The historian Phrantza compares the close ranks of the Mussulmans to an extended tightened cord, which might have been placed round the city. The towers which defended the gate St. Romanus crumbled away beneath the blows of the rams and the discharges of the Ottoman artillery. The exterior walls were carried; the dead and the founded, confounded with the ruins, filled up the ditches. And yet upon this horrible field of battle the defenders of Byzantium fought still; nothing could weary their constancy nothing could shake their courage.
After two hours of frightful conflict, Mahomet advanced with his chosen troops and ten thousand janissaries. He appeared in the midst of them, with his mace in his hand, like the angel of destruction; his threatening looks animated the ardour of his soldiers, and he pointed out to them by his gestures the points that were to be attacked. Behind the battalions he led, a troop of those men whom despotism charges with the execution of its vengeance, punished or constrained all who wished to fly, and forced them forward to the carnage. The dust which arose from the steps of the combatants, with the smoke of the artillery, covered both the army and the city. The clang of the trumpets, the crash of the ruins, the explosion of the cannons, and the shock of arms completely drowned the voices of the leaders. The janissaries fought in disorder; and Constantine, who had remarked it, was exhorting his soldiers to make one last effort, when the aspect of the fight became all at once changed. Justinian having been struck by an arrow, the pain of the wound was so intense as to force him to quit the field of battle. The Genoese and most of the Latin auxiliaries followed his example. The Greeks, left alone, are soon overwhelmed by numbers; the Turks pass the ramparts, get possession of the towers, and break open the gates. Constantine fought still; but soon, covered with wounds, he fell among the heap of dead, and Constantinople was without a head and without defenders.
What a spectacle is that of an empire which has but one moment of existence left, and which is about to finish amidst the furies of war, and beneath the sword of barbarians! All at once every tie of society is broken; religion, patriotism, nature have no longer laws that can be invoked; even wisdom and experience can yield none but useless counsels. All the ascendancy and splendour of virtue, genius, or even valour, have no longer power to distinguish or protect the citizens. Those magnificent palaces which constituted the pride of princes, nobody possesses them now. Among all the numerous edifices of a great capital, no one can find an asylum or an abode. The city has no longer warriors or magistrates, nobles or plebeians, poor or rich; the whole population is but a troop of slaves, who await with terror the presence of an irritated master. Such was Constantinople at the moment the conquerors were preparing to enter it.
When some of those who had defended the ramparts retreated into the city, announcing the coming of the Turks, they could not obtain belief; when the Turkish battalions came pouring in, the people, says the Greek historian Ducas, “were half dead with fear, and could scarcely breathe.” The multitude rushed about the streets, without knowing whither to go, and uttering piercing cries. Women, children, and old people flocked to the churches, as if the altars of Christ could prove an asylum against the savage disciples of Mahomet!
It is not our task to describe the disasters which followed the taking of Constantinople. The massacre of the unarmed inhabitants, the city given up to pillage, holy places profaned, virgins and matrons overwhelmed with outrages, an entire population loaded with chains; such are the horrible pictures that are to be found in the annals of the Turks, the Greeks, and the Latins. Such was the fate of that city which frequent revolutions had covered with ruins, and which became at length the ridicule and the prey of a nation it had long despised. If there be anything consolatory amidst so many distressing scenes, it is the virtue of Constantine,[71] who would not survive his country, and whose death was the last glory of the empire of the East.[72]
When we consider the weakness of the Greek empire and the power of its enemies, we are astonished it was able to resist so long. The Ottomans were governed by all the passions which favour conquests; the Greeks had not one of the qualities which are useful in defence: to be convinced of this, we have but to see how the two nations acted. When Mahomet proclaimed his enterprise, the Ottomans flocked to his army from all parts of his empire; whilst at the first report of the siege, a great part of the population of Constantinople deserted the city. We have seen that the dervises encouraged the Mussulman soldiers, and held up to them the war against the Greeks as a holy war. The Greek priests, on the contrary, discouraged the defenders of Byzantium, and were not far from considering the resistance of Constantine as a sacrilegious action. During the assaults made upon the imperial city, the Turkish soldiers, to fill up the ditches, cast into them their tents and their baggage, preferring victory to all they possessed. It is well known that at the same time the richest Greeks were employed in burying their wealth, preferring treasures to patriotism. We could add other remarkable features, but these quite sufficiently show on which side the strength was. What most strongly foretold the ruin of Byzantium, was the small degree of confidence the Greeks had in the duration of their empire. Never did the ancient Romans more clearly show the power and ascendancy of their patriotism, than when they designated Rome, the eternal city. Constantinople saw the number of its defenders diminish, and their courage became weaker, in proportion with the facility with which the sinister predictions of its approaching ruin found credit among the people.
When Byzantium, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, fell into the hands of the Latins, the empire still possessed great means of defence, and yet twenty thousand Crusaders achieved the conquest of it; which places the valour of the Franks much above that of the Turks. This would perhaps be the best place to examine what was the influence of the crusades over the destiny of the empire of the East. In the first expedition of the Latins, Asia Minor was delivered from the Turks, who were already masters of Nice, and threatened Constantinople; but the Crusaders sold the services they had rendered at too high a price: on the one part, violence, on the other, perfidy, disturbed the harmony that ought to have subsisted between the Greeks and the Latins. At length the taking of Constantinople by the Franks was a mortal blow to the empire of Byzantium. Amidst the war, schism became enlarged by hatred; and schism, in its turn, doubled the reciprocal hatred. This division favoured the progress of the Turks, and opened the gates of Constantinople to them.
What is most unfortunate in the conquest of the Ottomans is, that they preserved nothing, not even the name of Byzantium. The barbarians who overthrew the empire of the West, adopted the religion and manners of the conquered nations; which, by degrees, caused the traces of invasion and conquest to disappear. The Turks, on the contrary, were resolved to make the Koran triumph wherever they carried their arms. As soon as they were masters of Constantinople, the altars of Christ were overturned, and everything changed with religion. The city of Constantine became more widely than ever separated from Christendom; and as it was for the infidels the gate of the West, Christian Europe, which during nearly three centuries had sent its fleets and its armies into Asia, had reason at last to tremble for itself. From that period crusades took a new character, and were nothing but defensive wars.