The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks

by Edwin Pears

But although ultimately these various differences were sufficiently overcome to prevent any considerable number of men withdrawing from the defence of the city, discord always smouldered and occasionally burst into flame. Leonard mentions an incident which illustrates the bitterness of feeling which existed between the leaders respectively of Latins and Greeks. In the very last days of the siege, when a general attack was daily expected, Justiniani asked from Notaras the Grand Duke, who was the noble highest in rank, that such cannon as the city possessed should be given to him for use in the Lycus valley. The demand was haughtily refused. ‘You traitor!’ said Justiniani; ‘why should I not cut you down?’ The quarrel went no further, but Notaras is said to have been less zealous in his work for the defence of the city. The Greeks, according to Leonard, resented the insult and became sullen at the treatment of the Grand Duke, because they believed that the glory of saving the city would be gained by the Latins alone.[353]

On the day preceding the final assault the old jealousy again showed itself. Barbaro relates that he and the other Venetians made ‘mantles’—some kind of wooden contrivance for giving cover to the soldiers on the wall. They were made at the Plateia, possibly near the end of the present Inner Bridge. The Venetian bailey gave orders to the Greeks to carry them to the landward walls. The Greeks refused unless they were paid. Ultimately the difficulty of payment was got over, but when the mantles reached the wall it was already night; and thus, says Barbaro, on account of the greediness of the Greeks we had to stand at the defence without them.[354]

The dissensions were further increased by discord between the Italian colonists themselves. We have already seen that the emperor had been compelled to intervene to prevent dangerous recriminations between the Venetians and the Genoese. The former affected to despise the Genoese, while the latter, as the possessors of a walled city on the opposite side of the Golden Horn and as the more numerous, considered themselves the superiors of their rivals. The Venetians, on account of their position within the city, were compelled in their own interest either to help the Greeks or to get away. The Genoese claimed to be in an independent position. Each accused the other of the wish to desert the city.

Charge of treachery against the Genoese.

The most common charge, and one persisted in by the Venetians, was that the Genoese were traitors to the city and to Christianity, and it is difficult to say whether the charge is well founded or not. Barbaro, himself a Venetian, seldom loses an opportunity of speaking ill of the Genoese; but the coarseness and recklessness of his attacks lessen their value. If the charges of treachery depended on his evidence alone, they might be dismissed. But other evidence is at hand. We have seen that the Genoese are alleged to have claimed that they could have burnt the sultan’s ships when they made their passage overland and would have done so if they had not been his friends. Leonard, who was a Genoese, evidently believed that they were traitors to Christianity and were playing a double game. ‘They ought to have prevented the building of the fortress at Roumelia-Hissar. But,’ he concludes, ‘I will keep silence, lest I should speak ill of my own people, whom foreigners may justly condemn.’ They are nevertheless condemned by him because they ‘did not lend help to the Lord against the mighty.’

The evidence in their favour is, however, not weak. First and foremost, John Justiniani was a Genoese. His loyalty and the bravery and labours day and night of the Genoese soldiers were beyond cavil. Ducas himself states that the Genoese sent men from Galata who fought valiantly under Justiniani; that many of them acted as spies, sold provisions to the Turks, and secretly during the night brought to the Greeks the news they had gathered. The Podestà of Galata, writing shortly after the capture of the city, declares that every available man had been sent across the Horn to the defence of the walls. He protests that he had done his best, because he knew that if Constantinople were lost, the loss of Pera would follow.[355]

