The emperor was fully equal to the tremendous occasion; as able in disposing the troops and resources at his command as he was valiant in fight, he was indeed, in every sense, the hero of the siege. But with subjects so divided and so disloyal, what could the highest genius or the most generous devotion achieve? He reckoned but 9000 combatants of all kinds within his walls, which were fourteen miles in extent; while the forces that were advancing against him are said to have been 250,000 in number, without counting a fleet of 250 vessels, having on board 24,000 men. Nevertheless the last Constantine vowed never to yield except with life itself; and Mahomet, on his part, swore that the walls of Stamboul should be either his sepulchre or his throne. The siege lasted but two-and-forty days; we can only marvel that the defenders held out so long; and, though perhaps it scarcely belongs to our subject, there is something so touchingly beautiful in the account of the last struggle, that we may be excused for giving it a place in our pages. It was the evening of the 28th of May 1453, when the cries and shouts from the vast multitude of the besiegers warned the Christians that the final assault was in preparation for the following day. Constantine collected around him a little band of faithful followers, and addressed them in animated terms. He concluded thus: “My heart is very full; and yet I can say nothing more. There is my crown; I received it from God, but I place it in your hands; to-morrow I shall fight to deserve it still, or to die in its defence.” His words were drowned by the sobs and tears of those who listened, but he did not seem to share their grief. Raising his voice above the murmurs and exclamations of the assembly, he said, with a cheerful and joyous air, “Comrades, it is our fairest day; there remains only to prepare for death, and then to die.” Very early in the morning he proceeded to Santa Sophia, and received the Holy Communion; and turning from the altar to the weeping crowd that filled the church, he asked them to pardon him if he had failed to make them happy, and to forgive him all he had ever done amiss. When they had answered him, more with tears than words, he went out to the gates of his palace, and mounting his horse, rode to the ramparts, and stationed himself at the breach. Every thing was yet silent; but as the sun rose the combat began, and at noon all was over. For two hours the assailants made no impression on the gallant band that stood like a rampart of iron before that chasm in the wall. Wave upon wave of Moslem warriors rushed madly forward, only to dash themselves to pieces against the steady solid phalanx that confronted them. In vain did Mahomet in person rally his disheartened troops, and urge them on by promises and threats, and even blows; not a man could hold his footing on that mass of ruin. The prize seemed almost to be torn from his very grasp; when Giustiniani, who was fighting by the emperor’s side, received a mortal wound, and was carried from the walls only to die on board his galley. From that moment the tide of battle turned; a body of Janizaries,[11] headed by one of gigantic size and strength, with desperate effort threw themselves upon the barricades. They perished to a man; but the little band of heroes staggered under the fury of the assault, and ere they could recover from the shock, host upon host bore down on them; almost at the same moment a party of Turks, who had entered well-nigh unopposed through an unguarded gate, took them in the rear. Resistance was no longer possible against such overwhelming numbers; the mighty flood swept like an inundation into the city, and carried all before it. Constantine was seen fighting in the thickest of the crowd, crying, as it is said, for death from some Christian hand. When his body was found, after the contest had ceased, it was too much covered with wounds for form or feature to be recognised; and only the jewelled sword, still grasped within his hand, and the golden eagles in his buskins, betrayed the identity of the last emperor of the East.
“Never,” says Vertot, “was there seen so sad or so frightful a spectacle as that which was presented at the fall of Constantinople.” The Turks rushed through the streets massacring as they went along: forty thousand men were put to the sword; a yet greater number of every rank, age, and sex, were sold as slaves; and the city which once had been the centre of learning, refinement, and civilisation, became changed in a single hour into the seat of the most barbarous fanaticism. The circumstances attending the end of the unhappy Notaras are too horrible for recital. At first Mahomet treated him with courtesy, bestowed gifts upon him, and promised to reinstate him in his honours and possessions. Deluded by these flatteries, the traitor gave up the names of all the principal dignitaries and officers of state, who were instantly proclaimed through the army, and a large reward offered for their heads. Refusing to comply, however, with a brutal order issued by the monster amidst his drunken orgies, he was immediately put to death, with all his children; their bodies thrown into the streets, and their bloody heads, by the tyrant’s order, placed in a row before him on the banquet-table. Many noble Christians, and among them all the Greeks, whose lives he had promised to spare, were butchered the same day. The Cardinal Isidore, not being recognised, was sold as a slave; but he contrived to escape on board a vessel that was lying in the harbour, and survived to write a touching narrative of all that he had witnessed and endured. As to the atrocities perpetrated on the inhabitants of the city during the first fury of the capture, and for the six months that succeeded this fatal triumph of the Ottoman arms, we may well shrink from entering on their relation; a sensation of horror thrilled through Europe at the reports which came one upon another of deeds that seemed too terrible for belief. Impieties, enormities unutterable,—all that was holiest profaned and outraged with abominations that were worthy of the loathsome malice of fiends; the pictures of the saints torn to shreds; the sacred vessels and vestments put to the vilest uses; the crucifix—the image of the Redeemer—borne in mock procession, with the cap of the Janizary placed derisively on its head; the fonts turned into horse-troughs; and the very altars, on which had been offered the Adorable Sacrifice, defiled with nameless brutalities.
