But Prinkipo, as chiefest of the Prince’s Islands, stands out above them in romantic interest. Irene, the great Empress of the East, great among renowned contemporaries of the ninth century, Charlemagne, Haroun-al-Raschid, had built and endowed a convent on this island. Charlemagne spent much of his time fighting infidels; his warpath led him over the Pyrenees to assist the Gothic kingdoms against the Moor; on one such occasion, when retreating into France, Roland the Paladin fell. Again, Wittekind, Duke of the Saxons, was subject to the Frankish Emperor’s attention, and caused him a vast amount of trouble before he became a Christian and settled down. Then Charlemagne took the field against the Avari, who infested the banks of the Danube from above Vienna down towards the Black Sea, and who probably proved troublesome neighbours to the Eastern Empire. No doubt Irene was much impressed with Charlemagne’s prowess, and being a lone, lorn widow had the happy idea of uniting the Empires of the East and the West by matrimony. Charlemagne sent an ambassador to arrange the matter, but one Nicephorus, Chancellor of the Empire, spoilt the plan by banishing Irene to Prinkipo. The Empress was not allowed to rest here, but was conveyed to Lemnos, where she died a year later. Her remains were buried in the convent she had founded at Prinkipo. Nicephorus, as first Emperor of that name, reigned for nine years, and suffered the indignity of paying tribute to the Arabs. He fell in the war against the Bulgarians, who now, as I write, are threatening Constantinople at the lines of Chatalja.
Where now are tumbling ruins through which the railroad makes its way, down by the Sea of Marmora where it washes Seraglio Point, there was in ancient days a broad esplanade called the Atrium of Justinian the Great, for it was his creation. It was a fair place too, built of white marble, and here the citizens of Constantinople would meet to breathe the soft air and discuss the happenings of the times, probably as full of rumours as they are to-day. Here they walked, and talked of all things under the sun—religion, politics, and the latest news from the “front.” Before them lay the Sea of Marmora joining on to the Bosphorus, and swift-sailing vessels would hurry in with news from some distant province of the Empire. To-day the warships of the European Powers watch over the interests of their nationals in the death-struggle of an ancient Empire, many of them infants, some unthought of when Constantinople was guarding Europe from Asiatic agression, thus enabling those nations whose warships lie here to develop. Yet among the cypress groves of Seraglio Point, with the waves of the glittering Sea of Marmora lazily lapping against the tottering sea-walls, it was impossible not to let the mind wander among the misty labyrinths of ancient history, though Bulgarian guns were making history some fifty miles away. Historic pageants pass before the mind’s eye: an emperor moving amid pomp and splendour to meet his bride-elect at the sea-gate of Eugenius, down by the Golden Horn. Here Cæsar with elaborate ceremony would invest the lady with the Imperial buskins, and other insignia of her exalted rank. They pass like a dream, and dark clouds settle down on Constantinople, obscuring the brightness of the sun of Cæsar; rumours of defeat whisper among the marble columns of the Atrium, oversounding the officially heralded tidings of victory. So it is to-day, so it was when the old enemy of the Greeks, the Turk, demanded alliance between the house of Othman and the Eastern Empire through the marriage of an Imperial Princess with Amurath I. And that did not appease the enemy, for he came again, and finally made the Imperial City his own, and hence governed Christian peoples. Mohammed the Conqueror centred the life of his nation in the City of Constantine, and chose this promontory for his own residence. He separated a space of eight furlongs by a wall across the promontory, and in this triangle he built his seraglio. Strange scenes were witnessed here; one of the strangest happened shortly after the conquest of the City. The remnant of Greeks gathered together again and returned to the City in crowds, on being assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. To solemnize this pact the Sultan held an investiture on old Byzantine lines, with all accustomed pomp and ceremony, and thus re-instated the Patriarch of Greek Orthodoxy. With his own hands the Conqueror placed in the hands of Gennodius the crozier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his priestly office. His Holiness was then conducted to the gate of the Seraglio, presented with a richly caparisoned horse, and led by viziers and pashas to the palace appointed as his residence.
This happened within the Seraglio walls! The successor to the throne of many Cæsars, the Conqueror whose hands were red with the blood of massacred Christians, the victorious leader of that fanatic race whose life is more influenced by their creed than perhaps that of any other people, raised the Patriarch, the chosen head of a conquered Christian community, to high office in the state. Thus the Greek Orthodox variant of the Christian Faith lived on in the City of Constantine the Convert, though the Cross had fallen from the church he had built, St. Sophia, and minarets arose around it from which the muezzin calls pious Moslems to prayer.
