Chapter 19

From the days of the Emperor Heraclius the Byzantine Empire had been most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession. Five dynasties--the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and Comnenian families--enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four generations. The imperial house of Comnenius, though its direct line in male descent had expired with Andronicus I. (1185), had been perpetuated by marriage in the female line, and had survived the exile from Constantinople, in the persons of the descendants of Theodore Lascaris.

Michael Palæologus, who, through his mother, might claim perhaps a prior right to the throne of the Comnenii, usurped the imperial dignity on the recovery of Constantinople, cruelly blinded the young Emperor John, the legitimate heir of Theodore Lascaris, and reigned until 1282. His career of authority was notable for an attempt to unite the Greek and Roman churches--a union which was dissolved in 1283--and his instigation of the revolt in Sicily, which ended in the famous Sicilian Vespers (March 30, 1282), when 8,000 French were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre.

He saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion and blood. From these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son, Andronicus the Elder (1282-1332). Thousands of Genoese and Catalans, released from the wars that Michael had aroused in the West, took service under his successor against the Turks. Other mercenaries flocked to their standard, and, under the name of the Great Company, they subverted the authority of the emperor, defeated his troops, laid waste his territory, united themselves with his enemies, and, finally, abandoning the banks of the Hellespont, marched into Greece. Here they overthrew the remnant of the Latin power, and for fourteen years (1311-1326) the Great Company was the terror of the Grecian states.

Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignity of the house of Arragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens as a government or an appanage was successfully bestowed by the kings of Sicily. Conquered in turn by the French and Catalans, Athens at length became the capital of a state that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly, and was ruled by the family of Accaioli, plebeians of Florence (1384-1456). The last duke of this dynasty was strangled by Mahomet II., who educated his sons in the discipline of the seraglio.

During the reign of John Palæologus, son of Andronicus the Younger, which began in 1355, the eastern empire was nearly subverted by the Genoese. On the return of the legitimate sovereign to Constantinople, the Genoese, who had established their factories and industries in the suburb of Galata, or Pera, were allowed to remain. During the civil wars the Genoese forces took advantage of the disunion of the Greeks, and by the skilful use of their power exacted a treaty by which they were granted a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominions. The Roman Empire (I smile in transcribing the name) might soon have sunk into a province of Genoa if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that of conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital and navigated the Euxine till it was involved by the Turks in the final servitude of Constantinople itself.

_III.--End of the Roman World_

Only three more sovereigns ruled the remnants of the Roman world after the reign of John Palæologus, but the final downfall of the empire was delayed above fifty years by a series of events that had sapped the strength of the Mahometan empire. The rise and triumph of the Moguls and Tartars under their emperors, descendants of Zingis Khan, had shaken the globe from China to Poland and Greece (1206-1304). The sultans were overthrown, and in the general disorder of the Mahometan world a veteran and adventurous army, which included many Turkoman hordes, was dissolved into factions who, under various chiefs, lived a life of rapine and plunder. Some of these engaged in the service of Aladin (1219-1236), Sultan of Iconium, and among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line.

Orchan ruled from 1326 to 1360, achieved the conquest of Bithynia, and first led the Turks into Europe, and in 1353 established himself in the Chersonesus, and occupied Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont. Orchan was succeeded by Amurath I. (1389-1403). Bajazet carried his victorious arms from the Danube to the Euphrates, and the Roman world became contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth, a space of ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains of Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and populousness of a kingdom.

Under Manuel (1391-1425), the son and successor of John Palteologus, Constantinople would have fallen before the might of the Sultan Bajazet had not the Turkish Empire been oppressed by the revival of the Mogul power under the victorious Timour, or Tamerlane. After achieving a conquest of Persia (1380-1393), of Tartary (1370-1383), and Hindustan (1398-1399), Timour, who aspired to the monarchy of the world, found himself at length face to face with the Sultan Bajazet. Bajazet was taken prisoner in the war that followed. Kept, probably only as a precaution, in an iron cage, Bajazet attended the marches of his conqueror, and died on March 9, 1403. Two years later, Timour also passed away on the road to China. Of his empire to-day nothing remains. Since the reign of his descendant Aurungzebe, his empire has been dissolved (1659-1707); the treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the riches of their kingdom is now possessed by the Christians of a remote island in the northern ocean.

Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. The massive trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away than it again rose with fresh vigour and more lively vegetation. After a period of civil war between the sons of Bajazet (1403-1421), the Ottoman Empire was once more firmly established by his grandson, Amurath II. (1421-1451).

One of the first expeditions undertaken by the new sultan was the siege of Constantinople (1422), but the fortune rather than the genius of the Emperor Manuel prevented the attempt. Amurath was recalled to Asia by a domestic revolt, and the siege was raised.

While the sultan led his Janizaries to new conquests, the Byzantine Empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years. Manuel sank into the grave, and John Palæologus II. (1425-1448) was permitted to reign for an annual tribute of 300,000 aspers and the dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the suburbs of Constantinople.

On November 1, 1448, Constantine, the last of the Roman emperors, assumed the purple of the Cæsars. For three years he was allowed to indulge himself in various private and public designs, the completion of which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire.

