The Church of S. John Studius, now a sad ruin, stood likewise in this part of the city. So did the Church and monastery of S. Diomed, upon whose steps one day, towards sunset, a way-worn youth in quest of fortune lay down to rest, after his long journey from Macedonia, and rose to become, in a capital where strange careers were possible, the Emperor Basil I. He founded a dynasty that occupied the throne of the Byzantine Empire for two centuries, and counted among its members such notable sovereigns as Basil II. the Slayer of the Bulgarians, Nicephorus Phocas the Conqueror of the Saracens, John Zimisces who drove the Russians out of Bulgaria across the Danube.

CHAPTER V

along the walls beside the golden horn

The fortifications which defended the side of the city along the Golden Horn consisted of a single line of wall placed, for the most part, close to the water’s edge and flanked, it is said, by one hundred and ten square towers. Like the bulwarks along the Sea of Marmora, they attained their full length gradually, according as the northern extremity of the landward walls, which they were to join, was carried farther to the west, when Byzantium expanded into the City of Constantine, when the City of Constantine grew into the City of Theodosius II., and, finally, when, in 627, the outlying level portion of the suburb of Blachernæ was brought within the bounds of the capital. The points along the shore of the Golden Horn thus reached were successively the Stamboul head of the Inner Bridge, the eastern border of the quarter of Aivan Serai, and the present point of junction with the landward walls on the west of that quarter. But the actual wall is, substantially, the work of the ninth century, when the Emperor Theophilus reconstructed the fortifications along both shores of the city, as the inscription, “Tower of Theophilus, Emperor in Christ,” found until recently upon almost every tower of the line, proclaimed to the world. In the course of the improvements made in the quarters along the Golden Horn, extensive portions of the fortifications have disappeared, leaving scant remains to interest the visitor. It should be added that the safety of this side of the city was further secured by a chain stretched across the entrance of the harbour, from a tower near Yali Kiosk Kapoussi, the Gate of Eugenius, to a tower known as the Tower of Galata, somewhere near Kiretch Kapoussi on the opposite shore.

The view of Constantinople from the Golden Horn, whether seen from the bridges that cross the harbour, or from Pera, is universally admitted to be as impressive and beautiful a spectacle as any city in the world can present. The visitor of a day recognises its wonderful attractions at the first glance, and long familiarity never allows one to feel satisfied that he has given to the scene all the admiration which it deserves. The dominant feature of the view is lordliness, although beauty is almost equally manifest. Men spoke truly when they conferred upon New Rome the title “The Queen of Cities,” for the aspect of the city is not only lovely, but carries in its aspect the unmistakable air of the majesty and authority that befit the capital of a great Empire. Here is an eye “to threaten and command.” The city spreads itself before you for some three miles on both sides of the Golden Horn, seated upon hills that rise steeply from the water’s edge, and lift the long and wide panorama high into view. The buildings are packed close together, and rise tier above tier from the shore to the summit of the hills. Great mosques, rectangular buildings surmounted by domes and flanked by graceful minarets, occupy the most commanding positions, and crown the city with a diadem of oriental splendour. The Golden Horn, one of the finest harbours in the world, where the war-ships of a nation may ride at ease, and great merchantmen can moor along the shore, is so inwoven with the city as to be its principal thoroughfare, its “Grand Canal,” alive with boats of every description, and spanned by bridges over which the population streams to and fro in great tides. The city is generally irradiated by an atmosphere of extraordinary clearness, brilliance, and warmth of colour. Sometimes the solid earth seems transfigured by the light into a glorious spiritual essence. Early in the morning, Constantinople is often shrouded in a thick veil of mist, and, as the sun gains strength, it is beautiful to see the veil gradually rent at different points, and the objects it covered emerge, piece by piece, one by one, now here now there, a dome, a minaret, a palace, a red-tiled roof, a group of cypresses, as though a magician was constructing the city anew in your presence, until the immense capital gleams before you in its mighty proportions and minute details. Nor is the vision less memorable towards sunset, when the lights and shadows paint this varied surface of hills and valleys, of land and water, while the long array of mosques and minarets upon the hills overhanging the Golden Horn rests against the deepening glory of the sky. It is the vision which Browning saw with a poet’s eye:—