Mohammed died suddenly in the midst of his soldiers, leaving two sons to contest his vacant throne. The younger, Zizimes, suggested a partition of the Empire, by which he would rule over Anatolia, the Hellespont separating his dominion from that of his brother Bajazet in Europe. But Bajazet would none of it. “The Empire is a bride whose favours cannot be shared,” said Bajazet, and Zizimes thought it safer to seek refuge at the Courts of other rulers, mostly Christians, who, however, appeared little disposed to advocate his claims. For the sum of three hundred thousand ducats paid by Bajazet, a servant of Pope Alexander Borgia administered poison to Zizimes; thus was a problem solved in truly Oriental manner.
Murder was one of the leading factors in the Imperial policy pursued by the sons of Othman, and has always been resorted to as the best solution of a difficult problem, from earliest days until quite recently. Selim I, son of Bajazet, who abdicated in consequence of his son’s constant intrigues against him, had to face a problem, and settled it in the usual manner. Schism has arisen among the followers of the Prophet, and the Shiites repudiated the claim to the Caliphate of Mohammed’s immediate successors, Abu-Dekr, Omar, and Othman. For reasons as much political as religious, Selim proclaimed himself champion of Orthodoxy, and celebrated the event by the St. Bartholomew’s night of Ottoman history. There were in all some seventy thousand of his subjects who held to the Shiite doctrine in Europe and Asia, forty thousand of these were massacred and the remainder sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Thus Selim I became Caliph of Islam.
The old Seraglio walls and the solemn cypresses seem to tell yet another romantic story attaching to this place. It dates from the days when history was full of the names of great men. Charles V, that sombre Habsburger, ruled an Empire on which the sun never set (according to the opinion of those days), Francis I was the chivalrous King of France, his rival Henry VIII of England, and the influence of Pope Leo X was mighty in the Councils of nations. In those brave days Suleiman I was Sultan, and reigned in great splendour from the seat of Constantine. Suleiman loved a woman, a lovely Russian girl, Khourrem (the “Joyous One”), better known by the name the Christians gave her, Roxalana. Khourrem was a slave, but she obtained her freedom from her imperial lover and induced him to marry her. Thereupon her mind was set on furthering the fortunes of her own children, and Mustapha, the son of Suleiman’s former favourite Sultana, a Circassian, stood in the way of her ambition. Mustapha was Governor of Carmania, and Roxalana managed skilfully to insinuate that he was plotting to usurp the throne. Mustapha was recalled, and ordered to enter the Sultan’s presence alone; Suleiman, looking on from an inner chamber, saw seven mute executioners carry out his command to strangle his son with a bowstring.
Roxalana was buried in all due state near the place where rests her sovereign lord, under the shadow of the mosque he built to his own memory. You will notice a difference in the two mausoleums. To enter that of Suleiman you must take the shoes from off your feet, for this is holy ground; a warrior, almost a saint, lies here. No such reverence is expected by the grave of Roxalana, the “Joyous One”; she was a woman, and therefore had no soul; that makes all the difference.
But Roxalana’s son, Selim II, broke the laws of the Prophet, and died drunk.
The Red Crescent floats over the buildings within the Seraglio enclosure to-day. Thousands of sick and wounded stagger in at the gates, and pass by the Armoury, once the Church of St. Irene, in search of the comforts which Christian nations have in all haste collected to meet the awful consequences of this disastrous war. They gathered in thousands outside the old buildings, leaning up against the walls and the railings of St. Irene, behind which, half-hidden by shrubs, are tombs of long-forgotten Byzantine magnates. There is some doubt in my mind as to who built St. Irene: some attribute it to Leo the Isaurian, who reigned from 718-740; others, and I prefer their version, maintain that Constantine the Great built it at the same time that St. Sophia arose, during the Council of Nicæa, in 325, thus giving his subjects two excellent virtues to emulate—Faith and Wisdom—without committing himself to any narrowing dogma. As this version is the more picturesque, historians will probably declare it wrong, and insist on the authorship of Leo the Isaurian.
In the meantime the buildings of the Seraglio enclosure are full of suffering mortality. Thousands have come in from the stricken field, and all the hospitals are crowded. I have visited some of these sick men and wounded, men whom I have seen wandering dejectedly in little groups, or larger bodies, through the ill-paved streets, some falling by the way, and avoided by all, for cholera, the scourge of Asia, was raging in the ranks of the Turkish Army. They are patient, quiet men, these suffering Turkish soldiers, some still wondering why they were torn from their Anatolian homes and sent to fight with unaccustomed arms men whom they did not know of, for a cause they did not understand, and under conditions such as invite disaster. Untrained they went to war, unfed they fought as long as men could hold out, longer probably than would any European troops, starving, sick, in rags, forsaken by their officers, they staggered back into the City, where those responsible for their sufferings still live in lies. Poor souls, with their tired looks, their patient eyes—it was Bairam, their Feast of Pentecost, and many of them were grieving that they could not pass on to their homes and bring little presents to those they hold dear, away there in the scattered villages of Anatolia.