Swift to the breach his comrades fly; And through the Austrian phalanx dart, An earthquake could not overthrow Thus Switzerland again was tree The Storming of Constantinople.-Gibbon. [Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern empire, was taken by storm, by the Turks under Mahomet II., May 29, 1453, after a siege of fifty-three days. This event terminated the empire after an existence of one thousand and fifty-eight years. The following description is from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.") 1. IN the confusion of darkness, an assailant may sometimes succeed; but in this great and general attack the military judgment and astrological knowledge of Mahomet advised him. to expect the morning, the memorable twenty-ninth of May, in the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the Christian The preceding night had been strenuously employed; the troops, the cannons, and the fascines, were advanced to the edge of the ditch, which, in many parts, presented a smooth and level passage to the breach, and his fourscore galleys almost touched with the prows and their scaling-ladders, the less defensible walls of the harbor. era. 2. Under pain of death, silence was enjoined; but the physical law of motion and sound are not obedient to discipline or fear; each individual might suppress his voice and measure his footsteps; but the march and labor of thousands must inevitably produce a strange confusion of dissonant clamors, which reached the ears of the watchmen of the towers. daybreak, without the customary signal of the morning gun, the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land; and the similitude of a twined or twisted thread has been applied to the closeness and continuity of their line of attack. At 3. The foremost ranks consisted of the refuse of the host, a voluntary crowd who fought without order or command; of the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse drove them onward to the wall; the most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated; and not a dart, not a bullet, of the Christians, was idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their strength and ammunition were exhausted in this laborious defense; the ditch was filled with the bodies of the slain; they supported the footsteps of their companions; and of this devoted vanguard the death was more serviceable than the life. 4. Under their respective bashaws, the troops of Anatolia and Romania were successively led to the charge; their progress was various and doubtful; but, after a conflict of two hours, the Greeks still maintained and improved their advantage; and the voice of the emperor was heard, encouraging his soldiers to achieve, by a last effort, the deliverance of their country. In that fatal moment the Janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator and judge of their valor; he was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic troops, whom he reserved for the decisive occasion; and the tide of battle was directed and impelled by his voice and eye. 5. His numerous ministers of justice were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, and to punish; and if danger was in the front, shame and inevitable death were in the rear of the fugitives. The cries of fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and attaballs; and experience has proved that the mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honor. 6. From the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke, which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or de struction of the Roman empire. The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections; the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion; nor shall I strive, at the distance of three centuries, and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which there could be no spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable of forming any just or adequate idea. 7. The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed to the bullet or arrow which pierced the gauntlet of John Justiniani. The sight of his blood and the exquisite pain appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsels were the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew from his station in quest of a surgeon, his flight was perceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor. "Your wound," exclaimed Palæol'ogus, "is slight; the danger is pressing; your presence is necessary; and whither will you retire ?" "I will retire," said the trembling Genoese, "by the same road which God has opened to the Turks ;" and at these words he hastily passed through one of the breaches of the inner wall. 8. By this pusillanimous act he stained the honors of a military life; and the few days which he survived in Gal'ata, or the Isle of Chios (ki'os), were embittered by his own and the public reproach. His example was imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries, and the defense began to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled vigor. The number of the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps a hundred, times superior to that of the Christians; the double walls were reduced by the cannon to a heap of ruins: in a circuit of several miles, some places must be found more easy of access, or more feebly guarded; and if the besiegers could penetrate in a single point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. 9. The first who deserved the sultan's reward was Hassan the Janizary, of gigantic stature and strength. With his cimeter in one hand and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortification; of the thirty Janizaries who were emulous of his valor, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve companions had reached the summit; the giant was precipitated from the rampart; he rose on one knee, and was again oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the achievement was possible; the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks; and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. 10. Amidst these multitudes the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen and finally lost. The nobles who fought round his person sustained, till their last breath, the honorable names of Palæol'ogus and Cantacuze'ne: his mournful exclamation was heard, "Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head ?" and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple; amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. 11. After his death, resistance and order were no more; the Greeks fled toward the city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner wall; and as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbor. In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged that they should immediately have given quarter if the valor of the emperor and his chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of the capital. It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople was' irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the Second. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors. Assassination and Character of William the Silent. Motley. [Under William of Orange, surnamed the "Silent," the Seven United Provinces of Holland revolted against the cruelties perpetrated by Philip II. of Spain, through his merciless minister, the Duke of Alva, and achieved their independence, William becoming the first Stadtholder or President (1579). The enemies of this illustrious man had made various attempts to effect his assassination, the last of which was successful (1584). The following account of the event and of his character is taken from the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," by John Lothrop Motley.] 1. ON Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and gentlemen of his family, was going to the diningroom. William the Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of dark felt, with a silken cord around the crown-such as had been worn by the Beggars* in the early days. of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended one of the Beggars' medals, while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide, slashed under-clothes, completed his costume. 2. Gérard presented himself at the doorway, and demanded a passport. The princess, struck with the pale and agitated countenance of the man, anxiously questioned her husband concerning the stranger. The prince calmly observed that "it was merely a person who came for a passport," ordering, at the same time, a secretary forthwith to prepare one. The princess, still not relieved, observed in an undertone that "she had never seen so villainous a countenance." Orange, however, not at all impressed with the appearance of Gérard, conducted himself at table with his usual cheerfulness, conversing much with the burgomaster of Leeuwarden, the only guest present at the family dinner,concerning the political and religious aspects of Friesland. 3. At two o'clock the company rose from table. The prince led the way, intending to pass to his private apartment above. The name of an association or brotherhood that took an active part in the insurrection. + Balthazar Gérard, the murderer. He had on the previous day presented dispatches from France to William, and was, therefore, known to him. For a long time he had cherished the design to assassinate the stadtholder. |