ALONG THE LANDWARD WALLS
IN the third chapter, occupied with the story of the making of
Constantinople, some account has been given of the portion of the
landward walls erected in the earlier half of the fifth century, when
the city was enlarged under Theodosius II., viz, the portion extending
from the Sea of Marmora, on the south, to the ruins of the Palace of the
Porphyrogenitus (Tekfour Serai) on the north. That seemed the most
appropriate place to speak of the origin and character of fortifications
which were built as much for the growth and convenience of the city in
its civic relations, as for its security as the citadel of the Empire.
To that chapter the reader who desires to recall the information given
on the subject, is referred. Here, after a brief account of the
additions made to the Theodosian walls, in subsequent times, we shall
consider the historical importance of the landward walls as a whole, and
glance at some of the scenes enacted before them.
The post-Theodosian portions of the walls that guarded Constantinople on
the side of the land extend from the courtyard of the Palace of the
Porphyrogenitus to the shore of the Golden Horn at Aivan Serai. They
replaced an older line of fortifications which ran, at a short distance
to the rear, between the same points, and were constructed to strengthen
the weak places which time revealed in this part of the city's armour.
First in the order of position, though not in the order of time, comes
the wall erected by Manuel Comnenus (1142-1180), for the greater
security of the Palace of Blachernæ, his favourite residence, which
stood within the old bulwarks, just mentioned. It terminates at the foot
of the steep hill on which the quarter of Egri Kapou is situated. With
its nine noble towers it presents a striking likeness to the
fortifications of a feudal baronial castle, and its solid masonry defied
the Turkish cannon in 1453. Then follow walls, the original date of
whose construction cannot be precisely determined, as they evidently
underwent frequent repairs and alterations. Here is found the Tower of
Isaac Angelus, and, in the body of the wall to the north of the tower,
are three stories of large chambers, very much ruined, which some
authorities regard as the cells of the State Prison of Anemas. More
probably, they were either barracks or store-rooms attached to the
imperial residence, and at the same time buttresses for the support of
the terraced hill on which the palace was built. Beyond this chambered
wall there is a double line of fortifications. The inner wall was
erected in 627, under Heraclius, after the siege of the city by the
Avars, to protect the quarter of Blachernæ and its celebrated Church of
S. Mary of Blachernæ more effectively in the future than when assailed
by that enemy.
The outer wall was built as an additional defence in 813, by Leo the
Armenian (813-820), in view of an expected attack upon the city by the
Bulgarians under Crum.
The territory outside the landward walls has indeed a charm of its own,
in its quiet rural aspect, and in the glimpses it affords of distant
blue water seen through dark groves of cypresses. But it cannot pretend
to the splendid natural scenery which confronts the shores of the Sea of
Marmora or of the Golden Horn, and makes the beauty of Constantinople
famous throughout the world. This, however, is not altogether a
disadvantage, for it allows the visitor to view without distraction the
imposing line of bulwarks ranged across the promontory from sea to sea,
and to appreciate calmly all their significance. On the other sides of
the city, the fortifications which guarded the Queen of Cities are
comparatively unimportant, and are easily lost sight of in the beauty of
their surroundings. Here the walls and towers are everything. Here they
attained their greatest strength; here they rendered their greatest
service; here, like troops bearing the wounds and scars of a great
campaign, they force the beholder to realise the immense debt which the
civilised world owes to Constantinople for the strength, the valour, and
the sacrifices devoted through long centuries to the defence of the
highest life of mankind against terrible foes.
[Illustration: THE WALLS; THE TOWER OF ISAAC ANGELUS
Part of the old fortifications, now in ruins, stretching from the
Marmora to the Golden Horn.]
Nor does the scenery which the walls themselves present need to borrow
attractions from any other source to render it the most picturesque and
impressive spectacle of the kind in the world. The alternate courses of
grey stone and red bricks in the structure of the fortifications; the
long lines of wall ranged in ranks, and rising tier above tier to
support one another in the terrible struggles they were called to
maintain; the multitude of towers, marshalled to guard the city and
Empire, great and small, of every shape, square, round, polygons looking
in six, seven, or eight directions, some intact after all the storms of
centuries, others bare, broken, fissured from head to foot, yet holding
together; inscriptions recalling wars, earthquakes, names of men who
have made history; towers crowned with ivy; trees interspersed between
the walls or standing upon the summit, like banners; crenellated
parapets affording glimpses of the blue sky behind, as though, in
Oriental phrase, the ramparts rose to the very heavens; all this
stretching for mile upon mile, from sea to sea, presents a scene of
extraordinary beauty and grandeur, not less attractive because of the
heroism and achievements of which it has been the theatre.
