Progress of the Turks—Bajazet and Timour the Tartar—Siege and conquest of Smyrna—St. Peter’s of the Freed—Greatness of the order under Naillac—Mahomet II.—Fall of Constantinople—Threatened invasion of Rhodes—Death of Scanderbeg—Conquest of Lesbos and Negropont—Election of Peter d’Aubusson.
Progress of the Turks—Bajazet and Timour the Tartar—Siege and conquest of Smyrna—St. Peter’s of the Freed—Greatness of the order under Naillac—Mahomet II.—Fall of Constantinople—Threatened invasion of Rhodes—Death of Scanderbeg—Conquest of Lesbos and Negropont—Election of Peter d’Aubusson.
From the period of the first settlement of the order at Rhodes the war with the Turks, though desultory, had been continual. The Turkish empire, which, under its first sultan Othman, already included many of the provinces of Asia Minor, extended itself into Europe in the reign of his son Orchan. Disputes at Constantinople between the rival emperors, John Palæologus and Cantacuzenus, led to the unhappy policy adopted by the latter of calling in the Turks to his aid. Orchan (to whom Cantacuzenus had given his daughter in marriage) did not fail to seize so favourable an opportunity of enlarging his conquests; his son Solyman crossed the Hellespont; and speedily making himself master of the northern provinces of the Greek empire, even endeavoured to gain a footing in the Morea. Orchan’s son Amurath,—for Solyman had died in the midst of his career,—followed up his father’s victories with still greater success; and Palæologus, who in vain strove to resist the advances of the Turks, was compelled gradually to yield all his possessions to their arms, with the exception of Constantinople, Thessalonica, the Morea, and a few islands. Adrianople (at no great distance from the walls of Constantinople itself) became the metropolis of the Ottoman dominion in Europe (A.D.1361), and the danger of the latter city became daily more and more imminent; for whilst, on the one side, Asia was in the hands of the infidels, they were, on the other, masters of all the Macedonian cities and provinces, and from their position at Adrianople were able to attackand overran the Bulgarian and Servian principalities; and thus the capital of the Greek emperors was gradually surrounded on all sides by the victorious Moslem. Two defences alone of any strength remained to the Christian arms on the shores of the Archipelago: they were the island of Rhodes and the devoted garrison of Smyrna.
The divisions and dissensions of that unhappy time no doubt contributed in a great degree to the rapid extension of the Turkish conquests. First and foremost, and that which lay at the root of all the rest, was the disastrous schism which ensued on the death of Gregory XI., when a pope and an anti-pope claimed the obedience of the nations. Christendom, thus divided against itself, had no time to give to the danger that threatened it from without; the western powers, engaged in contesting the pretensions of two rival claimants of the papal chair, were unable to unite against the common foe. The Christian world was, in fact, bereft of its directing head: the popes had ever been the life and soul of the crusades against the infidel; and when their voice was dumb, or gave, or at least seemed to give, an uncertain sound, who could prepare himself for the battle? As regarded the order of the Knights Hospitallers, the evil was unmitigated. Our purpose in the present sketch being less to offer a continuous history of the order of St. John than to recount their struggles with the Moslems, we must pass rapidly over the period during which Heredia, the prior of Castile, was grand master, and redeemed his previous disloyal conduct by a government of remarkable disinterestedness and devotion. Brave he was even to daring. At the siege of Patras he mounted the breach, sword in hand, careless whether his knights followed him or no, and flinging himself with all the ardour of a young soldier into the midst of the Turks, encountered the governor in single combat and laid him dead at the foot of the wall he had been defending. At Corinth, which was the next point of attack, he fell into an ambush andwas taken prisoner. The order offered the restitution of Patras, together with a large sum of money, for his ransom, and three of the grand priors even engaged to remain as hostages in his place until the conditions were fulfilled: but though the Turks consented, Heredia magnanimously rejected the proposal. “Leave me, my dear brothers,” he said, “leave me, worn out as I am with years and toil, to die in my chains, and reserve yourselves who are young and active for the service of God and His Church.” As for the money, he would not hear of its being paid out of the treasury of the order; it should come from his own family, whom his ambition had enriched. One would have thought that the infidels would have been moved to generosity by so much nobility of soul; but all the effect it had upon them was, that they condemned him to a severer confinement, in which he was detained for more than three years. On his release, he made ample reparation for his previous avarice by devoting the wealth he had accumulated to the foundation of new commanderies and other means of defence against the untiring enemy of the Christian name; but all his efforts and self-sacrifices were paralysed and rendered of little avail by the divisions that prevailed. The contest for the papacy caused a schism among the knights; and as there were two competitors for the chair of St. Peter, so there were two grand masters, both arrogating to themselves the supreme command of the order.
