Progress of the Turks—Bajazet and Timour the Tartar—Siege and
conquest of Smyrna—St. Peter’s of the Freed—Greatness of the
order under Naillac—Mahomet II.—Fall of Constantinople—Threatened
invasion of Rhodes—Death of Scanderbeg—Conquest of Lesbos and
Negropont—Election of Peter d’Aubusson.
From the period of the first settlement of the order at Rhodes the
war with the Turks, though desultory, had been continual. The Turkish
empire, which, under its first sultan Othman, already included many
of the provinces of Asia Minor, extended itself into Europe in the
reign of his son Orchan. Disputes at Constantinople between the rival
emperors, John Palæologus and Cantacuzenus, led to the unhappy policy
adopted by the latter of calling in the Turks to his aid. Orchan (to
whom Cantacuzenus had given his daughter in marriage) did not fail
to seize so favourable an opportunity of enlarging his conquests;
his son Solyman crossed the Hellespont; and speedily making
himself master of the northern provinces of the Greek empire, even
endeavoured to gain a footing in the Morea. Orchan’s son Amurath,—for
Solyman had died in the midst of his career,—followed up his father’s
victories with still greater success; and Palæologus, who in vain
strove to resist the advances of the Turks, was compelled gradually
to yield all his possessions to their arms, with the exception
of Constantinople, Thessalonica, the Morea, and a few islands.
Adrianople (at no great distance from the walls of Constantinople
itself) became the metropolis of the Ottoman dominion in Europe (A.D.
1361), and the danger of the latter city became daily more and more
imminent; for whilst, on the one side, Asia was in the hands of the
infidels, they were, on the other, masters of all the Macedonian
cities and provinces, and from their position at Adrianople were able
to attack and overran the Bulgarian and Servian principalities;
and thus the capital of the Greek emperors was gradually surrounded
on all sides by the victorious Moslem. Two defences alone of any
strength remained to the Christian arms on the shores of the
Archipelago: they were the island of Rhodes and the devoted garrison
of Smyrna.
The divisions and dissensions of that unhappy time no doubt
contributed in a great degree to the rapid extension of the Turkish
conquests. First and foremost, and that which lay at the root of all
the rest, was the disastrous schism which ensued on the death of
Gregory XI., when a pope and an anti-pope claimed the obedience of
the nations. Christendom, thus divided against itself, had no time
to give to the danger that threatened it from without; the western
powers, engaged in contesting the pretensions of two rival claimants
of the papal chair, were unable to unite against the common foe.
The Christian world was, in fact, bereft of its directing head:
the popes had ever been the life and soul of the crusades against
the infidel; and when their voice was dumb, or gave, or at least
seemed to give, an uncertain sound, who could prepare himself for
the battle? As regarded the order of the Knights Hospitallers, the
evil was unmitigated. Our purpose in the present sketch being less
to offer a continuous history of the order of St. John than to
recount their struggles with the Moslems, we must pass rapidly over
the period during which Heredia, the prior of Castile, was grand
master, and redeemed his previous disloyal conduct by a government
of remarkable disinterestedness and devotion. Brave he was even to
daring. At the siege of Patras he mounted the breach, sword in hand,
careless whether his knights followed him or no, and flinging himself
with all the ardour of a young soldier into the midst of the Turks,
encountered the governor in single combat and laid him dead at the
foot of the wall he had been defending. At Corinth, which was the
next point of attack, he fell into an ambush and was taken prisoner.
The order offered the restitution of Patras, together with a large
sum of money, for his ransom, and three of the grand priors even
engaged to remain as hostages in his place until the conditions were
fulfilled: but though the Turks consented, Heredia magnanimously
rejected the proposal. “Leave me, my dear brothers,” he said, “leave
me, worn out as I am with years and toil, to die in my chains, and
reserve yourselves who are young and active for the service of God
and His Church.” As for the money, he would not hear of its being
paid out of the treasury of the order; it should come from his own
family, whom his ambition had enriched. One would have thought that
the infidels would have been moved to generosity by so much nobility
of soul; but all the effect it had upon them was, that they condemned
him to a severer confinement, in which he was detained for more
than three years. On his release, he made ample reparation for his
previous avarice by devoting the wealth he had accumulated to the
foundation of new commanderies and other means of defence against
the untiring enemy of the Christian name; but all his efforts and
self-sacrifices were paralysed and rendered of little avail by the
divisions that prevailed. The contest for the papacy caused a schism
among the knights; and as there were two competitors for the chair
of St. Peter, so there were two grand masters, both arrogating to
themselves the supreme command of the order.
It was then that Bajazet, the son of Amurath, began his extraordinary
career. One province after another was overrun and ravaged by his
armies; from Europe he passed to Asia, and thence back again to
Europe, attacking Christian and infidel alike in the very wantonness
of success. Even the frontiers of Hungary were laid waste; and
having taken some prisoners of that nation, he sent them back
to king Sigismund, with the following insulting message: “Tell
your master that I will pay him a visit next spring; and after
driving him from the land, I will pass over into Italy, and plant
my standards on the Capitol of Rome.” Indeed it was his common
boast that his horse should eat his oats on the high altar of St.
