The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

In the sacking of the city the Emperor Constantine perished. When he saw destruction going on all about him, he is said to have asked, “Is there no Christian here to cut my head off?” His fate must have come later, for his body was found on a heap of corpses near the gate that had first been entered. His head was set the same day on a column of the Augusteion, a sign to the Greeks that they had no other emperor now but the Sultan. Then it was placed in a precious casket and despatched from one Moslem ruler to another as the convincing proof of the prowess of their Moslem overlord.

Three days had been allowed for the sack; after this period the troops returned to their camp. Some of the streets were then cleaned, and the Sultan made his solemn entry into the deserted city to the Church of St. Sophia, which he transformed into a mosque. The Podestà and a few of the Italians from Pera, who had not actually been under arms, were protected by a guarantee from the Sultan’s own hand. But the walls of the suburb were destroyed, all weapons had to be given up, and a slave succeeded the Genoese Podestà as the supreme authority in the colony.

Most of the fleet, taking advantage of the confusion during the capture of the city, succeeded in getting away, taking with them some fugitives who escaped by disguising themselves in a Turkish garb. The head of the Venetian colony and the Catalan Consul were beheaded as disturbers of the peace, and even Lukas Notoras, the chief Greek noble, did not escape, although he had led the opposition against Constantine. The Greek clergy, on the other hand, were treated with great clemency; they had been trained by centuries into habits of servile obedience to secular rulers, and, therefore, they could be turned into useful instruments for ruling the subject Christian population.

With shrewd understanding of the religious situation, Mohammed now appointed as Patriarch in place of the Latin ecclesiastic, who had escaped from the city, the leader of the clerical opposition, Gennadios Scholarios. The new Patriarch dined with the new Emperor, and received rich presents and most courteous attention, befitting his exalted dignity as a churchman. In place of Santa Sophia, he was given as his metropolitan church the building known as the Church of the Holy Apostles. As a new Patriarch, created by favor of the Moslem Emperor, he kept his rights of jurisdiction over the Emperor’s Christian subjects.

A Moslem governor was placed in the city to order the administration, with instructions to induce those who had fled from the town to return, and to arrange for the colonization of the Moslem newcomers. Only a small garrison was left; and the Sultan took his road to Adrianople on 18th of June. While the Moslem ruler and his successors spared the population, and left to their Greek subjects a kind of spiritual empire, the conquest of Constantinople proved fatal to the many treasures of ancient art that had survived the Latin conquest of the city in 1204. The bronze statues of the Emperors were made into cannon, the bronze inscriptions on arches and obelisks were coined into money, and the marble statues of pagan divinities were turned into lime. Valuable antique columns were sawn to make baths, or were transformed into cannon balls.

The Basilica, in which the bodies of the Emperors were buried, became a mosque; the bones were scattered and the sarcophagi turned to the basest uses. Forty-two other churches became mosques, or were secularized; one, St. Irenæus, was employed as an arsenal. Some of the splendid mosaics in Santa Sophia were hidden by whitewash, because of their Christian symbolism; near the structure was built a minaret, and Mohammed’s successors added three more. As time went on, new mosques were constructed; also hospitals, schools, and palaces, the Sultan being a great builder. The new population was cosmopolitan, for many Greek, Servian, and Roumanian towns were drawn upon for their several contingents, as the Turkish conquests continued.

At the time of his great achievement, Mohammed was only twenty-five years old. He publicly announced that he had reached maturity by decapitating the Grand Vizier Khalil, the tutor set over him by his father, who was suspected of treasonable communications with the Greeks during the siege. He made it plain, also, that there was to be no repose from war after the taking of the capital, the Servians being the first to experience his heavy hand. Brankovitch’s fidelity as a vassal proved no protection to him; for Mohammed wrote claiming his kingdom. In terror the Servian prince fled to Hungary to secure the aid of Hunyadi. The war that followed was hotly contested, with the result that in 1454 the Sultan agreed, on the basis of the large tribute of 30,000 ducats, to recognize Brankovitch.

But this peace was not observed, for the conqueror appeared the next year and took Novoberda. Hunyadi, against whom bitter foes were working at the court of the King of Hungary, had only the support of the Wallachian princely house. When Belgrade was attacked by Mohammed, in May, 1456, only 3000 Christian soldiers were ready to oppose him. When the siege really began, however, 200 boats appeared before the city, containing many thousand men of various nationalities, whom the Franciscan monk, John of Capistrano, had drawn to the crusading cause by his protracted and widely extended journeys in Western Europe. Though over seventy years old, he had displayed remarkable energy, and he was honored by the defenders of Belgrade as a holy apostle.

On July 15 the two welcome allies took possession of the castle, as the city had not yet been cut off from the outside. The first stage of the defense was the defeat of the Turkish flotilla on the Danube; some vessels were sunk and others were captured, so that entrance into the town by water was made safe. In the attempt to storm the defenses made by the Janitschars, who advanced in small divisions, hardly 600 survived; three times Hunyadi, sallying from the castles, forced back the assailants. Capistrano’s crusaders proved too much for the Sultan’s trained troops; marching right up to the guns and careless of the havoc caused by the cannon fire, those who took part in the sortie cut down the Turks and threw the cannon into the water and ditches. If the crusaders had not stopped on the way to plunder, they would have broken through the Sultan’s own bodyguard. As it was the Ottomans were able to withdraw safely from their camp; but they lost some of their best captains, among them Aga, who was killed while protecting the Sultan, who escaped with an arrow wound.

No serious attempt was made to follow up this victory, though Hunyadi boasted that it was now possible “to take possession of the whole kingdom of Turkey.” Anarchy prevailed in the motley crowd gathered in the crusading camps along the river; worse still, owing to the unhealthful surroundings in the low lands, a plague began, to which the great Hungarian champion soon fell a victim; not long after Capistrano also died.