PERSONSof importance like our travellers land at Seraglio Point instead of travelling round to the bridge of Galata. Byzas did so, we have it in black and white a few pages back, so it must be true. We can without much fear of contradiction suppose that Constantine the Great landed here also, though perhaps he went to one of the harbours on the Sea of Marmora. Indeed, he is more likely to have done so, for the current runs pretty strongly and the sea is more than a little choppy at this point. Byzas had no harbour to turn into except the Golden Horn, and he must have been too eager to land and survey his new property to have followed that waterway any considerable distance. Just a little west of the point is perhaps the best place to land, somewhere near the Turkish Custom House.
It is, of course, very interesting to land at the bridge of Galata, passing through crowded shipping on the way up the Golden Horn. On one hand, to the south, one sees the irregular mass of buildings,mosques, and public offices which go to form Stamboul. You may descry that vast square of solid ugliness owned by the international creditors of the Ottoman Empire and known as the Public Debt. Close by you catch sight of the head-quarters of Government—the Sublime Porte. Drowsy fox-hunting squires, to whom their wives read the paper of an evening, must often have started at the reiteration of this familiar phrase, and wondered to what year the marvellous Eastern vintage belonged.
Opposite the business quarter of Galata, crowned by its tower. The life, the colour ever changing, on the highway across the Golden Horn is extraordinarily fascinating. Sons of every race and nation upon earth are freely mingled here. The Western official or the business man, whose garb is allowed to betray no ease or originality, here brave the fierce suns of summer clad in the drab discomfort of business attire, with the Perote or native of Pera and Levantines of European origin who have imbibed some longing for oriental display without the requisite taste. Western ladies unveiled, Eastern ladies veiled, the latter in many cases beautifully shod and gloved. Also the Artist raves about a little hand he has seen ungloved, such a dainty, beautiful hand, and according to his own estimate he is an expert in such matters. Then thereare Turks, Western Turks, whose costume is also Western, the fez and seldom-shaven cheeks being the only things in which they differ from others, for many are fair and most are fine, handsome men with every sign of the self-control good breeding gives. Hamals, the porters, push their way with backs bent double and their packs joined upon the leather rests provided for that purpose. Great men in carriages drawn by dashing, spirited Arab steeds roll by you, a servant in gorgeous livery beside the driver on the box. Asiatics of all kinds and colours, fantastically yet harmoniously clad, move past with silent, unhurried footsteps. And then a batch of soldiers, fine, upstanding fellows in business-like khaki, march past on their way to embark for the Yemen, the Sierra Leone of the Turkish Empire, for which men even volunteer nowadays, since the bad old order changed.
But we have landed our travellers on the northern extremity of the promontory on which stands Constantine’s ancient city. This part serves as a public promenade, and here people take the air, admire the glorious view, and generally behave like people do everywhere else, when they find time for a leisurely stroll, the only difference being that here men find time for one more often. The point is open to the sea, for there is no further occasion for the walls andtowers that encircled this the starting-point of Byzantine history. Here was the first settlement of Byzas that grew into an Acropolis, walled, and strongly held, the heart of a growing empire. So we go inland, crossing by a bridge the railway that discreetly hides its unloveliness in a cutting before running into a terminus that might have been picked up from one of the Hanseatic towns and planted here by some malignant fairy.
The road leads upwards to the Seraglio buildings, and here is much of interest. There is the Museum containing many treasures, among them two of wondrous beauty—two sarcophagi, one of which claims to have held the remains of Alexander the Great, the other is presumed to be the last resting-place of one of Alexander’s higher officers, and is known as “Les Pleureuses,” from the beautifully-sculptured female figures in mourning garb that adorn it. Within these precincts is the School of Art, where much good, earnest work is being done under the guidance of Humdi Bey, to whose efforts the recovery of the sarcophagi and other monuments is due as the result of excavations in Asia Minor.
A broad road leads us with park-like plantations on either hand up from the sea towards the Seraglio buildings. These buildings stand on a height, thefirst of the seven hills that form the immovable foundations of the city.
The Seraglio no longer serves its original purpose, the Imperial Museums and School of Art have taken up a considerable portion of them, and others find accommodation for troops. Here you may see the stalwart Anatolian peasant being made into a soldier after the German pattern, and a very good pattern too. Bugle-calls, reminiscent of those heard in Germany, tells the Turkish soldier the time for all the many duties he should attend to. Sergeants in manner emphatic and teutonesque impart the mysteries of that solemn, high-stepping march which takes the place of route marching in an army that has to train its men to reach perfection in two years’ time. Slim-waisted subalterns, whose moustaches follow Imperial precept, superintend these operations, and an anxious company commander may be seen in conference with his colour-sergeant.
It would sound invidious, it would savour of interference, to wonder which is the better use for the Seraglio buildings, that of the present or the past. The Artist doth profess loudly on this point, that no building can serve a higher purpose than that of housing in comfort those who are taken from their homes to learn how to defend the honour of their
The Landward Walls of the Seraglio. Romance and mystery cling to the place and live in the name Seraglio. It is jealously walled in, the wall being of Turkish construction and comparatively recent, and to it may be seen clinging quaint wooden houses.The Landward Walls of the Seraglio.Romance and mystery cling to the place and live in the name Seraglio. It is jealously walled in, the wall being of Turkish construction and comparatively recent, and to it may be seen clinging quaint wooden houses.
country, and that again the honour and glory of a community is well served by making ample provisions for the encouragement of art. Both Author and Artist wish these Seraglio buildings a glorious future in their present warlike and peaceful missions.
But romance and mystery cling to the place and live in the name Seraglio. It is jealously walled in, the wall being of Turkish construction and comparatively recent, and to it may be seen clinging quaint wooden houses.
No doubt Byzas dwelt somewhere about here, though the exact spot is possibly beyond the ken of the keenest archæologist. Remains of solid masonry, huge blocks of stone, have been discovered near the Seraglio kitchens, of which a fine view is offered from the railway, peeps of the massive, high-standing building through the ranks of its solemn escort of cypress-trees.
When Byzantium became the City of Constantine it was found necessary to extend the enceinte of the older fortifications, as the number of inhabitants had grown prodigiously, and this first rampart was of greater extent than the present Seraglio walls. The many improvements made by Constantine, the palace he built unto himself, the Forum and Hippodrome he laid out, and the churches he erected, are nearly all within the immediate neighbourhood of the Seraglio,if not inside its precincts. So here again was the centre of the civic and religious life of the city, rising rapidly to the zenith of its power, and here it has remained until most recent times.
There were walls and towers round the point to guard the city both against her enemies and the violence of the elements, and, sooth to say, it was the latter caused more damage than the former. These had need to be constantly repaired. Of the very earliest walls no trace remains, yet they too had their page in history. Not far from where our distinguished travellers landed, just round the eastern point and looking east, is Top Kapoussi, which means cannon-gate, for here stood a gate dedicated to St. Barbara, who is the patron saint of gunners. But a more likely reason for the Turks to retain the memory of the original name is that close by stood a magazine or military arsenal when they conquered the city, and may have stood for years after. It seems that there was a yet older gate at this spot, a gate through which the Spartan admiral Anaxibius entered the Acropolis when he escaped from the city by boat along the Golden Horn, what time Xenophon and his truculent Greeks were in possession.