Peter’s. In 1395 the fatal battle of Nicopolis was fought, which
seemed well-nigh to promise the fulfilment of this insolent threat.
Sigismund of Hungary there found himself at the head of a hundred
thousand men,—the army of a new crusade which had at length been
raised through the exertions of Pope Boniface IX.,[5] who proclaimed
a plenary indulgence for all who should repair to the rescue of
Hungary and the neighbouring kingdoms. It was composed of the forces
of France, Venice, Greece, Hungary, and the Knights of St. John.
Sixty thousand horse (according to some writers), “all of tried
courage and enterprise,” says the old chronicler, “the very flower
of Christian chivalry, were there, led on by the Count de Nevers,
a prince of the French blood-royal.” But the battle was lost with
immense slaughter;[6] Sigismund escaping with the grand master,
Philibert de Naillac, in a single galley, to Rhodes, and leaving
(it is said) twenty thousand of his followers dead upon the field.
Ten thousand Christian prisoners, among whom were three hundred of
gentle birth, were led out on the morning after the conflict, with
their hands bound behind them and halters round their necks, and
butchered in cold blood before the eyes of Bajazet himself, who sat
at the entrance of his tent from daybreak till four in the afternoon
to enjoy the horrid spectacle, and forced his unhappy captive, the
Count de Nevers, to stand by and witness the death-pangs of his
comrades. They were offered the Koran or the sword; and as one by one
they made profession of the Christian faith, they paid the penalty
of their fidelity with their lives. “It was a cruel case for them,”
says Froissart, “thus to suffer for the love of our Saviour Jesus
Christ; and may He receive their souls!” This victory brought Bajazet
to the walls of Constantinople. His generals overran Styria and the
south of Hungary; the sultan himself lead his victorious armies into
the north of Greece, while his lieutenants, crossing the isthmus of
Corinth, subdued the whole of the Morea. Athens was taken in 1397,
and the Crescent, the symbol of barbarism, shone over the ancient
seat of learning and the arts. The metropolis of the East, for which
the emperor gained a temporary but ignominious respite by turning
one of the churches of the city into a mosque, and consenting to pay
an annual tribute of 10,000 ducats, would doubtless have speedily
fallen into the power of Bajazet but for the appearance at that
moment of a rival on the scene. Manuel Palæologus had in vain sought
the assistance of the European princes; the wars in which they were
engaged prevented their heeding his appeal. In his extremity he
had recourse to Timour the Terrible,[7] the khan of Tartary, whose
jealousy of Bajazet’s successes induced him readily to listen to
the embassies of the Greek emperor. The result is well known: on
the plains of Angora (A.D. 1402),—the same where Pompey overthrew
the power of Mithridates,—the Turks and Tartars met, and after a
bloody contest the triumphs of Bajazet were terminated for ever,
and he himself, falling into the hands of his savage conqueror, was
subjected to a captivity the ignominy of which has gained for him a
compassion and sympathy to which his crimes and infamous vices were
far from entitling him.
It followed as a matter of course, that the dominions of Bajazet were
simply transferred into the hands of Timour; and with the single
exception of the knights of Rhodes, all the princes of the East
submitted to his yoke, or acceded to his alliance. Their stubborn
independence brought on them a declaration of war from the Tartar
despot. It seemed insufferable that one small island should presume
to withhold its allegiance to a monarch whose dominions exceeded
those of Alexander and of every conqueror the world had ever seen,
and whose power was acknowledged by the Christian sovereigns of
Anatolia, as well as in all the provinces of the East; yet Rhodes,
small as it was, presented so formidable an aspect, with its masses
of fortifications, that he determined on first of all reducing the
city of Smyrna, whose position in the very heart of the Asiatic
provinces seemed to bid defiance to his arms. Timour’s object was,
however, scarcely so much the actual subjection of the place as the
gratification of a proud ambition; and well knowing that a city
which had so long resisted the power of the Turks would prove no easy
conquest, he declared to William de Mina, the governor appointed
by the grand master, that he would be contented if his banner were
suffered to float from the citadel, without proceeding to a siege,
or depriving the knights of their actual possession. But the demand
was scornfully rejected: not that the Hospitallers for one moment
entertained a hope of withstanding the attack of the Tartars,
unsupported as they were by any succours from Europe, and isolated
in the midst of the enemy’s dominions; but Smyrna was the post of
honour which, intrusted to them as it had been by the Pope himself,
it would have been eternal disgrace to the order either to abandon or
surrender: and though the season was winter, Timour, exasperated by
the haughty reply of the garrison, at once commenced the siege.
