The bodies of the princes were thrown out unburied beyond the walls. No one ventured to approach them for fear of the vengeance of the Sultan. They would have been abandoned to the dogs, the usual scavengers of Christian flesh, had not the Empress Helena, the wife and mother, repaired to the spot where they lay. She was clad in a peasant's garb, to escape detection, and carried a spade in her hand. The day was spent in guarding the remains of husband and children from the ravenous dogs, and in digging a grave to receive their bodies. In the darkness of the night a few faithful souls came to her relief and assisted her in committing the bodies to the dust. The widowed and childless empress, who had seen the last of her race, the last of the glories of the Byzantine kingdom, then retired to a convent to pass the remainder of her days in prayers for the repose of the souls of her loved ones. Grief soon brought her to a refuge from all earthly sorrows in the grave.
The story of womanhood in the Byzantine Empire of the decadence is an extremely sad one. The times were out of joint; corruption and immorality prevailed; the emperors were almost without exception extremely selfish, cruel, and unprincipled. It was impossible for womanhood in such a period not to be tainted by the general ruin, yet we have found many noble characters, and whatever may have been their feminine weaknesses and foibles, however much their lots may have been circumscribed by the caprices of sovereigns and the ceremonials of courts, the princesses of the Comneni, the Palæologi and the Cantacuzeni have, as a rule, shown themselves in virtue and in capability the superiors of their brothers.
The rest of our story of Christian women of Greek or Byzantine traditions is soon told. During all the period we have covered in this chapter there was a flourishing mediæval life further south under Greek skies, in Athens, under a Frankish and, later, a Florentine duchy, and in the Peloponnesus, or the Morea, under Frankish or Venetian princes. But this was the feudal life of mediæval times transferred to Greek soil, the life of foreigners among a conquered people, and does not concern us here.
When the Turks extended their conquests over Greek lands, it looked as if the torch of freedom, the light of Hellenic tradition, the lamp of Christianity which had for so many centuries brightened the life of Oriental women, had been extinguished forever. But all during the dark age of Turkish oppression, the Christian Church kept alive the nobler aspirations of the Greek race. Women have always been the chief exponents of religious faith, and Greek women handed on from generation to generation the traditions of religion and liberty and intellectual culture. Many of the women of Greek lands were forced to spend their lives within the narrow walls of a Turkish harem; many saw their children taken from them and carried to Constantinople to be brought up as Mussulmans for the service of the Sultan; many had to undergo ignominy and insults at the hands of petty officials. But the Church found a constant and enthusiastic ally in Greek womanhood in preserving the language, the spirit, the love of liberty, of the ancient Greeks.
Hence, when in the early decades of the nineteenth century the fulness of time had come for a portion of the Greek race to rid itself of Turkish domination, the women showed an intense love of country which enabled them not only to inspire their brothers in the fight for freedom, but they also frequently shared with them the toils and privations of actual conflict. We read in the histories of the Greek War of Independence how women at times accompanied the Greek soldiers on their forages, carrying arms and ammunition and frequently fighting themselves; how they kept the standard of military honor high, and were unsparing critics of the mettle of their husbands.
There is no more inspiring folk tale in the records of history than the legend of the Suliote women in the struggle of their people against Ali, the cruel and rapacious tyrant of Janina. Bred in the mountains of Chamouri, they refused to submit to his yoke, and the valiant people had to see the gradual extermination of their race. They had ventured to defy the rising star of Ali, and all that force or treachery could accomplish was inflicted upon them. Tzavellas was one of their leaders, and the valor of Moscho, his wife, has been commemorated in popular verse, as typical of Greek womanhood in their struggle for independence:
"This is the famous Suli, is Suli the renowned,
Where the little children march to war, the women and the children:
Where the wife of Tzavellas combats, her sabre in her hand,
Her babe upon one arm, her gun upon the other, and her apron filled with cartridges."