Volume 6 Part 29 (2/2)
But the dress and language of the Latin priest who officiated at the altar were an object of scandal; and it was observed with horror, that he consecrated a cake or wafer of _unleavened_ bread, and poured cold water into the cup of the sacrament. A national historian acknowledges with a blush, that none of his countrymen, not the emperor himself, were sincere in this occasional conformity. [33] Their hasty and unconditional submission was palliated by a promise of future revisal; but the best, or the worst, of their excuses was the confession of their own perjury.
When they were pressed by the reproaches of their honest brethren, ”Have patience,” they whispered, ”have patience till G.o.d shall have delivered the city from the great dragon who seeks to devour us. You shall then perceive whether we are truly reconciled with the Azymites.” But patience is not the attribute of zeal; nor can the arts of a court be adapted to the freedom and violence of popular enthusiasm. From the dome of St. Sophia the inhabitants of either s.e.x, and of every degree, rushed in crowds to the cell of the monk Gennadius, [34] to consult the oracle of the church. The holy man was invisible; entranced, as it should seem, in deep meditation, or divine rapture: but he had exposed on the door of his cell a speaking tablet; and they successively withdrew, after reading those tremendous words: ”O miserable Romans, why will ye abandon the truth? and why, instead of confiding in G.o.d, will ye put your trust in the Italians? In losing your faith you will lose your city. Have mercy on me, O Lord! I protest in thy presence that I am innocent of the crime. O miserable Romans, consider, pause, and repent. At the same moment that you renounce the religion of your fathers, by embracing impiety, you submit to a foreign servitude.” According to the advice of Gennadius, the religious virgins, as pure as angels, and as proud as daemons, rejected the act of union, and abjured all communion with the present and future a.s.sociates of the Latins; and their example was applauded and imitated by the greatest part of the clergy and people.
From the monastery, the devout Greeks dispersed themselves in the taverns; drank confusion to the slaves of the pope; emptied their gla.s.ses in honor of the image of the holy Virgin; and besought her to defend against Mahomet the city which she had formerly saved from Chosroes and the Chagan. In the double intoxication of zeal and wine, they valiantly exclaimed, ”What occasion have we for succor, or union, or Latins? Far from us be the wors.h.i.+p of the Azymites!” During the winter that preceded the Turkish conquest, the nation was distracted by this epidemical frenzy; and the season of Lent, the approach of Easter, instead of breathing charity and love, served only to fortify the obstinacy and influence of the zealots. The confessors scrutinized and alarmed the conscience of their votaries, and a rigorous penance was imposed on those who had received the communion from a priest who had given an express or tacit consent to the union. His service at the altar propagated the infection to the mute and simple spectators of the ceremony: they forfeited, by the impure spectacle, the virtue of the sacerdotal character; nor was it lawful, even in danger of sudden death, to invoke the a.s.sistance of their prayers or absolution. No sooner had the church of St. Sophia been polluted by the Latin sacrifice, than it was deserted as a Jewish synagogue, or a heathen temple, by the clergy and people; and a vast and gloomy silence prevailed in that venerable dome, which had so often smoked with a cloud of incense, blazed with innumerable lights, and resounded with the voice of prayer and thanksgiving. The Latins were the most odious of heretics and infidels; and the first minister of the empire, the great duke, was heard to declare, that he had rather behold in Constantinople the turban of Mahomet, than the pope's tiara or a cardinal's hat. [35] A sentiment so unworthy of Christians and patriots was familiar and fatal to the Greeks: the emperor was deprived of the affection and support of his subjects; and their native cowardice was sanctified by resignation to the divine decree, or the visionary hope of a miraculous deliverance.
[Footnote 33: Phranza, one of the conforming Greeks, acknowledges that the measure was adopted only propter spem auxilii; he affirms with pleasure, that those who refused to perform their devotions in St.
Sophia, extra culpam et in pace essent, (l. iii. c. 20.)]
[Footnote 34: His primitive and secular name was George Scholarius, which he changed for that of Gennadius, either when he became a monk or a patriarch. His defence, at Florence, of the same union, which he so furiously attacked at Constantinople, has tempted Leo Allatius (Diatrib.
de Georgiis, in Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. x. p. 760--786) to divide him into two men; but Renaudot (p. 343--383) has restored the ident.i.ty of his person and the duplicity of his character.]