After Constantine had led his people, or at least those under his immediate influence, into the fold ofthe Christian community, many churches sprang up about this northern extremity of the promontory. (There are, no doubt, those who will differ from the Author on the subject of Constantine’s conversion, who may say that his people led Constantine to adopt Christianity, and that reasons of policy rather than the conviction born of a sudden inspiration guided him, but the Artist will on no account allow such a prosaic version.) Five churches stood about here, one dedicated to St. Barbara, as we have seen, another to St. Demetrius, a third to St. Saviour, yet another to St. Lazarus, and a fifth one built to St. George on the highest ground available just there, according to custom, for in former times all churches dedicated to the warrior’s patron saint were built on higher ground, as if to give the saint an opportunity of keeping a good look-out from his sanctuary. This church gave to the Sea of Marmora its mediæval name of Braz St. George.
There were evidently other buildings in connection with St. George’s Church, a monastic institution most probably, for here under the name of Joasaph the Emperor John Cantacuzene dwelt in seclusion after his abdication until he withdrew altogether from among his former subjects to a monastery on Mount Athos. Another great feature of this neighbourhood was its holy well, which may be springing still, though forthis the Author cannot vouch, as he has not seen it. The Church of St. Saviour guarded this holy spring—its water had healing qualities, and pilgrimages were made to it on the Festival of the Transfiguration.
The life of the capital of an empire stirred the precinct of what is now the Seraglio enclosure and the vicinity outside it for close on twenty centuries. We have seen the city rise under the fostering care of Byzas its founder, and followed those dim paths of remotest history when the world was young, though no doubt the sad young cynics of the period thought it as old and foredone as they do to-day. Then came the glorious epoch of Constantine and his successors—glorious indeed in the new light of Christianity, but in that name much evil was done, and by it murder and violence and civil war were held to be excused. But through it all the city, this seat of empire, exhibited a most astounding elasticity and power of recovery. True the Palace of Cæsar built by Constantine was not within the precincts enclosed by the Seraglio walls of to-day, but the brain of the empire held its sway hard by here, and its tumultuous heart beat everywhere among the ruins and decay that now mark the site of palaces.
Constantine in his glory and genius passes, and others follow him in an unbroken sequence, some good, many bad, all human, and thus surrounded by theromance that envelops those that played their part in history and did their share in making it. A noble sequence taking them all in all from Constantine, who reigned from 306 to 337, then his successors down to the last emperor, another Constantine of the house of Palæologus, twelfth of the name who fell before his city walls to be succeeded by a conqueror of the house of Ottoman, the house that has filled the throne of the Eastern Empire until to-day.
If we take but a few of this unbroken line of sovereigns, more than one hundred altogether, such names stand out in the world’s history as Valens, whose aqueduct still stands as a monument to perpetuate his name. Then Theodosius II, whose master mind gave to the city its furthest limit in those proud walls that have encircled it since the beginning of his reign, and still stand as testimony to the genius of man. Justinian the Great, too, first of that name of whom we must say more when we come to the ruins of the lordly palace he inhabited. Leo V the Armenian who entered the city as a poor groom, they say, but served his Imperial master, Michael I the Drunkard, so well that he then ascended his throne and restored the expelled Government of the Empire. And there are many others of whom mention will be made elsewhere in connection with fortifications and palacesthat were erected far beyond the first narrow limits of the city that Byzas had founded and the great Constantine made his own.
About this neighbourhood centred the life of the city; there was a broad esplanade near where the Church of St. Lazarus stood, down by the Sea of Marmora, its site probably not far from the foot of the Seraglio kitchens. This esplanade was called the Atrium of Justinian the Great, for it was his creation. And a fair place it was, all built of white marble. Here the good citizens might walk and breathe the soft air, looking out towards the Prince’s Islands and the coast of Asia, across the Sea of Marmora, reflecting in its translucent depths the glorious colours of an Eastern sunset. And here they walked and talked, and no doubt discussed all subjects upon earth, religion, politics, those chief incentives to resultless argument, and the news, with all its variations, which were nothing uncommon even in the days before a daily paper first appeared. How portly burghers must have smiled with satisfaction at the sight of bellying sails that drove their galleys back from the shores of many countries to the great market.
Or a racing craft under full sail with all its rows of glittering oars rising and dipping in strict accord would round the point into the Golden Horn, leavingthe gazers in the Atrium the prey to many conjectures, until a gentle sound coming from the north, round by the Senate, growing to a roar conveyed the news of some great victory.
Perhaps an anxious heart of mother, wife or sister would beat against the coping of the Atrium, as tearful eyes followed the swift sails of departing war fleets that pressed onward into the morning. And the sun would rise to arouse the golden glories of the city, and yet leave that heart unlightened.
Here, too, good folk would meet to discuss the pomp and splendour of the escort that had brought the Emperor’s bride-elect to the sea-gate of Eugenius down by the Golden Horn. How Cæsar there had met her with great pomp and ceremony, and had himself invested her with the insignia of her exalted rank. The talk would then go on to the high doings at the palace, and all those good things that had been brought together from every quarter of the earth for the delectation of the wedding guests. When lowering clouds obscured the brightness of the sun of Cæsar what whisperings, what anxious glances out to sea! Yes, and perhaps what black looks when an alliance was proposed, and indeed consummated, between a princess of their royal house and the polygamist ruler of their enemies the Turks, Amurath I.
What troublous times and discontents when every messenger brought news of fresh disaster, of yet another portion of the Empire torn from its enfeebled grasp. What grumbling at the supineness of the Christian world that looked on with apathy when it could find the time to spare from its own internal quarrels, while the most Eastern bulwark of the faith was being hard pressed by those who carried Islam with fire and sword wherever they went. And then a ray of hope when as a last resource John VI Palæologus betook himself to Rome to implore the Pope to exert his influence on behalf of his expiring fortunes, and to stir up another crusade among the nations of the West. Though at the same time the Emperor sent one of his sons to serve in the Turkish army and learn those secrets of success which that host alone seemed to know.
Intrigue flourished at Constantinople more perhaps than anywhere, unless it be in Rome, and we well imagine how rumours of such matters filtered down among the populace, giving rise to conjecture and wild, inaccurate statements, the food that intrigue fattens on, rumour also of private feuds and family dissensions not only among nobles and leaders of the State, but among its lowliest citizens. So when John Palæologus betrayed his weakness and the weakness of his Empire, many among those who walked the Atriumof an evening might search their minds for some one who could save them from the threatening devastation, and would gladly turn to any who promised to strengthen the shaky edifice and re-establish that sense of security without which all private enterprise was crippled. For here, as in the time before Saxon England fell to the Duke of Normandy, the conqueror’s influence permeated, and attachments were formed between the highest of both nations.
So Andronicus, another son of John Palæologus, entered into friendship with Saoudji, one of the sons of Amurath. Saoudji was jealous of the favour shown to Bajazet, his brother, and resented the latter’s popularity—well deserved too, for he was valiant and successful in the field, and through the rapidity and vigour of his charges acquired the epithet of Yilderim, or Lightning.
So while Amurath was away in Asia, Saoudji and Andronicus, with the assistance of a band of Greek nobles and retainers, organized a combined revolt against the Byzantine and Turkish Governments. Amurath got tidings of this, and forthwith recrossed the Hellespont.
Suspecting Palæologus of complicity, Amurath compelled him to join in his proceedings to quell the revolt. The rebel forces were encamped near thetown of Apicidion, and Amurath marched against them.
Unattended and under cover of night he rode to the entrenchments of their camp and called aloud to the Turkish insurgents, commanding them to return to their allegiance, promising a general amnesty. All these on hearing the familiar voice deserted their new leader and their Byzantine allies, and rejoined the forces of Amurath. Saoudji and Andronicus with his Greek followers were speedily taken. Saoudji was brought before his father, who commanded first that his eyes should be put out as unworthy to look his last upon the day, and then that he should be slain. The Greek insurgents were tied together and flung two or three at a time into the Maritza, while Amurath sat by until the last was drowned. The fathers of some of the rebels were ordered to slay their children before him; those who refused were themselves destroyed. Amurath ended by sending Andronicus in fetters to his father, commanding him to deal with him even as he had dealt with his own.