This is not the place for an extended history of the services which
these walls, and the Empire of which they were the citadel, rendered as
the shield of European civilisation. Enough to remember that the dread
of them dissuaded Attila and his Huns from delivering an attack upon the
city, although he approached as near to Constantinople as Athyras, now
Buyuk Tchekmedjé, some twelve miles distant. Doubtless they often
restrained the wrath also of other barbarous hordes. In vain did the
Avars, in 627, beat against these walls between Top Kapou (Gate of S.
Romanus) and the Gate of Adrianople (Charisius). In vain did the Arabs
invest these bulwarks from the spring to the autumn of four successive
years (673-677). As unsuccessful was the second siege of the city by the
same foe for twelve months (717-718). These fortifications defied the
Bulgarians both under Crum in 813 and under Symeon in 924. In 1203 they
repelled the valour of the knights and barons engaged in the Fourth
Crusade. They mocked the assaults of Sultan Murad, in 1422. And when
they succumbed, at length, to the artillery of Sultan Mehemet in 1453,
it was because their defenders were few and divided, and their
assailants were armed with weapons before which ramparts of stone, alike
in the West and in the East, crumbled to pieces, and old systems of
society were swept away.
The battles fought directly before the walls of New Rome do not, indeed,
give us the complete story of her warfare "per benefitio de la
Christiantade et per honor del mundo." On eight occasions, at least, the
armies of the East Roman Empire were drawn up on the plain outside the
Golden Gate to celebrate victories won on distant battlefields, and to
enter the triumphal Gate of the capital with prisoners, standards, and
spoils captured on hostile territory. To the shouts "Glory to God, who
has restored to us our sovereign crowned with victory! Glory to God who
has magnified you Emperor of the Romans! Glory to Thee All-Holy Trinity,
for we behold our Emperor victorious! Welcome Victor! most valiant
sovereign!" the triumphal car of Heraclius drove into the city, after
his splendid campaign of seven years against the Persians; the campaign
which brought the long struggle between Europe and Persia since 492 B.C.
to an end. The same shouts rent the air, when Constantine Copronymus
returned from the defeat of the Bulgarians, and twice again, when Basil
II., by two murderous wars with that people, earned the title, the
Slayer of Bulgarians, Bulgaroktonos. Theophilus, on two occasions, and
Basil I. passed through the Golden Gate as victors over the Saracens.
And Zimisces received the same honour for beating back the Russians
under Swiatoslaf. These were great days in the history of the city, nay,
of mankind, for they stayed the waves of barbarism that threatened to
overwhelm the civilised world. But after all, it is when the enemy
stands arrayed before the very capital of the Empire, and delivers
assault after assault upon the citadel which guarded its fate and the
destiny of Europe, that the struggle waged between civilisation and
barbarism during the history of New Rome is fully recognised to have
been, indeed, a struggle for life, and that we learn to appreciate what
we owe to the Warden of the Gates to the Western World. To these walls
may be applied the words in which Mr. Gladstone appraised the value of
the services rendered by the Christian populations of the Balkan
Peninsula, in a similar connection. "They are like a shelving beach that
restrained the ocean. That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves; it
is laid desolate; it produces nothing; it becomes perhaps nothing save a
mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed. But it is a fence
behind which the cultivated earth can spread and escape the incoming
tide.... It was that resistance which left Europe to claim the enjoyment
of her own religion, and to develop her institutions and her laws."
Although inferior as military works to the other portions of the
landward walls, great historical interest is associated with the
fortifications between the Wall of Manuel and the Golden Horn, for they
guarded the Palace of Blachernæ, the favourite residence of the
Byzantine Court from the time of Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) until the
fall of the Empire. As already intimated, the palace stood on the
terrace buttressed by the Tower of Isaac Angelus and the chambered wall
to the north of the tower, where the Mosque of Aivas Effendi is now
found. The terrace was almost level with the parapet-walk of the
fortifications, commanding fine views of the Golden Horn, and of the
hills at the head of the harbour; and there the most splendid Court of
the Middle Ages long displayed its wealth and pomp. What with the
Crusades, and what with the relations, hostile and friendly, between the
Italian Republics and the Government of Constantinople during the period
of the Palæologi, it was in that palace that Western and Eastern Europe
came into closest contact for good or for evil. On the hills and in the
valleys seen from the western windows of the palace, the armies of the
First Crusade encamped. To that residence came Peter the Hermit, Godfrey
of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Bohemond, Tancred, "the mirror of
knighthood," Count Robert of Paris, to wonder at the marvels of
Byzantine Art, and to attempt the co-operation of the East and the West,
in the great political and religious undertaking of the times. On the
hill immediately in front of the walls the soldiers of the Fourth
Crusade pitched their tents, and thence Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut,
Henry his brother, Louis of Blois and Chartres, and Hugo of Saint Paul,
led four divisions of the army against the wall erected by Leo the
Armenian. The wall was held by Varangian troops, the imperial
body-guard, recruited from England, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. "The
assailants," to quote the words of Ville-Hardouin, a witness of the
combat, and the historian of the Crusade, "placed two scaling-ladders
against an outer wall near the sea; the wall was furnished with
Englishmen and Danes, and the attack was strong, and good, and hard. And
by sheer force some knights and two sergeants mounted the ladders, and
became masters of the wall. Fully fifteen reached the wall, and they
fought hand to hand with axes and swords. And the men within returned to
the charge and drove them (the assailants) out, right rudely, even
taking two of them prisoners. And those of our men who were captured
were led to the Emperor Alexis, and he was very highly delighted. So
ended the attack by the French. And there was a considerable number of
men wounded and of maimed; and the barons were very angry about it."