It was then that Bajazet, the son of Amurath, began his extraordinary career. One province after another was overrun and ravaged by his armies; from Europe he passed to Asia, and thence back again to Europe, attacking Christian and infidel alike in the very wantonness of success. Even the frontiers of Hungary were laid waste; and having taken some prisoners of that nation, he sent them back to king Sigismund, with the following insulting message: “Tell your master that I will pay him a visit next spring; and after driving him from the land, I will pass over into Italy,and plant my standards on the Capitol of Rome.” Indeed it was his common boast that his horse should eat his oats on the high altar of St. Peter’s. In 1395 the fatal battle of Nicopolis was fought, which seemed well-nigh to promise the fulfilment of this insolent threat. Sigismund of Hungary there found himself at the head of a hundred thousand men,—the army of a new crusade which had at length been raised through the exertions of Pope Boniface IX.,[5]who proclaimed a plenary indulgence for all who should repair to the rescue of Hungary and the neighbouring kingdoms. It was composed of the forces of France, Venice, Greece, Hungary, and the Knights of St. John. Sixty thousand horse (according to some writers), “all of tried courage and enterprise,” says the old chronicler, “the very flower of Christian chivalry, were there, led on by the Count de Nevers, a prince of the French blood-royal.” But the battle was lost with immense slaughter;[6]Sigismund escaping with the grand master, Philibert de Naillac, in a single galley, to Rhodes, and leaving (it is said) twenty thousand of his followers dead upon the field. Ten thousand Christian prisoners, among whom werethree hundred of gentle birth, were led out on the morning after the conflict, with their hands bound behind them and halters round their necks, and butchered in cold blood before the eyes of Bajazet himself, who sat at the entrance of his tent from daybreak till four in the afternoon to enjoy the horrid spectacle, and forced his unhappy captive, the Count de Nevers, to stand by and witness the death-pangs of his comrades. They were offered the Koran or the sword; and as one by one they made profession of the Christian faith, they paid the penalty of their fidelity with their lives. “It was a cruel case for them,” says Froissart, “thus to suffer for the love of our Saviour Jesus Christ; and may He receive their souls!” This victory brought Bajazet to the walls of Constantinople. His generals overran Styria and the south of Hungary; the sultan himself lead his victorious armies into the north of Greece, while his lieutenants, crossing the isthmus of Corinth, subdued the whole of the Morea. Athens was taken in 1397, and the Crescent, the symbol of barbarism, shone over the ancient seat of learning and the arts. The metropolis of the East, for which the emperor gained a temporary but ignominious respite by turning one of the churches of the city into a mosque, and consenting to pay an annual tribute of 10,000 ducats, would doubtless have speedily fallen into the power of Bajazet but for the appearance at that moment of a rival on the scene. Manuel Palæologus had in vain sought the assistance of the European princes; the wars in which they were engaged prevented their heeding his appeal. In his extremity he had recourse to Timour the Terrible,[7]the khan of Tartary, whose jealousy of Bajazet’ssuccesses induced him readily to listen to the embassies of the Greek emperor. The result is well known: on the plains of Angora (A.D.1402),—the same where Pompey overthrew the power of Mithridates,—the Turks and Tartars met, and after a bloody contest the triumphs of Bajazet were terminated for ever, and he himself, falling into the hands of his savage conqueror, was subjected to a captivity the ignominy of which has gained for him a compassion and sympathy to which his crimes and infamous vices were far from entitling him.
It followed as a matter of course, that the dominions of Bajazet were simply transferred into the hands of Timour; and with the single exception of the knights of Rhodes, all the princes of the East submitted to his yoke, or acceded to his alliance. Their stubborn independence brought on them a declaration of war from the Tartar despot. It seemed insufferable that one small island should presume to withhold its allegiance to a monarch whose dominions exceeded those of Alexander and of every conqueror the world had ever seen, and whose power was acknowledged by the Christian sovereigns of Anatolia, as well as in all the provinces of the East; yet Rhodes, small as it was, presented so formidable an aspect, with its masses of fortifications, that he determined on first of all reducing the city of Smyrna, whose position in the very heart of the Asiatic provinces seemed to bid defiance to his arms. Timour’s object was, however, scarcely so much the actual subjection of the place as the gratification of a proud ambition;and well knowing that a city which had so long resisted the power of the Turks would prove no easy conquest, he declared to William de Mina, the governor appointed by the grand master, that he would be contented if his banner were suffered to float from the citadel, without proceeding to a siege, or depriving the knights of their actual possession. But the demand was scornfully rejected: not that the Hospitallers for one moment entertained a hope of withstanding the attack of the Tartars, unsupported as they were by any succours from Europe, and isolated in the midst of the enemy’s dominions; but Smyrna was the post of honour which, intrusted to them as it had been by the Pope himself, it would have been eternal disgrace to the order either to abandon or surrender: and though the season was winter, Timour, exasperated by the haughty reply of the garrison, at once commenced the siege.
