Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor

When the city had thus increased in magnitude and opulence, it became the great mark for the ambition of the barbarians that surrounded it. Placed at the extremity of Europe, it was the bulwark, as it were, against Asiatic aggression, and, filled with the riches of the earth, the great object of cupidity. In the year 668, after it had stood for three centuries unmolested by strangers, the Saracens attempted to take it. They were at that time a great maritime nation, and had made immense naval preparations. They had been converted to Mohammedanism about forty years, and were under an impression that the sins of all those who formed the first expedition against this Christian town would be forgiven; and they set out with a vast fleet. They disembarked on the shores of the Sea of Marmora, and assaulted the city on the land-side along the whole extent of the wall of Theodosius. The height and solidity of it defied them. For six years they persevered in their attacks, till sickness, famine, and the sword nearly annihilated their vast army. Their attempts were renewed at several times afterwards, and defeated by the terror of the Greek fire, which was then for the first time discovered and made use of.

The attacks of the Saracens having failed, and the Asiatics having desisted from a hopeless attempt, a new enemy advanced against the devoted city, and from a very different quarter. In the year 865, in the reign of Michael, son of Theophilus, the Sarmatians, Scythians, and the barbarous people now composing the empire of Russia, collected a vast fleet of boats, formed out of the hollowed trunks of single trees, and from hence called by the Greeks monoxylon. They descended the great rivers, and, from the mouth of the Borysthenes, fearlessly pushed out into the open sea in those misshapen and unmanageable logs which are still seen in the same regions. Their vast swarms of boats, like squadrons of Indian canoes, arrived at the mouth of the Bosphorus, and darkened the waters of the strait with their countless numbers. But the rude navy of these undisciplined barbarians was either sunk by the Greek fleet, or consumed by the Greek fire. For a century they continued, with unsubdued perseverance, in their fierce attacks, fresh swarms always succeeding to those that were destroyed, till at length one great and final attempt was made to obtain the object of their cupidity.

In the year 973, a land-army was added to the fleet, and the command given to Swatislas, a savage of singular habits and ferocity. He slept in the winter in the open air, having a heap of snow for his bed, wrapped in a bear’s skin, and with no pillow but his saddle. He quaffed an acid drink, probably the quass of the modern Russians, and he dined on slices of horse-flesh, which he broiled himself on the embers with the point of his sword. He was invited by the emperor Nicephorus to repel an invasion of other barbarians, and he gladly undertook the enterprise. Having proceeded round the coast of the Euxine in his hollow trees, to the mouth of the Danube, he disembarked; and, defeating the barbarians against whom he was allied, he advanced to the Balkan mountains. Here he looked down from the heights on the fertile plains below, and at once conceived the project of making himself master of the city, and obtaining that object of ambition, which the Russians never since seem to have abandoned. To this end, he descended, and first proceeded to Adrianople. The Greeks, finding he had passed this great barrier, became dreadfully alarmed. They sent a formal demand that their ally should now evacuate their territory, as they had no longer an occasion for his services. He replied, he could not think of returning till he had seen the wonders of their great city. Swatislas, never calculating on a retreat, had neglected to secure the passes open behind him, that the forces he had left at the mouth of the Danube might follow him. These passes the Greeks now seized, and cut off the connexion between the two divisions of his army. Finding himself sorely pressed and in imminent danger, he made a precipitate retreat, and with loss and difficulty reached the sea-shore, where he again attempted to establish himself. But he was compelled to abandon this position also, and, in attempting to escape by sea, became entangled in masses of ice, and unable to reach the shore. Here the greater part of his barbarous hordes miserably perished, but the remnant that escaped brought back with them a precious benefit, which compensated for all their losses. Olga, the mother of Swatislas, had been baptized at Constantinople, some time before, by the Greek name of Helena. The first seed of the Gospel was thus sown, and the invaders, when they entered the country, were prepared to adopt the religion of the people they came amongst. They had been generally baptized there, and those who escaped brought home with them the faith of the Greeks. The Russians, thus become members of the Greek church, adopted its discipline and doctrines,—to which they still adhere.

