Turkish sources offer a collection of Turkish popular legends about Constantinople and the Bosphorus.191a This enumeration of the chief sources shows what rich and various information we have for the study of the problem of the siege and capture of Constantinople by the Turks. At the beginning of April, 1453, the siege of the great city began. It was not only the incomparably greater military forces of the Turks that contributed to the success of the siege. Muhammed II, to quote Barbaro, "this perfidious Turk, dogTurk",1 ,192 was the first sovereign in history who had at his disposal a real park of artillery. The perfected Turkish bronze cannons, of gigantic size for that time, hurled to a great distance gigantic stone shots, whose destructive blows the old walls of Constantinople could not resist. The Russian tale of Tsargrad above mentioned states that "the wretched Muhammed" conveyed close to the city walls "cannons, arquebuses, towers, ladders, siege machinery, and other wall-battering devices".193 The contemporary Greek historian, Critobulus, had a good understanding of the decisive role of artillery, when he wrote that all the saps made by the Turks under the walls and their subterraneous passages "proved to be superfluous and involved only useless expense, as cannons decided everything"." 194 In the second half of the nineteenth century, in several places of Stamboul, one might still see on the ground the huge cannon shots which had hurled over the walls and were lying nearly in the same places in which they had fallen in 1453. On April 20 the only piece of good fortune for the Christians in the whole siege took place: the four Genoese vessels which had come to the aid of Constantinople, defeated the Turkish fleet in spite of its far superior numbers. "One may easily imagine", writes a recent historian of the siege and capture of the Byzantine capital, 191a See F. Babinger, Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen und ihre Werke (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 23-45 and passim. 102 Barbaro, pp. 20, 21. 193 Nestor-Iskander, p. 27 (in Russian). See also The Tales of Tsargrad, ed. by V. Yakovlev (St. Petersburg, 1868), pp. 92, 93 (in Russian). Iorga, Origines et prise de Constantinople, p. 99. 194 Critobulus, I, 31, 3 (ed. C. Müller, p. 80). Schlumberger, "the indescribable joy of the Greeks and Italians. For a moment Constantinople considered itself saved."195 But this success, of course, could have no real importance for the course of the siege. On April 22 the city with the Emperor at its head was struck by an extraordinary and terrifying spectacle: the Turkish vessels were in the upper part of the Golden Horn. During the preceding night the Sultan had succeeded in transporting the vessels from the Bosphorus by land into the Golden Horn; for this purpose a kind of wooden platform had been specially made in the valley between the hills, and the vessels were put on wheels and dragged over the platform by the exertions of a great number of "canaille", to quote Barbaro,196 who were at the Sultan's disposal. The Greco-Italian fleet stationed in the Golden Horn beyond the chain was thereafter between two fires. The condition of the city became critical. The plan of the besieged garrison to burn the Turkish vessels in the Golden Horn at night was treacherously revealed to the Sultan and prevented. Meanwhile, the heavy bombardment of the city, which did not cease for several weeks, brought the population to the point of complete exhaustion; men, women, children, priests, monks, and nuns were compelled, day and night, under cannon fire, to repair the numerous breaches in the walls. The siege had already lasted for fifty days. The tidings which reached the Sultan, perhaps especially invented, of the possible arrival of a Christian fleet to aid the city, induced him to hasten the decisive blow to Constantinople. Imitating the famous orations in the History of Thucydides, Critobulus even gives the speech of Muhammed to the troops appealing to their courage and firmness; in this speech the Sultan declared, "There are three conditions for successful war: to want (victory), to be ashamed (of dishonor, defeat), and to obey the leaders".197 The assault was fixed for the night of May 29. 195 Schlumberger, Le siège, la prise, et le sac de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1453 (Paris, 1915), p. 140. 199 Barbaro, p. 28. 197 Critobulus, I, 50, 2 (ed. Müller, p. 91). The old capital of the Christian East, anticipating the inevitable catastrophe and aware of the coming assault, spent the eve of the great day in prayer and tears. Upon the Emperor's order, religious processions followed by an enormous multitude of people singing "O, Lord, have mercy on us", passed along the city walls. Men encouraged one another to offer a stubborn resistance to the Turks at the last hour of battle. In his long speech given us by a Greek historian (Phrantzes),198 Constantine incited the people to a valorous defence, but he clearly realized their doom when he said that the Turks "are supported by guns, cavalry, infantry, and their numerical superiority, but we rely on the name of the Lord our God and Saviour, and, secondly, on our hands and the strength which has been granted us by the power of God".199 Constantine ended his speech thus: "I persuade and beg your love to accord adequate honor and obedience to your chiefs, everyone according to his rank, his military position, and service. Know this: if you sincerely observe all that I have commanded you, I hope that, with the aid of God, we shall avoid the just punishment sent by God.200 In the evening of the same day service was celebrated in St. Sophia, the last Christian