The portion of the Golden Horn to the east of the Galata Bridge is crowded with foreign steamships, among which those bearing the flags of Britain, France, Austria, Italy, Germany, Greece, and Roumania, are the most conspicuous. It may not be to the credit of the country, nor for its greatest advantage, that so much of the commerce of the place should be in foreign hands, but this gathering of the nations in the harbour of the city is imposing; it is an indication of the central position occupied by the city in the world’s affairs, and contributes largely to form the cosmopolitan character for which Constantinople is distinguished. Here the nations assemble to compete with one another as nowhere else in the world, at least in a way so manifest and decisive. This was a feature of the life of the city also before Turkish days. There was a time, indeed, during the Middle Ages when the commerce between the East and the West was exclusively in the hands of the subjects of the Byzantine Empire, when the merchants of Constantinople were the merchant princes of the civilised world. But not to speak of the interference of the Saracens with the trade of the city, the formidable competition of the Italian Maritime States began to make itself felt towards the close of the eleventh century, and from that time onwards became more and more serious until it well-nigh destroyed the business carried on by the native inhabitants. This was due partly to the enterprise of the Italian merchants, and partly to the policy which purchased the aid of the Western States against the foes of the Empire by means of commercial concessions which proved detrimental to domestic trade. It was thus that Alexius Comnenus secured the help of Venice against the Normans, and that Michael Palæologus obtained the support of the Genoese, when, in 1261, he undertook the task of recovering Constantinople from its Latin occupants. The attack upon Constantinople in 1203-1204 by the Fourth Crusade, at the instigation of the Doge Henrico Dandolo, was essentially a piratical expedition to capture the commerce of the East for the benefit of the merchants of Venice. In the course of time the foreign traders in Constantinople were allowed by the Byzantine emperors to occupy the territory extending along the southern shore of the Golden Horn from the Seraglio Point to Zindan Kapoussi. They were grouped according to their nationality, and placed beside one another in the following order, Saracens, Genoese, Pisans, traders from Amalfi, Venetians. After 1261, the Genoese were settled in Galata, where they have left a monument of their occupation in the strong and massive Tower of Galata, that formed their watch-tower and citadel, and where they established, at the very gates of the capital, so strong a rival, that, as Gibbon observes, “The Roman Empire might soon have sunk into a province of Genoa, if the Republic had not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power.” These foreign communities were allowed to be self-governing, so far as the Byzantine Government was concerned. They had their own courts of justice, and their own places of worship, even the Saracens being allowed to possess a mosque. A certain number of houses, a certain extent of territory, and particular piers at which their ships could moor for discharging or receiving cargo, were assigned to them, and, as a rule, they paid lower duties than native merchants did. Sometimes, it seems they were liable to render military service, as though feudal vassals, but to all intents and purposes they enjoyed under the Byzantine emperors very much the position which foreigners in Turkey now occupy, in virtue of the Capitulations granted by Sultans to European residents. The original copies of several of the commercial treaties between the Empire and the Italian States are preserved in the archives of Venice, Genoa, and other cities of Italy, and furnish an interesting chapter in the history of diplomacy and commerce.

The most picturesque portion of the Golden Horn is that which lies between the two bridges. Along the Galata shore, a large flotilla of gaunt native barges, with short masts and long oblique yards, is generally moored, waiting to be employed in the transhipment of the cargoes that leave or reach the port. Here also a mass of native shipping is laid up for the winter, after the fashion of the early days of navigation. It is a dense forest of bare masts and poles involved in a network of cordage, with the steep hill, upon which the stone houses of Galata and Pera are built, as a rocky background. After a night of rain, the scene changes. Then from every yard and mast, heavy, damp sails are spread in the warm, misty, morning air, and you seem to look upon a flock of great sea-birds opening their wings to bask in the sunshine. Along the opposite shore, surmounted by the domes and minarets of the Mosque of Sultan Suleiman, the bank is fringed with native craft, laden with fruit or oil from the islands of the Ægean Sea, or bringing planks and beams to the timber-yards at Odoun Kapan from the lands beside the Danube. Timber has been stored at that point ever since the days of Justinian the Great, if not ever since the city was founded. Caiques flit to and fro, as if shuttles weaving the sundered parts of the city together. While companies of fearless sea-gulls spread grey wings and white breasts over the blue waters, and dance around in every graceful form that motion can assume. It is the portion of the harbour in which the world of the East is still most clearly reflected. The reach of the Golden Horn beyond the Inner Bridge is specially devoted to the service of the Turkish navy, and there may be seen such modern things as ironclads, torpedo boats, and torpedo destroyers. The time was when the Ottoman fleet which gathered here formed an imposing display of naval strength. The Admiralty, Naval Hospital, and Dockyard are situated on the northern bank. On the hill above the Dockyard is the Okmeidan, the field to which the Sultans whose strong arms built up the Ottoman Power came to exercise themselves in the use of the bow. It is studded with pillars commemorating the long shots made by the imperial archers.