Constantinople had fallen; Santa Sophia had become, what it still remains, a Turkish mosque; the foul creed of Mahomet had usurped the temple of the Most High; and the infidel was enthroned for centuries in the metropolis of the once Christian empire of the East. And Rhodes knew well enough that at her the next blow was to be directed. Sir John de Lastic, the reigning grand master, hastened to prepare for the worst, and summoned all his knights throughout Europe to assemble for the defence. “We command you,” he says, “to come hither instantly, where your presence is urgently required. Not a day elapses but we hear of some new slaughter of the Christians by the grand Turk, whose inhuman cruelties are told us, not by idle rumour, but by those who have seen what they relate with their own eyes. Look, therefore, for no further letters, commands, or exhortations; but the moment you receive this message delay not to set out for Rhodes by the quickest conveyance love or money can procure.”
“Constantinople—and then Rhodes!” such had been the war-proclamation of Mahomet II.: nor was it long before his heralds appeared to summon the knights to acknowledge his pretensions. A yearly tribute of two thousand ducats, or war to the last extremity: such were the haughty conditions offered by the conqueror. The reply was such as might be expected: “Tell your master,” answered Lastic, “that our predecessors purchased this island at the price of their blood; and that we will give our lives rather than sacrifice our independence, or that of our religion.” Nothing doubting that such a reply would soon draw down on the order the fury of the sultan’s arms, Lastic at the same time despatched ambassadors to all the European courts, though with little hopes of deriving any succours from thence. The ambassador to France was Peter D’Aubusson,—and this is the first mention of a name which is among the greatest in the chronicles of the Hospitallers of St. John. A fresh league, which the indefatigable efforts of the Pontiff, Calixtus III., had succeeded in forming against the Turks, obliged Mahomet to defer his enterprise against Rhodes, and thus gave the knights a further time to prepare. Two men were still found on the frontiers of the Turkish empire before whom the arms of the Ottoman failed to be invincible: these were Scanderbeg the chief of Albania, and the gallant regent of Hungary, John Corvinus Hunyades. Scanderbeg, whose real name was George Castriotes, after being taken as hostage when nine years old, and brought up in the religion of Mahomet, had seized an opportunity of escaping to his native mountains, and openly professing the Christian faith. He was reckoned the greatest commander of his time; and taking advantage of the nature of the country, he succeeded in repeatedly beating large armies sent against him by the Turkish sultans with a mere handful of men. When, after the fall of Constantinople, every other province of Greece and the Morea submitted to Mahomet, Albania still held out, and the very name of Scanderbeg struck terror into the infidels, whom he defied. For twenty years he maintained the unequal contest. At length, as he lay at Alyssio, weak and dying of fever, news was brought him that the Turks were in the neighbourhood devastating the village and country. He called for his armour, but could not rise to put it on; nevertheless his followers carried his banner before them to the scene of combat; and at the first sight of that well-known ensign, the infidels turned and fled. He lived to hear of this last success, and then expired; and the Turks, when they took Alyssio twelve years after his death, had such an opinion of his valour, that, disinterring his bones, they made amulets of them to wear in battle. It is said his favourite horse would not suffer any other to mount him when his master was gone, but turning wild and savage, died a week after the decease of the noble chieftain.
The independence of Albania expired with its prince. Yet, though delivered from one of his most formidable opponents and now master of the whole of Greece, Mahomet was still forced to delay his great expedition against the Knights of Rhodes. He did not, however, entirely spare them; but in every attack his galleys made on their islands, they met with a repulse which warned him that the subjugation of Rhodes would be a far different enterprise from the taking of Constantinople. He was compelled to fear as much as he hated this unconquerable order; he found it every where. At Lesbos, led on by Zacosta, the grand master, they well-nigh succeeded in repulsing the assault of his most valiant troops, and would have saved the island, but for the detestable treachery of its Greek governor Gattilusio. This miserable man, after giving up the brave knights to slaughter, thought, if not to gain the reward he coveted, at least to save his life by adding apostasy to perfidy. But Mahomet did not grant him long impunity; on some frivolous pretext he had him thrown into a dungeon, where, shortly after, he was strangled. Three hundred of the garrison of Mitylene, when they saw that all was lost, had surrendered on a solemn promise that their lives should be spared; but no sooner were they in his power than the base and cruel Turk had them murdered to a man, and that by the most frightful death he could devise—they were all sawn asunder: this was now the tyrant’s favourite mode of taking vengeance on his vanquished foes, being, as he conceived, the most horrible torture that human ingenuity could inflict. The severed and mangled limbs of his victims he ordered to be thrown to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey.
