"Ah! true lover of mine art thou, if you would be there. Until I put the Mihrab[76] in the walls of St. Sophia, I shall not sleep without the dream that I have done it. Know you not the dream of Othman? how the leaves of the tree which sprang from his bosom when the fair Malkhatoon, the mother of all the Padishahs, sank upon it, were shaped like cimeters, and every wind turned their points toward Constantinople? My waking and sleeping thoughts are the leaves. The spirit of Othman breathes through my soul and turns them thither. Go! and prepare my coming. The walls withstood my father Amurath. Discover why? I hear that Urban, the cannon founder, is in the pay of the Greeks. He who discovered a way to turn the Dibrians against Sfetigrade can find a way to turn a foreigner's eyes from the battered crown of the Cæsars to something brighter—Go, and Allah give you wisdom!"
The reader is acquainted with the immediate sequel of Captain Ballaban's departure, his adventure with the Italian desperadoes at the old reservoir, and his success with Urban.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The siege and capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, was, with the exception of the discovery of America, the most significant event of the fifteenth century. The Eastern Roman Empire then perished, after eleven centuries of glory and shame; of heroic conquests, and pusillanimous compromises with other powers for the privilege of existence; exhibiting on its throne the virtues and wisdom of Theodosius and Justinian, and the vices and follies of emperors and empresses whose names it were well that the world should forget.
But the historic importance of the siege was matched by the thrilling interest which attaches to its scenes.
The last of the Constantines, from whose hands the queenly city was wrested, was worthy the name borne by its great founder, not, perhaps, for his display of genius in government and command, but for the pious devotion and sacrificial courage with which he defended his trust. A band of less than ten thousand Christians, mostly Greeks, and a few Latins whose love for the essential truth of their religion was stronger than their bigotry for sect, withstood for many weeks the horrors which were poured upon them by a quarter of a million Moslems. These foes were made presumptuous by nearly a century of unchecked conquest; their hot blood boiled with fury and daring excited by the promises of their religion, which opened paradise to those that perished with the sword; and they were led by the first flashings of the startling genius and audacity of Mahomet II.
The Bosphorus was blockaded six miles above the city by the new fortress, Rumili-Hissar, the Castle of Europe; answering across the narrow strait to Anadolu-Hissari—the Castles of Asia.
A fleet of three hundred Moslem vessels crowded the entrance to the Bosphorus, to resist any Western ally of the Christians that might have run the gauntlet of forts which guarded the lower entrance to Marmora. At the same time this naval force threatened the long water front of the city with overwhelming assault. The wall which lay between the sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn, and made the city a triangle, looked down upon armies gathered from the many lands between the Euphrates and Danube;—the feudal chivalry from their ziamets under magnificently accoutred beys; the terrible Akindji, the mounted scourge of the borders of Christendom; the motley hordes of Azabs, light irregular foot-soldiers,—these filling the plains for miles away:—while about the tents of the Sultan were the Royal Horse Guards, the Spahis, Salihdars, Ouloufedji and Ghoureba, rivals for the applause of the nations, as the most daring of riders and most skilful of swordsmen: and the Janizaries, who boasted that their tread was as resistless as the waves of an earthquake.