The southern bank, with its steep slopes crowded with konaks, gardens, mosques, minarets, is noteworthy for the number of Byzantine churches still found beside the shore or upon the hill-sides, preserving the memory and something of the aspect of the ancient city. Among them are, S. Theodosia (Gul Djamissi), Pantocrator (Kilissé Djamissi), Pantepoptes (Eski Imaret Djamissi), Pammakeristos (Fetiyeh Djamissi), Chora (Kahriyeh Djamissi), SS. Peter and Mark (Atik Mustapha Pasha Djamissi). Close to the western extremity of the shore stood the Church of S. Mary of Blachernæ, once the object of profoundest reverence on account of the wonder-working power attributed to the reputed girdle and mantle of the Mother of the Lord, enshrined among its relics. The site is marked by the Holy Well formerly attached to the sanctuary. On the hill above the Well are the scanty remains of the famous Palace of Blachernæ, once the favourite residence of the Byzantine Court. In the quarter of Phanar the humble residence and the cathedral of the Patriarch of Constantinople are found. What a contrast to the days when the chiefs of the Eastern Church were enthroned under the dome of S. Sophia! In the quarter of Balat, and at Haskeui on the opposite shore, are large settlements of Jews, to whose lowly dwellings belongs the historical interest that they are the homes of the descendants of the Jews who were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, and found refuge here among Moslems from persecution by Christians. They still use the Spanish language, although not with the music of the speech of Castile. The suburb of Eyoub at the foot of the hills at the head of the Golden Horn, and the meadows beside the fresh-water streams which enter the harbour at that point (the Sweet Waters of Europe) are interesting to all who delight in Oriental scenes. No quarter in or around the city is so Turkish in its appearance and spirit as the suburb of Eyoub. It contains the reputed grave of Eyoub, the standard-bearer of Mahomet, who was present at the first siege of Constantinople (673-678) by the Saracens, and who died during its course. The grave was identified, so it is believed, in 1453, when the city fell at last into Turkish hands, and the mosque erected over the tomb is the sanctuary in which Sultans, upon their accession to the throne, gird on the sword which constitutes them sovereigns of the Ottoman Empire, and standard-hearers of Islam. It is a ceremony which embodies the inmost idea of a Moslem State. No Christian is permitted to enter the mosque. On a recent occasion the veneration in which the edifice is held served a noble purpose. During the massacres of 1896, a crowd of Armenians took refuge in the court of the mosque, with the courage of despair. A wild mob followed, intent upon the death of the fugitives. A terrible scene seemed inevitable. When, at the critical moment, the imaum of the mosque appeared, and forbade the desecration of the holy ground by the shedding of blood upon it. The appeal was irresistible. The horde of murderers bowed to the command to be gone, and their intended victims were allowed to escape. The sacred associations of the suburb have made burial in its soil to be esteemed a great honour, and, accordingly, many distinguished Turkish personages have been laid to rest here from early times. The old turbaned tombstones, inscribed with Arabic letters, painted with floral designs, shaded by trees and overrun by climbing plants, form as picturesque a cemetery as one can wish to see. The influence of the suburb is not weakened by the fact that it enters into the life of Turkish children by being a great factory of their toys. The hill above Eyoub commands a magnificent view of the Golden Horn and the city. As to the scene in the valley of the Sweet Waters, where Turkish ladies gather on Fridays in early spring, it is no longer what it once was. The exchange of native vehicles for carriages such as may be seen in Paris or London, and the general use by Turkish ladies of quiet colours in their mantles and head-dress instead of bright hues, have robbed the spectacle of almost all its gaiety, originality, and decorative effect. The scene offers now rather a study in the transformation of the Turkish woman, than a presentation of her peculiar aspect and character. Still, as the change is not complete, a stranger may yet find pleasure in seeing what vestiges of former manners and customs have not disappeared.

