Part E

THE EARLIEST CONFLICT WITH RUSSIA.

CHAPTER I.

SACK OF CONSTANTINOPLE-REIGN OF MOHAMMED II-THE TURKS CONQUER THE CRIMEA-PROGRESS OF THE NATION.

HE conditions under which war is now conducted are so entirely different from those under which Turk and Greek fought in the middle of the fifteenth century, that the details of the capture of Constantinople have for us, only the interest that belongs to things antique and curious. Yet, so long as the story of human achievement, passion, sorrow, suffering, fascinates the mind, the siege and the sack of Constantinople will be read with the liveliest interest. Over the details of the capture of this royal city we dare not linger; but as a true appreciation of the Turkish character is only to be obtained from the study of such incidents in the history of the race as the siege and first occupation of the European capital, it is necessary to take note of some of the more salient features of that famous achievement. The signal for the attack of the city of Constantine was given before dawn, and even while it was still early morning, the Mohammedans had passed through the breach, and the sack of the city had commenced. The incident seems to have had a fascination for the fine mind of Shelley, who, in poetic vision, beheld

"A chasm,

As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul,
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,

Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise."

All hope for Constantinople vanished when Justiniani received his wound. The general, who had fought for hours at St. Romanus' Gate, was now obliged to retire, and leave the broken wall to be defended by Constantine alone. As he retreated, calling for a surgeon, the Emperor stopped him: "Your wound is slight," said Constantine, "the danger is pressing; your presence is necessary, and whither will you retire?" "I will

retire by the same road which God has opened to the Turks," replied the captain, as he passed hastily through one of the breaches of the inner wall. Then came the wild charge of Hassan of Ulubad, followed by repeated onsets of thick-mustering Mussulmans. They gained the summit of the tower," says Creasy, "and though Hassan and eighteen of his forlorn hope were struck down, others rapidly followed and carried the Greek defences by the overwhelming weight of their numbers." Another Ottoman corps broke over the walls some distance from the central gate, and, wheeling round, dashed against the garrison in the rear. The Turks now poured in on all sides, and an indiscriminate slaughter of old and young began. In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword. Gibbon's famous account of the sack is too accurate, too careful and picturesque, to be here overlooked. "In the general consternation," he says, "in the feelings of selfish or social anxiety, in the tumult and thunder of the assault, a sleepless night and morning must have elapsed; nor can I believe that many Grecian ladies' were awakened by the Janissaries 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 a 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 multitudes 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. . . . The doors were broken with axes; and, as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed 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 to 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 harem 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 these 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.

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57

Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phranza, 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 mirbashi or master of the horse; but his two children, in the flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of Mohammed himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio, perhaps a virgin; his son, in the fifteenth year of his age, preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the royal lover. . . . 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 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 sexes. The wealth of Constantinople had been granted by the Sultan to his victorious troops; and the rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. . . . The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God, was despoiled of the oblation of ages; and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind. The Byzantine libraries were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. . . . .. From the first hour (one A.M.) of the memorable 29th May 1453, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the Sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his viziers, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces so dissimilar from the style of oriental architecture. In the hippodrome or atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the under jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia he alighted from his horse, and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that, on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scimitar, that if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern Church was transformed into a mosque, the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed, the crosses were thrown down, and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the evening of Friday (the day of rest and worship among the Ottomans), the muezzin or crier ascended the most lofty turret and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and His prophet; the imaum

H

preached; and Mohammed II. performed the namaz or prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine; but which in a few hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind, and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: 'The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.'

