Fifty vessels making silver paths in the Summer-blue Sea of Marmora. Fifty vessels passing the Sweet Waters, blowing up the Bosphorus.
Strike your raucous gongs, City of Byzantium. Run about like ants between your golden palaces. These vessels are the chalices of God's wrath. The spirit of Christ walking upon the waters. Or is it anti-Christ? This is the true Church. Have we not the stone on which Jacob slept, the rod which Moses turned into a serpent, a portion of the bread of the Last Supper? We are the Virgin's chosen abiding place; why, the picture which Saint Luke painted of her is in our keeping. We have pulled the sun's rays from the statue of Constantine and put up the Cross instead. Will that bring us nothing? Cluster round the pink and white striped churches, throng the alabaster churches, fill the naves with a sound of chanting. Strike the terror-gongs and call out the soldiers, for even now the plumed knights are disembarking, and the snarling of their trumpets mingles with the beating of the gongs.
The bronze horses on the Hippodrome, harnessed to the gilded quadriga, step forward slowly. They proceed in a measured cadence. They advance without moving. There are lights and agitation in the city, but the air about the horses has the violet touch of night.
Now, now, you crossbowmen and archers, you go first. Stand along the gunwales and be ready to jump. Keep those horses still there, don't let them get out of order. Lucky we thought of the hides. Their damnable Greek fire can't hurt us now. Up to the bridge, knights. Three of you abreast, on a level with the towers. What's a shower of arrows against armour! An honourable dint blotting out the head of a heron, half a plume sheared off a helmet so that it leers cock-eyed through the press. Tut! Tut! Little things, the way of war. Jar, jolt, mud—the knights clash together like jumbled chess-men, then leap over the bridges. Confusion—contusion—raps—bangs—lurches—blows—battle-axes thumping on tin shields; bolts bumping against leathern bucklers. "A Boniface to the Rescue!" "Baldwin forever!" "Viva San Marco!" Such a pounding, pummelling, pitching, pointing, piercing, pushing, pelting, poking, panting, punching, parrying, pulling, prodding, puking, piling, passing, you never did see. Stones pour out of the mangonels; arrows fly thick as mist. Swords twist against swords, bill-hooks batter bill-hooks, staves rattle upon staves. One, two, five men up a scaling ladder. Chop down on the first, and he rolls off the ladder with his skull in two halves; rip up the bowels of the second, he drips off the ladder like an overturned pail. But the third catches his adversary between the legs with a pike and pitches him over as one would toss a truss of hay. Way for the three ladder men! Their feet are on the tower, their plumes flower, argent and gold, above the muck of slaughter. From the main truck of the ships there is a constant seeping of Venetians over the walls of Constantinople. They flow into the city, they throw themselves upon the beleaguered city. They smash her defenders, and crash her soldiers to mere bits of broken metal.
Byzantines, Copts, Russians, Persians, Armenians, Moslems, the great army of the Franks is knocking at the gates of your towers. Open the gates. Open, open, or we will tear down your doors, and breach the triple thickness of your walls. Seventeen burning boats indeed, and have the Venetians no boat-hooks? They make pretty fireworks to pleasure our knights of an evening when they come to sup with Doge Dandolo. At night we will sleep, but in the morning we will kill again. Under your tents, helmeted knights; into your cabin, old Doge. The stars glitter in the Sea of Marmora, and above the city, black in the brilliance of the stars, the great horses of Constantine advance, pausing, blotting their shadows against the sprinkled sky.
From June until September, the fracas goes on. The chanting of masses, the shouting of battle songs, sweep antiphonally over Constantinople. They blend and blur, but what is that light tinkling? Tambourines? What is that snapping? Castanets? What is that yellow light in the direction of the Saracen mosque? My God! Fire! Gold of metals, you have met your king. Ringed and crowned, he takes his place in the jewelled city. Gold of fire mounted upon all the lesser golds. The twin tongues of flame flaunt above the housetops. Banners of scarlet, spears of saffron, spikes of rose and melted orange. What are the little flags of the Crusaders to these! They clamoured for pay and won the elements. Over the Peninsula of Marmora it comes. The whips of its fire-thongs lash the golden city. A conflagration half a league wide. Magnificent churches, splendid palaces, great commercial streets, are burning. Golden domes melt and liquefy, and people flee from the dripping of them. Lakes of gold lie upon the pavements; pillars crack and tumble, making dams and bridges over the hot gold. Two days, two nights, the fire rages, and through the roar of it the little cries of frightened birds come thin and pitiful. Earth pleading with fire. Earth begging quarter of the awful majesty of fire. The birds wheel over Constantinople; they perch upon the cool bronze horses standing above the Hippodrome. The quiet horses who wait and advance. This is not their fire, they trample on the luminousness of flames, their strong hind legs plant them firmly on the marble coping. They watch the falling of the fire, they gaze upon the ruins spread about them, and the pungence of charred wood brushes along their tarnished sides like wind.
The Franks have made an Emperor and now the Greeks have murdered him. The Doge asks for fifty centenaria in gold to pay his sailors. Who will pay, now that the Emperor is dead? Declare a siege and pay yourselves, Count, and Marquis, and Doge. Set your ships bow to stern, a half a league of them. Sail up the Golden Horn, and attack the walls in a hundred places. You fail to-day, but you will win to-morrow. Bring up your battering-rams and ballistæ; hurl stones from your mangonels; run up your scaling ladders and across your skin bridges. Winter is over and Spring is in your veins. Your blood mounts like sap, mount up the ladder after it. Two ships to a tower, and four towers taken. Three gates battered in. The city falls. Cruel saints, you have betrayed your votaries. Even the relic of the Virgin's dress in the Panhagia of Blachernæ has been useless. The knights enter Byzantium, and their flickering pennants are the flamelets of a new conflagration. Fire of flesh burning in the blood of the populace. They would make the sign of the cross, would they, so that the Franks may spare them? But the sap is up in the Frankish veins, the fire calls for fuel. Blood burns to who will ignite it. The swords itch for the taste of entrails, the lances twitch at sight of a Byzantine. Feed, Fire! Here are men, and women, and children, full of blood for the relish of your weapons. Spring sap, how many women! Good Frankish seed for the women of Byzantium. Blood and lust, you shall empty yourselves upon the city. Your swords shall exhaust themselves upon these Greeks. Your hands shall satisfy themselves with gold. Spit at the priests. This is the Greek church, not ours. Grab the sacred furniture of the churches, fornicate upon the high altar of Saint Sophia, and load the jewels upon the donkeys you have driven into the church to receive them. Old pagan Crusaders, this is the Orgy of Spring! Lust and blood, the birthright of the world.
The bright, shining horses tread upon the clean coping of the Hippodrome, and the Sea of Marmora lies before them like a lupin field run over by a breeze.
What are you now, Constantinople? A sacked city; and the tale of your plundering shall outdo the tale of your splendours for wonder. Three days they pillage you. Burmese rubies rattle in the pockets of common soldiers. The golden tree is hacked to bits and carried off by crossbowmen. An infantry sergeant hiccoughs over the wine he drinks from an altar cup. The knights live in palaces and dip their plumes under the arch of the Emperor's bed-chamber.
In the Sea of Marmora, the good ships Aquila, Paradiso, Pellegrina swing at anchor. The dromi and hippogogi ride free and empty. They bob to the horses high above them on the Hippodrome. They dance to the rhythmic beat of hammers floating out to them from the city of Constantinople.