But an invasion was now meditated from a quarter, whence, of all others, it was least expected, and the Christians of the East were attacked by their fellow Christians of the West. The Crusaders were called to arms by a warning which they deemed the voice of God, and they set out from their own homes to obey it. The sufferings they brought upon themselves by their ignorance and presumption, the ruin they inflicted upon others by their vices and passions, could not repress the ardour of these infatuated fanatics. Three times had new swarms set out from Europe, and the miserable remnants returned utterly defeated, after desolating the country of friend and foe through which they passed. The fourth expedition inflicted misery and destruction on the Christian city of Constantinople. After Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard had excited and sent forth a countless rabble to the shores of Palestine, Fulk, another illiterate preacher, issued from his cell at Neuilly, in France, and became an itinerant missionary of the Cross. He commenced, as usual, by performing miracles, and the fame of his sanctity and superhuman power gave him all the influence he could wish in a barbarous and superstitious age; so he excited a fourth crusade against the Infidels, who had, by their presence, desecrated the holy sepulchre. The former soldiers of the Cross had suffered so much by their insane expeditions by land, that they now resolved to undertake one by sea; and for that purpose despatched deputies to the Venetians and the maritime states of Italy, to supply them with a convoy: their request was granted, and a fleet accordingly prepared.

Constantinople had hitherto escaped these marauders; they had passed its walls without inflicting injury, but an occasion now occurred which gave them a pretext for entering it. The emperor Alexius had deposed, and put out the eyes of his brother Isaak, whom he kept in prison, and his nephew Alexius, the heir to the throne, was a fugitive in the west of Europe. He thought it a good opportunity to avail himself of foreign assistance, and he applied to the leaders of the crusade to aid his cause. They affected to say, that the recovery of the lime and stone of the holy sepulchre was too important an object to be postponed for one of justice and humanity; but, tempted by large pecuniary offers, and calculating on the pretext of taking possession of the great city, avarice and ambition soon silenced the claims of superstitious piety. Dandolo was then doge of Venice; he was totally blind, yet he embarked with the crusaders. Their immense fleets literally covered the narrow waters of the Adriatic, and they arrived in safety at Chalcedon, under the convoy of the skilful mariners that now conducted them. They mounted to the heights of Scutari, and from thence contemplated, with longing eyes, the wealth and splendour of the magnificent city on the opposite shore, spread out on the seven hills before them.

Constantinople was at this time the emporium of every thing that was grand and beautiful in the arts, science, and literature of the world. The city contained, it is said, two millions of inhabitants, and was adorned with the noblest specimens of statuary and architecture, either the productions of its own artists, or the spoils of Egypt and other lands.

The usurper, Alexius, arrogant in safety, but abject in danger, after a feeble resistance, fled from the city with such treasure as he could hastily collect, and the feeble Isaak was taken from the prison in which he had been immured. It was a singular and affecting sight, to behold the blind and venerable doge of Venice leading to the throne the equally blind and venerable emperor of Constantinople.

It was now that the real character of the crusaders developed itself. They claimed the promised reward for this act of justice and humanity; but it was in vain the young Alexius attempted to raise the sum he proposed to pay: the present state of his empire rendered it impossible; so his Christian guests were glad to avail themselves of his inability, and pay themselves. In the language of the historian, “their rude minds, insensible to the fine arts, were astonished at the magnificent scenery; and the poverty of their native towns, enhanced the splendour and richness of this great metropolis of Christendom;” they longed, therefore, for the pretext and opportunity of its pillage. A rude but vigorous Greek, named Mourzoufle, who saw their design, assisted by his countrymen, deposed the weak monarch and his son, who was now associated with him, and their deaths soon followed. With his iron mace, Mourzoufle stood the defender of Constantinople against the rapacity of the crusaders, and attempted to burn their galleys. He was, however, repulsed; and, after various struggles, the imperial city, the head of the Christian world, was taken by storm, and given up to plunder, by the pious pilgrims of the Cross, and its fierce defender was dragged to the summit of the pillar of Theodosius, and from thence cast down and dashed to pieces.