Negropont, then subject to the republic of Venice, was the next point of attack; and though the Venetians had shown but little friendliness to the order, whose commercial rivalry they feared, yet, says Vertot, “the grand master Orsini, believing himself bound by his profession to defend the states of every Christian prince, instantly sent armed galleys to their assistance, and at the head of a brave troop of knights, who were to endeavor to land upon the island and throw themselves into the beleaguered town, was the Commander D’Aubusson;” who indeed was, at that time, the most distinguished chief of his illustrious body. Nevertheless Negropont fell, as Lesbos and Constantinople had already fallen. The Ottoman forces numbered no less than two hundred thousand men, and were supported by a powerful fleet; yet were the bold knights eager for the fight, and loudly demanded that they should be led against the bridge of boats which the enemy had constructed. But the Venetian admiral, seized as it appeared with a sudden panic, refused the enterprise, drew off his vessels, and left the defenders to their fate. Already had the besiegers made three desperate attacks upon the town, but with such loss to themselves both of men and ships, that even Mahomet was beginning to despair: now, however, their courage and hopes revived; and taking advantage of the consternation inspired by the withdrawal of the Venetian fleet, though once again repulsed in a fifth bloody assault, they carried the works and poured down upon the place. Erizzo, the intrepid governor, disputed every inch of ground with the assailants, and fought his way from street to street until he gained the citadel, where with good courage he still continued the defence; but when provisions and ammunition failed, and he beheld his little garrison daily thinned by death and exhausted by fatigue and wounds, he was compelled to sue for terms and offer to surrender on the sultan’s plighted word, that his life and the lives of his companions should be safe from harm. Mahomet swore by his own head that the heads of Erizzo and of all who were with him should be uninjured; but, furious at the loss of thousands of his best and bravest troops, when the garrison had laid down their arms, he caused them all to be massacred, the Greeks alone excepted, with circumstances of the most barbarous cruelty. Some he had impaled, others cut in pieces, or stoned to death. Erizzo himself he doomed to be sawn in two; boasting that thus he scrupulously kept his oath to the very letter, since he had sworn to leave his head untouched. The brave Venetian had a daughter, Anne Erizzo, young and beautiful, who, to the dauntless courage of her noble race joined all the indomitable fortitude of a Christian martyr. Mahomet, a monster of sensuality as of cruelty, had her brought into his presence: the virtuous maiden scorned alike his vile solicitations and his angry threats, till seized with fury, he drew his cimeter and at a single blow severed her fair head from her chaste body; thus, as Vertot expresses it, “gratifying to the full the wishes of this heroine, who, by the sacrifice of a frail life and a beauty even frailer, earned for herself an imperishable bliss.” The inhabitants were now at the mercy of the conqueror; but the very enormity of the crimes which were perpetrated in this as in every other instance forbids their being detailed. “Words cannot express,” says the same historian, “all the cruelties exercised at the taking of Negropont; the whole island was filled with carnage and horror, for the Turkish soldiers, following their sovereign’s example, made a merit of their ferocities.”
The rage of Mahomet when he saw the galleys of St. John in the midst of the Venetian fleet broke out into a kind of madness: the conqueror of two empires and of twelve kingdoms, as he haughtily termed himself, he felt the resistance of this single island enough to counterbalance all his success, and he sent envoys to Rhodes to declare war to blood and fire, swearing that he would exterminate the entire order, and put every member of it to the sword. But still the blow so often threatened was doomed to be delayed. Fresh leagues against the Turkish sultan gave time for fresh fortifications and armaments at Rhodes; they were conducted under the direction of D’Aubusson himself, whose capacity all recognised, so that he was the soul and animating spirit of the whole order; nothing escaped his vigilance, and to his charge every thing was committed; war, finance, fortifications, all were under his superintendence, and all, whether superiors or inferiors, listened to his word as law. It is no wonder, therefore, that on the death of Orsini in 1476, D’Aubusson was chosen as his successor; and it scarcely needed the votes of the chapter to declare an election which had already been made by the unanimous voice of his brethren.
CHAPTER IV.
Character of D’Aubusson—Religious union in Rhodes—Destruction of the suburbs—Arrival of the Turkish fleet—Attack on St. Nicholas—Conduct of D’Aubusson during the siege—First repulse of the infidels—Fresh attack on the Jewish quarter—Storm of the city—Defeat and failure of the Turks—D’Aubusson’s danger and recovery—Fall of Kaffa and Otranto—Death of Mahomet the Great.