Of the historical events of which the Golden Horn has been the theatre, the most important are: first, the attack upon the walls along this side of the city, in 1203, and again in 1204, by the Venetian fleet which accompanied the Fourth Crusade; second, the transportation by Sultan Mehemet into its waters in 1453, of warships over the hill that separates the harbour from the Bosporus. The movements of the Venetian fleet and of the army which accompanied it can be followed step by step, so minute is the description of Ville-Hardouin and so unaltered the topography of the country. Upon approaching the city the invaders put in at San Stefano, now a favourite suburban resort upon the Sea of Marmora. A south wind carried them next to Scutari. From that point they crossed to the bay now occupied by the Palace of Dolma Bagtché, near Beshiktash. There the army landed, and advancing along the shore attacked the tower to which the northern end of the chain across the harbour’s mouth was fastened. Upon the capture of the tower after a feeble resistance, the chain was cut, and the fleet of Venice under the command of Dandolo, flying the ensign of S. Mark, rode into the Golden Horn and made for the head of the harbour. At the same time, the troops marched towards the same point, along the northern shore, where Cassim Pasha and Haskeui are now situated. At the latter suburb they crossed the stone bridge that led to Eyoub on the southern bank. Then turning eastwards, they seized the hill facing the portion of the city walls above which the windows and domes of the Palace of Blachernæ looked towards the west. While the army prepared to attack that point, the ships of Dandolo stood before the harbour walls, in a long line from Aivan Serai to the Phanar and the neighbourhood of the present Inner Bridge. A desperate assault followed, in which twenty-five towers were carried by the Venetians, and the day would have been won, but for the repulse of the land forces and the necessity to hasten to their relief. Soon a revolution within the city against the usurper whom the Crusaders had come to depose, and in favour of the restoration of Isaac Angelus, whose claim to the throne they supported, seemed to bring the struggle to an end. As a sign that amicable relations had been established, and to avoid the danger of angry collisions with the citizens, the invaders removed their forces to the northern side of the Golden Horn. But the conditions on which help had been rendered to Isaac Angelus were too hard to be fulfilled; and insistence upon them provoked the national feeling against the foreign intruders. The imperial protegés of the Crusaders were murdered, or died from fear, and the smouldering embers of the strife burst once more into flames. The army of the Crusade was therefore taken on board the fleet, and proceeded to make a joint attack upon the portion of the harbour walls which Dandolo had once before captured. Victory wavered from side to side. At length, on Easter Monday 1204, Venetian ships approached so near to the walls in the Phanar quarter that bridges attached to the masts settled upon the parapet of the fortifications. Brave knights rushed across, cut down the defenders, clambered down into the city, and threw open the nearest gates. The blind Doge, ninety years old, leaped upon the beach, with the banner of S. Mark in his hands, and summoned his men to follow. The Emperor Murtzuphlus, who watched these operations from the terrace of the Church of Pantepoptes, fled, and for the first time in its history, Constantinople became the prize of a foreign foe.

The transportation of a fleet over the hill that rises some two hundred and fifty feet between the Bosporus and the Golden Horn was a skilful piece of strategy, and formed one of the most striking incidents in the siege of 1453. By compelling attention to the safety of the walls along the harbour, it extended the line of attack, and weakened the defence of the landward walls. To effect the passage, a road was made through the ravines leading from Beshiktash on the straits to Cassim Pasha on the Golden Horn. On that road well-greased logs were laid, like the sleepers on a railway, and then some seventy or eighty galleys, of fifteen, twenty, or twenty-two pairs of oars, were placed in ships’ cradles and dragged by men, oxen, and buffaloes, in the course of a single night, up one slope and down the other, from sea to sea. The incongruous form of navigation put everybody concerned in making the voyage into good humour. Drums beat, fifes sounded, and to add to the zest of the enterprise, the sails were unfurled, the oars were pulled, the rudders set, as if the vessels were proceeding over their native element. But the apparition of the enemy’s ships in the Golden Horn afforded no amusement to the besieged. It increased immensely their anxiety and the difficulties of their task. A brave attempt to burn the Turkish vessels failed, and though the flotilla actually did little in the way of direct attack, it remained a standing menace to the northern side of the city until the close of the siege, a thunder-cloud keeping men in constant dread of the bolts that might dart from its black bosom. Very appropriately, the Turkish Admiralty stands on the shore of the bay in which an Ottoman fleet first rode the waters of the Golden Horn.

