpets sounded a retreat. On the ensuing days the attack was renewed with equal vigour, and a similar event; and in the night the doge and the barons held a council, apprehensive only for the public danger; not a voice pronounced the words of escape or treaty; and each warrior, according to his temper, embraced the hope of victory, or the assurance of a glorious death. By the experience of the former siege the Greeks were instructed, but the Latins were animated; and the knowledge that Constantinople might be taken was of more avail than the local precautions which that knowledge had inspired for its defence. In the third assault, two ships were linked together, to double their strength; a strong north wind drove them on the shore; the bishops of Troyes and Soissons led the van; and the auspicious names of the _Pilgrim_ and the _Paradise_ resounded along the line. The episcopal banners were displayed on the walls; a hundred marks of silver had been promised to the first adventurers; and if their reward was intercepted by death, their names have been immortalized by fame. Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst open, and the French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt themselves invincible on horseback, on the solid ground. Shall I relate that the thousands who guarded the emperor’s person fled on the approach and before the lance of a single warrior? Their ignominious flight is attested by their countryman Nicetas: an army of phantoms marched with the French hero, and he was magnified to a giant in the eyes of the Greeks. While the fugitives deserted their posts and cast away their arms, the Latins entered the city under the banners of their leaders: the streets and gates opened for their passage; and either design or accident kindled a third conflagration, which consumed in a few hours the measure of three of the largest cities of France. In the close of the evening, the barons checked their troops and fortified their stations; they were awed by the extent and populousness of the capital, which might yet require the labour of a month, if the churches and palaces were conscious of their internal strength. But in the morning, a suppliant procession, with crosses and images, announced the submission of the Greeks, and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors; the usurper escaped through the Golden gate: the palaces of Blachernæ and Boucoleon were occupied by the count of Flanders and the marquis of Montferrat; and the empire, which still bore the name of Constantine, and the title of Roman, was subverted by the arms of the Latin pilgrims.”

We have not space, nor perhaps is it our province, to detail the awful results to Constantinople of this success of the barbarians, for such, notwithstanding our prejudices in favour of the western warriors, were the daring band who had, like pirates, made themselves masters of this magnificent city. No fact in history is better proved than the state of ignorant vandalism of the _pilgrims_, as the great historian so falsely or ironically calls them. By whatever means they had been gathered together, for whatever purposes they might be intended, or whatever vile passions they gratified, Constantinople, when taken by the Franks and the Venetians, was the most glorious emporium of objects of high art and fine taste the world had ever seen. With the conquerors nothing was valuable but money, and to obtain this all was sacrificed: precious works of art were melted for the sake of the metals they were made of; others were mutilated to facilitate division, and numberless others were destroyed in hopes of finding treasures concealed within them. No building was held sacred that would pay for the demolition; no object remained in the place with which it was naturally associated, if it was of the smallest value elsewhere. We read with horror of the destruction of great cities and holy places by the followers of Mahomet: no Mussulmans ever exceeded in barbarous ignorance or cruel cupidity the band of adventurers who plundered the treasures of ages in the sack of Constantinople. Great historians have run riot in the descriptions of these treasures; and so interesting are they, that it is with the utmost reluctance we turn from them without further notice. “Behold!” cries the justly exasperated historian Nicetas, “behold what you have done! contemplate your exploits! you who term the Greeks vile, and the Saracens barbarous! These barbarians have never behaved towards your compatriots in this manner. They have neither violated the women of the Latins, nor devoured their riches, nor stained the holy sepulchre with horror and carnage. You boasting talkers, you display the cross upon your shoulders, and you, at all times, are ready to trample it under foot for a little paltry gold and silver.” Tired rather than satisfied with plunder, the conquerors proceeded to the election of an emperor: Baldwin I. was crowned in the year 1204. This new domination only lasted fifty-seven years, under the name of the empire of the Latins. Under Baldwin II., brother of Robert de Courtenay, the Greeks revolted, drove out the Franks in 1261, and gave themselves and the throne to Michael Palæologus, whose posterity reigned up to the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II.

FIFTH SIEGE, A.D. 1453.

We come now to what some historians have termed the greatest event of a period the most surprisingly conspicuous in the history of mankind. We agree with them that the subversion of the Christian empire of Constantinople by the Turks was a _great_ event, but not the _greatest_: the invention of printing, the discovery of America, and the commencement of the Reformation belong to the same half-century; and either of these we conceive to be of much more importance than whether Constantinople should be under such degraded Christians as the Greeks, or be subjected to the worshippers of the Prophet of Mecca.