In fifteen days he had thrown a mole across the harbour, which
deprived the Christians of all succour from without, and brought the
Mongol troops close to the seaward parts of the town; the resistance
he encountered, however, was worthy of the fame of a city, of which
a Persian historian declares, that it had sustained a seven-years’
siege under Bajazet, had never paid tribute to any one, or ever
been in the power of any Mussulman prince from the period of its
conquest by Biandra. Attacks and sallies were daily interchanged;
and whilst both parties displayed prodigies of valour, victory could
be claimed by neither. The mines formed by the Tartars were of no
effect; for the besieged crushed all who entered them by the enormous
stones, or rather rocks, which they dashed from the summits of the
walls. At length Timour, impatient of delay, ordered a general
storm; an enormous number of wooden towers were erected, in which
the besiegers succeeded in approaching the fortifications; and from
these they threw themselves on the ramparts, covering their manœuvre
by a shower of arrows, the density of which darkened the very air.
In vain did the brave defenders struggle to force back the torrent
of their enemies; they poured in from every quarter in countless
numbers: nevertheless the same Persian writer, Cheresiddin Ali,
assures us that the assault lasted from morning to sunset, and that
the obstinacy of the defence equalled the ferocity of the attack.
“No one,” he says, “had a moment’s repose; the intrepid besieged
ceased not to send forth a shower of arrows, Greek fire, and stones,
without giving breathing-space for a minute; and all the while there
fell an extraordinary storm of rain, as though the universe were
about to be swallowed up in a second deluge; yet still, in spite
of the horrors of the tempest, Timour continued to give his orders
to his generals, and to stimulate the courage of his soldiers.” As
soon as the miners had effected a breach, the apertures were filled
with naphtha and other combustibles, and these being fired at once,
the walls fell all together with a hideous crash; and the Tartars,
forcing back the defenders, entered the city, and commenced an
indiscriminate slaughter of every living being it contained, sparing
neither sex nor age.[8] A very few escaped by throwing themselves
into the sea, and swimming to the vessels without the port; but a
vast number were drowned. Several vessels had been despatched from
Rhodes with succours, but were unable to land their troops: among
them, according to Cheresiddin, was the karrack, or great galley
of the order: “it was full of armed men,” he says; “but when they
approached the city, they saw no longer any vestiges of it,—neither
town nor castle remained, for all had been razed to the ground; and
the stones, furniture, and every thing therein had been cast into the
sea. Therefore, when they saw this, they put back their galleys; but
Timour ordered that a number of Christian heads should be thrown from
engines on board their vessels; and this was done so skilfully that
some rolled upon their decks. Then those on board, recognising the
ghastly tokens, gave up all hopes, and returned to their own country.”
Such is the description of the siege left by the Mussulman historian,
who, while he does honour to the courage of the defenders, is, of
course, little able to appreciate the generous devotion of their
death. The defence of Smyrna, first undertaken under religious
obedience, had been persisted in from the same honourable motive.
They had been avowedly stationed in that remotest outpost of
Christendom to offer themselves, if need were, as victims for the
safety of Europe; and the destiny, far from appalling them, had
only seemed glorious in the eyes of men whose vow and vocation it
was to die for the Cross they bore upon their breasts. So when the
black flag of Timour was hung out on the last day of the siege,—his
accustomed signal of “universal destruction,”—they knew very well
that the hour of sacrifice was come, and welcomed it, as the martyrs
did their torments. The dawn saw them at the altar; Mass, and a last
communion, and an offering of their life to God, made solemnly, yet
withal with a certain joy and exultation, preceded the last struggle
at the ruined ramparts. “They captivated their will to obedience unto
death,” says a modern historian of the order, “and fell for their own
honour and the protection of Christendom.”
Nor was the devotion of the order content with this heroic defence;
it did not deem its obligation to obedience satisfied, even when
Smyrna was a heap of ruins, and all its defenders destroyed.
Philibert de Naillac, considering that to his order had been confided
the defence of whatever was left in Asia capable of being defended,
proceeded, on the departure of Timour for Persia, whither he was
called by an invasion from India, to reconnoitre the coasts of Caria,
with the purpose of establishing a fresh garrison in some fortress
of that province. About twelve miles from the isle of Lango, in the
Gulf of Ceramis, there rose an old castle on the ruins of the ancient
Halicarnassus;—a body of troops had been left in it by Timour; but
Naillac, leading thither a small fleet in person, surprised and cut
to pieces the Tartar garrison, and erected on the site of the old
fortress another of extraordinary strength and solidity, which he
dedicated to St. Peter, and which became the asylum of refuge on the
coast of Asia for such Christian slaves as found means to effect
their escape from Turkish or Tartarian bondage. There is something in
the description left us of this fortress that combines the character
of romance with the noblest spirit of chivalry. Naillac surrounded
it with the strongest fortifications that art could devise; there
were walls of enormous height and thickness pierced for cannon, to
keep off the approach of hostile vessels by sea; whilst on the side
of the land the defences were yet stronger; ramparts and bastions
stood one against another, and to gain entrance to the fortress it
was necessary to pass through seven lines of these ramparts and
their seven gates. Over the last gate, however, appeared a motto
which breathed the true spirit of a knight of the Cross, whose trust
was less in his own sword or valour than in the favour of the God
of armies: _Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem, frustra vigilat qui
custodit eam._[9]
Standing thus proudly on the rocky peninsula of the Carian Gulf,
_St. Peter’s of the Freed_, as it was called, became in one sense
another hospital of the order. A strong garrison was put into it,
and a number of vessels were constantly at anchor in the harbour,
ready at the first note of alarm to issue forth, and either alone or
in conjunction with the galleys of Rhodes and Lango, to sweep the
seas of the hordes of pirates and corsairs that infested the coasts.
