Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/296

270 must be distinguished from the Seljukian Turks whom the Crusaders had found in possession of Asia Minor and Syria. Their leader at the final scene was Mohammed, a man possessing a singular combination of qualities, showing at one time the student's thirst for learning and at another the most heartless cruelty.

The scene of the siege and fall of Constantinople in the year 1453 is brought vividly before us in Gibbon's famous description, one of the most brilliant passages in English literature. But the journal of the besieged resident, Nicolo Barbaro, which was not known to Gibbon, has enabled Mr. Pears to supplement the great historian with many striking details. The vital character of the interests at stake and the wide range of the issues involved give a tragic grandeur to this event only comparable with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.

The hero of the siege is Constantine Palæologus, the last Roman emperor, a man worthy to sit on the throne of the greatest of his predecessors. By the aid of the General Justiniani, a Genoese noble, Constantine was able to organise a good defence, and he maintained it with almost incredible energy and courage.

When it became clear that there was no hope of deliverance, and that the end was approaching, there was no panic. A spirit of religious fervour took possession of the citizens. They formed a solemn procession in which orthodox Greeks and Catholics of the Roman communion united. All who were not fighting on the walls joined in the Kyrie Eleison, as they marched through the streets, and a great cry of a people in its agony went up to heaven. Icons and relics were fetched from the churches and conveyed to the places where the defences were weakest, in the pathetic hope that where natural means failed supernatural power might intervene. Constantine preached "the funeral oration of the empire"—to use Gibbon's phrase. At length the surging host of invaders broke Ihrough a weak place and poured into the city. Then, at