The scenes of carnage that followed are revolting to humanity. The Roman pontiff himself, who had granted a plenary indulgence to all who engaged in the expedition, was compelled to denounce their brutality. He accused them of “sparing neither age nor sex, nor religious profession, of the allies they came to assist; deeds of darkness were perpetrated in the open day; noble matrons and holy nuns suffered insult in the Catholic camp.” As an instance of individual suffering, an imperial senator, Nicetas, an eye-witness, details what he himself endured. His palace being reduced to ashes, he fled for refuge to an obscure house in the suburbs of the town. Here he concealed himself, guarded by a friendly Venetian in disguise, till an opportunity occurred of saving his own life, and the chastity of his daughter, from the ferocious crusaders who were pillaging the city. On a winter’s night, with his wife and tender child, carrying all they possessed on their shoulders, they fled for life; and, in order to disguise their rank and features, smeared their clothes and faces with mud; nor could they rest a moment, from their pursuers, till they reached a distance of forty miles from the capital. On their road, they overtook the venerable Greek patriarch, the head of the Christian church in the East, flying also for his life, mounted on an ass, and almost naked. Nicetas afterwards lived to instruct and inform the world, by his important history of these events.

Meantime the captors glutted, without restraint, every passion. They burst into the church of Santa Sophia, and other sacred edifices, which they defiled in the most wanton manner. They converted sacred chalices into drinking-cups, and trampled under foot the most venerable objects of Christian worship. In the cathedral, the veil of the sanctuary was torn to pieces for the sake of the fringe, and the finest monuments of pious art broken up for their material. It would be too revolting to detail all the particulars of these impious outrages; let one suffice. They placed on the throne of the patriarch a harlot, who sang and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Oriental Christian worship.

In those excesses it was that this noble city suffered its first dilapidation. The monuments of ancient art, collected from all parts of the world, were defaced and broken to pieces, not simply from a bigoted rage against any superstition different from their own, but from a crusade of ignorance against whatever bore the stamp of literature and science. A contemporary writer details particular specimens of art that were wantonly broken and destroyed; and the present denuded state of the city attests that the deeds of those barbarians were as destructive as those of the equally ignorant Turks. Their utter contempt for learning was displayed in various ways: in riding through the streets, they clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen, and displayed on them pens, ink, and paper, in ridicule of the people who used such worthless things. It was therefore no exaggeration when the Greeks called them Αγραμματοι και αναλφαβετοι Βαρβαροι, “Barbarians who could neither read nor write, who did not even know their alphabet.”

The Latins, who had thus seized on the capital, usurped the whole of the Grecian territories, and divided it among themselves. Five sovereigns, of the western invaders, occupied the throne in succession, till it descended to Baldwin. Michael Palæologus was destined to restore the ancient and rightful dynasty. In the year 1261, Alexius, a noble Greek, who was dignified with the name of Cæsar, commanded a body of troops in his service. He crossed the Hellespont into Europe, and advanced cautiously under the walls of the city. There was a body of hardy peasantry, at that time cultivating the lands of Thrace, of very doubtful allegiance. They were called volunteers, for they gave their services freely to any one who paid them. These bold men were induced to join themselves to the forces of Alexius; and, by stratagem, they entered the town. They gained the co-operation of a Greek, whose house communicated with the wall by a subterranean passage. Through this, Alexius was introduced with some of his volunteers; but he had scarcely passed the golden gate, when the peril of the enterprise struck him, and his heart failed him. He was pushed on, however, by his bolder companions, and at length emerged from the dark passage into the Greek house in the heart of the city. From hence they suddenly issued, and, though few in number, soon filled the streets with terror and dismay, from the suddenness of their attack, and the unknown extent of the danger. But every one was predisposed to join the enterprise. They looked upon the Latin conquest with irrepressible and increasing horror, and the streets were soon filled with shouts for Michael. Baldwin, utterly unapprehensive and unprepared, was suddenly roused from his sleep: he made no attempt to preserve his usurped power. He escaped to Italy, where he lived a private life for thirteen years, an object more of contempt than pity, vainly soliciting aid to recover a kingdom which he had neither right to keep, nor courage to defend.