In fifteen days he had thrown a mole across the harbour, which deprived the Christians of all succour from without, and brought the Mongol troops close to the seaward parts of the town; the resistance he encountered, however, was worthy of the fame of a city, of which a Persian historian declares, that it had sustained a seven-years’ siege under Bajazet, had never paid tribute to any one, or ever been in the power of any Mussulman prince from the period of its conquest by Biandra. Attacks and sallies were daily interchanged; and whilst both parties displayed prodigies of valour, victory could be claimed by neither. The mines formed by the Tartars were of no effect; for the besieged crushed all who entered them by the enormous stones, or rather rocks, which they dashed from the summits of the walls. At length Timour, impatient of delay, ordered a general storm; an enormous number of wooden towers were erected, in which the besiegers succeeded in approaching the fortifications; and from these they threw themselves on the ramparts, covering their manœuvre by a shower of arrows, the density of which darkened the very air.In vain did the brave defenders struggle to force back the torrent of their enemies; they poured in from every quarter in countless numbers: nevertheless the same Persian writer, Cheresiddin Ali, assures us that the assault lasted from morning to sunset, and that the obstinacy of the defence equalled the ferocity of the attack. “No one,” he says, “had a moment’s repose; the intrepid besieged ceased not to send forth a shower of arrows, Greek fire, and stones, without giving breathing-space for a minute; and all the while there fell an extraordinary storm of rain, as though the universe were about to be swallowed up in a second deluge; yet still, in spite of the horrors of the tempest, Timour continued to give his orders to his generals, and to stimulate the courage of his soldiers.” As soon as the miners had effected a breach, the apertures were filled with naphtha and other combustibles, and these being fired at once, the walls fell all together with a hideous crash; and the Tartars, forcing back the defenders, entered the city, and commenced an indiscriminate slaughter of every living being it contained, sparing neither sex nor age.[8]A very few escaped by throwing themselves into the sea, and swimming to the vessels without the port; but a vast number were drowned. Several vessels had been despatched from Rhodes with succours, but were unable to land their troops: among them, according to Cheresiddin, was the karrack, or great galley of the order: “it was full of armed men,” he says; “but when they approached the city, they saw no longer any vestiges of it,—neither town nor castle remained, for all had been razed to the ground; and the stones, furniture, and every thing therein had been cast into the sea. Therefore, when they saw this, they put back their galleys; but Timour ordered that a number of Christian heads should be thrown from engines on boardtheir vessels; and this was done so skilfully that some rolled upon their decks. Then those on board, recognising the ghastly tokens, gave up all hopes, and returned to their own country.”
Such is the description of the siege left by the Mussulman historian, who, while he does honour to the courage of the defenders, is, of course, little able to appreciate the generous devotion of their death. The defence of Smyrna, first undertaken under religious obedience, had been persisted in from the same honourable motive. They had been avowedly stationed in that remotest outpost of Christendom to offer themselves, if need were, as victims for the safety of Europe; and the destiny, far from appalling them, had only seemed glorious in the eyes of men whose vow and vocation it was to die for the Cross they bore upon their breasts. So when the black flag of Timour was hung out on the last day of the siege,—his accustomed signal of “universal destruction,”—they knew very well that the hour of sacrifice was come, and welcomed it, as the martyrs did their torments. The dawn saw them at the altar; Mass, and a last communion, and an offering of their life to God, made solemnly, yet withal with a certain joy and exultation, preceded the last struggle at the ruined ramparts. “They captivated their will to obedience unto death,” says a modern historian of the order, “and fell for their own honour and the protection of Christendom.”
