The brave Cretan sailors, who were defending the walls near the Horaia Gate, took refuge in certain towers named Basil, Leo, and Alexis. They could not be captured, and would not surrender. In the afternoon, however, their stubborn resistance being reported to the sultan, he consented to allow them to leave the city with all their belongings, an offer which they reluctantly accepted.[472] The Cretans seem to have been the last Christians who quitted their posts as defenders of the city.
Flight towards ships.
The panic caused by the morning’s massacre was general. Men, women, and children sought to get outside the city, to escape into the neighbouring country, or to reach the ships in the harbour. Some were struck down on their way; others were drowned before they could get on board. The foreigners naturally made for their own ships. Some of them have placed on record the manner of their escape. Tetaldi says that ‘the great galleys of Romania remained[473] till midday trying to save what Christians they could, and receiving four hundred on board,’ among whom was one named Tetaldi, who had been on guard very far from the place where the Turks entered.’ He stripped himself and swam to one of these vessels, where he was taken on board. Barbaro relates that when the cry was raised that the Turks had entered the city everybody took to flight and ran to the sea in order to seek refuge in the Greek and foreign ships.
It was a pitiable sight, says Ducas, to see the shore outside the walls all full of men and women, monks and nuns, shouting to the ships and praying to be taken on board. The ships took as many as they could, but the greater number had to be left behind. The wretched inhabitants expected no mercy, nor was any shown to them. Happily, the Turks had now become keener after plunder than after Plunder organised. blood. When they found that there was no organised force to resist them, they turned their attention solely to loot. They set about the pillage of the city with something like system. One body devoted its attention to the wealthy mansions, dividing themselves for this purpose into companies; another undertook the plunder of the churches; a third robbed the smaller houses and shops. These various bands overran the city, killing in case of resistance, and taking as slaves men, women and children, priests and laymen, regardless of age or condition. No tragedy, says Critobulus, could equal it in horror. Women, young and well educated; beautiful maidens of noble family, who had never been exposed to the eye of man, were torn from their chaste chambers with brutal violence and publicly treated in horrible fashion. Virgins consecrated to God were dragged by their hair from the churches and were ruthlessly stripped of every ornament they possessed. A horde of savage brutes committed unnameable atrocities, and hell was let loose.[474]
The conquering horde had spread themselves all over the city. For, while the regular troops had probably been kept in hand on the chance of resistance, there were others who could not be restrained from going in search of loot. Some even among the first who had entered by the Kerkoporta had rushed to plunder the famous monastery of the Virgin, the small chapel of which, known as the Kahriè mosque, still attests by its exquisite mosaics the wealth and artistic appreciation of its former occupants. The famous picture attributed to St. Luke was cut into strips. Others among them rushed off towards the many churches in Petra. These were, however, only a small number. It was in the afternoon of the day when the horde had entered across the broken walls and through the gates that they swept like a torrent over the city. Soon the organised bands, which had divided the city among them in order to capture the population and to seize all the gold and silver ornaments which they could lay hands on, began to amass their treasures. Old men and women, children, young men and maidens were tied together in order to mark to whom they belonged.
The loot from private houses and churches was put on one side for subsequent division and the partition was made with considerable method. Small flags were hoisted to indicate to other companies the houses plundered, and everywhere throughout the city these signals were waving, sometimes a single house having as many as ten.[475]
St. Sophia crowded with refugees.
A body of troops more amenable to discipline than we may suppose the Bashi-bazouks to have been hastened across the city towards Saint Sophia. Many inhabitants took refuge in the churches, some probably with the idea that the Turks would recognise that the sacred buildings should afford sanctuary; others in the hope or possible belief of some kind of miraculous interference on their behalf. Ducas relates that a crowd of affrighted citizens ran to the great church of Holy Wisdom because they believed in a prophecy that the Turks would be allowed to enter the city and slaughter the Romans until they reached the column of Constantine—the present Burnt Column—but that then an angel would descend from heaven with a sword and place it and the government of the city in the hands of one whom he would select, calling upon him to avenge the people of the Lord, and that thereupon the Turks would be driven from the West. It was on this account, he declares, that the Great Church was, within an hour from the tidings of the entry of the Turks becoming known, filled with a great crowd who believed themselves to be safe. By so doing they had only rendered their capture more easy.
The first detachment of Turks who arrived and found the doors closed soon succeeded in breaking in. The great crowd were taken as in a drag-net, says Critobulus. The miserable refugees thus made prisoners were tied or chained together and any resistance offered was at once overcome. Some were taken to the Turkish ships, others to the camp, and the loot collected was dealt with in the same manner. The scene was terrible, but, unhappily, one which was destined to be reproduced with many even worse features in Turkish history, because, while the chief object of the Turkish hordes in 1453 was mainly to capture slaves and other plunder, the attacks on many congregations in later years, down to the time of the holocaust of Armenians at Ourfa on December 28 and 29, 1895, were mainly for the sake of slaughter. In the Great Church itself the Turks struggled with each other for the possession of the most beautiful women. Damsels who had been brought up in luxury among the remnants of Byzantine nobility, nuns who had been shut off from the world, became the subjects of violence among their captors. Their garments were torn from them by men who would not relinquish their prizes to others. Masters and mistresses were tied to their servants; dignitaries of the Church with the lowest menials. The captors drove their flocks of victims before them in order to lodge them in safety under charge of their comrades and to return as quickly as possible to take a new batch. Ropes, ribbons, handkerchiefs were requisitioned to bind them. The sacred eikons were torn down and burnt, the altar cloths, chandeliers, chalices, carpets, ornaments—indeed everything that was valuable and portable—were carried off. The greatest misfortune of all, says Phrantzes, was to see the Temple of the Holy Wisdom, the Earthly Heaven, the Throne of the Glory of God, defiled by these miscreants. One would hope that his story of its defilement and of the scenes of open profligacy is exaggerated.[476] The other churches were plundered in like manner. They furnished a plentiful harvest. The richly embroidered robes, chasubles woven with gold and ornamented with pearls and precious stones, and church furniture, were greedily seized, the ornaments being torn from many of the objects and the rest thrown aside. A crucifix was carried in mock solemnity in procession surmounted by a Janissary’s cap.
While we can understand the indignation of the devout believers at the contemptuous destruction of sacred relics for the sake of the caskets in which they were contained, we can hardly regret the disappearance of the so-called sacred Wanton destruction of books. objects themselves. But it is otherwise with the destruction of books. The professors of Islam, whatever may have been their conduct in regard to particular libraries, have usually held the all-sufficiency of the Koran. That which contradicts its teaching ought to be destroyed; that which is in accordance with it is superfluous. The libraries of the churches, whatever Mahomet himself may have believed, were to the ignorant fanatical masses which followed him anti-Islamic. The only value of books was the amount for which they could be sold. Critobulus says that not only the holy and religious books, but also those treating of profane sciences and of philosophy, were either thrown into the fire or trampled irreverently under foot, but that the greater part were sold—not for the sake of the price but in mockery—for two or three pence or even farthings.[477]