The reader of the accounts of the siege, and indeed of its history generally before 1453, cannot but be struck with the attachment shown by its inhabitants towards their city. For them it is the Queen of Cities, the most beautiful, the most wealthy, the most orderly, and the most civilised in the world. There the merchant could find all the produce of the East, and could trade with buyers from all countries. There the student had access to the great libraries of philosophy, law, and theology, the rich storehouse of the writings of the Christian Fathers, and of the great classics of ancient Greece. In quietness and security, generations of monks had copied the manuscripts of earlier days free from the alarms which in Western and Eastern countries alike disturbed the scholar. The Church, the lawyers and scholars had kept alive a knowledge of the ancient language in a form in all its essential features like that which existed in the days of Pericles. Priests and laymen were proud to be inheritors and guardians of the writings of classical times and to consider themselves of the same blood as their authors. Though often almost as intolerant towards heretics as the great sister Church of the West, they did not and could not regard Aristotle and Plato, Leonidas and Pericles, and the rest of their glorious predecessors as eternally lost because they had not known Christ, and their sense of relationship with them helped to develop a conviction of the continuity of their history, not only with Constantine and the Roman empire, but with the more remote peoples who had given them their language. The New Rome had for a thousand years been towards all Eastern Christians all that the Elder Rome was to those in the West, and their pride in its stability and security was great. Once, and once alone, had it been captured. But the unfortunate attack made by the West in 1204, the results of which had been so correctly foreseen and foretold by Innocent the Third, had been in part overcome. This new capture was infinitely more serious. The essential difference between the two is commented on by Critobulus. By the first the city sustained a foreign domination for sixty years and lost much of its wealth. A great number of beautiful statues and other works of art, coveted by the whole world, were taken away and many more destroyed. But there the mischief stopped. The city did not lose all its inhabitants. Wives and children were not taken away. When the tyranny was past, the city recovered and once more it figured as the renowned capital of an empire, though only a simulacrum of what it had once been. It was still in the eyes of all Greek-speaking people the leader and example of all that was good, the home of philosophy and of every kind of learning, of science, of virtue, and in truth of all that is best.508 Now, all was changed: the new conquerors were Asiatics. A false religion replaced Christianity. The capital was a desert.

The city’s situation of picturesque beauty, as well as its Christian and historical associations, increased the love for it of its inhabitants and made them as proud of Constantinople as ever were the Italian citizens of Florence or Venice. It is therefore not surprising to find that, on its conquest, the grief and the rage of those who had lived in it are almost too great for words. She, says Critobulus, who had formerly reigned over many people with honour, glory, and renown, is now ruled by others and has sunk into poverty, ignominy, dishonour, and shameful slavery. The lamentations of Ducas are as sincere as those of Jeremiah. Its inhabitants gone; its womanhood destined to dishonourable servitude; its nobles massacred; the very babes at the breast butchered; the temples of God defiled: all present a spectacle on which he enlarges with the expression of a hope that the anger of God will be appeased and that His people will yet find favour. Unhappily, the Greek race had entered upon the darkness of the blackest night, and nearly four centuries had to pass before the dawn of their new day was at hand.

At a later date Mahomet himself recognised that it was necessary to do something towards the repeopling of Constantinople. He gave orders that five thousand families should be sent from the provinces to the capital, and commanded the repair of the walls.509 It does not appear, however, that they were repaired in an efficient manner. It is generally easy to distinguish between Turkish repairs and those effected at an earlier date. Critobulus states that Mahomet ordered the renewal of those parts which had been overthrown by the cannon and of both the sea and the landward walls, which had suffered by time and weather.510 The sea walls were probably thoroughly repaired; of those on the landward side probably only the Inner Wall. Experience had shown that more than one strong wall was a disadvantage rather than otherwise. Ducas states that the five thousand families sent to Constantinople by Mahomet from Trebizond, Sinope, and Asprocastron under pain of death included masons and lime-burners for repairing the walls.511

In order to attract population to the capital, Mahomet recognised that it was necessary to conciliate the Greeks. It may be, as Critobulus asserts, that he felt a genuine pity for the sufferings of the captives. As a young man, with, for a Turk, quite exceptional knowledge of the literary possessions of the old world, it is easy to believe that he was desirous of satisfying the Christians, while his general intelligence must have convinced him that trade and commerce, from which a revenue was to be derived, would be much more likely to flourish with them than with men of his own race. Critobulus insists that his first intention was to employ Notaras and others of the leading Greeks in the public service, and that he recognised when it was too late that he had been misled into the blunder of putting them to death, and sent away from his court some of those who had counselled their executions, and even condemned some others to death.512 A few days after the conquest, he ordered the captives who formed part of his own share in the booty to be established in houses on the slope towards the Golden Horn. From among the noble families he selected the young men for himself. Some of these he placed in the corps of Janissaries; others, who were distinguished by their education, he kept near him as pages.513

It was during these days that Critobulus the historian sent envoys to the city, who took with them the submission of the islands of Imbros, where he was living, of Lemnos and Thasos. The archons had learned of the capture of the city. Most of them fled, fearing that admiral Hamoud, who had returned with the fleet to Gallipoli, would attack the inhabitants of the islands and treat them as he had done those of Prinkipo. Critobulus, however, sent a large bakshish to Hamoud and arranged that if the inhabitants submitted there should be no attack. Thereupon Critobulus had sent the envoys to Constantinople, with rich presents for the sultan, to make submission. The islanders were ordered to pay the same taxes to the sultan as they had formerly paid to the emperor, and thus, says the historian, were preserved from the great danger which threatened them.514