Nor was the devotion of the order content with this heroic defence; it did not deem its obligation to obedience satisfied, even when Smyrna was a heap of ruins, and all its defenders destroyed. Philibert de Naillac, considering that to his order had been confided the defence of whatever was left in Asia capable of being defended, proceeded, on the departure of Timour for Persia, whither he was called by an invasion from India, to reconnoitre the coasts of Caria, with the purpose of establishing a fresh garrison in some fortress of that province. About twelve miles from the isle of Lango,in the Gulf of Ceramis, there rose an old castle on the ruins of the ancient Halicarnassus;—a body of troops had been left in it by Timour; but Naillac, leading thither a small fleet in person, surprised and cut to pieces the Tartar garrison, and erected on the site of the old fortress another of extraordinary strength and solidity, which he dedicated to St. Peter, and which became the asylum of refuge on the coast of Asia for such Christian slaves as found means to effect their escape from Turkish or Tartarian bondage. There is something in the description left us of this fortress that combines the character of romance with the noblest spirit of chivalry. Naillac surrounded it with the strongest fortifications that art could devise; there were walls of enormous height and thickness pierced for cannon, to keep off the approach of hostile vessels by sea; whilst on the side of the land the defences were yet stronger; ramparts and bastions stood one against another, and to gain entrance to the fortress it was necessary to pass through seven lines of these ramparts and their seven gates. Over the last gate, however, appeared a motto which breathed the true spirit of a knight of the Cross, whose trust was less in his own sword or valour than in the favour of the God of armies:Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem, frustra vigilat qui custodit eam.[9]
Standing thus proudly on the rocky peninsula of the Carian Gulf,St. Peter’s of the Freed, as it was called, became in one sense another hospital of the order. A strong garrison was put into it, and a number of vessels were constantly at anchor in the harbour, ready at the first note of alarm to issue forth, and either alone or in conjunction with the galleys of Rhodes and Lango, to sweep the seas of the hordes of pirates and corsairs that infested the coasts. Many too were the Christian slaves who, escaping from the chains of the infidels, found refuge within its walls; and the inmates were never weary of inventing and practising new devices forthe relief of the refugees. Among others, the knights kept a race of large and sagacious dogs, whom they trained to go out and seek for those who might have sunk exhausted on the mountains unable to reach the castle walls. The instinct of these dogs was extraordinary: we read of one Christian who, escaping from the hands of his masters, threw himself into a well when closely pursued, rather than fall again into their hands. Here he was tracked by one of these watch-dogs, who, unable to get him out, at least succeeded in saving his life. The well was dry, and the man had received no injury from his fall, but would infallibly have died of hunger but for the fidelity of the Hospitallers’ dogs. For many days did the noble animal bring him in his mouth all the share of food given him for his own daily support, dropping it down into the well below. At length it was observed that the dog was growing thinner every day; and his continual excursions after breakfast in the same direction exciting curiosity, some of the servants of the garrison set out to watch what he was about; the truth being thus discovered, the man was saved, and the dog given his place in the history of the order, of which he had proved himself so worthy a member.
Naillac was amongst the most able of the grand masters of that period, and was recognised as the protector of all the Christian states of the East. He saved Cyprus from the horrors of civil war by a disinterested and judicious interference; and in his day, says Vertot, “there was no corsair vessel that dared approach the Lycian coast. Every where he was acknowledged as the most powerful Christian prince of the East; he had more than a thousand knights under his command in the convent at Rhodes; and the greater number of the isles of the Sporades were subject to him. The sea was covered with his fleets; and the Rhodian vessels, under the escort of his galleys, carried their commerce into every port.” Most of these ships and galleys were prizes taken from the Saracens, who wereeven constrained at length to sue for peace, and despatched an embassy to Rhodes to arrange the terms. The conditions of pacification were all in favour of the Christians; and amongst them Jerusalem was not forgotten. It was stipulated that the Holy Sepulchre should be surrounded with walls, and that six knights of the order should be allowed a residence close by, free from all tribute, and with power to receive pilgrims into their house as of yore.
If we must add to these statements the fact, that Naillac, in common with those of his knights settled at Rhodes, was on the side of the anti-popes during the great schism to which we have already adverted, our readers must not be hasty in condemning him. Those were days when the right side was hard to be distinguished amid the confusion in which, from various causes, the whole matter was involved; and if Naillac was in error, he at least bore no inconsiderable part in the efforts made by the councils of Pisa and Constance to extinguish the schism: nor were they without success; and before he died, he had the satisfaction of seeing that unity which had been restored to Christian Europe, shared also by the order of which he was the head. No greater proof can be offered that the knights of Rhodes were animated by no schismatical spirit than the fact, that in their island the union between the Greek and Latin churches, established by the Council of Florence, was ever inviolably observed. Rhodes was probably the only state in which the two rites were kept in use among a people who were yet closely bound in one communion, and who never felt the jealousies of other Eastern countries, where Greek and Latin were the watchwords of party strife.
During the fifty years that elapsed from the siege of Smyrna to the fall of Constantinople, the war with the Turks continued with unabated vigour. Their empire revived after the death of Timour; and for many years Rhodes maintained a twofold struggle with Turks and Saracens; from the latter of whom they sufferedtwo invasions and a siege of forty days, when so gallant a repulse was given to the infidels, that, as Vertot tells us, the young nobility of Europe, and especially those of France and Spain, were filled with an enthusiasm for the glorious body that, unaided and alone, kept off the dreaded foe whose arms were every where else invincible; and the best blood of Christendom flowed into the order, which indeed stood in no small need of such reinforcements. Very few details of any interest, however, have been left of these achievements, and we are left to gather what the position of Rhodes was at this period from the continual circulars and briefs addressed by the Popes to the monarchs of Christendom, calling on them, but always in vain, to unite in one vigorous effort against that common enemy now only kept at bay by the Knights of St. John. It is indeed impossible to over-estimate the zeal manifested by the Roman Pontiffs for the preservation of Christendom: even from writers hostile to their interests we gather an idea of their extraordinary vigilance in this matter; and doubtless but for their ceaseless exertions the progress of the infidels would have extended far beyond the boundaries of the Grecian empire. Had those exertions been seconded, as in the days of the crusades, the result might have been very different; but the princes of Europe never heartily entered into the cause; and though year after year the danger became more threatening, the appeals and entreaties of the Popes were received but with apathy and indifference.
