A. D. ennobled the last scene of his life. He boldly refused to comply with the demands of the conqueror, deeming it 1448-1453. better that he and his house should perish than that his son should become a dishonoured renegade. Mohammed, thus finding a plausible pretext for destroying the grand-duke, ordered him and his sons to be immediately put to death. Many other Greek families were exterminated the men were executed, the male children were sent into the schools of the janissaries among the tribute-children, and the females were shut up in the harems of the sultan and his courtiers. The desolate aspect of Constantinople struck the observant mind of its young conqueror with a feeling of awe. Everything he saw within its walls attested that a long period of decline had preceded its fall. The deserted appearance of the imperial palace showed that, long before the accession of Constantine XI., it had been too vast for the diminished court by which it was tenanted, and its largest halls had evidently been long abandoned to solitude. The departed glory of an empire which had for ages ruled the richest provinces in the East, and often rendered the Cross triumphant over the Crescent, suggested to Mohammed a couplet of the Persian poet Firdousee on the instability of human grandeur: "The spider's curtain hangs before the portal of Cæsar's palace; the owl is the sentinel on the watchtower of Afrasiab."1 An empty palace affected the mind of Mohammed II., while he gazed unmoved on mountains of dead men. The fall of Constantinople is a dark chapter in the annals of Christianity. The death of the unfortunate Constantine, neglected by the Catholics and deserted by the orthodox, alone gives dignity to the final catastrophe. The governments of western The verses are given by Hammer, Hist. de l'Empire Othoman, ii. 527, and Malcolm, History of Persia, i. 540, 2d edit. The verses of Homer repeated by Scipio at the taking of Carthage were, Iliad, iv. 165. CH. II. § 7. BOOK IV. Europe, occupied with momentary interests, and the nations beginning to feel the impulses of new civil and political combinations in society, heeded little the destruction of an old and rotten edifice, incapable of receiving either internal repairs or external support; while on the part of the Greeks themselves no patriotic or religious enthusiasm has interwoven the struggle with the glories of their national history. No immortal band of martial youth crowding round their emperor, and dying in the breach the death of patriots, has left its exploits as a legacy of honour to the Hellenic race. The defence of Constantinople was intrusted to mercenary troops, and Constantine fell in their ranks. The first step of Mohammed II., in settling the condition of his conquered subjects, was to secure the allegiance of the orthodox, by proclaiming himself the protector of the Greek church. The hatred felt for the Latins by a numerous party among the Greeks facilitated the conclusion of this unholy alliance. George Scholarios, or Gennadios, accepted the dignity of Patriarch, and received the pastoral staff from the hands of the sultan. The ceremony of his installation was performed on the first of June, with the blood of the conquest still staining the pavements of the city. A charter of Mohammed was subsequently published, securing to the Greeks the use of their churches, allowing them to celebrate their religious rites according to their own usages, to keep open the gates of the quarter in which the Patriarch resided for three nights at Easter, and authorising the Patriarch to decide questions of ecclesiastical law according to the practice of the Christians.1 It was necessary for Mohammed II. to repeople 1 Phrantzes, 304. Historia Politica, 14. Historia Patriarcha, 108, in the Turco-Græcia of Crusius, reprinted at Bonn, 1849. Hammer, iii. 4. A. D. Constantinople, in order to render it the capital of the Othoman empire. The installation of an orthodox 1448-1453, Patriarch calmed the minds of the Greeks, and many who had emigrated before the siege gradually returned, and were allowed to claim a portion of their property. But the slow increase of population, caused by a sense of security and the hope of gain, did not satisfy the sultan, who was determined to see his capital one of the greatest cities of the East, and who knew that it had formerly exceeded Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo, in wealth, extent, and population. From most of his subsequent conquests Mohammed compelled the wealthiest of the inhabitants to emigrate to Constantinople, where he granted them plots of land to build their houses. Five thousand families are said to have been immediately collected among the Turkish and Greek population of his dominions, who were induced by the concessions made to them to take up their residence in the new capital. Four thousand Servian prisoners, instead of being reduced to slavery, were established in the ruined villages without the walls as cultivators of the soil.1 When the Peloponnesus was conquered, thousands of Greek and Albanian families were removed to Constantinople.2 The same measures were adopted when Amastris, Sinope, Trebizond, Lesbos, Bosnia, Akserai (Gausaura), and Kaffa, were conquered.3 During his whole reign, Mohammed II. continued to pour into the imperial city fresh streams of inhabitants. Turks, Greeks, Servians, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Lazes, followed one another in quick succession, and long before the end of his reign Constantinople was crowded by a numerous and active population, and pre 1 Ducas, 179. 2 Chalcocondylas, 237, 253, makes the number of families ten thousand; but Ducas, 192, mentions only two thousand families, and two thousand boys for the corps of janissaries. 3 Chalcocondylas, 245, 264, 280, 286. Hammer, iii. 140, 197, 209. BOOK IV. Sented a more flourishing aspect than it had done during the preceding century. CH. II. § 7. The embellishment of his capital was also the object of the sultan's attention. All the most skilful artisans and artists in the two principal cities of Karamania, Iconium and Laranda (Karaman), when that country was conquered, were transported to Constantinople.1 Mosques, minarets, fountains, and tombs, the great objects of architectural magnificence among the Mussulmans, were constructed in every quarter of the city. Upwards of forty Christian churches, too splendid in their appearance to be left in the hands of the conquered, were converted into mosques. Their original destination was concealed by the destruction of many ornaments, and their external form was modified by the addition of minarets.2 In the year 1477 the whole circuit of the walls underwent repair; but the sultan's object was rather to remove the aspect of dilapidation than to give strength to the fortifications, and he allowed the ditches to be in part filled up and the height of the battlements to be diminished. Thus Constantinople, in becoming the capital of the Othoman empire, became a new city, and received a new race of Greek as well as of Turkish inhabitants. Its buildings and its population underwent as great a change as its political, moral, and religious condition. The picturesque beauty of the Stamboul of the present day owes most of its artificial features to the Othoman conquest, and wears a Turkish aspect. The Constantinople of the Byzantine empire disappeared with the last relics of the Greek empire. The traveller who now desires to view the vestiges of a Byzantine capital, and examine the last relics of Byzantine architecture and art, must continue his travels eastward to Trebizond. 2 Ibid., xviii. 109. 1 Hammer, iii. 119. |