The Passing of the Turkish Empire in Europe

by B. Granville Baker

Emperor Constantine likewise assembled his nobles, and the leaders of his allies, chief of whom was Giustiniani; he adjured them to make yet greater efforts in the defence, and to infuse new courage into the siege-worn troops by their example. Rewards he had none to offer them. Then each leader went his way to the post assigned to him, the Emperor himself to a solemn Mass in St. Sophia, the last time in the history of that sacred shrine the mysteries of the Christian faith were adored by any Christian worshipper. Constantine then returned to the palace and asked forgiveness of any of his servants whom he might have wronged; then he passed from his palace to his station at the great breach.

In the Ottoman camp all was ready for the great attempt, and at sunrise masses of assailants stood in their appointed places, waiting to hurl themselves against the tottering defences of the Eastern Empire. To the sound of drums and trumpets wave after wave of fierce fighting men surged across the filled-in fosse, over the broken walls, to be repulsed by the defenders. Time after time they were repulsed and followed by fresh swarms, trampling down the barrier of corpses in their eagerness for blood and booty. But the courage and numbers of the defenders were ebbing fast; Giustiniani, who, side by side with the Emperor, was conducting the defence of the great breach, fell severely wounded, and was borne away to die in his galley in the harbour. This took the heart out of the defence; the chief of the assailing Janissaries noticed it, and urged his men to yet greater endeavour. The Turks now numbered fifty to one as Hassan, the Giant of Ulubad, led thirty men as vanguard of the last attack into the breach. Hassan fell, and most of those who came with him, but the main body followed rapidly, and under the weight of this tremendous onslaught the Christian garrison was over-powered. The victorious Turks rushed in; others had forced the gate of the Phanar on the Golden Horn, and Constantine’s fair City was given over to the sword.

Constantine XII (Palæologus) fell in the breach, defending the City of his great namesake against the Moslem; his body was found under a heap of slain, and with him fell the greater number of his Latin auxiliaries.

Refugees from Thrace and Macedonia are camping among the cypresses on the site from which Mohammed the Conqueror watched the fall of Constantinople’s last defences, while out at Chatalja another foe was dealing heavy blows at the last defences in Europe of that Empire founded here that day in May, 1453.

The Lycus, a dirty, insignificant stream, now swelled by constant rain and draining the quagmire which is called a road, outside the walls, flows through an arch underneath one of the towers into Stamboul. Just within, and leaning up against the walls, are huts built of wood, disused oil-tins, and other makeshifts. These harbour a colony of gipsies, who seemed as happy in the mud as they were when last I saw them, basking in the sunshine. This colony finds the expert horse-dealers (and stealers) of the neighbourhood. At present business is slack, for the war has demanded all there was in the way of horseflesh in the City, for in this respect, too, no adequate preparations had been made; the tramway companies had to give up their jades to carry the Sultan’s cavalry to victory and Sofia, as was fondly imagined by the hosts that streamed out through the gates of the City. I have seen some of the few survivors of those horses, led back by men who were in much the same condition as their mounts; it seemed as if their sinews alone kept their bones from falling apart.

Groves of cypress trees used to cast long shadows over the many graves that mark the landscape to westward of the track that leads northward along the walls of Constantinople; to-day they are fast disappearing under the axe of the refugees, and what was once a scene of solemn beauty is now squalor and desecration, for right away to the Gate of Adrianople, Edirné, as the Turks call it, there were clusters of carts with their distressful burdens. Looking down on all this misery stands the Mosque of Mihrama, on the highest point of the old defences of Constantinople. A church dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of warriors and horsemen, stood here, until St. George’s mission of protecting Christian soldiers ended in the debacle down in the ruin-heaped valley below. To me, the crescent on the dome of Mihrama, the unfinished minaret amidst its scaffolding seemed to wear an air of detachment from the ghastly scenes below; around it dirt and disease, and abject misery within the courtyard of the mosque; but its growing minaret stands quite aloof, and points to the lowering sky, beyond which Allah decides the fate of mortals. So his worshippers, the followers of the Prophet, lie down in huddled heaps of wretchedness about his courts below—Kismet!

The Walls of Theodosius turn away from the road after the Gate of Adrianople, and end at an imposing ruin, once the home of Emperors—the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. It stands high, overlooking the City and the open country; on its walls are the remains of two balconies, from one of which the new-born Prince was shown the wide extent of rolling plain and proclaimed “Cæsar Orbi,” from the other, looking out upon the city, “Cæsar Urbis.” Owls and bats now haunt the scene of former greatness, and the voice of Echo, the “Daughter of the Arches,” no longer gives back the sounds of revelry, the chorus of applause, or murmurs of discontent, which made up the history of that ancient Empire which fell before the sword of Othman in the Valley of the Lycus. Close by is a little postern gate in the curtain connecting the last two towers of the Walls of Theodosius; it was called the Kerko Porta, and legend lingered round it. During the last day of the siege, in May of 1453, a rumour ran along the lines of the defence that the Turks had gained admission by this gate. They did so, but were driven out again by the last Emperor’s bravery, which, however, only delayed the inevitable result of Mohammed’s fierce assault. Ever since then the Greeks believed that when the City should be recaptured by Christians, they would enter by this gate. The Turks heard of this tradition, and when the Slavs were pouring down the Valley of the Maritza, and approaching Stamboul, they pulled down the curtain so that the Russians might not enter by the Kerko Porta, and replaced it by a smaller wall.

Beyond the ruined palace the moat ends abruptly, but the walls continue higher and of greater strength. History clings round them; they recall names of famous men who lived their day, Manuel Comnenus, who was to old Byzant what Manoel O Fortunate was to mediæval Portugal. Anna Comnena, daughter of the first Alexius, who wrote the history of her father’s reign, a record of insincerity. Anne and her mother Irene conspired to poison John, her brother, who proved one of the worthiest of the latter Emperors of the East.