Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor. Robert Walsh
seized on the capital, usurped the whole of the Grecian territories, and divided it among themselves. Five sovereigns, of the western invaders, occupied the throne in succession, till it descended to Baldwin. Michael Palæologus was destined to restore the ancient and rightful dynasty. In the year 1261, Alexius, a noble Greek, who was dignified with the name of Cæsar, commanded a body of troops in his service. He crossed the Hellespont into Europe, and advanced cautiously under the walls of the city. There was a body of hardy peasantry, at that time cultivating the lands of Thrace, of very doubtful allegiance. They were called volunteers, for they gave their services freely to any one who paid them. These bold men were induced to join themselves to the forces of Alexius; and, by stratagem, they entered the town. They gained the co-operation of a Greek, whose house communicated with the wall by a subterranean passage. Through this, Alexius was introduced with some of his volunteers; but he had scarcely passed the golden gate, when the peril of the enterprise struck him, and his heart failed him. He was pushed on, however, by his bolder companions, and at length emerged from the dark passage into the Greek house in the heart of the city. From hence they suddenly issued, and, though few in number, soon filled the streets with terror and dismay, from the suddenness of their attack, and the unknown extent of the danger. But every one was predisposed to join the enterprise. They looked upon the Latin conquest with irrepressible and increasing horror, and the streets were soon filled with shouts for Michael. Baldwin, utterly unapprehensive and unprepared, was suddenly roused from his sleep: he made no attempt to preserve his usurped power. He escaped to Italy, where he lived a private life for thirteen years, an object more of contempt than pity, vainly soliciting aid to recover a kingdom which he had neither right to keep, nor courage to defend.
The Greeks were thus restored to their capital, after their Latin allies had held an unrighteous possession of it for fifty-seven years. As the ravages of their hands were irreparable and permanent records of their oppression, so the memory of them was indelible. It caused that irreconcilable animosity between the eastern and western people of the same faith, which has widened, to an unapproachable distance, the separation of the two churches, so that it is likely nothing within the probability of human events will ever diminish it. To such an extent had it reached, and so deeply did it rankle in the minds of the Greeks, that, two centuries after, when they were about to be overwhelmed by the resistless power of the Turks, they had rather trust to the tender mercies of the followers of Mohammed, than seek a perilous aid from their fellow-christians. To this day the memory of these events is recent in the minds of the people of Constantinople, and it has generated a lasting hostility to the Latin church, which seems only to increase and strengthen with revolving years.
Immediately after the restitution of the city to the Greeks, a new feature was added to it: another western people were received into it, not as allies with arms in their hands, but as something still more useful−merchants, to cultivate the arts of peace, and enrich the Eastern empire by their opulence and activity. These were the Genoese. This enterprising little state had already penetrated to the remotest extremity of the Black Sea, and the commodities brought from thence were particularly valuable to the Greeks. The Oriental church prescribes a vast number of fasts, in the observance of which it is very rigorous. The Genoese had established an extensive fishery at Caffa, in the Crimea; and sturgeon, strelitz, and other fish brought down by the current of the Tanais, and fed in the flat and slimy bottom of the Palus Mæotis, were of the utmost value to the strict disciplinarians of the Eastern church. To vend this necessary commodity, and always to keep a supply for the demands of the Greek capital, they were allowed to establish a commercial mart in its vicinity.
On the northern shore of the Golden Horn rises a promontory, similar to that on which the city is built, and called for that reason by the Greeks pera, because it stood on the “other side,” or beyond the harbour. The extreme point of this peninsula, and just opposite the ancient Byzantium, was called Galata, for, as some say, it was the “milk market” of the Greeks, and it was assigned to these merchants, as the most convenient site for their imports, having the Bosphorus on one side to receive them, and the harbour on the other to distribute them through the city. In process of time their town increased, and, in consequence of some attempt made by their rivals, the Venetians, they were permitted by the Greek emperor, Cantacuzene, to surround the city with a wall having turrets and battlements. It ran from sea to sea, shutting up this little enterprising community in a secure asylum, and still continues in a very perfect state. They were also allowed to use their own form of government, to elect their podesta, or chief magistrate, and to practise the forms and discipline of their own worship. Thus the mart of a few fishermen assumed the port and bearing of a considerable city. Though their independent estate has been abolished by the absorbing despotism of the Turks, they have left behind them another memorial of their consequence, beside the walls of their city: they introduced the Italian language into the East, and it is that Frank tongue that is now most universally spoken by all classes. The most respectable portion of the present inhabitants are the descendants of those merchants, and they are selected as dragomans, or interpreters, by the several European embassies.
But a new power was now preparing to overrun and astonish the world, not by the sudden and transitory inroad of a barbarous multitude, carrying with it the destruction of an inundation, and, like it, passing on, and remembered only by the ravages it left behind; this was a permanent invasion of a stubborn and persevering race, destined to obliterate the usages of former ancient people, and establish, in their place, its own. On the banks of the Oxus, beyond the waters of the Caspian Sea, there dwelt a nomadic people engaged only in the care of their flocks and herds, and for that reason called Turks, from their rude and rustic habits. They had embraced the Islam, or true faith of Mohammed, and changed the appellation of Turks, which was a term of reproach, to Moslemûna, or “the resigned.”1 From their remote obscurity in the centre of Asia, they issued, to carry the desolation of Islamism into the Christian world.
The first of this race who penetrated into the Greek possessions in Asia Minor was Othman. He seized upon the passes of Mount Olympus, and instead of razing, he strengthened all the fortified places behind him. His son Orchan conquered all the Christian cities established there, and finally made himself master of Brusa, the capital of Bythinia, which became the seat of the Turkish empire in Asia. The Seven Churches of the Apocalypse shared the same fate. Those lights of the world, swarming with a Christian people, were reduced to small villages, with a few Moslem inhabitants; even Ephesus, the great emporium of Asia, celebrated for its noble temple, had “its candlestick so removed,” that the village of Aysilûk (its modern name) now consists of a few cottages among its ruins, and contains a Christian population of only three individuals. Philadelphia was the only city that made an effectual resistance: though remote from the sea, and abandoned by the feeble Greek emperors, it maintained its Christian independence for eighty years, against the Moslem invaders. From the fame of this first conqueror, his race adopted the patronymic as their civil designation, and called themselves, ever after, Osmanli, or “the children of Othman.”
The first passage of the Turks into Europe was attended with a romantic adventure. Soliman, the son of Orchan, was engaged in a hunting excursion, and was led by the chase to the shores of the Hellespont. An insatiable curiosity induced him to wish to cross to the other side, and visit, for the first time, this new quarter of the globe. But the terror of the Turkish name had so alarmed the Greeks, that strict orders were issued, under the severest penalties, to remove every conveyance by which they could pass from the opposite shore into Europe. Under these circumstances, Soliman formed a raft of inflated ox-bladders, and, availing himself of a moonlight night, he floated over with some of his companions. When they landed, they seized on a passing peasant, who happened to be acquainted with a subterranean entrance into the town of Sestos. He was induced, by threats and bribes, to point it out, and so a few energetic Turks seized by surprise on this first European city. By this exploit a communication was at once established with their companions in Asia. Fresh succours crossed over and seized on Gallipoli, and thus the Turk first planted his foot in Europe.
Amurath availed himself of all the benefits of his brother’s adventurous enterprise. He appointed a singular custom at Gallipoli. The marauding Turks, now established on the European side of the Bosphorus, made slaves of all the Christians they could seize on, and sent them over to Asia by this passage. Amurath claimed for his share a certain portion as toll. Of
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