[Footnote 35: Fakiolion, kaluptra, may be fairly translated a cardinal's hat. The difference of the Greek and Latin habits imbittered the schism.]
Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides along the sea were made inaccessible to an enemy; the Propontis by nature, and the harbor by art. Between the two waters, the basis of the triangle, the land side was protected by a double wall, and a deep ditch of the depth of one hundred feet. Against this line of fortification, which Phranza, an eye-witness, prolongs to the measure of six miles, [36] the Ottomans directed their princ.i.p.al attack; and the emperor, after distributing the service and command of the most perilous stations, undertook the defence of the external wall. In the first days of the siege the Greek soldiers descended into the ditch, or sallied into the field; but they soon discovered, that, in the proportion of their numbers, one Christian was of more value than twenty Turks: and, after these bold preludes, they were prudently content to maintain the rampart with their missile weapons. Nor should this prudence be accused of pusillanimity. The nation was indeed pusillanimous and base; but the last Constantine deserves the name of a hero: his n.o.ble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue; and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honor of the Western chivalry. The incessant volleys of lances and arrows were accompanied with the smoke, the sound, and the fire, of their musketry and cannon. Their small arms discharged at the same time either five, or even ten, b.a.l.l.s of lead, of the size of a walnut; and, according to the closeness of the ranks and the force of the powder, several breastplates and bodies were transpierced by the same shot. But the Turkish approaches were soon sunk in trenches, or covered with ruins. Each day added to the science of the Christians; but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. Their ordnance was not powerful, either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion. [37] The same destructive secret had been revealed to the Moslems; by whom it was employed with the superior energy of zeal, riches, and despotism. The great cannon of Mahomet has been separately noticed; an important and visible object in the history of the times: but that enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude: [38] the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was mounted with one hundred and thirty guns, or that it discharged one hundred and thirty bullets. Yet in the power and activity of the sultan, we may discern the infancy of the new science. Under a master who counted the moments, the great cannon could be loaded and fired no more than seven times in one day. [39] The heated metal unfortunately burst; several workmen were destroyed; and the skill of an artist [391] was admired who bethought himself of preventing the danger and the accident, by pouring oil, after each explosion, into the mouth of the cannon.
[Footnote 36: We are obliged to reduce the Greek miles to the smallest measure which is preserved in the wersts of Russia, of 547 French _toises_, and of 104 2/5 to a degree. The six miles of Phranza do not exceed four English miles, (D'Anville, Mesures Itineraires, p. 61, 123, &c.)]
[Footnote 37: At indies doctiores nostri facti paravere contra hostes machinamenta, quae tamen avare dabantur. Pulvis erat nitri modica exigua; tela modica; bombardae, si aderant incommoditate loci primum hostes offendere, maceriebus alveisque tectos, non poterant. Nam si quae magnae erant, ne murus concuteretur noster, quiescebant. This pa.s.sage of Leonardus Chiensis is curious and important.]
[Footnote 38: According to Chalcondyles and Phranza, the great cannon burst; an incident which, according to Ducas, was prevented by the artist's skill. It is evident that they do not speak of the same gun. *
Note: They speak, one of a Byzantine, one of a Turkish, gun. Von Hammer note, p. 669.]
[Footnote 39: Near a hundred years after the siege of Constantinople, the French and English fleets in the Channel were proud of firing 300 shot in an engagement of two hours, (Memoires de Martin du Bellay, l.
x., in the Collection Generale, tom. xxi. p. 239.)]
[Footnote 391: The founder of the gun. Von Hammer, p. 526.]