The Greeks were thus restored to their capital, after their Latin allies had held an unrighteous possession of it for fifty-seven years. As the ravages of their hands were irreparable and permanent records of their oppression, so the memory of them was indelible. It caused that irreconcilable animosity between the eastern and western people of the same faith, which has widened, to an unapproachable distance, the separation of the two churches, so that it is likely nothing within the probability of human events will ever diminish it. To such an extent had it reached, and so deeply did it rankle in the minds of the Greeks, that, two centuries after, when they were about to be overwhelmed by the resistless power of the Turks, they had rather trust to the tender mercies of the followers of Mohammed, than seek a perilous aid from their fellow-christians. To this day the memory of these events is recent in the minds of the people of Constantinople, and it has generated a lasting hostility to the Latin church, which seems only to increase and strengthen with revolving years.

Immediately after the restitution of the city to the Greeks, a new feature was added to it: another western people were received into it, not as allies with arms in their hands, but as something still more useful−merchants, to cultivate the arts of peace, and enrich the Eastern empire by their opulence and activity. These were the Genoese. This enterprising little state had already penetrated to the remotest extremity of the Black Sea, and the commodities brought from thence were particularly valuable to the Greeks. The Oriental church prescribes a vast number of fasts, in the observance of which it is very rigorous. The Genoese had established an extensive fishery at Caffa, in the Crimea; and sturgeon, strelitz, and other fish brought down by the current of the Tanais, and fed in the flat and slimy bottom of the Palus Mæotis, were of the utmost value to the strict disciplinarians of the Eastern church. To vend this necessary commodity, and always to keep a supply for the demands of the Greek capital, they were allowed to establish a commercial mart in its vicinity.

On the northern shore of the Golden Horn rises a promontory, similar to that on which the city is built, and called for that reason by the Greeks pera, because it stood on the “other side,” or beyond the harbour. The extreme point of this peninsula, and just opposite the ancient Byzantium, was called Galata, for, as some say, it was the “milk market” of the Greeks, and it was assigned to these merchants, as the most convenient site for their imports, having the Bosphorus on one side to receive them, and the harbour on the other to distribute them through the city. In process of time their town increased, and, in consequence of some attempt made by their rivals, the Venetians, they were permitted by the Greek emperor, Cantacuzene, to surround the city with a wall having turrets and battlements. It ran from sea to sea, shutting up this little enterprising community in a secure asylum, and still continues in a very perfect state. They were also allowed to use their own form of government, to elect their podesta, or chief magistrate, and to practise the forms and discipline of their own worship. Thus the mart of a few fishermen assumed the port and bearing of a considerable city. Though their independent estate has been abolished by the absorbing despotism of the Turks, they have left behind them another memorial of their consequence, beside the walls of their city: they introduced the Italian language into the East, and it is that Frank tongue that is now most universally spoken by all classes. The most respectable portion of the present inhabitants are the descendants of those merchants, and they are selected as dragomans, or interpreters, by the several European embassies.

But a new power was now preparing to overrun and astonish the world, not by the sudden and transitory inroad of a barbarous multitude, carrying with it the destruction of an inundation, and, like it, passing on, and remembered only by the ravages it left behind; this was a permanent invasion of a stubborn and persevering race, destined to obliterate the usages of former ancient people, and establish, in their place, its own. On the banks of the Oxus, beyond the waters of the Caspian Sea, there dwelt a nomadic people engaged only in the care of their flocks and herds, and for that reason called Turks, from their rude and rustic habits. They had embraced the Islam, or true faith of Mohammed, and changed the appellation of Turks, which was a term of reproach, to Moslemûna, or “the resigned.”1 From their remote obscurity in the centre of Asia, they issued, to carry the desolation of Islamism into the Christian world.

The first of this race who penetrated into the Greek possessions in Asia Minor was Othman. He seized upon the passes of Mount Olympus, and instead of razing, he strengthened all the fortified places behind him. His son Orchan conquered all the Christian cities established there, and finally made himself master of Brusa, the capital of Bythinia, which became the seat of the Turkish empire in Asia. The Seven Churches of the Apocalypse shared the same fate. Those lights of the world, swarming with a Christian people, were reduced to small villages, with a few Moslem inhabitants; even Ephesus, the great emporium of Asia, celebrated for its noble temple, had “its candlestick so removed,” that the village of Aysilûk (its modern name) now consists of a few cottages among its ruins, and contains a Christian population of only three individuals. Philadelphia was the only city that made an effectual resistance: though remote from the sea, and abandoned by the feeble Greek emperors, it maintained its Christian independence for eighty years, against the Moslem invaders. From the fame of this first conqueror, his race adopted the patronymic as their civil designation, and called themselves, ever after, Osmanli, or “the children of Othman.”

