Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/308

 268 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE punishment, he was deprived of all his honours, and whatever he possessed was given to the Janissaries. 1 The success raised the hopes of the besieged, because they now firmly believed that these ships were only the forerunners of many others which were on their way to save the city. They had not yielded to Rome for nothing, and aid would come, and the city would yet be saved. In truth, a new crusade was not necessary to secure its deliverance. A few more vessels sent by the Christian states, with an army one tenth or even one twentieth of the number of the soldiers of the cross who had passed by Constantinople under Godfrey, would have been enough to prevent the conquest of the city by Mahomet. No further aid, however, came. All the hopes based upon re-union proved illusory, and Hun- garians as well as Italians failed to render the assistance which might have been of first importance to their own interests. 2 Attack ^ e w ^ ^ e ^ our S ^P S was 011 Ap r ^ 20. During contempo- that day the great bombards had been hard at work along madeln 7 ^ ne landward walls, and especially near the Romanus Gate, valley su ^ an himself was absent on the following day at the Double Columns, superintending one of the most interesting operations connected with the siege, but the bombardment went on as if he had been present. An important tower known as the Bactatinian, near the Romanus Gate, 3 was destroyed on the 21st, with a portion of the adjacent Outer Wall, and, says Barbaro, it was only through the mercy of Jesus Christ that the Turks did not give general battle, or they would have got into the city. He adds that if they had attacked 1 Ducas, 121 ; Leonard, Phrantzes, and Nicolo Barbaro. 2 Hunyadi, according to Phrantzes (p. 327), asked that Silivria or Mesem- bria, on the bay of Bourgas, should be given to him as the price of his aid, and Phrantzes declares that the emperor ceded the latter place, he himself having written the Golden Bull making the cession. He adds also that the king of Catalonia stipulated for Lemnos as the price of his aid. But no aid came from either. 3 Barbaro, under April 21 ; Phrantzes, 246. The tower is called by Leonard Bactatanea. He afterwards writes of the breach near it as being in the Murus Bacchatureus. See, as to its situation, Professor van Millingen's Byzantine Constantinople, pp. 86, 87.