The first random shots were productive of more sound than effect; and it was by the advice of a Christian, that the engineers were taught to level their aim against the two opposite sides of the salient angles of a bastion. However imperfect, the weight and repet.i.tion of the fire made some impression on the walls; and the Turks, pus.h.i.+ng their approaches to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm, and to build a road to the a.s.sault. [40] Innumerable fascines, and hogsheads, and trunks of trees, were heaped on each other; and such was the impetuosity of the throng, that the foremost and the weakest were pushed headlong down the precipice, and instantly buried under the acc.u.mulated ma.s.s. To fill the ditch was the toil of the besiegers; to clear away the rubbish was the safety of the besieged; and after a long and b.l.o.o.d.y conflict, the web that had been woven in the day was still unravelled in the night. The next resource of Mahomet was the practice of mines; but the soil was rocky; in every attempt he was stopped and undermined by the Christian engineers; nor had the art been yet invented of replenis.h.i.+ng those subterraneous pa.s.sages with gunpowder, and blowing whole towers and cities into the air. [41] A circ.u.mstance that distinguishes the siege of Constantinople is the reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines for casting stones and darts; the bullet and the battering-ram [411] were directed against the same walls: nor had the discovery of gunpowder superseded the use of the liquid and unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the largest size was advanced on rollers this portable magazine of ammunition and fascines was protected by a threefold covering of bulls' hides: incessant volleys were securely discharged from the loop-holes; in the front, three doors were contrived for the alternate sally and retreat of the soldiers and workmen. They ascended by a staircase to the upper platform, and, as high as the level of that platform, a scaling-ladder could be raised by pulleys to form a bridge, and grapple with the adverse rampart. By these various arts of annoyance, some as new as they were pernicious to the Greeks, the tower of St. Roma.n.u.s was at length overturned: after a severe struggle, the Turks were repulsed from the breach, and interrupted by darkness; but they trusted that with the return of light they should renew the attack with fresh vigor and decisive success. Of this pause of action, this interval of hope, each moment was improved, by the activity of the emperor and Justiniani, who pa.s.sed the night on the spot, and urged the labors which involved the safety of the church and city. At the dawn of day, the impatient sultan perceived, with astonishment and grief, that his wooden turret had been reduced to ashes: the ditch was cleared and restored; and the tower of St. Roma.n.u.s was again strong and entire. He deplored the failure of his design; and uttered a profane exclamation, that the word of the thirty-seven thousand prophets should not have compelled him to believe that such a work, in so short a time, could have been accomplished by the infidels.
[Footnote 40: I have selected some curious facts, without striving to emulate the b.l.o.o.d.y and obstinate eloquence of the abbe de Vertot, in his prolix descriptions of the sieges of Rhodes, Malta, &c. But that agreeable historian had a turn for romance; and as he wrote to please the order he had adopted the same spirit of enthusiasm and chivalry.]
[Footnote 41: The first theory of mines with gunpowder appears in 1480 in a MS. of George of Sienna, (Tiraboschi, tom. vi. P. i. p. 324.) They were first practised by Sarzanella, in 1487; but the honor and improvement in 1503 is ascribed to Peter of Navarre, who used them with success in the wars of Italy, (Hist. de la Ligue de Cambray, tom. ii. p.
93--97.)]
[Footnote 411: The battering-ram according to Von Hammer, (p. 670,) was not used.--M.]
Chapter LXVIII: Reign Of Mahomet The Second, Extinction Of Eastern Empire.--Part III.
The generosity of the Christian princes was cold and tardy; but in the first apprehension of a siege, Constantine had negotiated, in the isles of the Archipelago, the Morea, and Sicily, the most indispensable supplies. As early as the beginning of April, five [42] great s.h.i.+ps, equipped for merchandise and war, would have sailed from the harbor of Chios, had not the wind blown obstinately from the north. [43] One of these s.h.i.+ps bore the Imperial flag; the remaining four belonged to the Genoese; and they were laden with wheat and barley, with wine, oil, and vegetables, and, above all, with soldiers and mariners for the service of the capital. After a tedious delay, a gentle breeze, and, on the second day, a strong gale from the south, carried them through the h.e.l.lespont and the Propontis: but the city was already invested by sea and land; and the Turkish fleet, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, was stretched from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, in the form of a crescent, to intercept, or at least to repel, these bold auxiliaries. The reader who has present to his mind the geographical picture of Constantinople, will conceive and admire the greatness of the spectacle. The five Christian s.h.i.