Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor. Robert Walsh
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he had left at the mouth of the Danube might follow him. These passes the Greeks now seized, and cut off the connexion between the two divisions of his army. Finding himself sorely pressed and in imminent danger, he made a precipitate retreat, and with loss and difficulty reached the sea-shore, where he again attempted to establish himself. But he was compelled to abandon this position also, and, in attempting to escape by sea, became entangled in masses of ice, and unable to reach the shore. Here the greater part of his barbarous hordes miserably perished, but the remnant that escaped brought back with them a precious benefit, which compensated for all their losses. Olga, the mother of Swatislas, had been baptized at Constantinople, some time before, by the Greek name of Helena. The first seed of the Gospel was thus sown, and the invaders, when they entered the country, were prepared to adopt the religion of the people they came amongst. They had been generally baptized there, and those who escaped brought home with them the faith of the Greeks. The Russians, thus become members of the Greek church, adopted its discipline and doctrines,—to which they still adhere.
But an invasion was now meditated from a quarter, whence, of all others, it was least expected, and the Christians of the East were attacked by their fellow Christians of the West. The Crusaders were called to arms by a warning which they deemed the voice of God, and they set out from their own homes to obey it. The sufferings they brought upon themselves by their ignorance and presumption, the ruin they inflicted upon others by their vices and passions, could not repress the ardour of these infatuated fanatics. Three times had new swarms set out from Europe, and the miserable remnants returned utterly defeated, after desolating the country of friend and foe through which they passed. The fourth expedition inflicted misery and destruction on the Christian city of Constantinople. After Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard had excited and sent forth a countless rabble to the shores of Palestine, Fulk, another illiterate preacher, issued from his cell at Neuilly, in France, and became an itinerant missionary of the Cross. He commenced, as usual, by performing miracles, and the fame of his sanctity and superhuman power gave him all the influence he could wish in a barbarous and superstitious age; so he excited a fourth crusade against the Infidels, who had, by their presence, desecrated the holy sepulchre. The former soldiers of the Cross had suffered so much by their insane expeditions by land, that they now resolved to undertake one by sea; and for that purpose despatched deputies to the Venetians and the maritime states of Italy, to supply them with a convoy: their request was granted, and a fleet accordingly prepared.
Constantinople had hitherto escaped these marauders; they had passed its walls without inflicting injury, but an occasion now occurred which gave them a pretext for entering it. The emperor Alexius had deposed, and put out the eyes of his brother Isaak, whom he kept in prison, and his nephew Alexius, the heir to the throne, was a fugitive in the west of Europe. He thought it a good opportunity to avail himself of foreign assistance, and he applied to the leaders of the crusade to aid his cause. They affected to say, that the recovery of the lime and stone of the holy sepulchre was too important an object to be postponed for one of justice and humanity; but, tempted by large pecuniary offers, and calculating on the pretext of taking possession of the great city, avarice and ambition soon silenced the claims of superstitious piety. Dandolo was then doge of Venice; he was totally blind, yet he embarked with the crusaders. Their immense fleets literally covered the narrow waters of the Adriatic, and they arrived in safety at Chalcedon, under the convoy of the skilful mariners that now conducted them. They mounted to the heights of Scutari, and from thence contemplated, with longing eyes, the wealth and splendour of the magnificent city on the opposite shore, spread out on the seven hills before them.
Constantinople was at this time the emporium of every thing that was grand and beautiful in the arts, science, and literature of the world. The city contained, it is said, two millions of inhabitants, and was adorned with the noblest specimens of statuary and architecture, either the productions of its own artists, or the spoils of Egypt and other lands.
The usurper, Alexius, arrogant in safety, but abject in danger, after a feeble resistance, fled from the city with such treasure as he could hastily collect, and the feeble Isaak was taken from the prison in which he had been immured. It was a singular and affecting sight, to behold the blind and venerable doge of Venice leading to the throne the equally blind and venerable emperor of Constantinople.
It was now that the real character of the crusaders developed itself. They claimed the promised reward for this act of justice and humanity; but it was in vain the young Alexius attempted to raise the sum he proposed to pay: the present state of his empire rendered it impossible; so his Christian guests were glad to avail themselves of his inability, and pay themselves. In the language of the historian, “their rude minds, insensible to the fine arts, were astonished at the magnificent scenery; and the poverty of their native towns, enhanced the splendour and richness of this great metropolis of Christendom;” they longed, therefore, for the pretext and opportunity of its pillage. A rude but vigorous Greek, named Mourzoufle, who saw their design, assisted by his countrymen, deposed the weak monarch and his son, who was now associated with him, and their deaths soon followed. With his iron mace, Mourzoufle stood the defender of Constantinople against the rapacity of the crusaders, and attempted to burn their galleys. He was, however, repulsed; and, after various struggles, the imperial city, the head of the Christian world, was taken by storm, and given up to plunder, by the pious pilgrims of the Cross, and its fierce defender was dragged to the summit of the pillar of Theodosius, and from thence cast down and dashed to pieces.
The scenes of carnage that followed are revolting to humanity. The Roman pontiff himself, who had granted a plenary indulgence to all who engaged in the expedition, was compelled to denounce their brutality. He accused them of “sparing neither age nor sex, nor religious profession, of the allies they came to assist; deeds of darkness were perpetrated in the open day; noble matrons and holy nuns suffered insult in the Catholic camp.” As an instance of individual suffering, an imperial senator, Nicetas, an eye-witness, details what he himself endured. His palace being reduced to ashes, he fled for refuge to an obscure house in the suburbs of the town. Here he concealed himself, guarded by a friendly Venetian in disguise, till an opportunity occurred of saving his own life, and the chastity of his daughter, from the ferocious crusaders who were pillaging the city. On a winter’s night, with his wife and tender child, carrying all they possessed on their shoulders, they fled for life; and, in order to disguise their rank and features, smeared their clothes and faces with mud; nor could they rest a moment, from their pursuers, till they reached a distance of forty miles from the capital. On their road, they overtook the venerable Greek patriarch, the head of the Christian church in the East, flying also for his life, mounted on an ass, and almost naked. Nicetas afterwards lived to instruct and inform the world, by his important history of these events.
Meantime the captors glutted, without restraint, every passion. They burst into the church of Santa Sophia, and other sacred edifices, which they defiled in the most wanton manner. They converted sacred chalices into drinking-cups, and trampled under foot the most venerable objects of Christian worship. In the cathedral, the veil of the sanctuary was torn to pieces for the sake of the fringe, and the finest monuments of pious art broken up for their material. It would be too revolting to detail all the particulars of these impious outrages; let one suffice. They placed on the throne of the patriarch a harlot, who sang and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Oriental Christian worship.
In those excesses it was that this noble city suffered its first dilapidation. The monuments of ancient art, collected from all parts of the world, were defaced and broken to pieces, not simply from a bigoted rage against any superstition different from their own, but from a crusade of ignorance against whatever bore the stamp of literature and science. A contemporary writer details particular specimens of art that were wantonly broken and destroyed; and the present denuded state of the city attests that the deeds of those barbarians were as destructive as those of the equally ignorant Turks. Their utter contempt for learning was displayed in various ways: in riding through the streets, they clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen, and displayed on them pens, ink, and paper, in ridicule of the people who used such worthless things. It was therefore no exaggeration when the Greeks called them Αγραμματοι και αναλφαβετοι Βαρβαροι, “Barbarians who could neither read nor write, who did not even know their alphabet.”
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