CHAPTER VI

along the landward walls

In the third chapter, occupied with the story of the making of Constantinople, some account has been given of the portion of the landward walls erected in the earlier half of the fifth century, when the city was enlarged under Theodosius II., viz, the portion extending from the Sea of Marmora, on the south, to the ruins of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfour Serai) on the north. That seemed the most appropriate place to speak of the origin and character of fortifications which were built as much for the growth and convenience of the city in its civic relations, as for its security as the citadel of the Empire. To that chapter the reader who desires to recall the information given on the subject, is referred. Here, after a brief account of the additions made to the Theodosian walls, in subsequent times, we shall consider the historical importance of the landward walls as a whole, and glance at some of the scenes enacted before them.

The post-Theodosian portions of the walls that guarded Constantinople on the side of the land extend from the courtyard of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus to the shore of the Golden Horn at Aivan Serai. They replaced an older line of fortifications which ran, at a short distance to the rear, between the same points, and were constructed to strengthen the weak places which time revealed in this part of the city’s armour. First in the order of position, though not in the order of time, comes the wall erected by Manuel Comnenus (1142-1180), for the greater security of the Palace of Blachernæ, his favourite residence, which stood within the old bulwarks, just mentioned. It terminates at the foot of the steep hill on which the quarter of Egri Kapou is situated. With its nine noble towers it presents a striking likeness to the fortifications of a feudal baronial castle, and its solid masonry defied the Turkish cannon in 1453. Then follow walls, the original date of whose construction cannot be precisely determined, as they evidently underwent frequent repairs and alterations. Here is found the Tower of Isaac Angelus, and, in the body of the wall to the north of the tower, are three stories of large chambers, very much ruined, which some authorities regard as the cells of the State Prison of Anemas. More probably, they were either barracks or store-rooms attached to the imperial residence, and at the same time buttresses for the support of the terraced hill on which the palace was built. Beyond this chambered wall there is a double line of fortifications. The inner wall was erected in 627, under Heraclius, after the siege of the city by the Avars, to protect the quarter of Blachernæ and its celebrated Church of S. Mary of Blachernæ more effectively in the future than when assailed by that enemy.

The outer wall was built as an additional defence in 813, by Leo the Armenian (813-820), in view of an expected attack upon the city by the Bulgarians under Crum.

The territory outside the landward walls has indeed a charm of its own, in its quiet rural aspect, and in the glimpses it affords of distant blue water seen through dark groves of cypresses. But it cannot pretend to the splendid natural scenery which confronts the shores of the Sea of Marmora or of the Golden Horn, and makes the beauty of Constantinople famous throughout the world. This, however, is not altogether a disadvantage, for it allows the visitor to view without distraction the imposing line of bulwarks ranged across the promontory from sea to sea, and to appreciate calmly all their significance. On the other sides of the city, the fortifications which guarded the Queen of Cities are comparatively unimportant, and are easily lost sight of in the beauty of their surroundings. Here the walls and towers are everything. Here they attained their greatest strength; here they rendered their greatest service; here, like troops bearing the wounds and scars of a great campaign, they force the beholder to realise the immense debt which the civilised world owes to Constantinople for the strength, the valour, and the sacrifices devoted through long centuries to the defence of the highest life of mankind against terrible foes.