The "elegant distich" having been aptly quoted, Mohammed called for the head of Constantine, which he caused to be publicly exhibited to the people of Constantinople, and afterwards sent round to be gazed at in the chief Greek cities of the Ottoman Empire. Constantine is regarded as having been the greatest if he was also the last of the Greek princes, and his people, as they beheld the ghastly head of the hero who had fallen in defence of his capital, recognised it with tears. Having thus demonstrated that there was nothing further to be hoped for by the Greeks, if not from himself, Mohammed. caused the remains of Constantine to be decently interred; and for some days, after his capture of the city, the Sultan sought to secure the confidence and affection, or at least to calm the alarm of his new subjects, by acts of judicious clemency. He proclaimed himself the "friend and father" of the vanquished people, and the "protector of the Greek Church." The extraordinary assumption on the Sultan's part of the patronage and protection of the Christian religion would have shocked the whole Christian community of Constantinople, and the unholy alliance between the religion of Christ and the hated infidelity of Islam which that assumption involved, would certainly have been repudiated by them had they themselves as a community been united throughout by similar affections and convictions. But the hereditary hatred which subsisted between members of the Latin and of the Greek communion served, as it has continued to do in successive ages, to paralyse the influence of each, and cancel all Christian effort as directed against Mohammedanism. Thus it was from the unholy hands of the defender of the Mohammedan faith that the newly-appointed Patriarch or head of the Greek Church received his pastoral staff-the ceremony of the installation taking place on the 1st June, while the blood of the Christian defenders of the city was still red on its pavements. Mohammed further courted the suffrages of the Christians by publishing an edict securing to the Greeks the use of their churches, and allowing them to celebrate their worship according to their own usages. As we have seen, however, he had already desecrated the great Church of St. Sophia, the cathedral of Constantinople, the most venerated temple of the whole Eastern Church, the seat of Patriarchs, and the crowning-place of emperors, and had converted it into a Mohammedan mosque.

But the unnatural character of the relations between the Mohammedan protector of Christianity and the Greek Church could not long subsist. If Mohammed II. was a scholar, a general, and a statesman, he was something else besides. He was now about to show another and an unpleasant side of his character. If, judging from his earliest acts, the most sanguine of the Greeks might have been tempted to regard the Sultan as a deliverer, they were to be sadly undeceived. The market-place was soon made to stream with the blood of the noblest families of the city. To describe the sufferings of the people at

RESTORATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

59

once from the character and the variety of the tortures and punishments inflicted would be endless. At the date of the siege the population of Constantinople was about one hundred thousand souls. Of these it is estimated forty thousand perished in the defence and in the sack of the city, and fifty thousand were reduced to the condition of slaves. As an example of the savage manner in which the Greeks of the highest rank were treated, the story of the tragic fate of the Grand Duke Notaras and his family is told with more or less of painful detail by all writers on Turkish history. It is said that after the capture of the city Mohammed affected to treat Notaras and his family with consideration, and even with favour-assuring them of pardon and protection. The Sultan even condescended to visit the Grand Duke's wife, an aged princess bowed down with sickness and grief, and to have consoled her "in the most tender strain of humanity and filial reverence." Soon after he sent a command that the duke's youngest son, a youth of fourteen years of age, should be sent to him to become a page in the imperial palace. "In such circumstances," says Finlay, "the mildest fate that could await him would be to become a Mussulman. The father feared that he was destined to a more degraded fate," and accordingly refused to comply with Mohammed's command, and sent back the reply that rather than comply with the Sultan's unnatural request he and his house were prepared to die. Furious at hearing this reply, Mohammed ordered Notaras and his whole family to be brought before him, and massacred in his presence. The Grand Duke received the sentence with composure. He exhorted his children to die as became Christians, and after having seen their heads fall one by one, he himself bowed his neck to the axe of the executioner. "The bloody heads were brought to Mohammed, and placed by his orders in a row before him. on the table." Many more executions of Christian nobles followed on the same day to gratify the Sultan's monstrous delight in massacre.

But Mohammed was not always the gloomy and bloodthirsty ogre here represented, and the dark, vengeful mood having passed away, he did not fail to perceive that, if he wished his capital to be creditable to his splendid empire, he must build up and not destroy. He accordingly took measures at once for the restoration and the repeopling of Constantinople. Many of the rich and industrious families of the capital had been frightened away before the siege had commenced. These were now invited to return under the inducement that a part, at least, of their property should be restored to them. It is difficult to see that all the Sultan's measures for the increase of his capital were equally wise with this. In the various provinces which his valour had added to the dominions of the house of Othman, he compelled the wealthiest families to migrate to Constantinople, where free plots of land were granted to them for building purposes. Thousands of families from all parts of the empire were thus transplanted to the capital, and it appears that no prejudice in favour of special nations or tribes was allowed to affect the process of increase. Turks, Servians, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, all were welcome to the famous metropolis on the Golden Horn, whose fame among cities Mohammed desired to exalt above that of Cairo, of "holy" Damascus, of Bagdad the enchanted. And the Sultan's efforts in this, as in other directions, were effective in answering his intentions. His vast capital was soon crowded by an active population, and wore a more flourishing aspect than it ever had during the last hundred years of the Greek Empire.

And while Mohammed was thus careful to increase the population, he was equally