The first passage of the Turks into Europe was attended with a romantic adventure. Soliman, the son of Orchan, was engaged in a hunting excursion, and was led by the chase to the shores of the Hellespont. An insatiable curiosity induced him to wish to cross to the other side, and visit, for the first time, this new quarter of the globe. But the terror of the Turkish name had so alarmed the Greeks, that strict orders were issued, under the severest penalties, to remove every conveyance by which they could pass from the opposite shore into Europe. Under these circumstances, Soliman formed a raft of inflated ox-bladders, and, availing himself of a moonlight night, he floated over with some of his companions. When they landed, they seized on a passing peasant, who happened to be acquainted with a subterranean entrance into the town of Sestos. He was induced, by threats and bribes, to point it out, and so a few energetic Turks seized by surprise on this first European city. By this exploit a communication was at once established with their companions in Asia. Fresh succours crossed over and seized on Gallipoli, and thus the Turk first planted his foot in Europe.

Amurath availed himself of all the benefits of his brother’s adventurous enterprise. He appointed a singular custom at Gallipoli. The marauding Turks, now established on the European side of the Bosphorus, made slaves of all the Christians they could seize on, and sent them over to Asia by this passage. Amurath claimed for his share a certain portion as toll. Of the young males so obtained, he formed that tremendous militia that were afterwards to terrify and control their own country. He caused them to undergo the rite, and be instructed in the doctrines and discipline, of his own prophet. A Dervish named Hadgee Bectash, of great sanctity and influence, was then called in, to give this corps his benediction. Laying his hand on the head of the foremost, the sleeve of his coat fell over his back, and he blessed them by the name of yeni cheri, or “new soldiers.” Both circumstances afterwards distinguished them−the sleeve of the dervish was adopted as part of their uniform, and the name of janissary, corrupted from yeni cheri, was the terror of Europe for more than five centuries. With these young and vigorous apostates to Islamism, he subdued all the country to the base of the Balkan mountains, and having obtained possession of Roumeli, the “country of the Romans,” as the territory of the modern Greeks was called, he finally established himself at Adrianople, which now became the Turkish capital of Europe.

This prince was succeeded by Bajazet, called, from his impetuosity, and the awful destructiveness of his career, Ilderim, or “the thunderbolt.” He extended his conquests into the heart of Europe, penetrated into the centre of Hungary, and threatened to proceed from thence to Rome, to feed his horses with oats on the altar of St. Peter; but first he resolved to possess himself of the Christian capital of the East. To this end he advanced against Constantinople, and for ten years pressed it with a close siege. Its fate, however, was yet delayed by the sudden appearance of another extraordinary power, which, having subdued the remote parts of the East, and left nothing there unconquered, in the restlessness of ambition turned itself to the west in search of new enemies. This was the power of the Tartars, led on by Demur beg, or “the Iron Prince.”2 To oppose this new enemy, the siege of Constantinople was raised, and its fate suspended while the legions of barbarians encountered one another, and the Thunderbolt was to resist the Man of Iron. The battle was fought on the plain of Angora, where Pompey had defeated Mithridates. After a conflict of two days, the Turks were totally routed. Bajazet fell into the hands of the conqueror, and the treatment he experienced was such as one execrable tyrant might expect, or a still more execrable might inflict. He whose custom it was to celebrate his massacres by pyramids of human heads, erected at the gates of every city he conquered, would not hesitate to treat the rival whom he hated, and had subdued, without pity or remorse. He enclosed his captive in a cage, like a wild beast exposed to public view, and, as he was lame, made him and his cage a footstool to mount his horse. The end of Bajazet corresponded with his life; impatient of control, and stung with desperation, he beat out his brains against the bars of his prison. Tamerlane possessed one redeeming quality, which distinguished him, in some measure, from his fellow-barbarians. He entertained no hostility to Christianity: on the contrary, he allowed a temple, dedicated to its worship, to be erected in Samarcand, his capital. He did not follow up his conquest by renewing the siege of Constantinople; so that this Christian capital, by his interference, was spared for half a century longer.