The Passing of the Turkish Empire in Europe

by B. Granville Baker

But strong young nations have closed in upon Constantinople and threaten it from the West. They came strong in their faith, armed and equipped and prepared to carry all before them, to make vast sacrifices, and their strongest weapon is an ideal. They have not forgotten the history of past centuries; the memory of nameless indignities, of crushing shame, has fed the spirit that informs them, that bids them hurl their young strength against the vis inertiæ of the Turks and march over heaps of slain, over a country peopled by their kinsmen, fellow Christians, now devastated by the foe they have driven back. Now they are hammering at the gates, at the defences of Constantinople, and all the remaining strength of the dying Ottoman Empire in Europe is massed on the narrow strip of ground between the Bosphorus and the lines of Chatalja.

Uncertainty still reigns there as I write these lines; vain hopes are raised by rumours, some so improbable that they suggest the incoherent rambling of one but half-awakened out of a long drugged sleep. But certain it is that efficiency, concentration, and high purpose have met sloth and corruption, and have conquered. Though the lines of Chatalja may prove equal to the task of defending this last strip of Turkish territory, yet the fact remains that those young nations have brought about an epoch-making catastrophe—the passing of Ottoman rule in Europe.

CHAPTER VII

The defences of Constantinople—Adrianople and its history—The walls of Constantinople and their story—The Marble Tower—Yedi Koulé and the Golden Gate—Tales of Theodosius and Maximus, St. Ursula and the eleven thousand maidens—Emperor Heraclius—The story of Basil the Macedonian—King Crum’s appearance before the Golden Gate—Michael Palæologus and Mary the Conductress—The Walls of Theodosius—Refugees encamped outside the walls—The triumph of Christianity.

IN these days of effective long-range fire the defences of a capital city lie well away from and command the approaches to it. Whereas formerly hostile forces surged up against stout towers and strong walls, the enemy of to-day lets loud-voiced cannon speak from afar, hurling destruction at what look like mounds, green hills, from a distance, but when approached bristle with ordnance and small-arms. Far afield lie fortresses, each encircled with smaller forts, and these are meant to stay the tide of invasion. This was the mission of Adrianople and its enceinte of forts, Adrianople, the City of Hadrian, famous in history, for epoch-making events have taken place around it; the Goths here vanquished Valens, and their impetuous onslaught broke the ranks of Roman legions and filled the minds of those warriors with such dread of the Teuton invader that years passed before they could be induced to face the Goths again. It was Theodosius the Great who brought back their courage to them. His skilful system of block-houses kept him informed of the enemy’s vagrant movements, and by so contriving that the Roman legionaries met only numerically inferior bodies of barbarians, he helped to revive the great traditions of Roman arms at least for a short space of time.

Then again when Bulgarians came pouring down the Valley of the Maritza towards Constantinople, the defenders of the Imperial City met them at Adrianople; the armies of Byzant were beaten, the Emperor slain, and his skull, encased in gold, served as a drinking-vessel to his vanquisher. The hosts of Othman, having overrun the northern European provinces of the Byzantine Empire, made for Adrianople, and the city became the European capital of the Osmanli until Constantinople fell.

To-day the City of Hadrian, the “Sperr-fort” of Constantinople, is surrounded by the enemies of the Porte, Bulgarians and Servians, and thus one of the outlying defences of the capital no longer serves its purpose, and the defence has been drawn in nearer to the lines of Chatalja. Those lines now take the place as last defence of the walls built on the landward side by Theodosius II, and improved and repaired by his successors to the Imperial Purple. They stand to-day grey and deserted, lichen-grown, clad in dark green folds of ivy, that sympathetic friend of fallen fortresses, and listen to the sounds of danger to the capital, while recalling days when they themselves held out against all foes, though earthquakes shook their stout foundations, and discord in the city seemed like to nullify their usefulness. A strange and stirring history this of those landward walls of Constantinople, and worthy of a moment’s consideration in these days, when the fate of yet another Empire, with its seat of government within those walls, is trembling in the balance.

They stretch from the Sea of Marmora northward to the Golden Horn, do those walls of Theodosius, their southern angle marked by a strong tower, a marble tower, dipping its foundations deep into the pellucid waters. I saw it first on a glorious summer day, the gleaming blocks of marble of which it is built were reflected in the waters of the Sea of Marmora, beyond blue sea, or above blue sky, and between the two, floating like the Isles of the Blest on a magic sea, the Prince’s Islands, and behind them the blue hills of Asia Minor, their rugged outlines softened by the heat-haze of a summer’s day. Little white sails gleamed on the flashing waters, sails filled by some idle zephyr which carried small ships away, lazily, out into the southern seas. But, mind you, this tower has not always lived in idleness, bathing its feet in summer seas. Times were when the watchman up in this tower would see the south alive with movement and the silver path on the sea overshadowed by clouds of sail. Swiftly they came, those strange craft from out of the south, bearing bronzed sons of Arabia to storm the City of Cæsar. Twice they came, in 668 and again from 716-718, but their efforts were unavailing, and the groves of cypress trees mark their last resting-place.

The Marble Tower served its purpose well in those ancient days, over which distance has cast its glamour. To-day the Marble Tower stands silent, lifeless, by the side of a leaden sea; passing squalls hide the view to southward and over the Islands towards the mountains of Asia Minor, and a grey sky, heavy with rain, hangs like a pall over the City and this corner of its ancient defences. The Marble Tower’s part in history is long since played out, and now it listens silently, helpless, to the distant booming of cannon before which it would fall like those castles of dreamland at cock-crow; ruined it stands mourning the ruin which overtakes the kingdoms of this world.

A little further northward stands yet another memorable monument to former greatness, Yedi Koulé and the “Golden Gate.” Several ruined towers raise their heads above the broken walls from among groups of little wooden houses. They and the curtains which connect them once formed a stronghold built by Mohammed II on the ruins of a former castle. This was for a time the chief garrison of the Janissaries, and a state prison wherein the Sultans were wont to incarcerate the ambassadors of those foreign Powers with which they chanced to be at war, a playful habit which has been discontinued since Turkey asserted her claim to be considered a civilized nation. The Janissaries also kept their own prisoners here, generally dethroned Sultans, whom they killed here at their leisure and free from outside interference.