Hardly had the report been noised abroad throughout Constantinople, at about seven in the morning, that the Turks had actually scaled the walls, than an immense throng of people rushed to St. Sophia for refuge. There were about a hundred thousand persons in all—renegade soldiers, monks, priests, senators, thousands of virgins from the convents, members of patrician families laden with their treasures, high state dignitaries, and princes of the imperial blood,—all pouring through nave and gallery and arcade, treading upon one another in every recess of the huge building, and mingling in one inextricable mass with the dregs of the population, slaves, and malefactors escaped from the prisons and galleys. The mighty basilica resounded with shrieks of terror such as are heard in a theatre at the outbreak of fire. When every nook and corner, gallery and chapel, was filled to overflowing, the doors were shut to and securely bolted, and the wild uproar of the first few moments gave place to a terror-stricken silence. Many still believed that the victors would not dare to violate the sanctity of St. Sophia; others awaited with a stubborn sense of security the appearance of the angel foretold by the prophets who was to annihilate the Turkish army before the advance-guard should have reached the Column of Constantine; others, again, had ascended to the gallery running around the interior of the dome, from whose windows they could watch the movements of the enemy and impart their intelligence by signs to the hundred thousand strained and ashy faces turned up to them from the nave and galleries below. An immense white mass could be seen covering the city-walls from the Blachernæ to the Golden Gate, from which four shining bands were seen to detach themselves and advance between the houses like four torrents of lava, increasing in volume and noise and leaving behind them a track of smoke and flame. These were the four attacking columns of the Turkish army driving before them the disorganized remainder of the Greek forces, and burning and plundering as they came, converging toward St. Sophia, the Hippodrome, and the imperial palace. As the advance-guard reached the second hill the blare of their trumpets suddenly smote upon the ears of the terrified throng in the basilica, who fell upon their knees in agonized supplication; but even then there were many who still looked for the angel to appear, and others who clung to the hope that a feeling of awe at the vastness and majesty of that building, dedicated to the worship of God, might hold the invaders in check. But even this last illusion was soon dispelled. Through the thousand windows there broke on their ears a confused roar of human voices mingled with the clashing of arms and shrill blare of trumpets, and a moment later the first blows of the Ottoman sabres fell upon the bronze doors of the vestibule and resounded throughout the entire building, sounding the death-knell of the listening multitude, who, feeling the chill breath of the grave blow upon them, abandoned hope and recommended their souls to the mercy of God. Before long the doors were battered in or struck from their hinges, and a savage horde of janissaries, spahis, timmarioti, dervishes, and sciaus, covered with dust and blood, their faces contorted with the fury of battle, rapine, and murder, appeared in the openings. At sight of the enormous nave, glittering with gold and precious stones, they sent up a great shout of astonishment and joy, and, pouring in like a furious torrent, abandoned themselves to the work of pillage and destruction. Some busied themselves at once in securing the women and virgins, valuable booty for the slave-market, who, stupefied with terror, offered no resistance, but voluntarily held out their arms for the chains. Others attacked the rich furnishings of the church: tabernacles were violated, images overthrown, ivory crucifixes trodden under foot, while the mosaics, mistaken for precious stones, fell under the blows of the cimeters in glittering showers into the cloaks and caftans held open to receive them; pearls, detached from their settings with sabre-points, rolled about over the pavement, chased like living creatures and fought over with savage kicks and blows. The high altar was broken up into a thousand pieces of gold and silver; thrones, pulpits, the choir-rail, all disappeared as though swept away by an avalanche of rock and stone, and still those Asiatic hordes continued to pour into the church in blood-stained waves, and on all sides nothing could be seen but a whirlwind of drunken ruffians, some of whom had placed tiaras on their heads, while others wore different parts of the sacerdotal vestments over their own clothing. Chalices and receptacles for the Host were waved aloft, and troops of newly-acquired slaves, bound two and two with ecclesiastical scarfs of gold, and horses and camels laden with plunder, were driven over the pavement strewn with broken fragments of statues, torn copies of the Evangels, and relics of the saints—a barbarous and sacrilegious orgy in which shouts of triumph, fierce threats, bursts of hoarse laughter, children’s cries, the neighing of horses, and shrill clanging of trumpets mingled in one overpowering uproar, until, suddenly, the mad tumult ceased, and in the awed hush which followed the august figure of Muhammad II. appeared in a doorway, on horseback and surrounded by a group of princes, viziers, and generals, haughty and impassive, like the living representative of the vengeance of God. Rising in his stirrups, he announced in a voice of thunder, which re-echoed throughout the whole of the devastated building, the first formula of the new religion: “Allah is the light of heaven and earth.”
DOLMABÂGHCHEH.
Every Friday the Sultan says his prayers in some one of the mosques of Constantinople.
Palace of Dolma Baghcheh.
We saw him one day on his way to the mosque of Abdul-Mejid, which stands on the European shore of the Bosphorus not far from the imperial palace of Dolmabâghcheh. To reach this palace from Galata you pass through the populous district of Top-Khâneh, between a great gun-foundry and an immense arsenal, and, traversing the entire Mussulman quarter of Fundukli, which occupies the site of the ancient Aianteion, come out upon a spacious open square on the water’s edge, beyond which and on the shore of the Bosphorus rises the famous residence of the sultans.