It is satisfactory during this period of the history of the order, when doubtless, though surrounded by peril, its greatness and glory were at their height, to find a distinct notice of the austere and religious spirit still preserved alive and vigorous in Rhodes. With their ports filled with a flourishing commerce, and their treasury enriched by continual captures from the infidels, the knights themselves elevated to the position of temporal princes, and courted by all the nations of Europe as the defenders of Christendom, we find themderogating in nothing from the severe simplicity of their institute. Those of the brethren who were settled in the commanderies of Europe had indeed greatly fallen off from regular discipline; but at Rhodes, which was the real heart of the order, we read that “every one lived in the exact practice of the rule and of the statutes. In the midst of their continual hostilities the knights were never dispensed from their austere fasts during Lent and Advent, or from their abstinence on Wednesdays; and in the refectory and other parts of the house no one ever dared to break the silence which was observed as regularly as in a community of monks.”[10]
In 1451 the Ottoman throne became vacant by the death of Amurath II., who was succeeded by a prince destined to be the deadliest enemy whom Christendom had yet beheld. This was Mahomet II., surnamed the Great, who even then, though scarcely twenty-one years of age, had acquired a fame for talent, valour, and ferocity, which made him the terror of Europe and of the world. His vast capacity was united to so detestable a character that he has been called the Mahometan Nero; in truth he was of no religion; and if, as is said, his mother had been a Christian, and he had himself been originally brought up in the true faith, and instructed in its mysteries by the Greek patriarch, it is probable that his fury against the Cross was accompanied with all that bitter and unquenchable hatred which ever marks the apostate. On his accession to the throne his court was filled with ambassadors from all the eastern states, including that of Rhodes, to propose treaties and alliances of peace. Mahomet received them all with the utmost courtesy, and swore to establish a universal pacification; meanwhile his emissaries were actively employed in every direction preparing for the conquest of Constantinople; and scarcely had a year elapsed from his elevation to the sovereignty, when he marched upon the Greek capital, proclaiming his intentionsin the war-cry which was his manifesto, “Constantinople—and then Rhodes.”
There is not certainly an episode in history of more melancholy or more absorbing interest than that which relates to the final extinction of the Christian empire in the East. The Greek emperors are for the most part so entirely unworthy of our sympathy, that we are scarcely prepared for that momentary flicker of a great and noble spirit which illuminates the fall of the last successor of Constantine. He bore his name as well as his dignity, and it is not too much to say that he bore both worthily and well. Long and zealously had he laboured to heal the calamitous schism which for ages had separated his people from the communion of the Holy See, and thus from Europe and the whole Latin world; but unhappily with but little success. And now, when the ferocious enemy of the Christian name was before the gates and almost within the walls of the city, division in all its worst forms of bigotry and fanaticism distracted and paralysed the efforts of the brave defenders. The infatuated Greeks, at the head of whom was the Grand Duke Notaras, refused to co-operate with the Latin auxiliaries who had been despatched to aid the remnant of what was once the Greek empire in its last struggle for existence. There was the Cardinal Isidore, whom the Pope had sent in the hour of need with a small body of veteran soldiers; and there were bands from Spain and Venice, as skilled in all the arts of war as they were bold in fight; and above all, there was the celebrated Genoese, John Giustiniani, a host in himself, with his seven noble compatriots in arms, and three hundred chosen followers. But union and concert there were none: it was as if two hostile armies were arrayed against each other, while the common enemy was battering at the fortifications and about to precipitate himself upon the devoted city. Notaras, indeed, openly vowed he would rather see the sultan’s turban in Constantinople than the cardinal’s hat; and though some confessed that, if compelled to make the choice, they shouldprefer the yoke of those who at any rate believed in Christ and honoured His Virgin Mother to that of the dreaded and detested Turk, yet even at the last, when the enemy were pouring through the streets, and the church of St. Sophia was filled with crouching multitudes pressing round the altars in all the agony of terror and despair, Ducas declares that had an angel from heaven appeared to them and said, “Only accept the union, and I will disperse your enemies,” they would have remained deaf to his voice, and chosen rather to be slaves in subjection to the Moslem than freemen in communion with the See of Rome. The wretched monks who seemed to be possessed body and soul by the author of strife and division, kept the minds of the populace inflamed at the highest pitch; a very frenzy, as Von Hammer expresses it, seemed to have seized upon the convents, and the religious,—if the term can be applied to men who had neither faith nor the fear of God,—protested they would sooner acknowledge Mahomet than accept the creed of the Catholic Church.
