CHAP. XLII.—THE TURKISH CONQUEST. 1453–1670.
he last Emperor of the East was the best and bravest who had reigned for many years. Constantine Palæologus did his best against the Turks, but Mahommed II., one of the greatest of the Ottoman race, was Sultan, and vowed that Constantinople should be either his throne or his tomb.
When the besieged Christians heard the Turks outside their walls chanting their prayers, they knew that the city would be assaulted the next day, and late at night Constantine called his friends together, and said, “Though my heart is full, I can speak to you no longer. There is the crown which I hold from God. I place it in your hands; I entrust it to you. I fight to deserve it still, or to die in defending it.” They wept and wailed so that he had to wait to be heard again, and then he said, “Comrades, this is our fairest day;” after which they all went to the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and received the Holy Communion together. There was a crowd around as he came out, and he stood before
them, begging them to pardon him for not having been able to make them happier. They answered with sobs and tears, and then he mounted his horse and rode round the defences.
The Turks began the attack in the early morning, and the fight raged all day; but they were the most numerous, and kept thronging into the breach, so that, though Constantine fought like a lion at bay, he could not save the place, and the last time his voice was heard it was crying out, “Is there no Christian who will cut
off my head?” The Turks pressed in on all sides, cut down the Christians, won street after street, house after house; and when at last Mahommed rode up to the palace where Roman emperors had reigned for 1100 years, he was so much struck with the desolation that he repeated a verse of Persian poetry—