It is the largest marble building reflected in the waters of the strait from Seraglio hill to the mouth of the Black Sea, and can only be embraced in a single view by taking a käik and passing along its front. The façade, nearly a half (Italian) mile in length, looks toward Asia, and can be seen at a great distance gleaming between the water’s blue and deep green summits of the hills behind it. Properly speaking, it can hardly be called a palace, since it is not the result of any one architectural plan. The various parts are detached and present an extraordinary mixture of styles—Arabic, Greek, Asiatic, Gothic, Turkish, Romanesque, and Renaissance—combining the stateliness of the royal European palaces with the almost effeminate grace and charm of those of Granada and Seville. It might be called, instead of an imperial palace, an imperial city, like that of the emperor of China, and, more from the peculiarity of its arrangements than its great size, looks as though instead of a single monarch, a dozen kings, friends or brothers, might occupy it, dividing their time between amusement and complete idleness. Seen from the Bosphorus, there are a series of façades, looking like a row of theatres and temples, covered with an indescribable mass of ornamentation, apparently, as a Turkish poet has said, thrown broadcast by a madman’s hand, and which, like the famous Indian pagoda, weary the eye out almost at the first glance. They seem to be stone memorials of the mad caprices, loves, and intrigues of the dissolute princes who have inhabited them. Rows of Doric and Ionic pillars, light as the pole of a lance; windows framed in festooned cornices and twisted columns; arches carved with flowers and foliage, surmounting doors covered with fretwork; charming little balconies with open-work sculpture; trophies, roses, vines, and garlands which knot and intertwine with one another; delicate fancies in marble budding forth in the entablatures, running along the balconies, surrounding the windows; a network of arabesques extending from door to roof; a bloom and pomp and delicacy of execution and richness of design which lends to each one of the smaller palaces forming a part of the whole the character of some masterpiece of the workman’s chisel; and so impossible does it seem that the design could ever have emanated from the brain of a placid Armenian architect that one is rather tempted to ascribe its origin to a dream of some enamored sultan sleeping with his head upon the breast of an ambitious lady-love. Before it stretches a line of lofty marble pilasters connected by a gilded screenwork of boughs and flowers intertwined with such marvellous delicacy that at a little distance it has all the appearance of a lace curtain which at any moment may be carried away by a puff of wind. Long flights of marble stairs lead from the entrances to the water’s edge, and disappear beneath the waves. Everything is white, fresh, and sparkling, as though completed but yesterday. No doubt the eye of an artist would detect a thousand minor errors in composition and taste; but the effect as a whole of that vast and magnificent pile of buildings, that array of palaces, white as the driven snow, set like so many jewels and crowned with verdure, reflected in the shining waters below, is one of power, of mystery, of luxurious pomp, and voluptuous pleasure which almost supersedes that of the old Seraglio itself. Those who have had the good fortune to see it affirm that the interior fully comes up to the exterior of the building. Long suites of apartments, whose walls are covered with brilliant and fantastic frescoes, open into one another by doors of cedar and cassia-wood; corridors flooded with soft radiance lead to other rooms lighted from crimson crystal domes, and baths which seem to have been fashioned from a single block of Paros marble; lofty balconies overhang mysterious gardens, and groves of cypress and rose trees, from which, through long perspectives of Moorish porticoes, the blue waters of the sea are seen sparkling in the sunlight beyond; and windows, terraces, balconies, kiosks, everything, brilliant with flowers, and everywhere cascades of water shooting into the air to fall back in filmy showers upon green turf and marble pavement; while in all directions there open up enchanting views of the Bosphorus, the cool breezes from whose surface impart a delicious freshness to every corner of the great building.
On the side facing toward Fundukli there is an imposing entrance, covered with a mass of ornamentation, out of which the Sultan was expected to appear and cross the square. Not another monarch upon earth has such beautiful surroundings in which to issue in state from his palace and show himself to his subjects. Standing at the foot of the hill,—on one side is the entrance to the palace, looking like a royal triumphal arch; on the other the beautiful mosque of Abdul-Mejid, flanked by two graceful minarets; opposite is the Bosphorus; and beyond rise the green hills of Asia dotted over with kiosks, palaces, mosques, and villages of every variety of form and color, like some great scattered city decked out for a fête; farther on is seen the smiling beauty of Skutari, with her funereal crown of cypress trees; and between the two banks a never-ending procession of sailing vessels; men-of-war with flags flying; crowded steamboats, looking as though their decks were heaped with flowers; Asiatic ships of strange, obsolete design; launches from the Seraglio; princely barges; flocks of birds skimming over the surface of the water—a scene at once so full of peace and regal beauty that the stranger whose eye wanders over it as he awaits the coming of the imperial cortége finds himself picturing the fortunate possessor of all these things as endowed with angelic beauty and the smiling serenity of an infant.