The emperor was fully equal to the tremendous occasion; as able in disposing the troops and resources at his command as he was valiant in fight, he was indeed, in every sense, the hero of the siege. But with subjects so divided and so disloyal, what could the highest genius or the most generous devotion achieve? He reckoned but 9000 combatants of all kinds within his walls, which were fourteen miles in extent; while the forces that were advancing against him are said to have been 250,000 in number, without counting a fleet of 250 vessels, having on board 24,000 men. Nevertheless the last Constantine vowed never to yield except with life itself; and Mahomet, on his part, swore that the walls of Stamboul should be either his sepulchre or his throne. The siege lasted but two-and-forty days; we can only marvel that the defenders held out so long; and, though perhaps it scarcely belongs to our subject, there is something so touchingly beautiful in the account of the last struggle, that we may be excusedfor giving it a place in our pages. It was the evening of the 28th of May 1453, when the cries and shouts from the vast multitude of the besiegers warned the Christians that the final assault was in preparation for the following day. Constantine collected around him a little band of faithful followers, and addressed them in animated terms. He concluded thus: “My heart is very full; and yet I can say nothing more. There is my crown; I received it from God, but I place it in your hands; to-morrow I shall fight to deserve it still, or to die in its defence.” His words were drowned by the sobs and tears of those who listened, but he did not seem to share their grief. Raising his voice above the murmurs and exclamations of the assembly, he said, with a cheerful and joyous air, “Comrades, it is our fairest day; there remains only to prepare for death, and then to die.” Very early in the morning he proceeded to Santa Sophia, and received the Holy Communion; and turning from the altar to the weeping crowd that filled the church, he asked them to pardon him if he had failed to make them happy, and to forgive him all he had ever done amiss. When they had answered him, more with tears than words, he went out to the gates of his palace, and mounting his horse, rode to the ramparts, and stationed himself at the breach. Every thing was yet silent; but as the sun rose the combat began, and at noon all was over. For two hours the assailants made no impression on the gallant band that stood like a rampart of iron before that chasm in the wall. Wave upon wave of Moslem warriors rushed madly forward, only to dash themselves to pieces against the steady solid phalanx that confronted them. In vain did Mahomet in person rally his disheartened troops, and urge them on by promises and threats, and even blows; not a man could hold his footing on that mass of ruin. The prize seemed almost to be torn from his very grasp; when Giustiniani, who was fighting by the emperor’s side, received a mortal wound, and was carried from the wallsonly to die on board his galley. From that moment the tide of battle turned; a body of Janizaries,[11]headed by one of gigantic size and strength, with desperate effort threw themselves upon the barricades. They perished to a man; but the little band of heroes staggered under the fury of the assault, and ere they could recover from the shock, host upon host bore down on them; almost at the same moment a party of Turks, who had entered well-nigh unopposed through an unguarded gate, took them in the rear. Resistance was no longer possible againstsuch overwhelming numbers; the mighty flood swept like an inundation into the city, and carried all before it. Constantine was seen fighting in the thickest of the crowd, crying, as it is said, for death from some Christian hand. When his body was found, after the contest had ceased, it was too much covered with wounds for form or feature to be recognised; and only the jewelled sword, still grasped within his hand, and the golden eagles in his buskins, betrayed the identity of the last emperor of the East.
“Never,” says Vertot, “was there seen so sad or so frightful a spectacle as that which was presented at the fall of Constantinople.” The Turks rushed through the streets massacring as they went along: forty thousand men were put to the sword; a yet greater number of every rank, age, and sex, were sold as slaves; and the city which once had been the centre of learning, refinement, and civilisation, became changed in a single hour into the seat of the most barbarous fanaticism. The circumstances attending the end of the unhappy Notaras are too horrible for recital. At first Mahomet treated him with courtesy, bestowed gifts upon him, and promised to reinstate him in his honours and possessions. Deluded by these flatteries, the traitor gave up the names of all the principal dignitaries and officers of state, who were instantly proclaimed through the army, and a large reward offered for their heads. Refusing to comply, however, with a brutal order issued by the monster amidst his drunken orgies, he was immediately put to death, with all his children; their bodies thrown into the streets, and their bloody heads, by the tyrant’s order, placed in a row before him on the banquet-table. Many noble Christians, and among them all the Greeks, whose lives he had promised to spare, were butchered the same day. The Cardinal Isidore, not being recognised, was sold as a slave; but he contrived to escape on board a vessel that was lying in the harbour, and survived to write a touching narrative of all that he had witnessed and endured. As tothe atrocities perpetrated on the inhabitants of the city during the first fury of the capture, and for the six months that succeeded this fatal triumph of the Ottoman arms, we may well shrink from entering on their relation; a sensation of horror thrilled through Europe at the reports which came one upon another of deeds that seemed too terrible for belief. Impieties, enormities unutterable,—all that was holiest profaned and outraged with abominations that were worthy of the loathsome malice of fiends; the pictures of the saints torn to shreds; the sacred vessels and vestments put to the vilest uses; the crucifix—the image of the Redeemer—borne in mock procession, with the cap of the Janizary placed derisively on its head; the fonts turned into horse-troughs; and the very altars, on which had been offered the Adorable Sacrifice, defiled with nameless brutalities.