Nor does the scenery which the walls themselves present need to borrow attractions from any other source to render it the most picturesque and impressive spectacle of the kind in the world. The alternate courses of grey stone and red bricks in the structure of the fortifications; the long lines of wall ranged in ranks, and rising tier above tier to support one another in the terrible struggles they were called to maintain; the multitude of towers, marshalled to guard the city and Empire, great and small, of every shape, square, round, polygons looking in six, seven, or eight directions, some intact after all the storms of centuries, others bare, broken, fissured from head to foot, yet holding together; inscriptions recalling wars, earthquakes, names of men who have made history; towers crowned with ivy; trees interspersed between the walls or standing upon the summit, like banners; crenellated parapets affording glimpses of the blue sky behind, as though, in Oriental phrase, the ramparts rose to the very heavens; all this stretching for mile upon mile, from sea to sea, presents a scene of extraordinary beauty and grandeur, not less attractive because of the heroism and achievements of which it has been the theatre.

This is not the place for an extended history of the services which these walls, and the Empire of which they were the citadel, rendered as the shield of European civilisation. Enough to remember that the dread of them dissuaded Attila and his Huns from delivering an attack upon the city, although he approached as near to Constantinople as Athyras, now Buyuk Tchekmedjé, some twelve miles distant. Doubtless they often restrained the wrath also of other barbarous hordes. In vain did the Avars, in 627, beat against these walls between Top Kapou (Gate of S. Romanus) and the Gate of Adrianople (Charisius). In vain did the Arabs invest these bulwarks from the spring to the autumn of four successive years (673-677). As unsuccessful was the second siege of the city by the same foe for twelve months (717-718). These fortifications defied the Bulgarians both under Crum in 813 and under Symeon in 924. In 1203 they repelled the valour of the knights and barons engaged in the Fourth Crusade. They mocked the assaults of Sultan Murad, in 1422. And when they succumbed, at length, to the artillery of Sultan Mehemet in 1453, it was because their defenders were few and divided, and their assailants were armed with weapons before which ramparts of stone, alike in the West and in the East, crumbled to pieces, and old systems of society were swept away.

The battles fought directly before the walls of New Rome do not, indeed, give us the complete story of her warfare “per benefitio de la Christiantade et per honor del mundo.” On eight occasions, at least, the armies of the East Roman Empire were drawn up on the plain outside the Golden Gate to celebrate victories won on distant battlefields, and to enter the triumphal Gate of the capital with prisoners, standards, and spoils captured on hostile territory. To the shouts “Glory to God, who has restored to us our sovereign crowned with victory! Glory to God who has magnified you Emperor of the Romans! Glory to Thee All-Holy Trinity, for we behold our Emperor victorious! Welcome Victor! most valiant sovereign!” the triumphal car of Heraclius drove into the city, after his splendid campaign of seven years against the Persians; the campaign which brought the long struggle between Europe and Persia since 492 B.C. to an end. The same shouts rent the air, when Constantine Copronymus returned from the defeat of the Bulgarians, and twice again, when Basil II., by two murderous wars with that people, earned the title, the Slayer of Bulgarians, Bulgaroktonos. Theophilus, on two occasions, and Basil I. passed through the Golden Gate as victors over the Saracens. And Zimisces received the same honour for beating back the Russians under Swiatoslaf. These were great days in the history of the city, nay, of mankind, for they stayed the waves of barbarism that threatened to overwhelm the civilised world. But after all, it is when the enemy stands arrayed before the very capital of the Empire, and delivers assault after assault upon the citadel which guarded its fate and the destiny of Europe, that the struggle waged between civilisation and barbarism during the history of New Rome is fully recognised to have been, indeed, a struggle for life, and that we learn to appreciate what we owe to the Warden of the Gates to the Western World. To these walls may be applied the words in which Mr. Gladstone appraised the value of the services rendered by the Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula, in a similar connection. “They are like a shelving beach that restrained the ocean. That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves; it is laid desolate; it produces nothing; it becomes perhaps nothing save a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed. But it is a fence behind which the cultivated earth can spread and escape the incoming tide.... It was that resistance which left Europe to claim the enjoyment of her own religion, and to develop her institutions and her laws.”

