No sooner had he received the leaders and the troops than he marched boldly into Constantinople at their head. He trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence with the Empress, and assumed the title of Augustus. Unlike his double, Richard, he spared the lives of the young princes.
After some dubious dealings, the silence of the clergy made his union with Theophane possible, so he reached the height of his ambition—the Imperial Purple. But, strange to say, the once so popular general when in the Purple lost the affection of his people. No doubt the faults were equally divided, the Greeks disliked him for his parsimony, and he had ample precedent of how easily a fickle population can change from favour to fierce hatred. A demonstration of this change caused Nicephorus to fortify the Palace of Justinian; he had been stoned by his own people, and had barely reached the palace in safety.
Whilst standing by the sea under this mass of ruins, let us go back to a winter’s night in 969. The additions to the palace that Nicephorus had made to guard him against the fury of his subjects had that day been completed. The gates were locked and bolted, the windows strongly barred, and, as a further precaution, the Emperor had moved from the couch and room he generally occupied at night, and lay asleep stretched on a bear-skin on the floor of a smaller chamber. But treachery lurked within the palace walls; murderous plans were rife, and they were conceived in the brain of an adulterous empress. And listening by those dark waves we hear the sound of muffled oars. A boat takes shape in the gloom at the foot of the palace stairs. Headed by John Zimisces, lover of Theophane, a man of small stature but great strength and beauty, and a soldier of renown, shadowy forms ascend a rope ladder, lowered from a window by some female attendants. Other conspirators were hidden in Theophane’s most private chambers; they reached the Emperor’s retreat, and with much cruelty and insult Nicephorus II Phocas was done to death.
John Zimisces reigned in his stead, but ere he was allowed to assume full power with the sanction of the Church he had to face at least one upright man. On the threshold of St. Sophia, whither he went to his coronation, the intrepid Patriarch stopped his progress, charged him with entering the Holy Place with blood upon his hands, and demanded, as a sign of penance, he should separate himself from his guilty companion.
So Theophane was banished from the place that still is haunted by her baleful influence, and died unmourned in exile.
Another vision, less sombre, equally dramatic and more fleeting, comes and fades away. Amaury, king of Jerusalem, visits Manuel Comnenus in 1170, to implore his aid against Saladin. A brief pathetic scene thus re-enacts itself, brief as the reign of those, the Christian Kings of David’s Royal City, pathetic in the waste of life, the misery, the abject hopelessness that marked those chivalrous enterprises known to us as the Crusades.
One final scene before we turn away from this historic spot, the last scene in its history, and splendid in its utter despair. Here, at the last siege of Constantinople by the Turks, stout-hearted Peter Guliano and his gallant catalans held out when all else was lost.
A steep incline leads from the beach, past little wooden houses perched anywhere against the ruined walls. They look like that old house—that dear old house—Hans Andersen speaks of in the shortest of his fairy tales. We climb up the steep ascent, and at the top find more ruins—the base of a gigantic marble pillar, broken arches built of brick and glorious in their subdued colour; and then—the railway. Yes, gentle readers, the Roumelian Railway, to give it its full and awesome title. And we must follow this railway if we would see more of the city walls. You may walk anywhere you like along the single track. A little pathway winds about here and there and everywhere, and on either hand are houses, some of wood, some more pretentious, scattered about with irregularity.
Above us is the ridge on which the Hippodrome, theatre, and circus used to stand in days when a pleasure-loving population spent time and money in much the same way as do some Western nations of this day. No doubt they too considered themselves sportsmen; no doubt they too danced abject attendance and stood numerous dinners to the stalwart hero who was awarded his “Blue” or his “Green,” as the case might be. And as to some forms of sport in those days of the Byzantine Empire, we have already given account of one sportsman’s strenuous day, the Emperor Romanus, and we have seen how his wife discouraged his proclivities, by methods effective, but far too drastic for the present age.
Ancient chroniclers make mention of a polo-ground, but it is too much to expect such very learned men to tell you how the game was played. Yet this concerns the Author and Artist nearly, for both have spent much time and pleasantly in the saddle. No doubt the game, under whatever rules, was extremely picturesque; the life, the colour, the movement of horses and men engaged in such a keen pursuit can never fail to give a series of brilliant and entrancing pictures. But when you come to details! No trim pigskin saddles, but possibly some coloured bolsters, with loose bits of braid or tassels for adornment; no doubt bright-coloured brow-bands—that abomination! And then the ball. The Artist wonders whether it was painted the colour of one of the many factions that made up the political life of the city—Blue, Green, or Red—or whether, like keen sportsmen, such differences were dropped in contests of this kind.