The Walls of Constantinople

by B. Granville Baker

How anxiously those citizens of Constantinople must have longed for news of the enterprise, how hope revived as the fall of Widdin, Orsova, and Raco were reported. What a heavy time of waiting it must have been while the Christian host lay before Nicopolis. Still hope held on, for Bajazet was in Asia, and was never expected back. But suddenly he appeared within six leagues of the Crusaders’ camp. The news was brought in by foragers, and the impetuous French knights, sitting at their evening meal, at once buckled on their arms, and demanded to be led against the foes. Against the advice of Sigismund of Hungary the French charged impetuously. They charged and broke the ranks of the Akindgi, the advanced guard of the Janissaries and of the heavy regular cavalry, and pressed on till they encountered the main body of the Turks under the command of the Sultan himself. Meanwhile the disordered ranks of the Akindgi and Janissaries left behind, reformed and attacked the French in their rear. All gallantry was unavailing—they were almost all killed or taken. The German knights fell around their sacred banners. The day was lost; of the ten thousand prisoners taken, nearly all were massacred on the following day by Bajazet, who sat out from dawn till evening watching, according to the custom of his race, the gratifying spectacle of slaughter.

This dashed the hopes of the Greek Christians, and they began to prepare for the last hours of their Imperial City. But Bajazet was called away to his Eastern Asiatic frontier, where the Mongols were making fierce inroads on his territory, under their famous leader Tamerlane. A respite was thus granted while thus occupied, for the army of Bajazet was annihilated at Angora, and he himself was slain. No doubt the news of Bajazet’s defeat and death was welcome to those who took their walks on the Atrium, no doubt many a good bargain was concluded then and there in a friendly way, when the news from Asia promised better security, and at least a postponement of the Eastern terror. And indeed the Ottoman power was prostrate for awhile after the Battle of Angora, and to make matters worse the sons of Bajazet quarrelled about the succession. In the chaos that ensued even the Greek Empire profited directly, for several portions of lost property were recovered, and no doubt hopes ran high that a turning-point in its fortunes had arrived, that the dark clouds of Eastern predominance so long threatening were to be finally dispelled, and that the sun of Rome would shine again over Byzantium.

But the old terror revived again, though not perhaps to the same extent. Certainly, ere long the Turks were knocking at the city gates again. This time under Musa, a son of Bajazet, who on being released from captivity in Tamerlane’s tents, joined in the fray of brothers, and laid siege to Constantinople, because the emperor supported the claims of the eldest brother Solyman, who had taken unto himself the Sultanate of his father’s European possession, but had been overcome and slain by Mahomed the younger son.

Manuel II Palæologus, Greek emperor, besought the protection of Mahomed, and for a time a Turkish army actually garrisoned the Castle of Cæsar. But Mahomed had to take his troops back to Asia. There he overcame and slew his brother Musa, and then, all rival claimants having been removed, became Sultan of his father’s dominions.

But a few years longer was the respite granted to the failing power of Byzantium. John VII Palæologus retained some semblance of Imperial dignity; but under his successor, a bearer of Constantine’s illustrious name, the death-knell sounded alike to the house of Palæologus and to the Roman Empire of the East. The curtain rang down on what may be called the second act of the drama of Byzantium—the reign of the Christian emperors. The curtain rose again on a scene strewn with ruins of Imperial splendour, on heaps of slain, the victims of the conqueror’s lust of blood, and the succession of emperors in the Imperial City of the East was restored by one of the greatest and perhaps the most cruel of the able sons of Othman.

Mahomed II the Conqueror broke the proud record of those stout walls of Constantinople, and made the place his own. The ancient capital of the Ottomans, Broussa, and the more recent one, Adrianople, receded into the background; the former to become a relic of satisfied ambitions, treated with the respect usually meted out to a stepping-stone, the latter a mere base for frontier defence. Mahomed transformed all the life of his nation, and centred it in the City of Constantine, choosing that part of it where Byzas first landed, the point of the promontory. For here he separated a space of eight furlongs from the point to the triangle and built his Seraglio.

And here the history of Constantinople continued its course with just that break of a few days when ownership was forcibly transferred. Nor did the religious life of the city suffer any lengthy interruption. True, the monasteries disappeared, the Cross fell from the Christian churches, the Crescent added minarets, and due ceremony made them into mosques. But who can say that the religious life had ceased with the alteration in creed and dogma. And the Turks with some exceptions, usually political, have always respected the faith of others.

It must have been one of the most marvellous and astounding scenes ever witnessed by mortal eyes that took place not long after the city fell, and long before the sights and signs of the desolation there wrought had been removed. The Greek remnant had gathered together and returned in crowds as soon as they had sufficiently been assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. To solemnize this fast the Sultan held an investiture on old Byzantium lines, with all the pomp and traditional splendour of the ceremony, an investiture of the Patriarch of Greek Orthodoxy. With his own hand the Conqueror delivered into the hands of Gennodius the crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office. His Holiness was then conducted to the Gate of the Seraglio, presented with a horse richly caparisoned, and led by viziers and pashas to the palace allotted for his residence.

And this happened within the Seraglio walls! Surely an astounding event. The successor to the throne and empire of the 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 that of perhaps any other human community, himself approved the chosen Patriarch, the head of his new subjects’ religion, and with his own hands elevated him to that high office. Thus from the centre of Constantine’s city in its new aspect of purely oriental colouring, the Seraglio, the latticed prison of those whose privilege it is to give birth to the sons of Islam, new life was given to Greek Orthodoxy by him whose sword had hitherto been raised against it.

So the life of the old city, the heart of a new empire continued, and one ruler followed another, and like those of the second act, some were good, others bad, but none wholly indifferent. Another Bajazet followed on Mahomed the Conqueror and carried on the victorious traditions of his house. Mahomed died suddenly among his soldiers, leaving two sons, who contested for the sovereignty, as has so often happened in the history of empires raised by the hand of one strong man. Zizimes, the younger son, suggested a division of the empire, Bajazet to rule over Roumelia, Zizimes to govern Anatolia with the Hellespont as boundary between their realms. But Bajazet would none of it. “The Empire is a bride whose favours cannot be shared,” he said, and Zizimes was defeated and had to seek refuge at the Courts of other rulers, some Christian, but none of them favourable to the furtherance of his hopes. His death was caused by poison, administered by a servant of the Pope, Alexander Borgia, who thereby gained a reward of 300,000 ducats from the brother Bajazet, the sum that Borgia had agreed to for the deed, and would probably have earned himself had not Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and carried off Zizimes from the guardianship of the Roman Pontiff.