And after all the suppliant Emperor’s journey to Rome failed to arouse the Western nations to undertake a new crusade. All that was achieved was a confederacy to resist the future progress of the Ottoman power, and if possible to dispossess it of itsEuropean territories. The Sclavonic nations, at the confines of whose territories the Turks had arrived, joined together at the instigation of Servia. Servians, then the best troops and the most formidable the Turks had met in Europe, Bosnians, Albanians and Bulgarians, and with them Magyars and men from Wallachia took the field. Though at times successful, the alliance failed eventually in its purpose, and not until most recent times have those nations emerged from Turkish suzerainty to national independence.
The Battle of Kossova broke the power of the Sclavonic race in the Balkans and led to their disappearance from the arena of the polity of nations for many centuries. A fierce fight it was that raged all day with varying fortunes and glorious display of chivalry and knightly daring, where Bajazet the Lightning struck swift and sure, though a Christian noble ended the conqueror’s career when the fortunes of the day had just turned in his favour.
It happened thus, one Milosh Kabilovitch galloped forth as if a deserter from the Servian ranks and sought the royal presence of Amurath. He alleged important intelligence concerning the plans of the allies. Kneeling before Amurath, he suddenly leapt up and by one stroke buried his dagger in the monarch’s heart. By a miraculous exercise of strengthhe beat off all the attendants who surrounded him again and again, but finally fell under the sabres of the Janissaries just as he had reached the spot where he had left his horse. Amurath survived but to the close of the battle. His last act was to order the death of the captured Lazarus, king of Servia, who had commanded the centre of the Christian force, and who, standing in chains, regaled the dying eyes of his conqueror.
News of this momentous happening reached Constantinople, and we can guess that the faces of those who frequented the Atrium grew gloomier. Was there no one who could help? The horns of the Crescent were closing in on the City of Constantine, the Empire was shorn of most of its former glory and its vast possessions. Little but the city and its immediate surroundings were left unsubdued, all escape from the conquering Turk seemed hopeless. And then what were their prospects? to be conquered, and by such ruthless hands! The death of Saoudji may have been reckoned an act of justice, but rumours came to them, and proved true, of other deeds more cruel, of how Bajazet ascended the throne, like Richmond on Bosworth field, of how his brother Yakoub, who had fought valiantly in the Battle of Kossova, and had contributed largely to its success, was summoned to the regal tentand there saw his father’s body, the first intimation of his death. How then and there in the presence of that body Bajazet had immediately ordered his sorrowing brother to be strangled. This act was done, says Seaddedin, the Turkish historian, in conformity with the precept of the Koran, “Disturbance is worse than murder.” Surely a gloomy outlook for the watchers on the wall.
But how awful would be the fate of their city which had so long resisted the sacred Scimitar of Ottoman! What mercy could they expect? Help there was none, and Bajazet was making preparations to submit Constantinople to yet another siege. But he was diverted by hostilities on his western frontier, and hope revived again in the hearts of those that looked over the city walls across the Sea of Marmora. For the Christian natives of the West had at last begun to realize the danger threatening them from the East. They were moved not by the recommendation of a heretic Greek emperor, but urged by the supplications of the King of Hungary, a spiritual vassal of the Roman See. Pope Boniface IX proclaimed a crusade against the Turks, and promised plenary indulgence to those who should engage in an expedition for the defence of Hungary, and the neighbouring Catholic States.
There were fewer sinners in need of indulgence in those days than there are now; but the population of Europe was proportionately smaller. Yet many rallied to the banners of Philip of Artois; Comte d’Eu, Constable of France; Vienne, Admiral; and Bourcicault, Marshal of France. The Count of Hohenzollern, Grand Prince of the Teutonic order, led a force of Germans; the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, led by their Grand Master Naillac, joined the force of some 120,000 allies, all, as Froissart says, “of tried courage and enterprise.” Their aim was to break the power of Bajazet in Hungary, and when this was done to advance on Constantinople, cross the Hellespont, enter Syria, gain the Holy Land, and deliver Jerusalem with its Holy Sepulchre from the hands of infidels.
How anxiously those citizens of Constantinople must have longed for news of the enterprise, how hope revived as the fall of Widdin, Orsova, and Raco were reported. What a heavy time of waiting it must have been while the Christian host lay before Nicopolis. Still hope held on, for Bajazet was in Asia, and was never expected back. But suddenly he appeared within six leagues of the Crusaders’ camp. The news was brought in by foragers, and the impetuous French knights, sitting at their evening meal, at once buckled on their arms, and demanded to be led against thefoes. Against the advice of Sigismund of Hungary the French charged impetuously. They charged and broke the ranks of the Akindgi, the advanced guard of the Janissaries and of the heavy regular cavalry, and pressed on till they encountered the main body of the Turks under the command of the Sultan himself. Meanwhile the disordered ranks of the Akindgi and Janissaries left behind, reformed and attacked the French in their rear. All gallantry was unavailing—they were almost all killed or taken. The German knights fell around their sacred banners. The day was lost; of the ten thousand prisoners taken, nearly all were massacred on the following day by Bajazet, who sat out from dawn till evening watching, according to the custom of his race, the gratifying spectacle of slaughter.
This dashed the hopes of the Greek Christians, and they began to prepare for the last hours of their Imperial City. But Bajazet was called away to his Eastern Asiatic frontier, where the Mongols were making fierce inroads on his territory, under their famous leader Tamerlane. A respite was thus granted while thus occupied, for the army of Bajazet was annihilated at Angora, and he himself was slain. No doubt the news of Bajazet’s defeat and death was welcome to those who took their walks on the Atrium,no doubt many a good bargain was concluded then and there in a friendly way, when the news from Asia promised better security, and at least a postponement of the Eastern terror. And indeed the Ottoman power was prostrate for awhile after the Battle of Angora, and to make matters worse the sons of Bajazet quarrelled about the succession. In the chaos that ensued even the Greek Empire profited directly, for several portions of lost property were recovered, and no doubt hopes ran high that a turning-point in its fortunes had arrived, that the dark clouds of Eastern predominance so long threatening were to be finally dispelled, and that the sun of Rome would shine again over Byzantium.
But the old terror revived again, though not perhaps to the same extent. Certainly, ere long the Turks were knocking at the city gates again. This time under Musa, a son of Bajazet, who on being released from captivity in Tamerlane’s tents, joined in the fray of brothers, and laid siege to Constantinople, because the emperor supported the claims of the eldest brother Solyman, who had taken unto himself the Sultanate of his father’s European possession, but had been overcome and slain by Mahomed the younger son.
Manuel II Palæologus, Greek emperor, besoughtthe protection of Mahomed, and for a time a Turkish army actually garrisoned the Castle of Cæsar. But Mahomed had to take his troops back to Asia. There he overcame and slew his brother Musa, and then, all rival claimants having been removed, became Sultan of his father’s dominions.
But a few years longer was the respite granted to the failing power of Byzantium. John VII Palæologus retained some semblance of Imperial dignity; but under his successor, a bearer of Constantine’s illustrious name, the death-knell sounded alike to the house of Palæologus and to the Roman Empire of the East. The curtain rang down on what may be called the second act of the drama of Byzantium—the reign of the Christian emperors. The curtain rose again on a scene strewn with ruins of Imperial splendour, on heaps of slain, the victims of the conqueror’s lust of blood, and the succession of emperors in the Imperial City of the East was restored by one of the greatest and perhaps the most cruel of the able sons of Othman.