_IV.--The Great Siege of Constantinople_

Mahomet II. succeeded his father Amurath on February 9, 1451. His hostile designs against the capital were immediately seen in the building of a fortress on the Bosphorus, which commanded the source whence the city drew her supplies. In the following year a quarrel between some Greeks and Turks gave him the excuse of declaring war. His cannon--for the use of gunpowder, for some time the monopoly of the Christian world, had been betrayed to Amurath by the Genoese--commanded the port, and a tribute was exacted from all ships that entered the harbour. But the actual siege was delayed until the ensuing spring of 1453.

Mahomet, in person, surveyed the city, encouraged his soldiers, and discussed with his generals and engineers the best means of making the assault. By his orders a huge cannon was built in Hadrianople. It fired a ball one mile, and to convey it to its position before the walls, a team of sixty oxen and the assistance of 200 men were employed. The Emperor Constantine, unable to excite the sympathy of Europe, attempted the best defence of which he was capable, with a force of 4,970 Romans and 2,000 Genoese. A chain was drawn across the mouth of the harbour, and whatever supplies arrived from Candia and the Black Sea were detained for the public service.

The siege of Constantinople, in which scarcely 7,000 soldiers had to defend a city sixteen miles in extent against the powers of the Ottoman Empire, commenced on April 6, 1453. The last Constantine deserves the name of a hero; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue, and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the Western chivalry. But their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. Their ordnance was not powerful either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion.

The great cannon of Mahomet could only be fired seven times in one day, but the weight and repetition of the shots made some impression on the walls. The Turks rushed to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm and to build a road to the assault. In the attack, as well as in the defence, ancient and modern artillery was employed. Cannon and mechanical engines, the bullet and the battering-ram, gunpowder and Greek fire, were engaged on both sides.

Christendom watched the struggle with coldness and apathy. Four ships, which successfully forced an entrance into the harbour, were the limit of their assistance. None the less, Mahomet meditated a retreat. Unless the city could be attacked from the harbour, its reduction appeared to be hopeless. In this perplexity the genius of Mahomet executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast. He transported his fleet over land for ten miles. In the course of one night four-score light galleys and brigantines painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and were launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. A bridge, or mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. The galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert the fate of the capital.

On Monday, May 28, preparations were made for the final assault. Mahomet had inspired his soldiers with the hope of rewards in this world and the next. His camp re-echoed with the shouts of "God is God; there is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God"; and the sea and land, from Galata to the Seven Towers, were illuminated with the blaze of the Moslem fires.

Far different was the state of the Christians. On that last night of the Roman Empire, Constantine Palæologus, in his palace, addressed the noblest of the Greeks and the bravest of the allies on the duties and dangers that lay before them. It was the funeral oration of the Roman Empire. That same night the emperor and some faithful companions entered the Dome of St. Sofia, which, within a few hours, was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the sacrament of the Holy Communion. He reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations, solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured, and mounted on horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Cæsars.

At daybreak on May 29 the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land. For two hours the Greeks maintained the defence with advantage, and the voice of the emperor was heard encouraging the soldiers to achieve by a last effort the deliverance of their country. The new and fresh forces of the Turks supplied the places of their wearied associates. From all sides the attack was pressed.

The number of the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps one hundred, times superior to that of the Christians, the double walls were reduced by the cannons to a heap of ruins, and at last one point was found which the besiegers could penetrate. Hasan, the Janizary, of gigantic stature and strength, ascended the outward fortification. The walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks, and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes.

Amidst these multitudes, the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen and finally lost. His mournful exclamation was heard, "Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?" and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple. Amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain.

After his death, resistance and order were no more. Two thousand Greeks were put to the sword, and more would have perished had not avarice soon prevailed over cruelty.

It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet II. Sixty thousand Greeks were driven through the streets like cattle and sold as slaves. The nuns were torn from the monasteries and compelled to enter the harems of their conquerors. The churches were plundered, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments of St. Sofia were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind.

The cathedral itself, despoiled of its images and ornaments, was converted into a mosque, and Mahomet II. performed the _namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving at the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. The body of Constantine was discovered under a heap of slain, by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes, and after exposing the bloody trophy, Mahomet bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. Constantinople, desolated by bloodshed, was re-peopled and re-adorned by Mahomet. Its churches were shared between the two religions, and the Greeks were attracted back to their ancient capital by the assurance of their lives and the free exercise of their religion.

The grief and terror of Europe when the fall of Constantinople became known revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades. Pius II. attempted to lead Christendom against the Turks, but on the very day on which he embarked his forces drew back, and he was compelled to abandon the attempt. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks put an end to all thoughts of a crusade, and the general consternation was only allayed by the death of Mahomet II. in the fifty-first year of his age.

His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy; he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour, and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the New and the Ancient Rome.