+ps continued to advance with joyful shouts, and a full press both of sails and oars, against a hostile fleet of three hundred vessels; and the rampart, the camp, the coasts of Europe and Asia, were lined with innumerable spectators, who anxiously awaited the event of this momentous succor. At the first view that event could not appear doubtful; the superiority of the Moslems was beyond all measure or account: and, in a calm, their numbers and valor must inevitably have prevailed. But their hasty and imperfect navy had been created, not by the genius of the people, but by the will of the sultan: in the height of their prosperity, the Turks have acknowledged, that if G.o.d had given them the earth, he had left the sea to the infidels; [44] and a series of defeats, a rapid progress of decay, has established the truth of their modest confession. Except eighteen galleys of some force, the rest of their fleet consisted of open boats, rudely constructed and awkwardly managed, crowded with troops, and dest.i.tute of cannon; and since courage arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength, the bravest of the Janizaries might tremble on a new element. In the Christian squadron, five stout and lofty s.h.i.+ps were guided by skilful pilots, and manned with the veterans of Italy and Greece, long practised in the arts and perils of the sea. Their weight was directed to sink or scatter the weak obstacles that impeded their pa.s.sage: their artillery swept the waters: their liquid fire was poured on the heads of the adversaries, who, with the design of boarding, presumed to approach them; and the winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. In this conflict, the Imperial vessel, which had been almost overpowered, was rescued by the Genoese; but the Turks, in a distant and closer attack, were twice repulsed with considerable loss. Mahomet himself sat on horseback on the beach to encourage their valor by his voice and presence, by the promise of reward, and by fear more potent than the fear of the enemy. The pa.s.sions of his soul, and even the gestures of his body, [45] seemed to imitate the actions of the combatants; and, as if he had been the lord of nature, he spurred his horse with a fearless and impotent effort into the sea. His loud reproaches, and the clamors of the camp, urged the Ottomans to a third attack, more fatal and b.l.o.o.d.y than the two former; and I must repeat, though I cannot credit, the evidence of Phranza, who affirms, from their own mouth, that they lost above twelve thousand men in the slaughter of the day. They fled in disorder to the sh.o.r.es of Europe and Asia, while the Christian squadron, triumphant and unhurt, steered along the Bosphorus, and securely anch.o.r.ed within the chain of the harbor. In the confidence of victory, they boasted that the whole Turkish power must have yielded to their arms; but the admiral, or captain bashaw, found some consolation for a painful wound in his eye, by representing that accident as the cause of his defeat. Balthi Ogli was a renegade of the race of the Bulgarian princes: his military character was tainted with the unpopular vice of avarice; and under the despotism of the prince or people, misfortune is a sufficient evidence of guilt. [451] His rank and services were annihilated by the displeasure of Mahomet. In the royal presence, the captain bashaw was extended on the ground by four slaves, and received one hundred strokes with a golden rod: [46] his death had been p.r.o.nounced; and he adored the clemency of the sultan, who was satisfied with the milder punishment of confiscation and exile. The introduction of this supply revived the hopes of the Greeks, and accused the supineness of their Western allies. Amidst the deserts of Anatolia and the rocks of Palestine, the millions of the crusades had buried themselves in a voluntary and inevitable grave; but the situation of the Imperial city was strong against her enemies, and accessible to her friends; and a rational and moderate armament of the marine states might have saved the relics of the Roman name, and maintained a Christian fortress in the heart of the Ottoman empire. Yet this was the sole and feeble attempt for the deliverance of Constantinople: the more distant powers were insensible of its danger; and the amba.s.sador of Hungary, or at least of Huniades, resided in the Turkish camp, to remove the fears, and to direct the operations, of the sultan. [47]
[Footnote 42: It is singular that the Greeks should not agree in the number of these ill.u.s.trious vessels; the _five_ of Ducas, the _four_of Phranza and Leonardus, and the _two_ of Chalcondyles, must be extended to the smaller, or confined to the larger, size. Voltaire, in giving one of these s.h.i.+ps to Frederic III., confounds the emperors of the East and West.]
[Footnote 43: In bold defiance, or rather in gross ignorance, of language and geography, the president Cousin detains them in Chios with a south, and wafts them to Constantinople with a north, wind.]
[Footnote 44: The perpetual decay and weakness of the Turkish navy may be observed in Ricaut, (State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 372--378,) Thevenot, (Voyages, P. i. p. 229--242, and Tott), (Memoires, tom. iii;) the last of whom is always solicitous to amuse and amaze his reader.]
[Footnote 45: I must confess that I have before my eyes the living picture which Thucydides (l. vii. c. 71) has drawn of the pa.s.sions and gestures of the Athenians in a naval engagement in the great harbor of Syracuse.]
[Footnote 451: According to Ducas, one of the Afabi beat out his eye with a stone Compare Von Hammer.--M.]
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