Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

In vain Mohammed spurred his horse breast deep into the sea and drew his scimitar against the Venetian vessels which were fighting but a few yards from him in the mouth of the Bosphorus. For a moment his cries and his presence encouraged his galleys but they were shattered anew. The Greeks struck down the iron chains that protected the harbor of the Golden Horn and the Christian ships entered it under full sail amid the shouts of soldiers and populace thronging the walls of the city.

Twelve thousand Turks perished in this sea fight. The introduction of these supplies revived the hopes of the Greeks. The city could easily be saved by the sea. A rational and moderate armament of the maritime states might have saved the relics of the Roman name and maintained a Christian fortress in the heart of the Ottoman Empire. Yet this was the sole and feeble attempt to save Constantinople.

Mohammed, now convinced that a complete investment by sea and land was the condition of conquest, resolved to conquer nature herself. By means of the thousands of wood cutters and miners who followed his army, he caused to be levelled and planked in a few weeks a road for his galleys and ships over the hills and across the valleys into the Golden Horn. Over these “ways” which were well greased with ox-fat, a part of his fleet were drawn by cables and launched into the waters and anchored in the same bay with the Greek fleet and under the shelter of the Ottoman artillery. Then a hundred thousand men were employed in making from one bank to the other a bridge or causeway of sufficient breadth to permit one hundred men to march abreast to storm the bastions of the fort.

Seven weeks of bombardment on the land side had at last opened four immense breaches upon the ruins of four towers. Only the moat of great width and thirty feet deep protected the assault of four hundred thousand men from the ten thousand combatants of Constantine that were extended along the walls for more than three miles.

The Sultan was desirous of sparing the blood of his soldiers, now that the city lay at his mercy, of securing the Byzantine treasures as well and accordingly sent an envoy to appeal from the courage of the Emperor to the cowardice of the Greeks. The avarice of the Sultan might have been satisfied with the annual tribute of one hundred thousand ducats; but his ambition grasped the capital of the East. He guaranteed the Empire the absolute and independent sovereignty of the Peloponnesus, the property of all the inhabitants of Constantinople subject only to tribute if he would surrender.

The reply was grandly heroic and stoical, not to say Christian. It was sad, hopeless, yet grand and dignified. He said that he would give thanks to God if Mohammed really inclined, in according him a sure and honorable peace, to spare his nation the catastrophes that weighed upon it. * * * That he was ready to discuss with the Sultan the conditions of a treaty as from prince to prince or even the conditions of a tribute of war imposed by the strong upon the weak:—but that no human force and no personal advantage would ever make him consent to give up to the enemy of the Christian name an empire and a capital, which he had sworn to his God, to his people and to himself, not to deliver, but with his life.

These words, too noble, too elevated for the rest of Christian Europe were most irritating to the impatient Sultan who, guided by his favorite science of astrology, fixed on the twenty-ninth day of May as the fortunate and fatal hour.

Several days were given to preparations for the assault. The Sultan proclaimed it throughout the camps, and dervishes, fired their religious fanaticism by going through the ranks and haranguing the Moslems: “It was the last step of Islam in Europe to sweep off the last focus of idolatry on the two continents. Their bows and their scimitars were the weapons of Allah the true God. Those who vanquish in his name will possess the earth; those who fall will possess the houris and the fountains of Paradise.”

On the eve of the day of the assault an illumination of joy suddenly lighted up the camps of the Ottomans from the hills of the Bosphorus of Europe to the sea of Marmora. Every soldier had his torch of resinous pine, and thousands of fires burned all night long, and the three contiguous seas were reddened with an anticipated reflection of the conflagration of the doomed city.

Constantinople lighted up as it were by its own funeral pyre watched and wept and prayed during the night. Endless processions of priests, monks, nuns, and other women thronged the streets chanting with mournful voice, “Kyrie Eleison. Lord, have mercy. Lord, rise in our defence.” The whole city ran to the altars; no one except Constantine and his few soldiers ran to arms: and he was everywhere posting his generals and giving orders for the morrow.