Fall of Constantinople
The Emperor looked despairingly for Western aid, in order to secure which the Emperor John V had himself in years gone by visited Rome and made formal renunciation to the Pope of all the views of the Greek Church that disagreed with Catholic doctrine. One of the chief points of controversy had been the Catholic use of unleavened bread in the Sacrament of the Mass; another, the words of the Nicene Creed, declaring that the Holy Ghost ‘proceeded’ from the Son as well as from the Father.
In all matters of faith as well as of ecclesiastical jurisdiction John V, and later Constantine himself, had made open acknowledgement of the supremacy of Rome, but their compliance did not avail to save their kingdom in the hour of danger: indeed, while it evoked little military support from Catholic nations it aroused keen hostility and treachery at home. There were many Greeks who refused to endorse their sovereign’s signature to what they considered an act of national betrayal, some declaring openly that the Mahometan victories were God’s punishment on kings who had forsaken the faith of their fathers, and that it would be better to see the turbans of the infidels in St. Sophia than a cardinal’s red hat.
When, then, Mohammed began to thunder with his fourteen batteries against the once impregnable walls of Constantinople, making enormous breaches, the reduction of the city had become only a question of days. It is said that the Sultan in his eagerness to take possession offered the Emperor and his army freedom and religious toleration if they would capitulate. ‘I desire either my throne or a grave,’ replied Constantine, knowing well which of the two must be his fate.
Beside some four thousand of his own subjects he could command only a few hundred mercenaries sent by the Pope, and three hundred Genoese. Of the Venetians and other Western Europeans there were even less; and it was with this miniature army that he manned the wide circuit of the walls, led out sorties, and rebuilt as well as he could the gaps made by the heavy guns.
The contest was absurdly unequal, for Mohammed had some two hundred and fifty-eight thousand men; and in May 1453 the inevitable end came to a heroic struggle. Up through the breaches in the wall, that no labour was left to repair, climbed wave after wave of fanatical Janissaries, shouting their hopes of victory and Paradise. Beneath their continuous onslaughts the defenders weakened and broke, fighting to the last amid the narrow streets, until Constantine himself was slain, his body only recognized later by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes.
The women, and many of the Greeks who had refused to help in this time of crisis because of the Emperor’s submission to the Catholic Church, were torn from their sanctuary in St. Sophia and sold as slaves in the markets of Syria.
Thus was lost the second city of Christendom to the infidels, and the old Roman Empire, whose restoration had been a mediaeval idea for centuries, perished for ever.
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Retribution, at least according to human ideas of justice, often seems to lag in history; but in the case of the fall of Constantinople some of the culprits most responsible, on account of their selfish indifference, were speedily called on to pay the penalty. Mohammed II, his ambition inflated by what he had already achieved, planned the reduction of Christendom, declaring that he would feed his horse from the altar of St. Peter’s in Rome. With an enormous army he advanced through Serbia and besieged Belgrade; but here he was thrust back by a Christian champion, John Hunyadi, ‘the wicked one’, as the title reads in Turkish, with such loss of men and material ‘that Hungary and eastern Germany were saved from serious danger for eighty years’.