CONSTANTINOPLE.
Fountain and Square of St. Sophia.
Spain we have seen coming together, by the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella, within its present boundaries of sea and mountains. It has finally overthrown the last stronghold of Mahommedan power in the western part of Europe by the conquest of Granada. Portugal ever since the time of the second Crusade has kept its independence.
On the other, the eastern side of Europe, however, we find that another Mahommedan power, of quite different race from any of the Syrians, Arabians, and Africans who composed the mixed Moslem force which occupied Spain, has taken firm possession of Constantinople itself and of a vast area of Europe northward—the Turks.
Constantine had been an Emperor of wise foresight when he surrounded with strong defensive walls the fine city which he built beside the older Byzantium. It was the gate commanding the narrow sea-way separating Europe from Asia. Its harbour, later known as the Golden Horn, was spacious and secure for ships of commerce or ships of war. Its importance was obvious. Long before its capture by the Crusaders at the beginning of the thirteenth century it had seen the barbarians from the north hammering at its walls. Already the growing nation which had Moscow for its chief city, and which was beginning to be called Russia, had commenced its attempts—of which there have been very many in later story—to reach down to Constantinople.
Partly by fighting and partly by bribing, the Emperor of the East had succeeded in keeping the barbarians off, but the attack of the Crusaders, with the Venetian fleet to aid, prevailed as we have seen. Baldwin and his successors reigned at Constantinople for more than fifty years.
The effect of that capture of the capital of the East by the Western powers was curious. It led to the incursion into Greece, and into all that south-eastern corner of Europe over which the Emperor at Constantinople was supposed to be sovereign, of many members of the most important families of the Western world, especially French and Burgundian. And so we have at this time as actors in our stories men with such titles as Duke of Thebes and Duke of Athens, but with names that are Gothic or Latin in origin.
Gothic Dukes in Greece