Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks; or, The Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks

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Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks; or, The Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks

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Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks; or, The Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (A.D. 1453) by Chedomil Mijatovich
Elibron Classics (facsimile reprint of 1892 ed. by Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London) | 1892 | ISBN: 1402176783 | 267 pages | PDF | 8.6 MB

Preface

The German Emperor Frederic III. in a letter written June 1453 to Pope Nicholas V., lamenting greatly the catastrophe on the Bosphorus, calls Constantinople "the capital of the Eastern Empire, the head of Greece, the home of arts and literature" (" Orientalis imperii sedem, Graeciae caput …. veluti domicilium litterarum artiumque"). And indeed, from the time of Constantino the Great to the time when the dawn of Kenaissance aroused Italy to her noble task, Constantinople was the capital of Christian civilization. Its place in the history of the world has been always a most remarkable one, - Rome being the only city which can successfully bear comparison with it.

When in 1453 it passed into the hands of Mohammed El-Fathi its possession consolidated at once the new Mohammedan Empire, and enabled the Sultans of the Ottoman Turks to extend their sway up to the blue Carpathians in the north-west and to the Gulf of Persia in the south-east. There seems almost a miraculous telepathic influence in that place, an influence which inspires its occupants, as long as they possess some power, with an irresistible ambition to rule over three worlds, and which enables old and exhausted Empires to live longer than the most flattering prophecies ever thought probable or possible.

There are theories which assert that the possession of Constantinople enervates, disorganizes, and in the end kills. So far as I have been able to read history, I have found that he who takes Constantinople, once securely seated on the Bosphorus, unavoidably feels that his power is strengthened for a higher task, that his political horizon has widened to the misty limits of an Universal Empire, and that it is the manifest destiny of Constantinople to be the capital, if not of an universal, then at least of a great Empire, stretching over Europe, Asia, and Africa. And I would even say that it seems to me that neither the Byzantine nor the Ottoman Empires could have withstood so long the consequences of disorganization if their capital had not been Constantinople.

It is somewhat singular that, notwithstanding the undoubted interest which European nations in general, and the British in particular, feel in everything connected with Constantinople, the great catastrophe of 1453, so tragic in its incidents and so terrible in its consequences, has never yet been fully and thoroughly worked out and placed before the readers of history. I do not flatter myself for a moment that I shall be able to do what others have not done. I wish only to state, as an undeniable fact, that up to the present no work on, and no description of, the conquest of Constantinople has used all the materials which exist in our time.

Gibbon wrote his incomparably graphic description (vol. iii. 702-730), using only the Byzantine historians, Phrantzes, Ducas, and Chalcochondylas, and the letter addressed to the Pope Nicholas V. by the Archbishop Leonardo of Chios. The famous historian of the Ottoman Empire, Joseph von Hammer, looked to the same sources of information, adding some scanty notes from the Turkish historian Sa'ad-ud-din.

J. W Zinkeisen, in his Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (i. 833-866) was able to use letters and reports found in the Vatican Library. Mr S. Martin and Mr Brosset (Histoire du Bas Empire, par Lebeau) improved Mr Lebeau's description by details found in the poem of the Armenian Abraham, and in the so-called "Grusian Chronicle."

The Russian historian Mr Stassulevich, in his work Ossada i vzyatiye Vizantii Turhami (St Petersburg, 1854), used only the old Byzantine sources and the chronicle of Sa'ad-ud-din.

Mr Sreznyevsky published in 1855 an old Slavonic chronicle, Povyest o Tzaregradye, accompanying it with notes from Byzantine sources and from Leonardo of Chios.

Dr A. D. Mordtmann has given us one of the most interesting descriptions in his Belagerung und Eroberung Constantinopels durch die Türken im Jahre 1453, nach Original-Quellen bearbeitet (Stuttgart, 1858), using largely the Journal of Nicolo Barbaro.

Professor Dr Y. U. Krause (Die Eroberungen von Constantinopel in XIII und XV Jahrhundert nach Byzantinischen, Frankischen und Türkischen Quellen und Berichten, Halle, 1870) drew principally from Byzantine authors, reprinting some portions from Sa'ad-ud-din, and taking some incidents from the poem of a Greek eye-witness.

Rev. W. J. Broadribb and Mr Walter Besant (Constantinople, a Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453, London, 1879) followed Mordtmann and Krause, but consulted also independently Byzantine authors, and added some interesting information on the condition of Constantinople, given by the French knight Bertrandon de la Brocquiere.

The latest monograph that appeared in Western literature is that one written by Mr E. A. Vlasto (Les derniers jours de Constantinople, Paris, 1883). The author has mainly reproduced the general results of the researches of modern Greek historians, and especially those of Mr C. Paparrigopoulo ; but his able work leaves you the impression of being more a political dissertation than a historical picture of the catastrophe.

It is rather singular that there should not exist a single monograph on the Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in English, though as early as in 1675 a tragedy entitled The Siege of Constantinople was published in London.

I believe that, by carefully comparing the statements of eye-witnesses and contemporaries of the siege, as well as the letters and documents of the time, preserved in the Italian and other archives it would be possible to give a tolerably complete and reliable account of one of the most stirring and important events of history. In the chapters which follow I shall give the result of my attempt in that direction.

I venture to hope that at the present time, when an uncomfortable feeling that Constantinople may soon again change masters pervades the world, political as well as military men will find this little work worthy of perusal, at least for the sake of the great subject of which it treats.

Chedomil Mijatovich.

Kensington, January 1892.

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Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks; or, The Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks

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A pair of sample pages

Contents

Preface

1. Moral Causes of the Rapid Rise of the Ottoman and the Fall of the Byzantine Empires;

2. The Superior Military Organization of the Turks;

3. On the Eve of the Fall;

4. Diplomatic Negotiations and Preparations for War;

5. Military Arrangement of the Besiegers and of the Besieged;

6. The Diaries of the Siege;

7. The Last Days;

8. The Last Night; and

9 The Last Hours.

Appendix
Bibliography