TOP AND BOTTOM OF A GRANT IN GREEK CONCEDING COMMERCIAL PRIVILEGES TO THE GENOESE THE WEEK AFTER THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1453: ABOVE IS THE MONOGRAM OF MAHOMET II; BELOW, THE SIGNATURE OF THE VIZIER

BRITISH MUSEUM

accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen, and finally lost. The nobles who fought round his person sustained, till their last breath, the honourable names of Palæologus and Cantacuzene: 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.85 The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple; amidst the tumult, he fell by an unknown Death of hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. peror ConAfter his death, resistance and order were no more; the Greeks Palæologus fled towards the city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner wall; and, as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the

of the Greeks who were fighting in the space between the inner and the outer wall, pressed by the enemy, retreated through the Kerkoporta, and fifty Turks followed them, as they neglected to shut the gate. More Turks soon pressed in, and others mounted the walls, captured the tower close to the gate, and set up the Ottoman standards on the walls. The retreat of the Greeks, who were outside the inner wall, by the Kerkoporta was now cut off, and seeing the flags of the foe on the battlements they thronged back through the Porta Charseæ, which was then left undefended, so that the Turks could enter by this gate too. The Turks who thus penetrated seem to have betaken themselves at first to the harbour side of the city, and some time elapsed before the combatants at the Gate of St. Romanus, where the fight was raging most hotly, learned what had happened. Phrantzes (without explaining) describes the arrival of the tidings (p. 285). A cry was heard on the harbour side: "The fort is taken, the standards of the foe are on the towers!" Then Constantine spurred his horse into the thick of the fray. On the Kerkoporta, see Van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople, p. 89 sqq.; Pears, op. cit. p. 342.]

83 Ducas kills him with two blows of Turkish soldiers; Chalcondyles wounds him in the shoulder, and then tramples him in the gate. The grief of Phranza carrying him among the enemy escapes from the precise image of his death; but we may, without flattery, apply these noble lines of Dryden :—

As to Sebastian, let them search the field;
And, where they find a mountain of the slain,
Send one to climb, and looking down beneath,
There they will find him at his manly length,

With his face up to heaven, in that red monument
Which his good sword had digg'd.

84 Spondanus (A.D. 1453, No. 10), who has hopes of his salvation, wishes to absolve this demand from the guilt of suicide.

85 Leonardus Chiensis very properly observes that the Turks, had they known the emperor, would have laboured to save and secure a captive so acceptable to the sultan. [It appears that Constantine fell in the space between the inner and outer walls (Ducas, p. 283), near the Gate of St. Romanus (Phrantzes, p. 287). Critobulus is mistaken in saying that it was near the Kerkoporta (i. 60). Theodore Spandugino Cantacusino in his work "Dell' origine et imperio de Turchi " (ed. 1564, p. 195) describes Constantine as rejecting the proposals which were made to him to flee to the harbour, and crying, "God forbid that I should live an Emperor without enjoying the Empire! I will die with my city!"]

the em

stantine

harbour.86 In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged that they should immediately have given quarter, if the valour of the emperor and his chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposiLoss of the tion in every part of the capital. It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chagan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the Second. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors.8

city and

empire

The Turks enter and pillage Constanti

nople

87

The tidings of misfortune fly with a rapid wing; yet such was the extent of Constantinople that the more distant quarters might prolong, some moments, the happy ignorance of their ruin.88 But in the general consternation, in the feelings of selfish or social anxiety, in the tumult and thunder of the assault, a sleepless night and morning must have elapsed; nor can I believe that many Grecian ladies were awakened by the Janizaries from a sound and tranquil slumber. On the assurance of the public calamity, the houses and convents were instantly deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets, like an herd of timid animals, as if accumulated weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope that amid the crowd each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the capital, they flowed into the church of St. Sophia: in the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with the multitudes of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins; the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on

S6 Cantemir, p. 96. The Christian ships in the mouth of the harbour had flanked and retarded this naval attack. [Cp. Barbaro, p. 56; Critobulus, i. 65.]

87 Chalcondyles most absurdly supposes that Constantinople was sacked by the Asiatics in revenge for the ancient calamities of Troy; and the grammarians of the xvth century are happy to melt down the uncouth appellation of Turks into the more classical name of Teucri.

88 When Cyrus surprised Babylon during the celebration of a festival, so vast was the city, and so careless were the inhabitants, that much time elapsed before the distant quarters knew that they were captives. Herodotus (1. i. c. 191), and Usher (Annal. p. 78), who has quoted from the prophet Jeremiah a passage of similar import.

the prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor, that one day the Turks would enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine in the square before St. Sophia; but that this would be the term of their calamities; that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand, and would deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a poor man seated at the foot of the column. "Take this sword," would he say, "and avenge the people of the Lord." At these animating words, the Turks would instantly fly, and the victorious Romans would drive them from the West, and from all Anatolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this occasion that Ducas, with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and obstinacy of the Greeks. "Had that angel appeared," exclaims the historian, "had he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to the union of the church, even then, in that fatal moment, you would have rejected your safety or have deceived your God." 89

of the

While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the Captivity doors were broken with axes; and, as the Turks encountered Greeks no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth attracted their choice; and the right of property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of the church; and young men of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common captivity, the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder; and the inexorable soldier was careless of the father's groans, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the children. The loudest

89 This lively description is extracted from Ducas (c. 39), who two years afterwards was sent ambassador from the prince of Lesbos to the sultan (c. 44). Till Lesbos was subdued in 1463 (Phranza, l. iii. c. 27), that island must have been full of the fugitives of Constantinople, who delighted to repeat, perhaps to adorn, the tale of their misery. [The terrible description of the wasting of Constantinople given by Critobulus (i. 61-63), who wrote as a friend of the Turks, proves that the other historians have not exaggerated the frightful scenes. He has an interesting notice of the destruction of books sacred and profane (c. 62, 3); some were destroyed, but " 'the greater number of them" were sold for small sums, cp. Ducas, p. 312.]