Many too were the Christian slaves who, escaping from the chains of
the infidels, found refuge within its walls; and the inmates were
never weary of inventing and practising new devices for the relief
of the refugees. Among others, the knights kept a race of large
and sagacious dogs, whom they trained to go out and seek for those
who might have sunk exhausted on the mountains unable to reach the
castle walls. The instinct of these dogs was extraordinary: we read
of one Christian who, escaping from the hands of his masters, threw
himself into a well when closely pursued, rather than fall again
into their hands. Here he was tracked by one of these watch-dogs,
who, unable to get him out, at least succeeded in saving his life.
The well was dry, and the man had received no injury from his fall,
but would infallibly have died of hunger but for the fidelity of the
Hospitallers’ dogs. For many days did the noble animal bring him in
his mouth all the share of food given him for his own daily support,
dropping it down into the well below. At length it was observed that
the dog was growing thinner every day; and his continual excursions
after breakfast in the same direction exciting curiosity, some of
the servants of the garrison set out to watch what he was about; the
truth being thus discovered, the man was saved, and the dog given his
place in the history of the order, of which he had proved himself so
worthy a member.
Naillac was amongst the most able of the grand masters of that
period, and was recognised as the protector of all the Christian
states of the East. He saved Cyprus from the horrors of civil war
by a disinterested and judicious interference; and in his day,
says Vertot, “there was no corsair vessel that dared approach the
Lycian coast. Every where he was acknowledged as the most powerful
Christian prince of the East; he had more than a thousand knights
under his command in the convent at Rhodes; and the greater number of
the isles of the Sporades were subject to him. The sea was covered
with his fleets; and the Rhodian vessels, under the escort of his
galleys, carried their commerce into every port.” Most of these ships
and galleys were prizes taken from the Saracens, who were even
constrained at length to sue for peace, and despatched an embassy
to Rhodes to arrange the terms. The conditions of pacification were
all in favour of the Christians; and amongst them Jerusalem was
not forgotten. It was stipulated that the Holy Sepulchre should be
surrounded with walls, and that six knights of the order should be
allowed a residence close by, free from all tribute, and with power
to receive pilgrims into their house as of yore.
If we must add to these statements the fact, that Naillac, in common
with those of his knights settled at Rhodes, was on the side of the
anti-popes during the great schism to which we have already adverted,
our readers must not be hasty in condemning him. Those were days
when the right side was hard to be distinguished amid the confusion
in which, from various causes, the whole matter was involved; and
if Naillac was in error, he at least bore no inconsiderable part in
the efforts made by the councils of Pisa and Constance to extinguish
the schism: nor were they without success; and before he died, he
had the satisfaction of seeing that unity which had been restored
to Christian Europe, shared also by the order of which he was the
head. No greater proof can be offered that the knights of Rhodes
were animated by no schismatical spirit than the fact, that in their
island the union between the Greek and Latin churches, established
by the Council of Florence, was ever inviolably observed. Rhodes was
probably the only state in which the two rites were kept in use among
a people who were yet closely bound in one communion, and who never
felt the jealousies of other Eastern countries, where Greek and Latin
were the watchwords of party strife.
During the fifty years that elapsed from the siege of Smyrna to
the fall of Constantinople, the war with the Turks continued with
unabated vigour. Their empire revived after the death of Timour;
and for many years Rhodes maintained a twofold struggle with Turks
and Saracens; from the latter of whom they suffered two invasions
and a siege of forty days, when so gallant a repulse was given
to the infidels, that, as Vertot tells us, the young nobility of
Europe, and especially those of France and Spain, were filled with
an enthusiasm for the glorious body that, unaided and alone, kept
off the dreaded foe whose arms were every where else invincible; and
the best blood of Christendom flowed into the order, which indeed
stood in no small need of such reinforcements. Very few details of
any interest, however, have been left of these achievements, and we
are left to gather what the position of Rhodes was at this period
from the continual circulars and briefs addressed by the Popes to
the monarchs of Christendom, calling on them, but always in vain,
to unite in one vigorous effort against that common enemy now only
kept at bay by the Knights of St. John. It is indeed impossible to
over-estimate the zeal manifested by the Roman Pontiffs for the
preservation of Christendom: even from writers hostile to their
interests we gather an idea of their extraordinary vigilance in this
matter; and doubtless but for their ceaseless exertions the progress
of the infidels would have extended far beyond the boundaries of
the Grecian empire. Had those exertions been seconded, as in the
days of the crusades, the result might have been very different;
but the princes of Europe never heartily entered into the cause;
and though year after year the danger became more threatening, the
appeals and entreaties of the Popes were received but with apathy and
indifference.
