Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/271

 Greeks made him almost a traitor to his master, replied to the eager sultan, who had asked from him the gift of Constantinople, that "God, who had already given him so much of the Roman empire, would not deny the remnant and the capital."

One of the most remarkable features of the siege of Constantinople was the strange blending which it witnessed of the methods of ancient and modern warfare. It was by this time clearly evident that artillery was destined to play a great part in the wars and sieges of the future. But as yet the discovery was not sufficiently perfected to enable combatants to dispense with those old engines of the Greeks and the Romans, the catapult and the ballista. These were used with effect on the present occasion. Amurath, as we have seen, had however employed a few pieces of ordnance in his assault on the city in 1422. It has ever been the instinct of the Turk to utilise promptly the newest and most efficient instruments of destruction. Mahomet made a special study of artillery, and secured the assistance of foreign genius in rendering this arm more powerful than it had hitherto been made. Neither Turk nor Greek had as yet acquired the art of casting large guns, such as would be serviceable for the purposes of a siege. For this they were obliged to resort to the foreigner. One Urban, a Wallachian, an adept in this new science, had been in the Greek service, but he seems to have been poorly remunerated, and his pay had even fallen into arrears, and so he was now tempted to leave the Greek for the Turk. The sultan was sure to be a