Constantinople had fallen; Santa Sophia had become, what it still remains, a Turkish mosque; the foul creed of Mahomet had usurped the temple of the Most High; and the infidel was enthroned for centuries in the metropolis of the once Christian empire of the East. And Rhodes knew well enough that at her the next blow was to be directed. Sir John de Lastic, the reigning grand master, hastened to prepare for the worst, and summoned all his knights throughout Europe to assemble for the defence. “We command you,” he says, “to come hither instantly, where your presence is urgently required. Not a day elapses but we hear of some new slaughter of the Christians by the grand Turk, whose inhuman cruelties are told us, not by idle rumour, but by those who have seen what they relate with their own eyes. Look, therefore, for no further letters, commands, or exhortations; but the moment you receive this message delay not to set out for Rhodes by the quickest conveyance love or money can procure.”
“Constantinople—and then Rhodes!” such had been the war-proclamation of Mahomet II.: nor was it long before his heralds appeared to summon theknights to acknowledge his pretensions. A yearly tribute of two thousand ducats, or war to the last extremity: such were the haughty conditions offered by the conqueror. The reply was such as might be expected: “Tell your master,” answered Lastic, “that our predecessors purchased this island at the price of their blood; and that we will give our lives rather than sacrifice our independence, or that of our religion.” Nothing doubting that such a reply would soon draw down on the order the fury of the sultan’s arms, Lastic at the same time despatched ambassadors to all the European courts, though with little hopes of deriving any succours from thence. The ambassador to France was Peter D’Aubusson,—and this is the first mention of a name which is among the greatest in the chronicles of the Hospitallers of St. John. A fresh league, which the indefatigable efforts of the Pontiff, Calixtus III., had succeeded in forming against the Turks, obliged Mahomet to defer his enterprise against Rhodes, and thus gave the knights a further time to prepare. Two men were still found on the frontiers of the Turkish empire before whom the arms of the Ottoman failed to be invincible: these were Scanderbeg the chief of Albania, and the gallant regent of Hungary, John Corvinus Hunyades. Scanderbeg, whose real name was George Castriotes, after being taken as hostage when nine years old, and brought up in the religion of Mahomet, had seized an opportunity of escaping to his native mountains, and openly professing the Christian faith. He was reckoned the greatest commander of his time; and taking advantage of the nature of the country, he succeeded in repeatedly beating large armies sent against him by the Turkish sultans with a mere handful of men. When, after the fall of Constantinople, every other province of Greece and the Morea submitted to Mahomet, Albania still held out, and the very name of Scanderbeg struck terror into the infidels, whom he defied. For twenty years he maintained the unequal contest. At length, as he lay at Alyssio, weak anddying of fever, news was brought him that the Turks were in the neighbourhood devastating the village and country. He called for his armour, but could not rise to put it on; nevertheless his followers carried his banner before them to the scene of combat; and at the first sight of that well-known ensign, the infidels turned and fled. He lived to hear of this last success, and then expired; and the Turks, when they took Alyssio twelve years after his death, had such an opinion of his valour, that, disinterring his bones, they made amulets of them to wear in battle. It is said his favourite horse would not suffer any other to mount him when his master was gone, but turning wild and savage, died a week after the decease of the noble chieftain.