It is satisfactory during this period of the history of the order,
when doubtless, though surrounded by peril, its greatness and glory
were at their height, to find a distinct notice of the austere and
religious spirit still preserved alive and vigorous in Rhodes. With
their ports filled with a flourishing commerce, and their treasury
enriched by continual captures from the infidels, the knights
themselves elevated to the position of temporal princes, and courted
by all the nations of Europe as the defenders of Christendom, we
find them derogating in nothing from the severe simplicity of their
institute. Those of the brethren who were settled in the commanderies
of Europe had indeed greatly fallen off from regular discipline; but
at Rhodes, which was the real heart of the order, we read that “every
one lived in the exact practice of the rule and of the statutes.
In the midst of their continual hostilities the knights were never
dispensed from their austere fasts during Lent and Advent, or from
their abstinence on Wednesdays; and in the refectory and other
parts of the house no one ever dared to break the silence which was
observed as regularly as in a community of monks.”[10]
In 1451 the Ottoman throne became vacant by the death of Amurath II.,
who was succeeded by a prince destined to be the deadliest enemy
whom Christendom had yet beheld. This was Mahomet II., surnamed the
Great, who even then, though scarcely twenty-one years of age, had
acquired a fame for talent, valour, and ferocity, which made him the
terror of Europe and of the world. His vast capacity was united to so
detestable a character that he has been called the Mahometan Nero; in
truth he was of no religion; and if, as is said, his mother had been
a Christian, and he had himself been originally brought up in the
true faith, and instructed in its mysteries by the Greek patriarch,
it is probable that his fury against the Cross was accompanied
with all that bitter and unquenchable hatred which ever marks the
apostate. On his accession to the throne his court was filled with
ambassadors from all the eastern states, including that of Rhodes,
to propose treaties and alliances of peace. Mahomet received them
all with the utmost courtesy, and swore to establish a universal
pacification; meanwhile his emissaries were actively employed in
every direction preparing for the conquest of Constantinople; and
scarcely had a year elapsed from his elevation to the sovereignty,
when he marched upon the Greek capital, proclaiming his intentions
in the war-cry which was his manifesto, “Constantinople—and then
Rhodes.”
There is not certainly an episode in history of more melancholy
or more absorbing interest than that which relates to the final
extinction of the Christian empire in the East. The Greek emperors
are for the most part so entirely unworthy of our sympathy, that
we are scarcely prepared for that momentary flicker of a great and
noble spirit which illuminates the fall of the last successor of
Constantine. He bore his name as well as his dignity, and it is
not too much to say that he bore both worthily and well. Long and
zealously had he laboured to heal the calamitous schism which for
ages had separated his people from the communion of the Holy See, and
thus from Europe and the whole Latin world; but unhappily with but
little success. And now, when the ferocious enemy of the Christian
name was before the gates and almost within the walls of the city,
division in all its worst forms of bigotry and fanaticism distracted
and paralysed the efforts of the brave defenders. The infatuated
Greeks, at the head of whom was the Grand Duke Notaras, refused to
co-operate with the Latin auxiliaries who had been despatched to aid
the remnant of what was once the Greek empire in its last struggle
for existence. There was the Cardinal Isidore, whom the Pope had sent
in the hour of need with a small body of veteran soldiers; and there
were bands from Spain and Venice, as skilled in all the arts of war
as they were bold in fight; and above all, there was the celebrated
Genoese, John Giustiniani, a host in himself, with his seven noble
compatriots in arms, and three hundred chosen followers. But union
and concert there were none: it was as if two hostile armies were
arrayed against each other, while the common enemy was battering at
the fortifications and about to precipitate himself upon the devoted
city. Notaras, indeed, openly vowed he would rather see the sultan’s
turban in Constantinople than the cardinal’s hat; and though some
confessed that, if compelled to make the choice, they should prefer
the yoke of those who at any rate believed in Christ and honoured
His Virgin Mother to that of the dreaded and detested Turk, yet
even at the last, when the enemy were pouring through the streets,
and the church of St. Sophia was filled with crouching multitudes
pressing round the altars in all the agony of terror and despair,
Ducas declares that had an angel from heaven appeared to them and
said, “Only accept the union, and I will disperse your enemies,” they
would have remained deaf to his voice, and chosen rather to be slaves
in subjection to the Moslem than freemen in communion with the See
of Rome. The wretched monks who seemed to be possessed body and soul
by the author of strife and division, kept the minds of the populace
inflamed at the highest pitch; a very frenzy, as Von Hammer expresses
it, seemed to have seized upon the convents, and the religious,—if
the term can be applied to men who had neither faith nor the fear of
God,—protested they would sooner acknowledge Mahomet than accept the
creed of the Catholic Church.