Constantinople no longer preserved anything but the proud remembrance of its ancient splendour. In that capital, once so flourishing and so respected, there still breathed an immense population; but that multitude, without force or without courage, seemed only to be waiting to crouch willingly under the strong hand that might be held forth to enchain them. Frivolous acquirements, agreeable arts, preferred by indolence and effeminacy to the exercise of essential duties or useful labours, had annihilated love of country, and dried up the springs of life of this unfortunate empire. They wrote and they disputed: questions of philosophy and theological quarrels were the sole concerns of the lazy citizens, who had never stood in such pressing need of providing for their own safety. Instead of being the heart of an empire, the walls of Constantinople had become frontiers; it had no dominions beyond them. The enemy appeared at their gates: during the eight hundred years that Mahometanism had progressed, the city had often been threatened, and in vain; but the harvest was now ripe, the time was come, and the sickle, in the hands of Mahomet II., was employed in earnest workmanlike fashion. He began by constructing the castle of the Dardanelles on the Bosphorus. Constantine Palæologus, who then reigned, in vain was anxious to prevent this: his own subjects thwarted his correct views; their presumption equalled their blindness; they boasted that they could destroy that fortress the moment it was any annoyance to them. Constantine is an exemplification of the proverb, that it is not the last step of a journey that creates the fatigue, nor the last ruler of an empire that brings about its ruin: few of the predecessors of the emperor had better qualities than he displayed in circumstances of great emergency; and had they all been like him, those circumstances would never have occurred. The subversion of the empire was not due to the doctrines of Mahomet or the valour of their followers--it was an internal decay, produced by the vices and weaknesses of ages.

Five or six thousand men, taken from the very dregs of the people, composed the national force, which was augmented by a few European troops, under Justinian, a Genoese. These were the only resource of a city inhabited by men incapable of defending themselves, and who trusted entirely to a few mercenary strangers, who still deigned to protect them. All the Greeks individually boasted of their country and its fame; and yet not one of them would have sacrificed to its welfare his pleasures, his luxuries, his comforts, _or his opinions_. Threatened by the most frightful of misfortunes, they awaited the fatal blow with an insensible stupidity, like the animals who still continue feeding at the foot of the altar which is about to be stained with their blood. The emperor tried to induce them to contribute a portion of their riches to the defence of the state: but he could obtain nothing. In times of prosperity, princes had levied tributes destined solely to swell their treasury or to be wasted in superfluities. The people, plundered without occasion, had unfortunately learnt to confound the abuse of authority with the real wants of a government. As long as the supreme power could make itself respected, it dared to require all: it was no longer feared--everything was denied to it. In this case the solitary virtue of Constantine was powerless--the corruption was deep and universal--a Hercules could not have cleansed the Augæan stable; and, though endowed with many good qualities, Constantine was not a Hercules. Palæologus and his courtiers favoured, at least in appearance, the union of the two churches of the East and West. The holy father promised to send some galleys and troops. The Greeks still further flattered themselves that the exhortations of the pontiff would prevail upon the Christian princes to undertake a crusade: that was their last hope. Cardinal Isidore came to Constantinople as legate from the Holy See. He celebrated divine service in the church of St. Sophia, according to the liturgy of Rome. This threw the whole city into a state of alarm. The people flocked in crowds to the retreat of the monk Gennadius, to consult with him what was to be done. The solitary affixed his reply to the door of his cell. He declared in this document that the agreement drawn up at Florence was not orthodox. He at the same time announced the greatest misfortunes to those who should adopt the _impious_ reconciliation of the Greeks with the Latins. Immediately the devotees, the nuns who were under the direction of Gennadius, the abbots, the priests, the citizens, the soldiers--for the contagion spread to all orders--joined in one unanimous anathema! The church of St. Sophia was considered a defiled place. Communication with the Latins ceased: they would prefer, they said, to see the turban of Mahomet displayed, to the appearance of the Roman purple, or the cardinal’s hat.

But now the sultan, having employed two years in preparations, marched towards Constantinople at the head of an army of four hundred thousand men. This fearful multitude was composed, for the most part, of newly-conquered nations, which he dragged after him. Out of all these he had not more than thirty thousand horse and sixty thousand foot of disciplined troops. The rest were nothing but a collection of slaves, torn by force from the places of their birth, without arms and almost naked, who were obliged to be driven to the combat by strokes of the whip or the scimitar. In all battles they were placed in front, in order to fatigue the enemy with the shedding of blood: the regular reserved troops were then to take advantage of their exhaustion; in sieges they served as fascines, to fill up ditches. Such was the manner of fighting with the Turks, so that when they came in contact with the Christians, it was generally remarked they had the disadvantage at the commencement of a battle, but won it at last.

