Constantinople, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

[B] Ali Pasha was beheaded on February 5th, 1822.—Trans.

And ever on the one hand wall after wall, tower succeeding tower, and on the other shaded cemeteries, sometimes a green field or so, a vineyard, or a group of deserted houses. Now and then, as I looked ahead from some depression in the road, I would fancy that I could see the final outline, but on reaching high ground the same unbroken succession would again be seen stretching away into the distance, seemingly without end: at every few steps new towers would come in sight, far away, one behind the other, two or three at a time, as though they were pressing forward and peering over one another’s heads in the effort to see who it could be thus daring to disturb that silence and solitude.

Interior View of the Seven Towers.

All along this part of the defences the vegetation is something quite marvellous. Spreading trees grow from the very summits of the towers, as though they stood in gigantic vases; garlands of brilliant flowers, vines, and creepers droop and wave from the battlements; while below, from the midst of a dense undergrowth of brambles, nettles, wild strawberries, and lentisks, plane and willow trees cast their dark shadows across the moat and its banks. Whole sections of the walls are completely covered with vegetation flung like a green veil over the brickwork and crumbling masonry, and concealing the cracks and fissures. The moat is laid out in truck-gardens; on its banks are flocks of sheep and goats grazing, whose keepers, Greek boys, lie stretched out at full length under the trees; now and then a flock of birds flies out from the walls, and the atmosphere is loaded with the penetrating odor of wild grass; from those hoary ruins there comes something of the joyous spirit of spring-time, and they look as though they had been decked and wreathed for the triumphal procession of a sultana. All at once a salt breath blew across my cheek, and, raising my eyes, I saw far ahead of me the blue bosom of the Sea of Marmora; at the same instant a voice seemed to murmur in my ear, “The Castle of the Seven Towers,” arresting me in the middle of the road with a vague feeling of inquietude; but, presently resuming my walk, I passed first the ancient gate of Deuterou, and farther on the Melandesias Gate,[C] coming at last face to face with the castle itself. This place of ill omen, erected by Muhammad II. on the site of the ancient Kyklobion of the Greeks[D] to defend the city at that point where the sea and land walls join, was later, when further victories had rendered Stambul secure from danger of attack, and it was consequently no longer required as a fortress, converted into a prison. To-day it is merely the skeleton of a castle guarded by a handful of soldiers—a hated ruin, whose dark and gloomy associations and sinister history are bywords among the people of Constantinople, although strangers seldom see more of it than the fleeting glimpse to be had from the decks of the steamer which bears them to the mouth of the Golden Horn. By the Turks it is called Yedi Kuleh, and they regard it much as the French did the Bastile and the English the Tower of London—a monument recalling the most oppressive days of the tyranny of the sultans.

[C] The Melandesias Gate is the same as the Silivri Gate, mentioned above.—Trans.

[D] Some authorities place the site of the Greek citadel outside of the walls, on the Sea of Marmora.—Trans.