The emperor was fully equal to the tremendous occasion; as able in
disposing the troops and resources at his command as he was valiant
in fight, he was indeed, in every sense, the hero of the siege. But
with subjects so divided and so disloyal, what could the highest
genius or the most generous devotion achieve? He reckoned but 9000
combatants of all kinds within his walls, which were fourteen
miles in extent; while the forces that were advancing against
him are said to have been 250,000 in number, without counting a
fleet of 250 vessels, having on board 24,000 men. Nevertheless the
last Constantine vowed never to yield except with life itself;
and Mahomet, on his part, swore that the walls of Stamboul should
be either his sepulchre or his throne. The siege lasted but
two-and-forty days; we can only marvel that the defenders held out
so long; and, though perhaps it scarcely belongs to our subject,
there is something so touchingly beautiful in the account of the
last struggle, that we may be excused for giving it a place in our
pages. It was the evening of the 28th of May 1453, when the cries and
shouts from the vast multitude of the besiegers warned the Christians
that the final assault was in preparation for the following day.
Constantine collected around him a little band of faithful followers,
and addressed them in animated terms. He concluded thus: “My heart
is very full; and yet I can say nothing more. There is my crown; I
received it from God, but I place it in your hands; to-morrow I shall
fight to deserve it still, or to die in its defence.” His words were
drowned by the sobs and tears of those who listened, but he did not
seem to share their grief. Raising his voice above the murmurs and
exclamations of the assembly, he said, with a cheerful and joyous
air, “Comrades, it is our fairest day; there remains only to prepare
for death, and then to die.” Very early in the morning he proceeded
to Santa Sophia, and received the Holy Communion; and turning from
the altar to the weeping crowd that filled the church, he asked them
to pardon him if he had failed to make them happy, and to forgive
him all he had ever done amiss. When they had answered him, more
with tears than words, he went out to the gates of his palace, and
mounting his horse, rode to the ramparts, and stationed himself at
the breach. Every thing was yet silent; but as the sun rose the
combat began, and at noon all was over. For two hours the assailants
made no impression on the gallant band that stood like a rampart of
iron before that chasm in the wall. Wave upon wave of Moslem warriors
rushed madly forward, only to dash themselves to pieces against the
steady solid phalanx that confronted them. In vain did Mahomet in
person rally his disheartened troops, and urge them on by promises
and threats, and even blows; not a man could hold his footing on that
mass of ruin. The prize seemed almost to be torn from his very grasp;
when Giustiniani, who was fighting by the emperor’s side, received a
mortal wound, and was carried from the walls only to die on board
his galley. From that moment the tide of battle turned; a body of
Janizaries,[11] headed by one of gigantic size and strength, with
desperate effort threw themselves upon the barricades. They perished
to a man; but the little band of heroes staggered under the fury of
the assault, and ere they could recover from the shock, host upon
host bore down on them; almost at the same moment a party of Turks,
who had entered well-nigh unopposed through an unguarded gate, took
them in the rear. Resistance was no longer possible against such
overwhelming numbers; the mighty flood swept like an inundation into
the city, and carried all before it. Constantine was seen fighting
in the thickest of the crowd, crying, as it is said, for death from
some Christian hand. When his body was found, after the contest had
ceased, it was too much covered with wounds for form or feature to
be recognised; and only the jewelled sword, still grasped within his
hand, and the golden eagles in his buskins, betrayed the identity of
the last emperor of the East.
“Never,” says Vertot, “was there seen so sad or so frightful a
spectacle as that which was presented at the fall of Constantinople.”
The Turks rushed through the streets massacring as they went along:
forty thousand men were put to the sword; a yet greater number of
every rank, age, and sex, were sold as slaves; and the city which
once had been the centre of learning, refinement, and civilisation,
became changed in a single hour into the seat of the most barbarous
fanaticism. The circumstances attending the end of the unhappy
Notaras are too horrible for recital. At first Mahomet treated him
with courtesy, bestowed gifts upon him, and promised to reinstate
him in his honours and possessions. Deluded by these flatteries,
the traitor gave up the names of all the principal dignitaries and
officers of state, who were instantly proclaimed through the army,
and a large reward offered for their heads. Refusing to comply,
however, with a brutal order issued by the monster amidst his drunken
orgies, he was immediately put to death, with all his children;
their bodies thrown into the streets, and their bloody heads, by the
tyrant’s order, placed in a row before him on the banquet-table.