The truth appears to be that the sympathy of the Podestà and the leading men was with their fellow Christians, but that the hostility of the Greeks and trade rivalry caused many of the Genoese too often to regard them as enemies. The Podestà is probably correctly expressing his own opinion and that of the better Genoese in stating that he foresaw that if Mahomet captured Constantinople, Galata would become an easy prey. But the certainty of making a good profit by dealing with the enemy was too great a temptation to be resisted by the ordinary merchant. Under cover of night he passed safely across the harbour and sold his goods to the citizens. He was equally ready during the day to deal with the Turks. The statement of Pusculus that the Genoese informed Mahomet by signal of the departure of the ships upon their night attack to burn the Turkish vessels which had been transported overland may be accepted as true, but the signal was probably the act of a private individual, for which the colony ought not to be held responsible. The boast reported by Ducas as having been made by the notables to Mahomet that they could have prevented the transport of the ships showed at least that they endeavoured to persuade him that they were neutral. It is by no means certain that had the Genoese desired to destroy the ships during the transit they could have made the attempt with a reasonable hope of success. They were far too few to meet the Turks outside the walls. However this may have been, they remained faithful to the conditions of the treaty which had existed before the time of Mahomet and which had been confirmed while he was at Adrianople on the express condition that they should not give aid to Constantinople. Even the complaint of Leonard that they could have saved the city if they had endeavoured to prevent Mahomet from securing a base of operations by building the fortifications at Hissar is a complaint against the policy of neutrality. It would no doubt have been not only more in accordance with the crusading spirit but possibly wiser and better in the interest of Europe and of civilisation if the Genoese, as Leonard suggests that they ought to have done, had violated their treaty and had made common cause openly with the emperor from the first; but to have done so would have been to risk the capture of Galata. Their policy was not a lofty one. Looked at by the light of subsequent events, it was not merely selfish but fatal; but it was no more treacherous than the policy of neutrals generally is.

It is not improbable that the various dissensions between the citizens and the foreigners and between the latter themselves tended to make some of the Greeks lukewarm in their defence of the city. They were not going to fight for papists and heretics, or even for an emperor who had gone over to the papists. Leonard asserts that there were many defections; that during the siege men who ought to have been at the walls tried to desert the city, pretended that they could not fight, that they wanted to attend to their fields and vineyards; that others with whom he spoke urged that they must earn their bread, and that, in answer to his urging them to fight not only because of their duty to aid all Christians but because their own fate was at stake, they replied, ‘What does the capture of the city matter to us if our families die of starvation?’[356] His statement that many men left the city is not sufficiently supported by other evidence to cause it to be accepted without hesitation.

Witnesses against Greeks are nearly all Latins.

In reading the charges brought against the Greek citizens by Leonard, it must be noted that he himself was a Genoese and a Latin archbishop. Unfortunately, almost all our accounts of the siege come either from Western writers or from Greek converts who are imbued with the usual bitterness against the professors of the faith which they have abandoned. Barbaro and Pusculus were Latins. Phrantzes and Ducas belonged to the Catholic party. The reports of the Podestà of Galata, of Cardinal Isidore, and other documents emanating from Latin sources all help to give a version unfavourable to the Greeks. Indeed Critobulus almost stands alone as the representative of the larger party in the Orthodox Church. When, however, we get the account of an independent Western soldier, as in the case of Tetaldi, the charges against the Greek population disappear. In the whole of his clear and concise narrative, as well as in his estimate of how Europe might defeat the Turks, he has not a word to say against the conduct of the besieged. While praising the courage of the Turks highly as that of men who in the perils and hazards of war attach hardly any value to their lives, he yet judges that the Greeks with European help could defeat them.[357] These and other facts are at least sufficient to cause us to regard with suspicion attacks upon the loyalty towards the city and the emperor of the members of the Orthodox Church. Gibbon, influenced by the writers of the Latin Church—the only ones available to him—remarks ‘that the Greeks were animated only by the spirit of religion, and that spirit was productive only of animosity and discord.’ The observation or charge would hardly have been made if he had remembered the ex parte character of all the evidence before him. While there is truth in the statement that the spirit of religion produced animosity and discord, it is far from true either that it was the only spirit which actuated the Greeks or that it was productive only of animosity and discord. The Greeks were actuated by their own worldly interest, by their desire to preserve their own lives and property, their own city and their own government. Nor in admitting that they were even deeply animated with the religious spirit, can it successfully be maintained that this spirit only produced animosity. It was the religious spirit which animated Greeks as well as Italians to fight for the honour of God and the benefit of Christianity and thus tended to suppress discord and animosity. Even theological differences did not make the Greeks less eager to prevent a Moslem from taking the place of a Christian emperor. The Greeks differed from and even quarrelled with the Italians and their Romanised fellow citizens, but they regarded Genoese and Italians not merely as fighting for the interests of Venice and Genoa, but as helping them to keep their own, and the evidence is certainly insufficient to show that such animosity and discord as existed prevented Greeks and Italians alike from doing their utmost to keep the common enemy of Christendom out of the city.