Although inferior as military works to the other portions of the landward walls, great historical interest is associated with the fortifications between the Wall of Manuel and the Golden Horn, for they guarded the Palace of Blachernæ, the favourite residence of the Byzantine Court from the time of Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) until the fall of the Empire. As already intimated, the palace stood on the terrace buttressed by the Tower of Isaac Angelus and the chambered wall to the north of the tower, where the Mosque of Aivas Effendi is now found. The terrace was almost level with the parapet-walk of the fortifications, commanding fine views of the Golden Horn, and of the hills at the head of the harbour; and there the most splendid Court of the Middle Ages long displayed its wealth and pomp. What with the Crusades, and what with the relations, hostile and friendly, between the Italian Republics and the Government of Constantinople during the period of the Palæologi, it was in that palace that Western and Eastern Europe came into closest contact for good or for evil. On the hills and in the valleys seen from the western windows of the palace, the armies of the First Crusade encamped. To that residence came Peter the Hermit, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Bohemond, Tancred, “the mirror of knighthood,” Count Robert of Paris, to wonder at the marvels of Byzantine Art, and to attempt the co-operation of the East and the West, in the great political and religious undertaking of the times. On the hill immediately in front of the walls the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade pitched their tents, and thence Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, Henry his brother, Louis of Blois and Chartres, and Hugo of Saint Paul, led four divisions of the army against the wall erected by Leo the Armenian. The wall was held by Varangian troops, the imperial body-guard, recruited from England, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. “The assailants,” to quote the words of Ville-Hardouin, a witness of the combat, and the historian of the Crusade, “placed two scaling-ladders against an outer wall near the sea; the wall was furnished with Englishmen and Danes, and the attack was strong, and good, and hard. And by sheer force some knights and two sergeants mounted the ladders, and became masters of the wall. Fully fifteen reached the wall, and they fought hand to hand with axes and swords. And the men within returned to the charge and drove them (the assailants) out, right rudely, even taking two of them prisoners. And those of our men who were captured were led to the Emperor Alexis, and he was very highly delighted. So ended the attack by the French. And there was a considerable number of men wounded and of maimed; and the barons were very angry about it.”

The recovery of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 did not diminish Italian influence over the life of the city. On the contrary, from that time to the close of Byzantine history that influence, modified indeed by the rival force of Ottoman power, grew stronger and stronger. Commercial interests, political necessities, schemes of ecclesiastical union, literary sympathies, possibilities of aggrandisement at the expense of an Empire hastening to ruin, made Italy, especially Genoa and Venice, take a most active part in the affairs of New Rome. A Western atmosphere, so to speak, then enveloped Constantinople, very much like that which surrounds the City of the Sultans to-day.

But the portion of the walls about which the greatest and most pathetic interest gathers is where Sultan Mehemet delivered his fatal blow upon the Byzantine Empire, and won the title of “the Conqueror.” It is the portion which stretches from Top Kapoussi (Gate of S. Romanus) to Edirné Kapoussi (Gate of Charisius), across the ravine through which the little stream of the Lycus, on its way to the Sea of Marmora, enters the city. Owing to the depression of the ground and the impossibility of constructing a deep moat there, this was the weakest point in the Theodosian fortifications, and here the bravest of the defenders, under Giustiniani of Genoa and the Emperor Constantine, manned the walls to oppose the best troops under the command of the Sultan. Against this part of the walls the enemy pointed his heaviest cannon, and here the contest raged for more than seven weeks. Both the besieged and the besiegers fought with the determination and the valour worthy of the issues at stake. When the Turkish artillery broke down the Outer Wall, Giustiniani and his Genoese and Greek comrades held their ground, and replaced the fallen ramparts by a stockade built of stones, barrels full of earth, beams, branches of trees—of anything within reach that would hold together. Against that barricade wave after wave of Turkish troops dashed and beat furiously and long. There were moments when the defenders seemed to have gained the day. But like gleams of sunshine that pierce storm clouds, they only served to make the impending catastrophe more tragic. Giustiniani was wounded and left the field. A band of bold Turks entered the city through the postern of the Kerkoporta, thoughtlessly left open, and, mounting the walls, planted their banners upon the parapet. Anon, the cry “The city is taken” burst upon the air and reverberated from tower to tower. A panic seized the besieged. The Sultan, grasping his opportunity, roused his janissaries to a supreme effort, and hurled them against the battered and half-deserted barricade. The Emperor Constantine did everything in his power to rally his followers and repel the terrible onset. It was hopeless. He then sought and found a soldier’s death, rather than survive the fall of his Empire. “All was lost save honour.” And over his dead body the tide of conquest poured into the city.