Whilst Mahomet was investing Constantinople by land, his fleet, consisting of two hundred and fifty sail, advanced to the Dardanelles. This prodigious number of vessels could not, however, prevent four ships from the isle of Chio, after having fought for a whole day against the united strength of the Ottoman, and killed a thousand of their men, from entering the port of Constantinople, and there landing a few troops and some provisions. Enormous iron chains barred the entrance of the Turkish ships. It is affirmed that Mahomet, to surmount this obstacle, had recourse to an expedient till that time unheard of, and which has never been repeated since: he transported by land eighty galleys in the course of one night, and at daybreak launched them into the interior of the basin of the port, before the eyes of the besieged, terrified and astonished at this extraordinary spectacle. The manner in which this transportation was effected, which savours of the marvellous, proves to what an extent the conqueror carried his despotism, and could overcome difficulty by his mere will. The vessels were drawn, by means of machines and human arms, along planks thoroughly greased, which covered a space of road two leagues in length. The sultan had at his command the most skilful engineers of Europe and Asia. The progress of these vessels offered a most curious exhibition. They were commanded by pilots, had their sails unfurled as if upon the sea, and advanced over a hilly piece of ground, by the light of torches and flambeaux, and to the sound of trumpets and clarions, without the Genoese, who inhabited Galata, daring to offer any opposition to the passage. The Greeks, fully occupied in guarding their ramparts, had no suspicion of the design of the enemy. They could not comprehend what could be the object or the cause of all the tumult that was heard during the whole night from the sea-shore, till at dawn they beheld the Mussulman standards flying in their port.

A Hungarian, who had not been able to procure employment among the Greeks, founded for Mahomet some pieces of artillery that would carry balls weighing two hundred pounds. A modern author judiciously observes that each of these balls would have required nearly a hundred pounds of powder, of which only a fifteenth part would have taken fire at the moment of the explosion. These enormous pieces of ordnance appeared more formidable than they really were. The use of artillery fired by gunpowder was not more than a hundred years old; and, with a true Eastern imagination, Mahomet II. wished to have the largest and most powerful cannon that had ever been made. He was satisfied with the answer to the first question he put to the Hungarian artist. “Am I able to cast a cannon capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient size to batter the walls of Constantinople?”--“I am not ignorant of their strength, but were they more solid than those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine of superior power: the position and management of that engine must be left to your engineers.” On this assurance a foundry was established at Adrianople. An enormous piece of ordnance was produced within three months; its bore was twelve palms, and it was capable of throwing a ball or stone weighing six hundred pounds. It was tried in a vacant place before the new palace of Adrianople; but notice of its being fired was obliged to be published on the preceding day, to prevent the effects of astonishment and fear. The explosion is said to have been heard over a circuit of a hundred furlongs; the ball was cast by the gunpowder above a mile, and when it fell it buried itself a fathom deep in the ground. To convey this cannon, thirty waggons were linked together, and it was drawn by a team of sixty horses: two hundred men walked by the sides of it, to poise it and keep it steady; two hundred and fifty men went before, to level the way and repair the bridges; and it required two months to draw it a distance of one hundred and fifty miles.

The Turks, masters of the port, established batteries on the side next the sea, whilst the army pressed the city on the land side. They employed trenches, mines, and countermines. The besieged, who defended themselves with some spirit at first, repaired the breaches with incredible diligence. They even made some successful sorties. The hopes of being succoured by Huniades supported them for some time. Mahomet began to relax in his efforts; it is even said that he had thoughts of raising the siege. At length, however, he resolved to make one more attempt. Before he proceeded to the general assault, he proposed to Constantine to leave him the Peloponnesus, upon condition of his giving up the imperial city. He was anxious, he said, to prevent the destruction of Constantinople. The emperor replied he would rather be buried beneath the ruins of his capital. Both Christians and Mahometans prepared themselves, by fast and prayer, for the action of that morrow which was to decide the fate of the two empires. It was the 29th of May. On the evening before, Mahomet gave notice that he should abandon the plunder of the city to his soldiers, only strictly commanding that they should not set fire to any of the edifices.