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The last Emperor of the East was the best and bravest who had reigned for
many years. Constantine Palaeologus did his best against the Turks, but
Mahommed II., one of the greatest of the Ottoman race, was Sultan, and
vowed that Constantinople should be either his throne or his tomb.
When the besieged Christians heard the Turks outside their walls chanting
their prayers, they knew that the city would be assaulted the next day,
and late at night Constantine called his friends together, and said,
"Though my heart is full, I can speak to you no longer. There is the
crown which I hold from God. I place it in your hands; I entrust it to
you. I fight to deserve it still, or to die in defending it." They wept
and wailed so that he had to wait to be heard again, and then he said,
"Comrades, this is our fairest day;" after which they all went to the
Cathedral of St. Sophia, and received the Holy Communion together. There
was a crowd around as he came out, and he stood before them, begging them
to pardon him for not having been able to make them happier. They
answered with sobs and tears, and then he mounted his horse and rode
round the defences.
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The Turks began the attack in the early morning, and the fight raged all
day; but they were the most numerous, and kept thronging into the breach,
so that, though Constantine fought like a lion at bay, he could not save
the place, and the last time his voice was heard it was crying out, "Is
there no Christian who will cut off my head?" The Turks pressed in on
all sides, cut down the Christians, won street after street, house after
house; and when at last Mahommed rode up to the palace where Roman
emperors had reigned for 1100 years, he was so much struck with the
desolation that he repeated a verse of Persian poetry--
"The spider hath woven her web in the palace of kings,
The owl hath sung her watch-song in the towers of Afrasiab."
Search was made for the body of Constantine, and it was found under a
heap of slain, sword in hand, and so much disfigured that it was only
known by the golden eagles worked on his buskins. The whole city fell
under the Turks, and the nobles and princes in the mountains of the Morea
likewise owned Mahommed as their sovereign. Only Albania held out as
long as the brave Skanderbeg lived to guard it; but at last, in 1466, he
fell ill of a fever, and finding that he should not live, he called his
friends and took leave of them, talking over the toils they had shared.
In the midst there was an alarm that the Turks were making an inroad, and
the smoke of the burning villages could be seen. George called for his
armour, and tried to rise, but he was too weak, so he bade his friends
hasten to the defence, saying he should soon be able to follow. When the
Turks saw his banner, they thought he must be there, and fled, losing
many men in the narrow mountain roads; but the Greeks had only just
brought back the news of their success, when their great leader died.
His horse loved him so much that it would not allow itself to be touched
by any other person, became wild and fierce, and died in a few weeks'
time. The Albanians could not hold out long without their gallant chief;
and when the Turks took Alyssio, the body of Castriotes was taken from
its grave, and the bones were divided among his enemies, who wore them as
charms in cases of gold and silver, fancying they would thus gain a share
of his bravery.
The Turkish empire thus included all Greece on the mainland, but the
Greeks were never really subdued. On all the steep hills were castles or
convents, which the Turks were unable to take; and though there were
Turkish Beys and Pashas, with soldiers placed in the towns to overawe the
people, and squeeze out a tribute, and a great deal more besides, from
the Greek tradesmen and farmers, the main body of the people still
remembered they were Greeks and Christians. Each village had its own
church and priest, each diocese its bishop, all subject to the Patriarchs
of Constantinople; and the Sultans, knowing what power these had over the
minds of the people, kept them always closely watched, often imprisoned
them, and sometimes put them to death. The islands for the most part
were still under Venice, and some of the braver-spirited young men became
Stradiots in the Venetian service; but too many only went off into the
mountains, and became robbers and outlaws there, while those who lived a
peaceable life gave way under their miseries to the two greatest faults
there had always been in the Greek nature, namely, cheating and lying.
They were so sharp and clever that the dull Turks were forced to employ
them, so that they grew rich fast; and then, as soon as the Pasha
suspected them of having wealth, however poor they seemed to be, he would
seize them, rob them, or kill them to get their money; and, what was
worse, their daughters were taken away to be slaves or wives to these
Mahommedans. The clergy could get little teaching, and grew as rude and
ignorant as their flocks; for though the writings of the great teachers
of the early Church were laid up in the libraries in the convents, nobody
ever touched them. But just as, after the Macedonian conquest of old
Greece, the language spread all over the East; so, after the Turkish
conquest of Constantinople, Greek became much better known in Europe, for
many learned men of the schools of Constantinople took refuge in Italy,
bringing their books with them; the scholars eagerly learned Greek, and
the works of Homer and of the great old Greek tragedians became more and
more known, and were made part of a learned education. The Greeks at
home still spoke the old tongue, though it had become as much altered
from that of Athens and Sparta as Italian is from Latin.
The most prosperous time of all the Turkish power was under Solyman the
Magnificent, who spread his empire from the borders of Hungary to those
of Persia, and held in truth nearly the same empire as Alexander the
Great. He conquered the island of Rhodes, on the Christmas day of 1522,
from the Knights of St. John, who were Frankish monks sworn to fight
against the Mahommedans. Cyprus belonged to the Venetians, and in 1571 a
Jew, who had renounced his faith, persuaded Sultan Selim to have it
attacked, that he might gain his favourite Cyprus wine for the pressing,
instead of buying it. The Venetian stores of gunpowder had been blown up
by an accident, and they could not send help in time to the unfortunate
governor, who was made prisoner, and treated with most savage cruelty.
However, fifty years later, in 1571, the powers of Europe joined together
under Don John of Austria, the brother of the king of Spain, and beat the
Turks in a great sea-fight at Lepanto, breaking their strength for many
years after; but the king, Philip II. (the husband of our Mary I.), was
jealous of his brother, and called him home, and after that the Venetians
were obliged to make peace, and give up Cyprus. The misfortune was that
the Greeks and Latins hated each other so much that they never would make
common cause heartily against the Turks, and the Greeks did not like to
be under Venetian protection; but Venice kept Crete, or Candia, as it was
now called, till 1670, when the Turks took it, after a long and terrible
siege, lasting more than two years, during which the bravest and most
dashing gentlemen of France made a wild expedition to help the Christian
cause. But all was in vain; Candia fell, and most of the little isles in
the Archipelago came one by one under the cruel power of the Turks.
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