* * * * *

FRANÇOIS GUIZOT

History of Civilisation in Europe

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French historian and statesman, was born of Huguenot parents at Nimes on October 4, 1787. The liberal opinions of his family did not save his father from the guillotine in 1794, and the mother fled to Geneva, where Guizot was educated. He went to Paris in the later days of the Empire, and engaged himself at once in literature and politics. His lectures on the History of Civilisation delivered in 1828, 1829, and 1830, during his professorship at the University of Paris, revealed him as a historian with a rare capacity for mastering the broad essential truths of history, co-ordinating them, and expounding them with vigour and impressiveness. His first series of lectures was on "The History of Civilisation in Europe," a masterly abstract of a colossal subject; the second on "The History of Civilisation in France." From 1830 to 1848 Guizot occupied high offices of State, ultimately becoming prime minister; in 1848, like his master Louis Philippe, he had to fly the country. He died on September 12, 1874.

_I.--The Nature of Civilisation_

The subject I propose to consider is the civilisation of Europe--its origins, its progress, its aims, its character. The fact of civilisation belongs to what is called the philosophic portion of history; it is a vague, obscure, complex fact, very difficult, I admit, to explain and describe, but none the less requiring explanation and description. It is, indeed, the greatest historical fact, to which all others contribute; it is a kind of ocean which makes the wealth of a people, and in the bosom of which all the elements of the people's life, all the forces of its existence, are joined in unity.

What, then, is civilisation--this grave, far-reaching precious reality that seems the expression of the entire life of a people? It seems to me that the first and fundamental fact conveyed by the word civilisation is the fact of progress, of development. But what is this progress? What is this development? Here is the greatest difficulty of all.

The etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer. It tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to men. But is this all? Have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of the word? France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was acknowledged to be the most civilised country in Europe; yet in respect of purely civil progress France was then greatly inferior to some other European countries, Holland and England, for example. Another development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life, of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas.

These two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the development of individual activity--are intimately related to each other. Their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the great social advances have profited the individual mind.

So much for civilisation in general. It is now necessary to point out the essential difference between modern European and other civilisations. The characteristic of other civilisations has been unity; they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. In Egypt and India, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the Greek and Phoenician republics, the democratic principle. The civilisation of modern Europe, on the contrary, is diverse, confused, stormy; all the forms and principles of social organisation theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, co-exist in it; there are infinite gradations of liberty, wealth, influence. All the various forces are in a state of constant struggle; yet all of them have a certain family resemblance, as it were, that we cannot but recognise.

These diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise with the rest. The outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the European over the other civilisations. European civilisation, if I may say so, has entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of God.

_II.--Feudalism_

It would be an important confirmation of my assertion as to the diverse character of our civilisation if we should find in its very cradle the causes and the elements of that diversity. And indeed, at the fall of the Roman empire, we do so find it. Three forms of society, each entirely different from the other, are visible at this time of chaos. The municipalities survived, the last remnant of the Imperial system. The Christian Church survived. And in the third place there were the Barbarians, who brought with them a military organisation, and a hardy individual independence, that were wholly new to the peoples who had dwelt under the shelter of the empire. The Barbarian epoch was the chaos of all the elements, the infancy of all the systems, a universal hubbub in which even conflict itself had no definite or permanent effects.

Europe laboured to escape from this confusion; at some times, and in some places, it was temporarily checked--in particular by the great Charlemagne in his revival of the imperial power; but the confusion did not cease until its causes no longer acted. These causes were two--one material, one moral. The material cause was the irruption of fresh Barbarian hordes. The moral cause was the lack of any ideas in common among men as to the structure of society. The old imperial fabric had disappeared; Charlemagne's restoration of it depended wholly on his own personality, and did not survive him; men had no ideas of any new structure--their intellectual horizon was limited to their own affairs. By the beginning of the tenth century the Barbarian invasions ended, and as the populations settled down a new system appeared, based partly on the Barbarians' love of independence, partly on their plans of military gradation--the system of feudalism.

A sound proof that in the tenth century the feudal system was necessary, and the only social state possible, lies in the universality of its establishment. Everywhere society was dismembered; everywhere there was formed a multitude of small, obscure, isolated societies, consisting of the chief, his family, his retainers, and the wretched serfs over whom he ruled without restraint, and who had no appeal against his whim. The power he exercised was the power of individual over individual, the domination of personal will and caprice; and this is perhaps the only kind of tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, is never willing to endure. Hence the prodigious and invincible hatred that the people have at all times entertained for feudal rule, for the memories of it, for its very name.

The narrow concentrated life of the feudal lord lent, undoubtedly, a great preponderance to domesticity in his affairs. The lord had his wife and children for his permanent society; they continually shared his interests, his destiny. It was in the bosom of the feudal family that woman gained her importance in civilisation. The system excited development of private character and passion that were, all things considered, noble. Chivalry was the daughter of feudalism.

But from the social point of view feudalism failed to provide either legal order or political security. It contained elaborate obligations between the higher and the lower orders of the feudal hierarchy, duties of protection on the one side and of service on the other. But these obligations could never be established as institutions. There was no superior force to which all had to submit; there was public opinion to make itself respected. Hence the feudal system was without political guarantee to sustain it. Might alone was right. Feudalism was as much opposed to the establishment of general order as to the extension of general liberty. It was indispensable for the reconstruction of European society, but politically it was in itself a radically bad system.

_III.--The Church_