Many noble Christians, and among them all the Greeks, whose lives
he had promised to spare, were butchered the same day. The Cardinal
Isidore, not being recognised, was sold as a slave; but he contrived
to escape on board a vessel that was lying in the harbour, and
survived to write a touching narrative of all that he had witnessed
and endured. As to the atrocities perpetrated on the inhabitants
of the city during the first fury of the capture, and for the six
months that succeeded this fatal triumph of the Ottoman arms, we
may well shrink from entering on their relation; a sensation of
horror thrilled through Europe at the reports which came one upon
another of deeds that seemed too terrible for belief. Impieties,
enormities unutterable,—all that was holiest profaned and outraged
with abominations that were worthy of the loathsome malice of fiends;
the pictures of the saints torn to shreds; the sacred vessels and
vestments put to the vilest uses; the crucifix—the image of the
Redeemer—borne in mock procession, with the cap of the Janizary
placed derisively on its head; the fonts turned into horse-troughs;
and the very altars, on which had been offered the Adorable
Sacrifice, defiled with nameless brutalities.
Constantinople had fallen; Santa Sophia had become, what it still
remains, a Turkish mosque; the foul creed of Mahomet had usurped the
temple of the Most High; and the infidel was enthroned for centuries
in the metropolis of the once Christian empire of the East. And
Rhodes knew well enough that at her the next blow was to be directed.
Sir John de Lastic, the reigning grand master, hastened to prepare
for the worst, and summoned all his knights throughout Europe to
assemble for the defence. “We command you,” he says, “to come hither
instantly, where your presence is urgently required. Not a day
elapses but we hear of some new slaughter of the Christians by the
grand Turk, whose inhuman cruelties are told us, not by idle rumour,
but by those who have seen what they relate with their own eyes.
Look, therefore, for no further letters, commands, or exhortations;
but the moment you receive this message delay not to set out for
Rhodes by the quickest conveyance love or money can procure.”
“Constantinople—and then Rhodes!” such had been the war-proclamation
of Mahomet II.: nor was it long before his heralds appeared to summon
the knights to acknowledge his pretensions. A yearly tribute of two
thousand ducats, or war to the last extremity: such were the haughty
conditions offered by the conqueror. The reply was such as might be
expected: “Tell your master,” answered Lastic, “that our predecessors
purchased this island at the price of their blood; and that we will
give our lives rather than sacrifice our independence, or that of
our religion.” Nothing doubting that such a reply would soon draw
down on the order the fury of the sultan’s arms, Lastic at the same
time despatched ambassadors to all the European courts, though with
little hopes of deriving any succours from thence. The ambassador to
France was Peter D’Aubusson,—and this is the first mention of a name
which is among the greatest in the chronicles of the Hospitallers
of St. John. A fresh league, which the indefatigable efforts of
the Pontiff, Calixtus III., had succeeded in forming against the
Turks, obliged Mahomet to defer his enterprise against Rhodes, and
thus gave the knights a further time to prepare. Two men were still
found on the frontiers of the Turkish empire before whom the arms
of the Ottoman failed to be invincible: these were Scanderbeg the
chief of Albania, and the gallant regent of Hungary, John Corvinus
Hunyades. Scanderbeg, whose real name was George Castriotes, after
being taken as hostage when nine years old, and brought up in the
religion of Mahomet, had seized an opportunity of escaping to his
native mountains, and openly professing the Christian faith. He was
reckoned the greatest commander of his time; and taking advantage of
the nature of the country, he succeeded in repeatedly beating large
armies sent against him by the Turkish sultans with a mere handful of
men. When, after the fall of Constantinople, every other province of
Greece and the Morea submitted to Mahomet, Albania still held out,
and the very name of Scanderbeg struck terror into the infidels,
whom he defied. For twenty years he maintained the unequal contest.
At length, as he lay at Alyssio, weak and dying of fever, news was
brought him that the Turks were in the neighbourhood devastating the
village and country. He called for his armour, but could not rise to
put it on; nevertheless his followers carried his banner before them
to the scene of combat; and at the first sight of that well-known
ensign, the infidels turned and fled. He lived to hear of this last
success, and then expired; and the Turks, when they took Alyssio
twelve years after his death, had such an opinion of his valour,
that, disinterring his bones, they made amulets of them to wear in
battle. It is said his favourite horse would not suffer any other to
mount him when his master was gone, but turning wild and savage, died
a week after the decease of the noble chieftain.
The independence of Albania expired with its prince. Yet, though
delivered from one of his most formidable opponents and now master
of the whole of Greece, Mahomet was still forced to delay his great
expedition against the Knights of Rhodes. He did not, however,
entirely spare them; but in every attack his galleys made on
their islands, they met with a repulse which warned him that the
subjugation of Rhodes would be a far different enterprise from the
taking of Constantinople. He was compelled to fear as much as he
hated this unconquerable order; he found it every where. At Lesbos,
led on by Zacosta, the grand master, they well-nigh succeeded in
repulsing the assault of his most valiant troops, and would have
saved the island, but for the detestable treachery of its Greek
governor Gattilusio. This miserable man, after giving up the brave
knights to slaughter, thought, if not to gain the reward he coveted,
at least to save his life by adding apostasy to perfidy. But Mahomet
did not grant him long impunity; on some frivolous pretext he had
him thrown into a dungeon, where, shortly after, he was strangled.