Mahomed II the Conqueror broke the proud record of those stout walls of Constantinople, and made the place his own. The ancient capital of the Ottomans, Broussa, and the more recent one, Adrianople, receded into the background; the former to become a relic ofsatisfied ambitions, treated with the respect usually meted out to a stepping-stone, the latter a mere base for frontier defence. Mahomed transformed all the life of his nation, and centred it in the City of Constantine, choosing that part of it where Byzas first landed, the point of the promontory. For here he separated a space of eight furlongs from the point to the triangle and built his Seraglio.
And here the history of Constantinople continued its course with just that break of a few days when ownership was forcibly transferred. Nor did the religious life of the city suffer any lengthy interruption. True, the monasteries disappeared, the Cross fell from the Christian churches, the Crescent added minarets, and due ceremony made them into mosques. But who can say that the religious life had ceased with the alteration in creed and dogma. And the Turks with some exceptions, usually political, have always respected the faith of others.
It must have been one of the most marvellous and astounding scenes ever witnessed by mortal eyes that took place not long after the city fell, and long before the sights and signs of the desolation there wrought had been removed. The Greek remnant had gathered together and returned in crowds as soon as they had sufficiently been assured of their lives, their liberties,and the free exercise of their religion. To solemnize this fast the Sultan held an investiture on old Byzantium lines, with all the pomp and traditional splendour of the ceremony, an investiture of the Patriarch of Greek Orthodoxy. With his own hand the Conqueror delivered into the hands of Gennodius the crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office. His Holiness was then conducted to the Gate of the Seraglio, presented with a horse richly caparisoned, and led by viziers and pashas to the palace allotted for his residence.
And this happened within the Seraglio walls! Surely an astounding event. The successor to the throne and empire of the Cæsars, the conqueror whose hands were red with the blood of massacred Christians, the victorious leader of that fanatic race whose life is more influenced by their creed than that of perhaps any other human community, himself approved the chosen Patriarch, the head of his new subjects’ religion, and with his own hands elevated him to that high office. Thus from the centre of Constantine’s city in its new aspect of purely oriental colouring, the Seraglio, the latticed prison of those whose privilege it is to give birth to the sons of Islam, new life was given to Greek Orthodoxy by him whose sword had hitherto been raised against it.
So the life of the old city, the heart of a new empire continued, and one ruler followed another, and like those of the second act, some were good, others bad, but none wholly indifferent. Another Bajazet followed on Mahomed the Conqueror and carried on the victorious traditions of his house. Mahomed died suddenly among his soldiers, leaving two sons, who contested for the sovereignty, as has so often happened in the history of empires raised by the hand of one strong man. Zizimes, the younger son, suggested a division of the empire, Bajazet to rule over Roumelia, Zizimes to govern Anatolia with the Hellespont as boundary between their realms. But Bajazet would none of it. “The Empire is a bride whose favours cannot be shared,” he said, and Zizimes was defeated and had to seek refuge at the Courts of other rulers, some Christian, but none of them favourable to the furtherance of his hopes. His death was caused by poison, administered by a servant of the Pope, Alexander Borgia, who thereby gained a reward of 300,000 ducats from the brother Bajazet, the sum that Borgia had agreed to for the deed, and would probably have earned himself had not Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and carried off Zizimes from the guardianship of the Roman Pontiff.
And the romantic history of this chosen spot ofByzas continues within the walls of the Seraglio, one Sultan following another and making his throne secure by murdering others that stood near it. Thus did Selim I to his brethren. He was the youngest, the ablest and most daring of the sons of Bajazet, and in his father’s lifetime intrigued against him for possession of the throne. His efforts proved successful. A rabble of soldiers and citizens surrounded the Seraglio and demanded audience of the Sultan. “What is your desire?” inquired Bajazet. “Our Padishah is old and sickly, and we will that Selim shall be our Sultan.” So Bajazet abdicated, to die a few days afterwards, and Selim reigned in his stead.
Having secured the throne Selim bent his mind on conquest and the suppression of schism among the followers of the Prophets. The Shiites repudiated the claim to the caliphate of Mahomed’s immediate successors, Abu-Dekr, Omar and Othman. So for reasons probably as much political as religious, Selim proclaimed himself champion of Orthodoxy, and sullied his reign by the St. Bartholomew of Ottoman history. In all there were 70,000 of his subjects who held to the Shii doctrine within the Ottoman dominion in Europe and Asia, 40,000 of these were massacred and 30,000 sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. And Selim became Caliph of the Moslem faith.
Then follows one whose name looms large in history, Solyman I the Great, his title nobly earned not only by valour in the field, but by wisdom in the council—and he was great among a galaxy of great Christian sovereigns, Charles V, Francis I, Henry VIII and Pope Leo X. The world was then entering on modern times, and many changes were in progress. But who will deny to this the first inception of the modern spirit, the glamour of Romance. The art and practice of war was undergoing a change, the arts of peace were reviving. Holbein was making illustrious sovereigns yet more illustrious by his cunning hand, and the bold spirits of a new Europe found yet newer countries across the seas.
The name of Solyman conjures up visions of the glowing glory of the Eastern Empire, of the force and vigour of Islam, for Selim had enjoined upon his son to carry war into the countries that professed the faith of the Cross. Through this monarch’s enterprise was Romance enriched by the story of his wars, as when against Hungary he penetrated even as far as Vienna, which he besieged, what time the Poles came stoutly to the help of Europe, to be rewarded later in history by the partition of Poland and a period of oppression which is not yet ended. With him we connect another glorious name, who brought to his master, victoriouson land, new laurels won at sea, Barbarossa, Solyman’s great admiral.
Yet another name that rings out from within the walls of the Seraglio, and is known by all who love Romance, is that of Roxalana. Solyman’s favourite Sultana in the earlier part of his reign had been a beautiful Circassian. Her son Mustapha inherited his mother’s beauty, and was a pattern of manly and chivalrous excellence.
But the Circassian Sultana lost the Imperial favour. A lovely Russian girl, Khourrem (“The joyous one”), enkindled anew the passion of love in the Sultan’s breast. She was a slave, she obtained her freedom from her royal lover and induced him to wed her. Khourrem, or as the Christians called her “Roxalana” became Sultana. Her aims and ambition was to forward the chances of her own children, and to that end Mustapha had to be removed. She ruled Solyman to the day of her death, and had the satisfaction of bringing about the murder of Mustapha before she died. He was appointed Governor of Carmania, and so skilfully did Roxalana work upon Solyman that he was at last induced to believe that Mustapha was plotting to usurp the throne. Mustapha was ordered to enter the Sultan’s presence alone, and Solyman looking on from an inner chamber saw seven muteexecutioners carry out his command to strangle his son with the bowstring.
And so the Romance that sheds a glamour over the history enacted within the Seraglio walls flows on, while fortune favours those who merit it, and wrong-doing is often punished by those drastic measures to which these grey embattlements had long become accustomed. Roxalana herself was buried in all due state not a stone’s throw from the spot where her sovereign lord afterwards found his rest. But in the two chambers where they lie you will notice a difference. To enter that of Solyman you must take off your shoes, the place is holy ground—the grave of a warrior who is almost a saint. You may, however, pass to the chamber of the “Joyous one” shod as you are. She has no soul, that makes all the difference.
They tell of Selim, Solyman’s successor, Roxalana’s son, who broke the Law of the Prophet and died drunk; Othman II, of the revolt of the Janissaries and their choice of Sultan—until the seat of Government was moved from the place where Byzas first made his choice and Constantine and his successors reigned, until they in due time gave way to those of the house of Ottoman.
