The Walls of Constantinople

by B. Granville Baker

Perhaps the first serious attempt upon the seaward walls was made by those scourges of the Mediterranean, the Saracens. It was on this occasion that mention is first made of the use of a chain to close the entrance of a harbour against an enemy. It was stretched across the Golden Horn, from a tower near the apex of the promontory to one upon the northern bank.

Those were stirring times, when the sons of Arabia Felix, the first disciples of the Prophet, spread out over all the Mediterranean and the neighbouring countries. They conquered in breathless advance Egypt and all north of Africa, and held their own still in its most western region. They invaded Persia, they overflowed into Spain, overthrew the Gothic monarchy, and remained, despite the heroic efforts of Charlemagne and his Paladins. Syria and the Holy Places were theirs, and they snatched what was best and most worth having among the islands of the Mediterranean. What wonder, then, that they turned their eager, flashing eyes towards Constantinople? As we stand gazing at the beautiful city that rises proudly out of a tranquil sea, the waters become troubled, and dark-blue and iron-grey storm-clouds gather in the south. They race up from the Dardanelles, and hundreds of rakish-looking craft, rigged as those that the traveller may see any day off the north coast of Africa, fly before the wind. The rain falls in torrents, and then suddenly all is still again, the sea is quiet, and the rearguard of the tempest sweeps away up the Bosphorus, to leave the sun in possession of its former battlefield. Even so came the invincible navies of Egypt and Syria, carrying the swarthy sons of Arabia towards the treasures they descried within the walls of Constantine’s Imperial City. And up it comes, this storm-cloud, over a smooth sea, and borne on a gentle breeze like a moving forest overshadowing the surface of the strait. Others of their fierce race and fiercer faith were arrayed before the land-walls; and no one of the invaders doubted that any bulwarks, however strong, however well defended, could resist the tide of passionate bravery that was about to break over the devoted city.

But the time was not yet come. Leo III the Isaurian, a man risen from the people to the Imperial Purple through his ability and valour, knew how to defend his own. He had the chain that guarded the entrance to the harbour lowered, and, while the enemy hesitated as to which course to adopt, Greek fireships sailed amongst them carrying destruction as to the Armada. This, and the tempests that arose, so seriously damaged the hitherto invincible fleet that only a few galleys were spared to return to Alexandria and to relate the tale of their moving misadventures.

Though peace was never the lot of the Eastern Empire for any protracted period, it was more than a century later that an unfriendly keel furrowed the waters of the Sea of Marmora. And this time the trouble came from within. Michael II the Stammerer had gained the throne when Leo V the Armenian was slain at the foot of the altar grasping a weighty cross in his hand. Thomas contested Michael’s claim and sailed towards the city to enforce his own, but a storm arose and compelled him to withdraw. So Thomas and his galleys are wafted from the scene to be followed shortly afterwards by other hardier adventurers. They came down from the Black Sea, a black cloud their canopy, on black waters that turned to silver where the prows of their vessels cleared a path. Fierce, reckless foes these, who in 865 first made acquaintance with the Eastern Gate of Europe, a goal that for ten centuries represented the sum of their ambition. Fair men of big stature with high cheek-bones, speaking a barbarous language, they sped down on the wings of a fierce gale towards the Golden Horn. But here the tempest gained the mastery, and this the first Russian fleet to disturb the peace of Constantinople perished in the storm.

Again a visionary host crowds the further banks with their glittering arms and pennants waving overhead; all the chivalry of the West is here assembled. Their numbers are so great that the Byzantine agents gave up the task of counting them. They came from all the West: from Rome to Britain, from Poland and Bohemia and all Germany under the banner of Conrad the Kaiser. Louis of France too, and his nobles, swelled this throng, who, with the cross emblazoned on their shields and embroidered on their garments, set out upon this conquest of the Holy Land. We see them cross the waters, while hope beats high in their unconquered hearts, and would rather draw a veil over the return of the mere remnant of survivors.