Three hundred of the garrison of Mitylene, when they saw that all was
lost, had surrendered on a solemn promise that their lives should be
spared; but no sooner were they in his power than the base and cruel
Turk had them murdered to a man, and that by the most frightful
death he could devise—they were all sawn asunder: this was now
the tyrant’s favourite mode of taking vengeance on his vanquished
foes, being, as he conceived, the most horrible torture that human
ingenuity could inflict. The severed and mangled limbs of his victims
he ordered to be thrown to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey.
Negropont, then subject to the republic of Venice, was the next
point of attack; and though the Venetians had shown but little
friendliness to the order, whose commercial rivalry they feared, yet,
says Vertot, “the grand master Orsini, believing himself bound by his
profession to defend the states of every Christian prince, instantly
sent armed galleys to their assistance, and at the head of a brave
troop of knights, who were to endeavor to land upon the island
and throw themselves into the beleaguered town, was the Commander
D’Aubusson;” who indeed was, at that time, the most distinguished
chief of his illustrious body. Nevertheless Negropont fell, as Lesbos
and Constantinople had already fallen. The Ottoman forces numbered
no less than two hundred thousand men, and were supported by a
powerful fleet; yet were the bold knights eager for the fight, and
loudly demanded that they should be led against the bridge of boats
which the enemy had constructed. But the Venetian admiral, seized
as it appeared with a sudden panic, refused the enterprise, drew
off his vessels, and left the defenders to their fate. Already had
the besiegers made three desperate attacks upon the town, but with
such loss to themselves both of men and ships, that even Mahomet was
beginning to despair: now, however, their courage and hopes revived;
and taking advantage of the consternation inspired by the withdrawal
of the Venetian fleet, though once again repulsed in a fifth bloody
assault, they carried the works and poured down upon the place.
Erizzo, the intrepid governor, disputed every inch of ground with the
assailants, and fought his way from street to street until he gained
the citadel, where with good courage he still continued the defence;
but when provisions and ammunition failed, and he beheld his little
garrison daily thinned by death and exhausted by fatigue and wounds,
he was compelled to sue for terms and offer to surrender on the
sultan’s plighted word, that his life and the lives of his companions
should be safe from harm. Mahomet swore by his own head that the
heads of Erizzo and of all who were with him should be uninjured;
but, furious at the loss of thousands of his best and bravest troops,
when the garrison had laid down their arms, he caused them all to
be massacred, the Greeks alone excepted, with circumstances of the
most barbarous cruelty. Some he had impaled, others cut in pieces, or
stoned to death. Erizzo himself he doomed to be sawn in two; boasting
that thus he scrupulously kept his oath to the very letter, since
he had sworn to leave his head untouched. The brave Venetian had a
daughter, Anne Erizzo, young and beautiful, who, to the dauntless
courage of her noble race joined all the indomitable fortitude of a
Christian martyr. Mahomet, a monster of sensuality as of cruelty, had
her brought into his presence: the virtuous maiden scorned alike his
vile solicitations and his angry threats, till seized with fury, he
drew his cimeter and at a single blow severed her fair head from her
chaste body; thus, as Vertot expresses it, “gratifying to the full
the wishes of this heroine, who, by the sacrifice of a frail life and
a beauty even frailer, earned for herself an imperishable bliss.”
The inhabitants were now at the mercy of the conqueror; but the very
enormity of the crimes which were perpetrated in this as in every
other instance forbids their being detailed. “Words cannot express,”
says the same historian, “all the cruelties exercised at the taking
of Negropont; the whole island was filled with carnage and horror,
for the Turkish soldiers, following their sovereign’s example, made a
merit of their ferocities.”
The rage of Mahomet when he saw the galleys of St. John in the
midst of the Venetian fleet broke out into a kind of madness: the
conqueror of two empires and of twelve kingdoms, as he haughtily
termed himself, he felt the resistance of this single island enough
to counterbalance all his success, and he sent envoys to Rhodes to
declare war to blood and fire, swearing that he would exterminate
the entire order, and put every member of it to the sword. But still
the blow so often threatened was doomed to be delayed. Fresh leagues
against the Turkish sultan gave time for fresh fortifications and
armaments at Rhodes; they were conducted under the direction of
D’Aubusson himself, whose capacity all recognised, so that he was the
soul and animating spirit of the whole order; nothing escaped his
vigilance, and to his charge every thing was committed; war, finance,
fortifications, all were under his superintendence, and all, whether
superiors or inferiors, listened to his word as law. It is no wonder,
therefore, that on the death of Orsini in 1476, D’Aubusson was chosen
as his successor; and it scarcely needed the votes of the chapter
to declare an election which had already been made by the unanimous
voice of his brethren.