But is the present state of this Seraglio less romantic than in those days of fierce passion untrammelledand only expressed in blood? The head priest, the Sheik-ul-Islam, has decreed that there is no infringement of the Laws of Islam in its sons expressing higher thoughts by means artistic. And so the life of the Seraglio goes on, peaceful, more beautiful, and just as much Romance as heretofore.
SERAGLIOPOINTitself, or rather the extreme end of it at least, is now open to the sea. It was not always so, and is only safe now that long-range guns have completely revolutionized the methods of defence.
Where our travellers alighted was a wall flanked by strong towers, 188 in all, says Bondelmontius; this extended all along the coast by the Sea of Marmora, until it joined the angle where the land-walls that cut right across the peninsula commence. Remains, and fine remains, of their sea-wall are still here, at one place dipping their stout foundations into the sea, at others further inland on spots which were in former times the harbour.
No doubt the first wall here was built by Byzas, but it has vanished and made room for the ramparts which Constantine the Great erected to defend his new capital. What yet remains is full of interest and has a beauty of its own.
When looking towards the city from Modar orKadikeui on the Asiatic side, the city seems to arise from out a girdle of embattled walls, to lose itself in a forest of slender minarets. On approaching these walls their interest increases, for here are arches built up and strange inscriptions, gateways that each contribute many pages to history. Theodosius II and his præfect Constantius have here left records of their rule; the Emperor Theophilus is mentioned in the same manner as the restorer of the walls, and so is the share that Emperor Isaac Angelus contributed to their repair.
No doubt there was much need of walls to guard the ever-extending sea-front of the city along the shore of the Sea of Marmora; for though the Greeks, and after them the Turks, were generally able to forestall an attack by striking first, this policy in the degenerate times of the Empire was not always practicable.
Still the sea-walls were not exposed to the assaults of an enemy to such an extent as were the landward ones; their worst enemy was the sea in its destructive phases, and other elements aided in rendering insecure man’s tenure of this precious slip of land.
The traveller must remember the first sight of Constantine’s glorious city; he approached it at high noon and saw it melting in a golden haze rising out of tranquil waters, which mirrored faithfully the colour ofthe sky, while many other colours flamed and fleeted like sparkling diamonds. Yet as we approached Seraglio Point the strength of the current became evident, the current against which those heavy-built sailing craft, aided by their oars, battled so manfully, while it bore other small craft swiftly out into the Sea of Marmora. This current with its constant wear and tear put a severe strain on the foundations of the seaward walls upon Seraglio Point. The traveller’s first view was in the fairest of fair weather; but in the winter, when the piercing icy gale tears down through the narrow channel of the Bosphorus, ploughing up its waters to dash them against the facings of the promontory, another side of the picture is revealed, and helps to account for the constant repairs that were needed to keep the seaward ramparts in a proper state of defence. Not only those storms that scourge the racing billows to the charge, but other forces have helped to frustrate man’s efforts to shelter himself from fierce foemen and fiercer elements.
For in 447 an earthquake visited this fair spot and wreaked much havoc among the stout walls and stouter towers that Constantine constructed. Again, some three centuries later, a most severe winter held all that Eastern neighbourhood in an iron grip. According to Theophanes, the Black Sea along the northern andwestern shores was frozen to a distance of one hundred miles from land, and that to a depth of sixty feet. Upon this foundation a huge mass of snow some forty-five feet in height had gathered. With the softer breath of spring the ice broke up, and floating on the swift currents of the Bosphorus came the floes in such numbers that they blocked up the narrower passages and formed a floating barricade across the channel from Scutari to Galata. When this mass in its turn was loosened and drifted south, huge icebergs crashed against the bulwarks, so high that they overtopped the towers and ramparts of the sea-wall, so great that their weight and impetus crushed all that opposed their progress. And thus the walls along the apex of the promontory had to be entirely reconstructed by Michael II, who commenced the work, and his son Theophilus, who completed it.
Author and Artist have discussed most seriously how best to show the traveller these walls along the Sea of Marmora, for there is much to be seen. The Artist loves the view from across the Sea of Marmora seen at sunrise, of the city swimming in a sea of pearly grey; or at sunset, purple against a glowing mass of orange, red and green, colours which are all truthfully reflected in the placid waters. And the centre of the composition is the Seraglio lighthouse. Close behind itrise battlemented walls and towers, and then in tiers of little red roofs above the grey wooden houses, among trees of all kinds, while everywhere the immortal cypress strives after the minarets that stand as sentinels to the many mosques which crown the heights of the city.
Here, too, on that tranquil sheet of water, pages of history have been unrolled, filled up, and set aside for the guidance of future generations. For though the seaward walls were strong and bravely manned, though they were further guarded by a current which could dash an enemy’s fleet to atoms on the strong surface of the defences, or carry it harmless out to sea again, many a shipload of adventurous spirits has tried conclusions with the men who held them and the elements which guarded the approaches with equal jealousy.
Perhaps the first serious attempt upon the seaward walls was made by those scourges of the Mediterranean, the Saracens. It was on this occasion that mention is first made of the use of a chain to close the entrance of a harbour against an enemy. It was stretched across the Golden Horn, from a tower near the apex of the promontory to one upon the northern bank.
Those were stirring times, when the sons of Arabia Felix, the first disciples of the Prophet, spread out overall the Mediterranean and the neighbouring countries. They conquered in breathless advance Egypt and all north of Africa, and held their own still in its most western region. They invaded Persia, they overflowed into Spain, overthrew the Gothic monarchy, and remained, despite the heroic efforts of Charlemagne and his Paladins. Syria and the Holy Places were theirs, and they snatched what was best and most worth having among the islands of the Mediterranean. What wonder, then, that they turned their eager, flashing eyes towards Constantinople? As we stand gazing at the beautiful city that rises proudly out of a tranquil sea, the waters become troubled, and dark-blue and iron-grey storm-clouds gather in the south. They race up from the Dardanelles, and hundreds of rakish-looking craft, rigged as those that the traveller may see any day off the north coast of Africa, fly before the wind. The rain falls in torrents, and then suddenly all is still again, the sea is quiet, and the rearguard of the tempest sweeps away up the Bosphorus, to leave the sun in possession of its former battlefield. Even so came the invincible navies of Egypt and Syria, carrying the swarthy sons of Arabia towards the treasures they descried within the walls of Constantine’s Imperial City. And up it comes, this storm-cloud, over a smooth sea, and borne on a gentlebreeze like a moving forest overshadowing the surface of the strait. Others of their fierce race and fiercer faith were arrayed before the land-walls; and no one of the invaders doubted that any bulwarks, however strong, however well defended, could resist the tide of passionate bravery that was about to break over the devoted city.
But the time was not yet come. Leo III the Isaurian, a man risen from the people to the Imperial Purple through his ability and valour, knew how to defend his own. He had the chain that guarded the entrance to the harbour lowered, and, while the enemy hesitated as to which course to adopt, Greek fireships sailed amongst them carrying destruction as to the Armada. This, and the tempests that arose, so seriously damaged the hitherto invincible fleet that only a few galleys were spared to return to Alexandria and to relate the tale of their moving misadventures.
Though peace was never the lot of the Eastern Empire for any protracted period, it was more than a century later that an unfriendly keel furrowed the waters of the Sea of Marmora. And this time the trouble came from within. Michael II the Stammerer had gained the throne when Leo V the Armenian was slain at the foot of the altar grasping a weighty cross in his hand. Thomas contested Michael’s claimand sailed towards the city to enforce his own, but a storm arose and compelled him to withdraw. So Thomas and his galleys are wafted from the scene to be followed shortly afterwards by other hardier adventurers. They came down from the Black Sea, a black cloud their canopy, on black waters that turned to silver where the prows of their vessels cleared a path. Fierce, reckless foes these, who in 865 first made acquaintance with the Eastern Gate of Europe, a goal that for ten centuries represented the sum of their ambition. Fair men of big stature with high cheek-bones, speaking a barbarous language, they sped down on the wings of a fierce gale towards the Golden Horn. But here the tempest gained the mastery, and this the first Russian fleet to disturb the peace of Constantinople perished in the storm.
