The progress of the Turks, A.D. 1341-1347.
Their fleet.
A.D. 1353.
A.D. 1360-1389.
The time had indeed come when a Greek emperor, more fearful of his own life than of the honour of his people, could seek the advice, if not the direct aid, of the enemies of his faith and country. The Turks, seeing the chance of great ultimate advantages, were not unwilling to grant his requests. Under the pretence of protecting one of their race, who had taken up his residence at the Greek court, they assembled at Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels and twenty-nine thousand men, in the depth of winter, and casting anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus, under the further pretext of guarding their fleet, landed nine thousand five hundred of their men; thus for the first time establishing themselves on the continent of Europe. A position, however small, thus obtained, the further spread of the Turkish arms was but a question of time. In a few years they were settled in their new homes; a little later, the whole province of Roumania and of Thrace fell into their hands; and, in less than forty years from their first arrival, all the country round Constantinople, including Adrianople, which they had made their western capital, became subject to them. From this time the fate of Constantinople was sealed, and the overthrow of the Cross by the Crescent but a question of a few years.
First use of gunpowder, and of large cannon.
Various reasons, however, prevented the immediate capture of Constantinople; nor was it till sixty years after the Turks had secured Adrianople, that Muhammed II., who had unceasingly sighed for its possession, resolved, by an attack of sufficient magnitude, and at any cost, to make it the centre of the Muhammedan arms and religion, and to haul down the Christian banner, which for more than a thousand years had waved over its battlements. Nor was he unsupported by many favouring accidents, of which the most valuable was the discovery of gunpowder, as this engine of destruction rendered the Greek fire of comparatively little advantage, and left success to those who had best studied the qualities of the new explosive compound.[371] Muhammed at once devoted himself to its serious study, the result being that the cannon he cast for the siege of Constantinople are generally admitted to have been greatly superior to any weapons of the class hitherto invented.
While Muhammed threatened the capital of the East, the Greek emperor implored in vain the assistance of the Christian powers of the West, who were either too weak or too much engaged with their own contentions, even where favourably disposed, to render him assistance. Even the princes of the Morea and of the Greek islands affected a cold neutrality, while the Sultan indulged the Genoese in the delusive hope that they would still be allowed to retain the advantages they had possessed under the empire as regarded their trade with the city and on the Euxine.
The Turks finally become masters of the Eastern capital, A.D. 1453.
But Constantinople did not fall without a desperate and bloody struggle; and had the zeal and ability of its inhabitants equalled the heroism of the last Constantine, the banner of the Cross might have floated even until now over the great city of the Eastern Empire.