Thus ended the history of more than a thousand years. Then Asia dealt its worst blow upon Europe. Then the last vestige of the State, ruled first by Rome from the seven hills beside the Tiber, and afterwards by New Rome enthroned on the seven hills beside the Bosporus, disappeared. Then the Crescent gained its greatest triumph over the Cross. Not many spots in the world have been the scene of such momentous events as took place in the little valley of the Lycus on the 29th of May, 1453. There an Empire died, and a long and great epoch closed.

CHAPTER VII

among the churches of the city

Constantinople was a city of churches. Clavijo, the Spanish envoy, who visited the city in 1403, was assured that it was hallowed by the presence of no less than 3000 sanctuaries, counting large and small. This was obviously an exaggeration, intended to impress the stranger’s mind with a due sense of the city’s grandeur and sacredness. Ducange in his great work, Constantinopolis Christiana, gives the names of some 400 churches mentioned by the Byzantine authors whose works he had examined. But a wider acquaintance with Byzantine literature since the time of that great student of the antiquities of Constantinople has discovered the names of many churches not upon his list. It is therefore impossible to reach exact figures here, and we must be content with the vague statement that the number was so large as to form a striking feature of the city’s aspect. This was only what might be expected in a city where the number of churches would be determined not only by the ordinary religious needs of a devout population, but also by the demands of the many monasteries which sought security from violence behind the bulwarks of the capital, notwithstanding the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, encountered there. What does cause surprise, however, is that so few of the numerous churches which once adorned the city, and embodied the piety of its people, have left one stone standing upon another to recall their existence. At most, thirty-five remain, and of these several of them are so dilapidated that they only serve for the identification of an interesting site, or to emphasise the vanity of earthly things.

Of course all the churches of the city were never contemporaneous. In a city which had a life of more then eleven centuries, the list of almost any class of edifices erected in the course of that period would necessarily be a long one, without implying the existence of numerous edifices of that class at one and the same time. According to the description of Constantinople which dates from the first quarter of the fifth century, the number of churches then in the city is given as only fourteen. Churches appeared and disappeared, and while some of them were, for special reasons, maintained throughout the whole course of the city’s history, many came to flourish for a while and then decayed in the ordinary course of things, bequeathing as their memorial only the withered leaves of their names. Then we must remember the frequent and disastrous earthquakes which shook the soil of Constantinople during the Middle Ages, and the terrible conflagrations which again and again reduced the wealth and glory and beauty of extensive tracts of the city to dust and ashes. For example: the three fires associated with the capture of the city by the Latins in 1203-1204 inflicted a blow from which the city never recovered. One of those fires raged for a night and a day; another for two days and two nights, with the result that almost all the territory along the Golden Horn, as well as the territory extending thence to the Hippodrome and the Sea of Marmora, as far away as Vlanga, were turned into a wilderness of smoking ruins. “The fire,” says Ville-Hardouin, a spectator of the awful scene, “was so great and so terrible that no man could extinguish or check it. It was a sad and pitiful spectacle for the barons of the army encamped on the other side of the harbour to see those beautiful churches and those rich palaces fall in and be destroyed, and great business streets burned by the scorching flames; but they could do nothing. The fire spread beyond the harbour across to the densest part of the city, quite close to S. Sophia, and as far as the sea on the other side. It lasted two days and two nights, without being ever touched by the hand of man, and the front of the fire was fully half a league long. Of the damage done, or of the property and wealth thus lost and consumed no estimate can be made, nor of the number of men, women, or children who perished.” It is true that churches injured by the hand of time were often restored. There were even periods when such renovation was carried out on an extensive scale, as for instance under Justinian the Great and under Basil I. (867-886). But not less frequently the old fabric was so weakened by age or shaken by earthquake that to repair it was out of the question, and the only thing to be done was to use its stones and bricks and marbles as materials in the construction of other buildings. Much of the material, for instance, employed in the erection of the Tower of Isaac Angelus, in front of the Palace of Blachernæ, was taken from the ruins of old churches. While for the construction of the citadel which John VI. Palæologus (1341-1391) built near the Golden Gate, material was taken from the remains of churches so noted in their day as the Church of All Saints, the Church of the Forty Martyrs, and the Church of S. Mokius.