Again a visionary host crowds the further banks with their glittering arms and pennants waving overhead; all the chivalry of the West is here assembled. Their numbers are so great that the Byzantine agents gave up the task of counting them. They came from all the West: from Rome to Britain, from Poland and Bohemia and all Germany under the banner of Conrad the Kaiser. Louis of France too, and his nobles, swelled this throng, who, with the cross emblazoned on their shields and embroidered on theirgarments, set out upon this conquest of the Holy Land. We see them cross the waters, while hope beats high in their unconquered hearts, and would rather draw a veil over the return of the mere remnant of survivors.
Then later on came others in larger vessels, from the South: Genoese, experienced travellers and determined fighters; also Venetians, the only race of sea-dogs that ever succeeded in an attempt on these sea-walls. A striking scene this. In double line the ships and lighter galleys of the Venetians bore down upon the walls. Soldiers leapt from the swifter sailing craft on to shore and planted scaling-ladders against the walls. In the meantime the heavier ships filled up the gaps with their high poop-decks and turrets, as platforms for those military engines then in use, and from them drawbridges were lowered to the summit of the wall. On the prow of his galley stood Dandolo, the venerable Doge, in full armour. He was the first warrior on the shore. The standard of St. Mark waved from the ramparts and twenty-five of the towers were speedily occupied, the Greeks being driven by fire from the adjacent quarters. But Dandolo decided to forego the advantage thus gained in order to hasten to the aid of his Latin comrades, whose small and exhausted bands were in sore straits among thesuperior numbers of the Greeks. Nevertheless, their firm aspect awed the coward Emperor Alexius. But he collected a treasure of 10,000 pounds of gold, and basely deserting his wife and people crept into a barque and stole through the Bosphorus and sought safety in an obscure Thracian harbour.
Two mighty heroes of history and Romance, both known as Barbarossa, add yet more colour to the vivid pageant that plays over these placid waters. For further to the south, where the Sea of Marmora narrows into the Channel of the Dardanelles, the Redbeard Frederick, Conrad’s son and successor to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, if not the greatest, at least the best known in the romantic story of the house of Hohenstauffen, crossed into Asia to find, after many deeds of derring do, his watery grave in a small Cilician torrent. There were many who believed he was not dead, but only slumbering deep among the ruins of Kyffhausen—his long red beard grown through the table on which his hand supports his head, the while he dreams even as he has dreamt through all the troublous times that visited Germany. Dreamt while the last scion of his house perished; dreamt while a war of thirty years, provoked like all the cruelest wars by religious differences, devastated the fair fields of Germany and laid waste many a walledcity; dreamt while the march of the first Napoleon’s armies made Europe tremble—only to awake when all Germany arose and marched towards the Rhine and into the Empire of the third Napoleon, and returning thence to build up a new and stronger empire.
The next to bear the epithet of Barbarossa lived his eventful life when Francis I was King of France and Charles V King of Spain, Naples and the Netherlands, and by election German Emperor, ruled over many states and provinces of the old world and the new.
Solyman I the Great was Sultan and Chief, and reigned at Constantinople, extending the empire of the Crescent by land far into Western Europe, while Barbarossa carried the victorious symbol everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea. His name was Khairedden Pasha, one of four brothers who were trained to merchandise with its usual concomitant piracy, and amassed great wealth in these pursuits. Barbarossa and his brother Urudsh sailed at first under the flag of the Tunisian Sultan but paid tribute to Solyman, and eventually transferred to him their allegiance. They conquered Temnes, Algiers, and all the Barbary coast, which they held as fief of the Porte. All his ventures seemed to be successful. A strong fleet was sent against him under command of Genoa’s great admiral,Doria, by Charles V, but Barbarossa defied him. A stately pageant passed down the Sea of Marmora in 1534. Barbarossa and his fleet of eighty-four vessels, with which he scoured the Mediterranean Sea, ravaged the coasts of Italy, Minorca and Spain, and beat the combined fleets of the Emperor, the Pope, and Venice off Prevesa. After many years of successful marauding we see the Turkish fleet return, still under command of their veteran admiral, Barbarossa, whose beard was turning white. A peaceful end in Constantinople was his, and now the body that held that turbulent spirit rests worthily enshrined by the shore of the Bosphorus.
With the passing of Barbarossa a new power first makes its appearance under the walls of old Byzantium, its colours the white ensign emblazoned with St. George’s blood-red cross. Tight-built English ships, some of which may possibly have borne their brave part in the defeat of Spain’s great Armada, are next seen sailing smoothly upon the waters of the inland sea. They bring messages from Elizabeth, Queen of England, to Amurath II, Sultan and Chief.
Again, a century later, when Ibrahim, an evil ruler, reigned over the Turkish Empire, and excesses of all kinds went unpunished, some English ships lying in the Bosphorus were plundered. It was the customthen in Turkey, when any one had received an injury from a minister or official, for him to put fire on his head and run to the palace. Stout Sir Thomas Bentinck, the English Ambassador—redress for the outrage to English ships having been refused—brought them up from Galata and anchored them immediately before the windows of the Imperial Palace. Adapting the custom we have mentioned, he lighted fires on every yard-arm. No sooner was this seen on shore than the Vizier hastened to the Ambassador, paid him a large sum of money, and engaging to pay the surplus of the sum demanded, besought him to extinguish the warning blaze.
But now, at the bidding of the Author, we move landwards again. As we approach, bearing somewhat to the south of the Seraglio lighthouse, the buildings above us stand out more clearly. Constantine’s Church, now Mosque of St. Sophia, looms over all the attendant minarets, relieving the imposing mass of masonry of its too heavy aspect. Near by the Mosque of St. Irene, also of Constantine’s building. In this mosque is still kept the chain that barred the Golden Horn to the Turks during the last siege. A long yellow building stands out near St. Sophia, and shows a pillared front to the smooth waters of the Marmora. This is now the Turkish Parliament, though in a shorttime that young and vigorous assembly is to transfer its deliberations to one of the more gorgeous palaces of the Bosphorus. Fittingly enough it stands almost on the site of the Senate of Roman, Grecian and Byzantine empire. Here centred much of the life of the old City of Constantine, hard by is the Hippodrome which that emperor laid out. It was here that the city’s pleasure-seeking denizens met to enjoy the games, the chariot-races, and other pastimes peculiar to that age. What fortunes must have been wagered or dissipated by a single crashing blow of the cæstus, or by one slip of the runner as he left the starting-line! How many a delicate girl must have held her hands in horror to her eyes, when under the brazen tripod fell the charioteer who had swerved too closely to the corner, and drawn down the other competitors with him in his ruin. Here, also, in later times of trouble or internal strife the citizens would meet and clamour to be taken to the palace, there to acclaim a heroic emperor, or abuse an unpopular leader. How fickle and ill-balanced that turbulent cosmopolitan crowd must have been, we realize from the curious history of Justinian.