The independence of Albania expired with its prince. Yet, though delivered from one of his most formidable opponents and now master of the whole of Greece, Mahomet was still forced to delay his great expedition against the Knights of Rhodes. He did not, however, entirely spare them; but in every attack his galleys made on their islands, they met with a repulse which warned him that the subjugation of Rhodes would be a far different enterprise from the taking of Constantinople. He was compelled to fear as much as he hated this unconquerable order; he found it every where. At Lesbos, led on by Zacosta, the grand master, they well-nigh succeeded in repulsing the assault of his most valiant troops, and would have saved the island, but for the detestable treachery of its Greek governor Gattilusio. This miserable man, after giving up the brave knights to slaughter, thought, if not to gain the reward he coveted, at least to save his life by adding apostasy to perfidy. But Mahomet did not grant him long impunity; on some frivolous pretext he had him thrown into a dungeon, where, shortly after, he was strangled. Three hundred of the garrison of Mitylene, when they saw that all was lost, had surrendered on a solemn promise that their lives should be spared; but no sooner were they in his power than the base and cruel Turk had them murderedto a man, and that by the most frightful death he could devise—they were all sawn asunder: this was now the tyrant’s favourite mode of taking vengeance on his vanquished foes, being, as he conceived, the most horrible torture that human ingenuity could inflict. The severed and mangled limbs of his victims he ordered to be thrown to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey.
Negropont, then subject to the republic of Venice, was the next point of attack; and though the Venetians had shown but little friendliness to the order, whose commercial rivalry they feared, yet, says Vertot, “the grand master Orsini, believing himself bound by his profession to defend the states of every Christian prince, instantly sent armed galleys to their assistance, and at the head of a brave troop of knights, who were to endeavor to land upon the island and throw themselves into the beleaguered town, was the Commander D’Aubusson;” who indeed was, at that time, the most distinguished chief of his illustrious body. Nevertheless Negropont fell, as Lesbos and Constantinople had already fallen. The Ottoman forces numbered no less than two hundred thousand men, and were supported by a powerful fleet; yet were the bold knights eager for the fight, and loudly demanded that they should be led against the bridge of boats which the enemy had constructed. But the Venetian admiral, seized as it appeared with a sudden panic, refused the enterprise, drew off his vessels, and left the defenders to their fate. Already hadthe besiegers madethree desperate attacks upon the town, but with such loss to themselves both of men and ships, that even Mahomet was beginning to despair: now, however, their courage and hopes revived; and taking advantage of the consternation inspired by the withdrawal of the Venetian fleet, though once again repulsed in a fifth bloody assault, they carried the works and poured down upon the place. Erizzo, the intrepid governor, disputed every inch of ground with the assailants, and fought his way from street to street until he gained the citadel, where with good courage he stillcontinued the defence; but when provisions and ammunition failed, and he beheld his little garrison daily thinned by death and exhausted by fatigue and wounds, he was compelled to sue for terms and offer to surrender on the sultan’s plighted word, that his life and the lives of his companions should be safe from harm. Mahomet swore by his own head that the heads of Erizzo and of all who were with him should be uninjured; but, furious at the loss of thousands of his best and bravest troops, when the garrison had laid down their arms, he caused them all to be massacred, the Greeks alone excepted, with circumstances of the most barbarous cruelty. Some he had impaled, others cut in pieces, or stoned to death. Erizzo himself he doomed to be sawn in two; boasting that thus he scrupulously kept his oath to the very letter, since he had sworn to leave his head untouched. The brave Venetian had a daughter, Anne Erizzo, young and beautiful, who, to the dauntless courage of her noble race joined all the indomitable fortitude of a Christian martyr. Mahomet, a monster of sensuality as of cruelty, had her brought into his presence: the virtuous maiden scorned alike his vile solicitations and his angry threats, till seized with fury, he drew his cimeter and at a single blow severed her fair head from her chaste body; thus, as Vertot expresses it, “gratifying to the full the wishes of this heroine, who, by the sacrifice of a frail life and a beauty even frailer, earned for herself an imperishable bliss.” The inhabitants were now at the mercy of the conqueror; but the very enormity of the crimes which were perpetrated in this as in every other instance forbids their being detailed. “Words cannot express,” says the same historian, “all the cruelties exercised at the taking of Negropont; the whole island was filled with carnage and horror, for the Turkish soldiers, following their sovereign’s example, made a merit of their ferocities.”
The rage of Mahomet when he saw the galleys of St. John in the midst of the Venetian fleet broke out into a kind of madness: the conqueror of two empiresand of twelve kingdoms, as he haughtily termed himself, he felt the resistance of this single island enough to counterbalance all his success, and he sent envoys to Rhodes to declare war to blood and fire, swearing that he would exterminate the entire order, and put every member of it to the sword. But still the blow so often threatened was doomed to be delayed. Fresh leagues against the Turkish sultan gave time for fresh fortifications and armaments at Rhodes; they were conducted under the direction of D’Aubusson himself, whose capacity all recognised, so that he was the soul and animating spirit of the whole order; nothing escaped his vigilance, and to his charge every thing was committed; war, finance, fortifications, all were under his superintendence, and all, whether superiors or inferiors, listened to his word as law. It is no wonder, therefore, that on the death of Orsini in 1476, D’Aubusson was chosen as his successor; and it scarcely needed the votes of the chapter to declare an election which had already been made by the unanimous voice of his brethren.