Then later on came others in larger vessels, from the South: Genoese, experienced travellers and determined fighters; also Venetians, the only race of sea-dogs that ever succeeded in an attempt on these sea-walls. A striking scene this. In double line the ships and lighter galleys of the Venetians bore down upon the walls. Soldiers leapt from the swifter sailing craft on to shore and planted scaling-ladders against the walls. In the meantime the heavier ships filled up the gaps with their high poop-decks and turrets, as platforms for those military engines then in use, and from them drawbridges were lowered to the summit of the wall. On the prow of his galley stood Dandolo, the venerable Doge, in full armour. He was the first warrior on the shore. The standard of St. Mark waved from the ramparts and twenty-five of the towers were speedily occupied, the Greeks being driven by fire from the adjacent quarters. But Dandolo decided to forego the advantage thus gained in order to hasten to the aid of his Latin comrades, whose small and exhausted bands were in sore straits among the superior numbers of the Greeks. Nevertheless, their firm aspect awed the coward Emperor Alexius. But he collected a treasure of 10,000 pounds of gold, and basely deserting his wife and people crept into a barque and stole through the Bosphorus and sought safety in an obscure Thracian harbour.

Two mighty heroes of history and Romance, both known as Barbarossa, add yet more colour to the vivid pageant that plays over these placid waters. For further to the south, where the Sea of Marmora narrows into the Channel of the Dardanelles, the Redbeard Frederick, Conrad’s son and successor to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, if not the greatest, at least the best known in the romantic story of the house of Hohenstauffen, crossed into Asia to find, after many deeds of derring do, his watery grave in a small Cilician torrent. There were many who believed he was not dead, but only slumbering deep among the ruins of Kyffhausen—his long red beard grown through the table on which his hand supports his head, the while he dreams even as he has dreamt through all the troublous times that visited Germany. Dreamt while the last scion of his house perished; dreamt while a war of thirty years, provoked like all the cruelest wars by religious differences, devastated the fair fields of Germany and laid waste many a walled city; dreamt while the march of the first Napoleon’s armies made Europe tremble—only to awake when all Germany arose and marched towards the Rhine and into the Empire of the third Napoleon, and returning thence to build up a new and stronger empire.

The next to bear the epithet of Barbarossa lived his eventful life when Francis I was King of France and Charles V King of Spain, Naples and the Netherlands, and by election German Emperor, ruled over many states and provinces of the old world and the new.

Solyman I the Great was Sultan and Chief, and reigned at Constantinople, extending the empire of the Crescent by land far into Western Europe, while Barbarossa carried the victorious symbol everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea. His name was Khairedden Pasha, one of four brothers who were trained to merchandise with its usual concomitant piracy, and amassed great wealth in these pursuits. Barbarossa and his brother Urudsh sailed at first under the flag of the Tunisian Sultan but paid tribute to Solyman, and eventually transferred to him their allegiance. They conquered Temnes, Algiers, and all the Barbary coast, which they held as fief of the Porte. All his ventures seemed to be successful. A strong fleet was sent against him under command of Genoa’s great admiral, Doria, by Charles V, but Barbarossa defied him. A stately pageant passed down the Sea of Marmora in 1534. Barbarossa and his fleet of eighty-four vessels, with which he scoured the Mediterranean Sea, ravaged the coasts of Italy, Minorca and Spain, and beat the combined fleets of the Emperor, the Pope, and Venice off Prevesa. After many years of successful marauding we see the Turkish fleet return, still under command of their veteran admiral, Barbarossa, whose beard was turning white. A peaceful end in Constantinople was his, and now the body that held that turbulent spirit rests worthily enshrined by the shore of the Bosphorus.

With the passing of Barbarossa a new power first makes its appearance under the walls of old Byzantium, its colours the white ensign emblazoned with St. George’s blood-red cross. Tight-built English ships, some of which may possibly have borne their brave part in the defeat of Spain’s great Armada, are next seen sailing smoothly upon the waters of the inland sea. They bring messages from Elizabeth, Queen of England, to Amurath II, Sultan and Chief.