Looking at it from the road, the walls hide all but two of the great towers which gave it its name, only four of which are now standing. Two Corinthian columns indicate the ancient Golden Gate through which Heraclius and Narsetes made their triumphal entry: according to a legend common to Turk and Greek alike, it is through this gate that the Christians will come on that day when they once more take possession of the City of Constantine. A postern beneath a small square tower gives admittance to the interior, and the sentinel in slippers who drowses without usually permits the simultaneous entry of a visitor into the castle and a coin into his pocket. This successfully accomplished, I found myself in a large enclosure combining lugubriously the aspect of a cemetery with that of a prison. All around rose massive blackened walls, forming a pentagon crowned by heavy towers, square and round, high and low, some tottering to pieces, others intact and topped by high conical roofs, overlaid with lead; innumerable flights of half-ruined stairs led to the battlements and loopholes. A thick, tangled growth of vegetation was overshadowed by a group of cypress and plane trees, above whose summits the minaret of a little mosque could be seen, and beneath, half hidden by the undergrowth, a group of small huts occupied by the soldiers; in the centre of the enclosure stood the tomb of a vizier strangled in the castle; here and there appeared traces of an ancient redoubt, while beneath the underbrush and along the walls were fragments of bas-reliefs, shafts of broken columns, and capitals half buried in the earth and covered with moss and slime—a strange, melancholy chaos, forbidding and oppressive, which made me hesitate about exploring farther. After a momentary indecision, however, I proceeded, circumspectly though, as if afraid that a false step might land me in a pool of blood. The huts were shut up, the mosque closed—everything as still and solitary as in some abandoned ruin. On the walls may still be found traces of Greek crosses, the Constantinian monogram, the spread wings of the Roman eagle, and discolored bits of the decorations of the earlier Byzantine building. Some rough inscriptions on the stones in minute Greek characters bear witness to the presence of Constantine’s soldiers stationed here under the command of the Florentine Giuliani to defend the citadel; they were evidently executed on the day preceding the fall of Constantinople, and the poor fellows, reconciled to death for themselves, request only that Heaven may preserve their city from pillage and their families from slavery. One of the two towers flanking the rear of the Golden Gate is the dungeon tower, in which the sultan used to confine ambassadors from those countries with which he was at war: a number of Latin inscriptions may be seen upon the walls traced by the hands of the prisoners, the most recent being those of the Venetian envoys confined during the reign of Ahmed III., when the Morean War broke out. The other is that far-famed tower around which cluster all the most horrid traditions of the castle—that tower within whose gloomy walls were perpetrated countless deeds of blood and treachery, where viziers and once-powerful ministers raised their last prayers to Heaven for aid while the steps of the executioner were without the door, or, driven crazy by loneliness and despair, beat their heads against the stones. In one of these living sepulchres stood the great mortar in which the bones and flesh of the ulemas were pounded: on the first floor is the circular room, called the Bloody Prison, where the condemned were secretly beheaded and their heads thrown down a well called the Well of Blood, whose mouth may still be seen in the centre of the uneven floor covered with two slabs of stone. Beneath is the so-called Rocky Cavern, lighted by a lantern hung from the roof, where the skin of those sentenced to be tortured was cut into strips, or boiling pitch poured into the wounds left by the lash, and their hands and feet pounded with clubs, the agonized shrieks of these victims rising faint and muffled to the ears of the prisoners in the tower above. In one corner of the enclosure portions remain of the inner courtyard, where common criminals were beheaded by night, near to which there stood until comparatively recent times a wall of human bones reaching nearly to the ramparts of the castle. Near the entrance is the prison of Osman II., the first imperial victim of the vengeance of the Janissaries. Here the unhappy sultan, only eighteen years of age, his strength redoubled by despair, held his four executioners at bay until the hand of one cowardly ruffian, seizing him unawares, elicited a piercing cry, quickly choked by the fatal noose.

Throughout all the towers, and parts of the walls themselves, is a network of dark corridors, secret stairways, low, ponderous doors secured with heavy bars and beams, beneath which many a haughty head of pasha or chamberlain, governor or imperial prince, has bent for the last time, hurled in the flower and vigor of youth from the height of power and success to a dark and ignominious death, their life-blood often staining the castle-walls, while their wives, arrayed in their richest robes, wondered as they sat expectantly amid the splendors of the harem why their lord delayed his coming. Along those narrow passage-ways reeking with moisture, down those steep, uneven stairs, soldiers and executioners with blood-stained hands have passed by night, guided by the uncertain rays of a lantern, or messengers from the Seraglio bringing a faint tantalizing gleam of hope to some poor wretch or else the final “No” of the Sultan, and dead bodies with staring eyes and the horrible silken cord still hanging from the neck been carried in the arms of panting sciaus, exhausted with their long silent struggle in the dim, uncertain light with the fury born of despair.