After his victory, Amurath traversed the field of battle; and as he observed he did not see among the Christian bodies one with a gray beard, his vizier replied that men arrived at the age of reason would never have attempted such a rash enterprize. These words were nothing more than a piece of flattery addressed to the sultan; but they might, nevertheless, serve to characterize a war in which the leaders of the Christian armies obeyed rather the impulses of the imprudent passions of youth, than the cooler dictates of experience and matured age.
The expeditions of the Christians against the Turks began almost all, like this, by brilliant successes, and finished by great disasters. Most frequently a crusade was terminated at the first or the second battle, because the Crusaders had only valour, and were totally deficient in qualities which could improve a victory or repair reverses. When conquerors, they quarrelled for the glory of the fight or the spoils of the enemy; when conquered, they were at once depressed and discouraged, and returned to their homes, accusing each other reciprocally of their defeats.
The battle of Warna secured to the Turks the European provinces they had invaded, and permitted them to make fresh conquests. Amurath, after having triumphed over his enemies, again renounced the imperial crown, and the solitude of Magnesia once more beheld the conqueror of the Hungarians clothed in the humble mantle of a hermit; but the janissaries, whom he had so often led to victory, would not permit him to renounce the world or enjoy the repose he was so anxious for. Forced to resume the command of armies and the reins of empire, he directed his views against Albania; and he afterwards returned to fight with Hunniades on the shores of the Danube. He passed the remainder of his days in making war against the Christians, and with his last breath recommended his successor to direct his arms against Constantinople.
Mahomet II., to whom Amurath bequeathed the conquest of Byzantium, did not succeed his father till six years after the battle of Warna. It was then that began the days of mourning and calamity for the Greeks; and it is at this period that history offers us, as a spectacle, a last and terrible conflict; on the one side, an old empire whose glory had filled the universe, and which had no defence or limits left but the ramparts of its capital; and on the other, a new empire, the name of which was scarcely known, and which already threatened the whole world with invasion.
Constantine and Mahomet, elevated almost at the same time,—the one to the throne of Otman, the other to that of the Cæsars, presented no less difference in their characters than in their destinies. The moderation and piety of Constantine were admired, and historians have celebrated his calm and prudent valour in the field of battle, with his heroic patience in reverses. Mahomet brought to the throne an active and enterprising spirit, an ardent and passionate policy, and an indomitable pride. It is asserted that he loved letters and the arts; but these peaceful pursuits were not able to soften his savage ferocity. In war, he neither spared the lives of his enemies nor of his soldiers; and the violences of his character often ensanguined even peace. Whilst in Constantine a monarch could be recognized brought up in the school of Christianity, in Mahomet was as easily known a prince formed by the warlike and intolerant maxims of the Koran. The last of the Cæsars had all the virtues that can honour and teach the endurance of a great misfortune. The son of Amurath exhibited the dark qualities of a conqueror, with all the passions which, in the day of victory, must leave nothing but despair to the vanquished.
When Mahomet succeeded to the empire, his first thought was the conquest of Byzantium. In the negotiations which preceded the rupture of the peace, Constantine did not conceal the weakness of the Greek empire, and displayed all the resignation of a Christian. “My confidence is in God,” said he to the Ottoman prince; “if it should please him to soften your heart, I shall rejoice at that happy change; if it should please him to deliver up Constantinople to you, I shall submit to his will without a murmur.”
The siege of Byzantium was fixed to begin in the spring of the year 1453; and the Greeks and the Turks passed the winter in preparation for the defence and the attack. Mahomet entered with ardour upon an enterprise to which, for a length of time, all the wishes of the Turkish nation and all the Ottoman policy has been directed. In the middle of a night, having sent for his vizier: “Thou seest,” said Mahomet, “the disorder of my couch. I have carried to it the trouble which agitates and devours me; henceforth there will be neither repose nor sleep for me but in the capital of the Greeks.”
Whilst Mahomet was getting together all his forces to commence the war, Constantine Palæologus implored assistance from the nations of Europe. Cries of alarm had so often been heard from Constantinople, that some regarded the dangers of the Greek empire as imaginary, and others, its ruin as inevitable. In vain Constantine promised, as all his predecessors had done, to unite the Greek Church with the Roman Church; the remembrance of so many promises, made in the hour of peril and forgotten in times of safety, added to the antipathy of the Latins for the people of Greece. The Pope exhorted feebly the warriors of the West to take arms, and satisfied himself with sending to the Greek emperor a legate and some ecclesiastics versed in the art of argumentation and in the study of theology. Although the Cardinal Isidore brought with him a considerable treasure, and had in his suite some Italian soldiers, his arrival at Constantinople must have spread discouragement among the Greeks, who expected other succours, and appeared to have attached a very high value to their submission to the Church of Rome.
The princes of the Morea and the Archipelago, with those of Hungary and Bulgaria, some, in dread of being themselves attacked, the others, restrained by indifference or the spirit of jealousy, refused to take any part in a war in which victory would decide their own fate. As Genoa and Venice had counting-houses and commercial establishments at Constantinople, two thousand Genoese soldiers and five or six hundred Venetians presented themselves to assist in defending the city. A troop of Catalans also arrived, an intrepid soldiery, by turns the scourge and hope of Greece, whom a love of war and peril brought to the imperial city. And this was all that was to represent warlike Europe at the siege of Byzantium.
At this period, several Christian powers were at war with each other: the continuator of Baronius remarks on this subject, that the soldiers who then perished in battles fought in the bosom of Christendom, would have been sufficient to disperse the Turks, and drive them back to the outward verge of Asia. But if history, on this occasion, accuses the nations of the West of indifference, what ought it to say of that of the Greeks for their own defence? The efforts of Constantine to unite the two Churches had weakened the confidence and zeal of his subjects, who prided themselves upon being orthodox. Among the Greeks, some, in order to owe nothing to the Latins, declared that God himself had undertaken to save his people, and upon the faith of some prophecies they had made, they awaited in inaction a miraculous deliverance. Others, more dark in their scholastic reveries, were not willing that Constantinople should be saved, because they had predicted that the empire must perish to expiate the crime of the union. Every hope of victory had in their eyes something impious and contrary to the will of Heaven. When the emperor spoke of the means of safety that still remained, and of the necessity for taking arms, these atrabilarious doctors drew back with a kind of horror, and the multitude they had misled ran after the monk Genadius, who, from the depth of his cell, cried out constantly to the people, that there was nothing to be done, and that all was lost.