ceremony in the famous church. On the basis of Byzantine sources an English historian (E. Pears) gives us a striking picture of this ceremony: "The great ceremony of the evening and one that must always stand out among the world's historic spectacles was the last Christian service held in the church of Holy Wisdom. . . The emperor and such of the leaders as could be spared were present and the building was once more and for the last time crowded with Christian worshippers. It requires no great effort of imagination to picture the scene. The interior of the church was the most beautiful which Christian art had produced, and its beauty was enhanced by its still gorgeous fittings. Patriarch and cardinal, the crowd of ecclesiastics representing both the Eastern and Western Churches; emperor and nobles, the last remnant of the once gorgeous and brave Byzantine aristocracy; priests and 198 Phrantzes, III, 6 (pp. 271-79). 199 Idem., p. 273. 200 Phrantzes, p. 278. soldiers intermingled, Constantinopolitans, Venetians and Genoese, all were present, all realizing the peril before them, and feeling that in view of the impending danger the rivalries which had occupied them for years were too small to be worthy of thought. The emperor and his followers partook together of 'the undefiled and divine mysteries', and said farewell to the patriarch. The ceremony was in reality a liturgy of death. The empire was in its agony and it was fitting that the service for its departing spirit should be thus publicly said in its most beautiful church and before its last brave emperor. If the scene so vividly described by Mr. Bryce of the coronation of Charles the Great and the birth of an empire is among the most picturesque in history, that of the last Christian service in St. Sophia is surely among the most tragic.' ."201 In a source (Phrantzes) we read: "Who will tell of the tears and groans in the palace! Even a man of wood or stone could not help weeping."202 The general assault began on Tuesday night between one and two o'clock of May 28-29. At the given signal, the city was attacked simultaneously on three sides. Two attacks were repulsed. Finally, Muhammed organized very carefully the third and last attack. With particular violence the Turks attacked the walls close to the St. Romanus gate (or Pempton) where the Emperor was fighting. One of the chief defenders of the city, the Genoese Giustiniani, seriously wounded, was forced to abandon the battle; he was transported with difficulty to a vessel which succeeded in leaving the harbor for the Island of Chios. Either there or on the journey there Guistiniani died. His tomb is still preserved in Chios, but the Latin epitaph formerly in the church of S. Dominic in the citadel has apparently disappeared.203 The departure and death of Giustiniani was an irreparable 201 E. Pears, The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks (London-New York, 1903), pp. 330-31. A French paraphrase of Pears' account is given by G. Schlumberger, Le siège, la prise et le sac de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1453 (Paris, 1915), pp. 269–70. 202 Phrantzes, p. 279. 203 See F. M. Hasluck, The Latin Monuments of Chios, in the Annual of the British School at Athens, no. XVI (1909-1910), 155, no. 18. The text of the inscription is given. The author remarks, "This is the tomb of the famous Giovanni Giustiniani, whose wound was the immediate cause of the fall of Constantinople" (p. 155). loss to the besieged. In the walls more and more new breaches opened. The Emperor fought heroically as a simple soldier and fell in battle. We have no exact information of the death of the last Byzantine Emperor; for this reason his death soon became the subject of a legend which has obscured the historical fact. After Constantine's death, the Turks rushed into the city inflicting terrible devastation. A great multitude of Greeks took refuge in St. Sophia, hoping for safety there. But the Turks broke in the entrance gate and poured into the church; they murdered and insulted the Greeks who were hiding there, without distinction of sex or age. The day of the capture of the city, or perhaps the next day, the Sultan solemnly entered conquered Constantinople, and went into St. Sophia, where he offered up a Muhammedan prayer. Thereupon Muhammed took up his residence in the imperial palace of Blachernae. According to the unanimous indication of the sources, the pillage of the city, as Muhammed had promised his soldiers, lasted for three days and three nights. The population was mercilessly murdered. The churches, with St. Sophia at their head, and monasteries with all their wealth were robbed and polluted; private property was plundered. In these fatal days an innumerable mass of cultural material perished. Books were burnt or torn to pieces, trodden upon or sold for practically nothing. According to the statement of a source (Ducas), an enormous number of books were loaded upon carts and scattered through various countries; a great number of books, the works of Aristotle and Plato, books of theology, and many others, were sold for one gold coin; the gold and silver which adorned the beautifully bound Gospels was torn off, and the Gospels themselves were either sold or thrown away; all the holy images were burnt, and the Turks ate meat boiled on the fire.204 Nevertheless, some scholars, for example Th. Uspensky, believe that "the Turks in 1453 acted with more mildness and humanity than the crusaders who had seized Constantinople in 1204" 205 204 Ducas, chap. XLII (p. 312). 206 Th. Uspensky, The start and development of the Eastern Problem, in the Transactions of the Slavonic Charitable Society (St. Petersburg, 1886), III, 251 (in Russian). |