The recovery of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 did not diminish
Italian influence over the life of the city. On the contrary, from that
time to the close of Byzantine history that influence, modified indeed
by the rival force of Ottoman power, grew stronger and stronger.
Commercial interests, political necessities, schemes of ecclesiastical
union, literary sympathies, possibilities of aggrandisement at the
expense of an Empire hastening to ruin, made Italy, especially Genoa and
Venice, take a most active part in the affairs of New Rome. A Western
atmosphere, so to speak, then enveloped Constantinople, very much like
that which surrounds the City of the Sultans to-day.
But the portion of the walls about which the greatest and most pathetic
interest gathers is where Sultan Mehemet delivered his fatal blow upon
the Byzantine Empire, and won the title of "the Conqueror." It is the
portion which stretches from Top Kapoussi (Gate of S. Romanus) to Edirné
Kapoussi (Gate of Charisius), across the ravine through which the
little stream of the Lycus, on its way to the Sea of Marmora, enters the
city. Owing to the depression of the ground and the impossibility of
constructing a deep moat there, this was the weakest point in the
Theodosian fortifications, and here the bravest of the defenders, under
Giustiniani of Genoa and the Emperor Constantine, manned the walls to
oppose the best troops under the command of the Sultan. Against this
part of the walls the enemy pointed his heaviest cannon, and here the
contest raged for more than seven weeks. Both the besieged and the
besiegers fought with the determination and the valour worthy of the
issues at stake. When the Turkish artillery broke down the Outer Wall,
Giustiniani and his Genoese and Greek comrades held their ground, and
replaced the fallen ramparts by a stockade built of stones, barrels full
of earth, beams, branches of trees--of anything within reach that would
hold together. Against that barricade wave after wave of Turkish troops
dashed and beat furiously and long. There were moments when the
defenders seemed to have gained the day. But like gleams of sunshine
that pierce storm clouds, they only served to make the impending
catastrophe more tragic. Giustiniani was wounded and left the field. A
band of bold Turks entered the city through the postern of the
Kerkoporta, thoughtlessly left open, and, mounting the walls, planted
their banners upon the parapet. Anon, the cry "The city is taken" burst
upon the air and reverberated from tower to tower. A panic seized the
besieged. The Sultan, grasping his opportunity, roused his janissaries
to a supreme effort, and hurled them against the battered and
half-deserted barricade. The Emperor Constantine did everything in his
power to rally his followers and repel the terrible onset. It was
hopeless. He then sought and found a soldier's death, rather than
survive the fall of his Empire. "All was lost save honour." And over his
dead body the tide of conquest poured into the city.
Thus ended the history of more than a thousand years. Then Asia dealt
its worst blow upon Europe. Then the last vestige of the State, ruled
first by Rome from the seven hills beside the Tiber, and afterwards by
New Rome enthroned on the seven hills beside the Bosporus, disappeared.
Then the Crescent gained its greatest triumph over the Cross. Not many
spots in the world have been the scene of such momentous events as took
place in the little valley of the Lycus on the 29th of May, 1453.
There an Empire died, and a long and great epoch closed.
[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE AND GOLDEN HORN FROM THE CEMETERY AT EYOUB
Many a charming vista may be seen through the cypress trees in the
cemetery at Eyoub.]
It is very natural, when thoughtful men tread the road which skirts
these ancient fortifications, that the mind should be profoundly
impressed by the vanity of earthly might and greatness. On the one hand,
the way is strewn with the wreck and ruin of ramparts once deemed
impregnable:
O'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power.
On the other hand, stretch great silent cemeteries, beneath whose dark
cypresses lies the dust of a dead multitude more than can be numbered.
As one has expressed the feeling awakened by this spectacle of wreckage
and mortality, "It is walking through the valley of the Shadow of
Death." And yet, seeing there must be an end to all things, is it not
wiser and more just to dwell rather upon the glory that crowns these
bulwarks for their long defence of the civilised life of the world?
For a full account of the Turkish Conquest, see E. Pears'
_The Destruction of the Greek Empire_.