Justinian, bearing the name of a triumphant lawgiver, entered into the heritage of the Roman world in 685. He was a lad of strong passions and feebleintellect. He ruled with a cruelty gross even for that age and place, through the hands of his favourite ministers, a eunuch and a monk, by whose aid he succeeded for ten years in braving the growing hatred of his subjects. A sudden freak, rather than any sense of the justice he habitually outraged, induced the emperor to liberate Leontius, a general of high repute, who, with some of the city’s noblest and most deserving men, had suffered imprisonment for above three years. Leontius was promoted to be Governor of Greece. A successful conspiracy was headed by him, the prisons were forced open, and an excited populace swarmed to the Church of St. Sophia, where the Patriarch, taking as text for his sermon, “This is the day of the Lord,” influenced the passions of the multitude. They crowded into the Hippodrome, Justinian was dragged before the insurgent judges, who clamoured for his immediate death. But Leontius, already clothed in the Purple, was merciful, and spared the life of his benefactor’s son, the scion of so many emperors, and, slightly mutilated about the face, the deposed sovereign was banished to the Crimea. Here he abode, and watched events of which the news trickled through but sparingly. News of another revolution arrived, in which Leontius fell from power a mutilated victim, to make room for Apsimar, whohenceforth called himself Tiberius. Meanwhile Justinian had contracted an alliance with the Khan of the Chazars by marrying that chief’s sister, Theodora. But the Khan proved venal, and bribed by the gold of Constantinople sought to bring about Justinian’s death. In vain, for Theodora’s conjugal love frustrated this design, and Justinian with his own hands strangled the two emissaries of the Khan. He then sent Theodora back to her brother. Thereupon Justinian sailed away, and with the aid of the Bulgarians laid siege to his own city, which having tired of their present ruler admitted him to the throne again.
So we find Justinian in the Hippodrome surrounded by his people. The two usurpers, Leontius and Apsimar, were dragged one from his prison, the other from his palace, and cast prostrate and in fetters before the throne, where Justinian sat and watched the chariot-race, a foot on the neck of each vanquished rival. The fickle people meanwhile shouted in the words of the psalmist, “Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion and the dragon shalt thou set thy foot.” Even in those early days the use of a well-known text, taken conveniently apart from its context, was a political weapon not to be despised.
When the games were over Leontius and Apsimar were taken down to the Kynegion, the place ofexecution near the Church of St. George of Mangana, and there Justinian requited the ill-judged clemency of his former conqueror. But his own capricious cruelty so disgusted the troops he had dispatched to carry out the sentence of those on whom the Emperor had sworn to be avenged, that they revolted, and invested Bardanes with the Imperial Purple. Destitute of friends, and deserted by his Barbarian guard, there was none to ward off the stroke of the assassin, and by it Justinian, along with his innocent son, Tiberius, perished, and thus ended the line of Heraclius.
The Palace of Hormisdas or Justinian. This place is full of the memories of dark and strange events, it is the Palace of Justinian.The Palace of Hormisdas or Justinian.This place is full of the memories of dark and strange events, it is the Palace of Justinian.
LETus go ashore under the sea-walls of Constantinople. We now approach the white Seraglio lighthouse, keeping a little south of it and yet a little more, rounding a slight bend of the coast to westward. Here, beyond a strong square tower which formerly showed a flare of Grecian fire to guide the mariner, is a stretch of beach, Author and Artist insist on landing. The tower we left on our right joins on to a large front of masonry, built stoutly of rough stones as you may see where the walls are broken, and where a few marble pillars frame hollow openings for the windows. This place is full of the memories of dark and strange events, it is the Palace of Justinian.
Old chroniclers called this the Palace of Hormisdas, or Hormouz, Prince of Persia, who sought refuge here with Constantine the Great. Others, again, suggest that this palace was built by Justinian himself before he began his long and useful reign.
At any rate, great and famous names occur to usas we survey these ruins. It is an astounding chapter of history this, which tells how Justinian came to inherit the Imperial Purple. His uncle Justin was the founder of his house, a simple Dacian peasant who left his native village and the flocks he tended to enter the military service of the Eastern Empire. Through his own strength, his own ability and valour in the field, Justin the Dacian peasant rose step by step until he took his place next to Cæsar himself in importance. Then when the Emperor Anastasius died, after carefully excluding his own kinsman from the throne, Justin was acclaimed Emperor by the unanimous consent of those who knew him to be brave and gentle, his soldiers, and by those who held him to be orthodox, the priests. So in his old age, for he was sixty-eight when Anastasius died, Justin climbed the throne and reigned for nine years. Strange, too, it is, that he and yet another ruler of his time, Theodoric, the King of Italy, even in those days when learning was by no means uncommon, should both have been unable to read and write. Justin had brought his nephew Justinian out of Dacia, and had him educated in Constantinople to be trained for the Purple.
His was a curious and eventful reign. Of great strength and comely of face, full of the best intentions and restless in his pursuit of knowledge, Justinianentered into his inheritance; he had been his uncle Justin’s right hand, and so was well acquainted with all the devious ways of statecraft. So everything promised well, and in a measure he succeeded. The wars he undertook were brought to a successful issue, the laws he framed should have earned him the people’s gratitude, yet Justinian was not beloved.
No doubt these walls could tell the reason—you may almost hear them whisper, “Theodora, the actress, the dancer, and Justinian’s empress.” Surely those were stirring times, when Justinian and Theodora sat side by side upon the throne, when circus and streets rang with the cries of factions, Blue and Green. And Theodora favoured Blue—her cause for doing so dates back to the day of her earliest appearance in Constantinople—in the theatre. Here she and her sisters, daughters of Acacius, whose office was to tend the wild beasts that the Green faction kept for the games, were brought by their mother in the garb of suppliants. The Green faction received them with contempt, the Blues with compassion, and hence the reason that Theodora favoured that colour.
Then some time elapsed, during which it were best not to follow Theodora’s fortunes. During this epoch a son was born to her. Years after, the father of the child when dying told him: “Your mother is anempress.” The son of Theodora hastened to Constantinople, hurried to the palace to present himself—and was never seen again. When in seclusion at Alexandria Theodora had a vision which told her that one day she would wear the Purple, so she returned to Constantinople, and ere long won Justinian’s love. So they reigned side by side, and Justinian first of that name is still called “the Great.” Let whatever evil she may have done be forgotten. Are not the scandals of that time softened by the mists of romance which enshroud them, for all but those who like to peer about among the secrets of dead men, and to cavil at their failings, and tear what tatters of reputation they can find into yet smaller shreds.
Nearly four centuries had passed, and yet again the Palace of Justinian was witness of Imperial weakness. The Greek fleet rode at anchor beneath the windows of the palace, and from his ship the Admiral Romanus Lecapenus made his way into the presence of the Emperor. There he demanded of Constantine VII, called Porphyrogenitus, a share in the government of the Empire, and was proclaimed co-Emperor. At one time during this reign five Cæsars wore the Purple; he who was born in it, Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus, ranked least among them, but he survived them all in office to die of poison, it is saidadministered by Theophane, the wife of his son, Romanus II.
Again a woman plays a strong part in the history of these palace walls. A woman of low origin, this wife of the Eastern Emperor, son of Constantine VII, and under the careless reign of her good-natured husband, she made her vigorous personality a power in the land. Four years did Romanus II reign, and in that time did nothing that could afford the historian excuse for lingering on his name. Strongly built and fair to look upon, his time was spent in the pleasures he best loved. While the two brothers Leo and Nicephones triumphed over the Saracens, the Emperor’s days were spent in strenuous leisure. He visited the circus in the morning, feasted the senators at noon, and then adjourned to the sphæristerium, the tennis-court, where he achieved his only victories. From time to time he would cross over to the Asiatic side, and there hunt the wild boar, returning to the palace well content with what he probably considered a good day’s work.
Theophane tired of her useless spouse, and mingled for him the same deadly draught which killed his father. She then aspired to reign in the name of her two sons, Basil and Constantine, one five, the other only two years old, but found she could not support theweight of such responsibility, and looked about for some one to protect her.