Mahomet published an edict within a few weeks of the capture of the city, that all of the former inhabitants who had paid ransom, or who were ready to enter into an agreement with their masters to pay it within a fixed period, should be considered free, be allowed to live in the city, and should for a time be exempt from taxes. Phrantzes states515 that even on the third day after the capture an order was issued allowing those to return who had fled from the city and who were in hiding, promising that they should not be molested. Upon the question whether on such return they would, as Critobulus relates, have to pay ransom Phrantzes is silent. A few weeks later, after his visit to Adrianople, Mahomet sent orders to various parts of his empire to despatch families of Christians, Jews, and Turks to repeople the city. He endeavoured to allure Greeks and other workmen by employing them on public works, notably in the construction of a palace—for which, Critobulus rightly says, he had chosen the most beautiful site in the city, namely, at Seraglio Point—on the construction of the fortress of the Seven Towers around the Golden Gate, and at the repairs of the Inner Wall. He ordered the Turks to allow their slaves to take part in this work, so that they might earn money not only to live but to save enough for their ransom.516

Mahomet’s most important step towards conciliation was to decree the toleration of Christian worship and to allow the Church to retain its organisation. As George Scholarius had been the favourite of the Greeks who had refused to accept the Union with Rome, Mahomet ordered search for him. After much difficulty, he was found at Adrianople, a slave in the house of a pasha, kept under confinement as a prisoner, but treated with distinction. His master had recognised, or had learned, that his captive was a man of exceptional talent. He was sent to the sultan, who was already well disposed towards him on account of his renown in philosophy. Scholarius made a favourable impression in the interview by his intelligence and manners. Mahomet ordered that he should have access to the palace when he wished, begged him always to speak freely in their intercourse, and sent him away with valuable presents.517

A Record of the ecclesiastical affairs of the Orthodox Church, written within ten years after the capture, states that Mahomet, desiring to increase the number of the inhabitants of Constantinople, gave to the Christians permission to follow the customs of their Churches, and, having learned that they had no patriarch, ordered them to choose whom they would. He promised to accept their choice and that the patriarch should enjoy very nearly the same privileges as his predecessors. A local synod having been called, George Scholarius was elected, and became known as Gennadius. The sultan received him at his seraglio, and with his own hands presented him with a valuable pastoral cross of silver and gold, saying to him, ‘Be patriarch and be at peace. Count upon our friendship as long as thou desirest it, and thou shalt enjoy all the privileges of thy predecessors.’

After the interview the sultan caused him to be mounted upon a richly caparisoned horse and conducted to the Church of the Holy Apostles, which he presented to him as the church of the patriarchate as it had formerly been.518

After the election of Gennadius, the sultan, according to Critobulus, continued his intercourse with the new patriarch and discussed with him questions relating to Christianity, urging him to speak his mind freely. Mahomet even paid him visits and took with him the most learned men whom he had persuaded to be present at his court.519

During the long reign of Mahomet his attention was again and again directed to the repeopling of his capital, In addition to the attempts already mentioned, Critobulus recounts many other efforts made with the same object. But the sultan’s inducements mostly failed. The Christians mistrusted his promises, and experience showed that they were justified in so doing. Mahomet addressed himself to the Greek noble families and endeavoured to persuade them to return to the city. He publicly promised that all who came back and could prove their nobility and descent should be treated with even more distinction than had been shown to them under the emperor and should continue to enjoy the same rank as before. Relying on this promise, a number of them returned, on the feast of St. Peter. They, however, paid dearly for their credulity. Either the promise which had been given was of the hasty, spasmodic kind which has often characterised the orders of most of the Ottoman sultans and was repented of, or it had been given treacherously with no idea of its being kept. The heads of the nobles soon sullied the steps of Mahomet’s court.520 The repeopling which could not be done by persuasion was attempted more successfully by force.

In 1458, while Mahomet was attacking Corinth his army made a raid in the neighbouring country and brought in more than three thousand prisoners, men, women and children. These were sent to settle outside the walls of Constantinople, on the lands which had been devastated before the siege. In the following year the sultan returned from the Peloponnesus. The artisans whom he had captured were settled in the capital; the remainder in the neighbourhood. In the same year he ordered that the most well-to-do inhabitants of Amastris on the Black Sea, including all the Armenian merchants, should be sent to the capital. It was partly to employ the workmen thus brought together that he ordered the construction of the mosque which bears his name.

In 1460 he published an Iradè inviting all who had ever lived in the capital to return. There were many fugitives, says Critobulus, at Adrianople, Philippopolis, Brousa, and elsewhere, who had been sold as slaves or had left the city before the siege: learned, noble, and industrious men who by their ability had already gained positions of comfort and even of wealth. All these, therefore, he transported to the capital, giving some of them honour, others permission to build where they liked, and to others again all that was needed to establish themselves. He transported to the capital all the inhabitants of the two Phocaeas. He sent his admiral in chief with forty ships into the Archipelago for the same purpose. The people of Thasos and of Samothracia were carried en masse to the capital.521