LXVIII. ❝has opened to the Turks ;" and at these words he bas- CHAP. tily passed through one of the breaches of the inner wall. By this pusillanimous act, he stained the honours of a military life; and the few days which he survived in Galata, or the isle of Chios, were embittered by his own and the public reproach. His example was imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries, and the defence began to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled vigour. The number of the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps an hundred, times superior to that of the Christians: the double walls were reduced by the cannon to an heap of ruins: in a circuit of several miles, some places must be found more easy of access, or more feebly guarded; and if the besiegers could penetrate in a single point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. The first who deserved the sultan's reward was Hassan the Janizary, of gigantic stature and strength. With bis scymetar in one hand and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortification: of the thirty Janizaries, who were emulous of his valour, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve companions had reached the summit; the giant was precipitated from the rampart; he rose on one knee, and was again oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the achievement was possible: the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks; and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. Amidst these multitudes, the emperors, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen, and finally lost. The nobles, who fought round his person, sustained till their last breath 58 In the severe censure of the flight of Justiniani, Phranza expresses his own feelings, and those of the public. For some private reasons, he is treated with more lenity and respect by Ducas: but the words of Leonardus Chiensis express his strong and recent indignation, gloriæ salutis suique oblitus. In the whole series of their Eastern policy, his countrymen, the Genoese, were always suspected, and often guilty. 59 Ducas kills him with two blows of Turkish soldiers; Chalcocondyles wounds him in the shoulder, and then tramples him in the gate. The grief of Phranza carrying him among the en my, escapes from the precise image of his death; but we may, without flattery, apply these noble lines of Dryden: As to Sebastian, let them search the field; CHAP. the honourable names of Palæologus and Cantacuzene: LXVIII. his mournful exclamation was heard, "Cannot there "be found a Christian to cut off my head?" and his ror Con gus. last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the Death of infidels1. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the empe- the purple: amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown stantine hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the Palæolo slain. After his death, resistance and order were no more: the Greeks fled towards the city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner wall; and as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbour2. In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged, that they should immediately have given quarter if the valour of the emperor and his chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of the capital. It was thus, after a siege of fiftythree days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chagan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the second. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins: her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors3. Loss of and em. pire. The Turks The tidings of misfortune fly with a rapid wing; yet enter and such was the extent of Constantinople, that the more pillage Constan- distant quarters might prolong some moments the happy tinople. ignorance of their ruin. But in the general consterna tion, in the feelings of selfish or social anxiety, in the 60 Spondanus (A. D. 1453, No. 10), who has hopes of his salvation, wish. es to absolve this demand from the guilt of suicide. 61 Leonardus Chiensis very properly observes, that the Turks, had they known the emperor, would have laboured to save and secure a captive so acceptable to the sultan. 62 Cantemir, p. 96. The Christian ships in the mouth of the harbour, had flanked and retarded this naval attack. 63 Chalcocondyles most absurdly supposes, that Constantinople was sacked by the Asiatics in revenge for the ancient calamities of Troy; and the grammarians of the xvth century are happy to melt down the uncouth appellation of Turks, into the more classical name of Teucri. 64 When Cyrus surprised Babylon during the celebration of a festival, so vast was the city, and so careless were the inhabitants, that much time elap. sed before the distant quarters knew that they were captives (Herodotus, l. i. c. 191), and Usher (Annal. p. 78), who has quoted from the prophet Jere miah a passage of similar import. LXVIII. tumult and thunder of the assault, a sleepless night and CHAP. morning must have elapsed; nor can I believe that many Grecian ladies were awakened by the Janizaries from a sound and tranquil slumber. On the assurance of the public calamity, the houses and convents were instantly deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets, like an herd of timid animals; as if accumulated weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope, that amid the crowd, each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the capital, they flowed into the church of St. Sophia: in the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with the multitude of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins: the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on the prophecy of an enthusiast or imposter; that one day the Turks would enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine in the square before St. Sophia: but that this would be the term of their calamities: that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand, and would deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a poor man seated at the foot of the column. "Take this "sword," would he say, "and avenge the people of the "Lord." At these animating words, the Turks would instantly fly, and the victorious Romans would drive them from the West, and from all Anatolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this occasion, that Ducas, with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and obstinacy of the Greeks. "Had that angel "appeared," exclaims the historian, "had he offered to "exterminate your foes if you would consent to the union "of the church, even then, in that fatal moment, you "would have rejected your safety or have deceived your "God65," While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, Captivity the doors were broken with axes; and as the Turks en 65 This lively description is extracted from Ducas (c. 39), who two years afterwards was sent ambassador from the prince of Lesbos to the sultan (c. 44.) Till Lesbos was subdued in 1463 (Phranza, l. iii. c. 27), that island must have been full of the fugitives of Constantinople, who delighted to repeat, perhaps to adorn, the tale of their misery. VOL. VIII. X of the Greeks. CHAP. countered no resistance, their bloodless hands were emLXVIII. ployed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth, attracted their choice; and the right of property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of the church; and young men of a plebeian class, with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common captivity, the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder; and the inexorable soldier was careless of the father's groans, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar with naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair: and we should piously believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils of the haram to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows. At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations of the capital; nor could any place, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty thousand of this devoted people were transported from the city to the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold according to the caprice or interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude through the provinces of the Ottoman empire. Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phrauza, first chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved with his family in the common lot. After suffering four months the hardships of slavery, he recovered his freedom; in the ensuing winter he ventured to Adrianople, and ransomed his wife from the mir bashi or master of the horse; but his two children, in the flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of Mahomet himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio, perhaps a virgin his son, in the fiftecuth year of his age, pre LXVIII. ferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the band of CHAP. the royal lover. A deed thus inhuman, cannot surely be expiated by the taste and liberality with which he released a Grecian matron, and her two daughters, on receiving a Latin ode from Philelphus, who had chosen a wife in that noble family. The pride or cruelty of Mahomet would have been most sensibly gratified by the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity of cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he escaped from Galata in a plebeian habits. The chain and entrance of the outward harbour was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war. They had signalised their valour in the siege; they embraced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dissipated in the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail, `the beach was covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd: but the means of transportation were scanty: the Venetians and Genoese selected their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and embarked with their most precious effects. In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is Amount of the spoil. condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity; the same effects must by produced by the same passions; and when those passions may be indulged without controul, small, alas! is the difference between civilised and savage man. Amidst the vague exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or immoderate effusion of Christian blood: but according to their maxims (the maxims of antiquity,) the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom, of his captives of both 66 See Phranza, 1. iii. c. 20, 21. His expressions are positive: Ameras suâ manu jugulavit.... volebat enim eo turpiter et nefarie abuti. Me miserum et infelicem. Yet he could only learn from report, the bloody or impure scenes that were acted in the dark recesses of the seraglio. 67 See Tiraboschi (tom. vi. P. i. p. 290.) and Lancelot (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718.) I should be curious to learn how he could praise the public enemy, whom he so often reviles as the most corrupt and inhuman of tyrants. 68 The Commentaries of Pius II. suppose, that he craftily placed his cardinal's hat on the head of a corpse which was cut off and exposed in triumph, while the legate himself was bought and delivered, as a captive of no value. The great Belgic Chronicle adorns his escape with new adventures, which he suppressed (says Spondanus, A. D. 1453, No. 15.) in his own letters, lest he should lose the merit and reward of suffering for Christ. |