She found the man in Nicephorus Phocas, who was then accounted the bravest soldier in the land. In other ways he appeared suitable, for he combined with the military genius that had led to many victories the reputation of a saint. For the rest, in person he was deformed, so that perchance Theophane’s spacious heart was aided by her head when she set about to choose the successor to Romanus in her affections. Another like him lived many centuries later and ruled over England, Richard of Gloucester—and through the hazy veil wherewith romance so kindly clothes the crude outlines of history, it is difficult to decide to what extent the religious practices and utterances of these two monarchs were prompted by sincerity or guile. For Nicephorus wore hair-cloth, fasted, and clothed his conversation with pious terms; he even wished to retire from the business of this world into the serene seclusion of a monastery. Whatever the value of the sentiments he expressed, the people and the Patriarch trusted him, and so he was invested with the command of the oriental armies.
No sooner had he received the leaders and the troops than he marched boldly into Constantinople at their head. He trampled on his enemies, avowed hiscorrespondence with the Empress, and assumed the title of Augustus. Unlike his double, Richard, he spared the lives of the young princes.
After some dubious dealings, the silence of the clergy made his union with Theophane possible, so he reached the height of his ambition—the Imperial Purple. But, strange to say, the once so popular general when in the Purple lost the affection of his people. No doubt the faults were equally divided, the Greeks disliked him for his parsimony, and he had ample precedent of how easily a fickle population can change from favour to fierce hatred. A demonstration of this change caused Nicephorus to fortify the Palace of Justinian; he had been stoned by his own people, and had barely reached the palace in safety.
Whilst standing by the sea under this mass of ruins, let us go back to a winter’s night in 969. The additions to the palace that Nicephorus had made to guard him against the fury of his subjects had that day been completed. The gates were locked and bolted, the windows strongly barred, and, as a further precaution, the Emperor had moved from the couch and room he generally occupied at night, and lay asleep stretched on a bear-skin on the floor of a smaller chamber. But treachery lurked within the palacewalls; murderous plans were rife, and they were conceived in the brain of an adulterous empress. And listening by those dark waves we hear the sound of muffled oars. A boat takes shape in the gloom at the foot of the palace stairs. Headed by John Zimisces, lover of Theophane, a man of small stature but great strength and beauty, and a soldier of renown, shadowy forms ascend a rope ladder, lowered from a window by some female attendants. Other conspirators were hidden in Theophane’s most private chambers; they reached the Emperor’s retreat, and with much cruelty and insult Nicephorus II Phocas was done to death.
John Zimisces reigned in his stead, but ere he was allowed to assume full power with the sanction of the Church he had to face at least one upright man. On the threshold of St. Sophia, whither he went to his coronation, the intrepid Patriarch stopped his progress, charged him with entering the Holy Place with blood upon his hands, and demanded, as a sign of penance, he should separate himself from his guilty companion.
So Theophane was banished from the place that still is haunted by her baleful influence, and died unmourned in exile.
Another vision, less sombre, equally dramatic and more fleeting, comes and fades away. Amaury, kingof Jerusalem, visits Manuel Comnenus in 1170, to implore his aid against Saladin. A brief pathetic scene thus re-enacts itself, brief as the reign of those, the Christian Kings of David’s Royal City, pathetic in the waste of life, the misery, the abject hopelessness that marked those chivalrous enterprises known to us as the Crusades.
One final scene before we turn away from this historic spot, the last scene in its history, and splendid in its utter despair. Here, at the last siege of Constantinople by the Turks, stout-hearted Peter Guliano and his gallant catalans held out when all else was lost.
A steep incline leads from the beach, past little wooden houses perched anywhere against the ruined walls. They look like that old house—that dear old house—Hans Andersen speaks of in the shortest of his fairy tales. We climb up the steep ascent, and at the top find more ruins—the base of a gigantic marble pillar, broken arches built of brick and glorious in their subdued colour; and then—the railway. Yes, gentle readers, the Roumelian Railway, to give it its full and awesome title. And we must follow this railway if we would see more of the city walls. You may walk anywhere you like along the single track. A little pathway winds about here and there andeverywhere, and on either hand are houses, some of wood, some more pretentious, scattered about with irregularity.
Above us is the ridge on which the Hippodrome, theatre, and circus used to stand in days when a pleasure-loving population spent time and money in much the same way as do some Western nations of this day. No doubt they too considered themselves sportsmen; no doubt they too danced abject attendance and stood numerous dinners to the stalwart hero who was awarded his “Blue” or his “Green,” as the case might be. And as to some forms of sport in those days of the Byzantine Empire, we have already given account of one sportsman’s strenuous day, the Emperor Romanus, and we have seen how his wife discouraged his proclivities, by methods effective, but far too drastic for the present age.
Ancient chroniclers make mention of a polo-ground, but it is too much to expect such very learned men to tell you how the game was played. Yet this concerns the Author and Artist nearly, for both have spent much time and pleasantly in the saddle. No doubt the game, under whatever rules, was extremely picturesque; the life, the colour, the movement of horses and men engaged in such a keen pursuit can never fail to give a series of brilliant and entrancing pictures. But whenyou come to details! No trim pigskin saddles, but possibly some coloured bolsters, with loose bits of braid or tassels for adornment; no doubt bright-coloured brow-bands—that abomination! And then the ball. The Artist wonders whether it was painted the colour of one of the many factions that made up the political life of the city—Blue, Green, or Red—or whether, like keen sportsmen, such differences were dropped in contests of this kind.
Undoubtedly party feeling ran high when races—chariot-races chiefly—were in progress at the Hippodrome. These Green and Blue kept up a continual wordy warfare, and no doubt backed their own fancy colour with the same indiscriminate ardour not altogether unfamiliar even in the world’s greatest Empire of to-day. And here again another likeness presents itself, for the games were played and contests entered by men paid to show their skill, while thousands sat and watched, shouted advice, or yelled their disapproval, though quite unable and unwilling to venture on the game themselves.
Of fishing there is no mention as a sport. The Author much regrets to have to make this statement, as he would have liked to give Walton’s disciples of to-day some account of how their gentle art was plied in the days of Old Byzantium. But then the necessaryimplements were not available, for the West had not yet swamped the East with cheap manufactures and easily-twisted pins in penny packets.
The Artist has watched with interest gallant attempts with the bent pin to draw fish from the Bosphorus. The small boy with his little rod so evidently cut by himself, and one sticky little hand full of dead flies, served to remind the Artist of his own efforts in that line. Oh the unholy joy of impaling a fat blue-bottle on the point of that bent pin! But the chief pleasure of this form of sport is lacking on the banks of the Bosphorus; the long arm of the law does not interfere, and so the charm of the “strictly forbidden” is denied you.
A noble form of sport was practised in the Middle Ages, and until comparatively recent times a pastime that has given rise to much that is beautiful in poetry and painting—the art of falconry. This was a favourite pursuit of many a sultan, this and hunting with those strong hounds whose descendants (though to judge from their appearance one can scarcely believe it) now roam the streets of Constantinople, and act as rather unsatisfactory scavengers.
A mighty sportsman in these particulars was Achmet I, who reigned in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was in this monarch’s reign thatthe Turkish theologians propounded a peculiar doctrine. Achmet had ordered all the dogs in Constantinople to be transported to Scutari, on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, with an allowance of bread and carrion for their maintenance. By a later decree they were again removed, this time to an island sixteen miles away, where they all perished for want of food. The lives of dogs, though held unclean by Turks, were deemed of such importance that the Sultan thought fit to ask the Mufti whether it were lawful to kill them. After due deliberation the head of Islam answered (for he can give no fetvah or decree unless first consulted) that every dog had a soul, and therefore it was not lawful to kill them.