The defense of the city forms one of the most stirring
episodes in history. The Christians, not more than eight thousand in number,
were a mere handful compared to the Ottoman hordes. Yet they held out for
nearly two months against every assault. When at length the end drew near, the
Roman emperor, Constantine Palaeologus, a hero worthy of the name he bore, went
with his followers at midnight to Sancta Sophia and there in that solemn fane
received a last communion. Before sunrise on the following day the Turks were
within the walls. The emperor, refusing to survive the city which he could not
save, fell in the onrush of the Janizaries. Constantinople endured a sack of
three days, during which many works of art, previously spared by the crusaders,
were destroyed. Mohammed II then made a triumphal entry into the city and in
Sancta Sophia, now stripped of its crosses, images, and other Christian
emblems, proclaimed the faith of the prophet. And so the "Turkish
night," as Slavic poets named it, descended on this ancient home of
civilization.
AN EPOCH-MAKING EVENT
The capture of Constantinople is rightly regarded as an
epoch-making event. It meant the end, once for all, of the empire which had
served so long as the rearguard of Christian civilization, as the bulwark of
the West against the East. Europe stood aghast at a calamity which she had done
so little to prevent. The Christian powers of the West have been paying dearly,
even to our own time, for their failure to save New Rome from infidel hands.
