Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [122]
The greatest atrocity, however, in Christian eyes was the capture and ravishment of Constantinople by Mehmed’s armies on May 28, 1453. The defeat at Varna had greatly diminished Hungarian enthusiasm for a Crusade in the East, and there was no coherent opposition from the West to the young sultan’s investment of the city. In stark contrast to the earlier Muslim sieges of Constantinople over the centuries, the army that assembled in the early spring of 1453 relied not so much on weight of numbers (although it was very large) but upon military professionalism and advanced techniques of war. First, the Turks had armed their twin fortresses on each side of the Bosphorus with powerful guns designed to prevent any relieving force gaining access to Constantinople. Second, at a new cannon factory in Adrianople, huge siege artillery pieces that could destroy the ancient triple walls protecting the Byzantine capital were designed and built. But the imbalance between Muslim power and Christian weakness was apparent in the muster rolls: fewer than 7,000 men defended Constantinople’s fourteen miles of walls, confronting the 80,000 Ottomans gathered outside.
Early in the morning of May 28, after fifty-three days of desperate resistance, the Ottoman janissaries broke through the walls into the city. By custom they were entitled to three days of looting in any city they had taken by storm. At first they killed everyone they found alive. From the Church of St. Mary of the Mongols high above the Golden Horn, a torrent of blood ran down the hill toward the harbor. The soldiers broke into the churches, ripping out the precious objects, raping or killing anyone who caught their fancy. In the afternoon the sultan made his formal entry, and went directly to the Church of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. There he ordered an end to the pillage and destruction and directed that the great church should become the chief mosque of the city. Ducas, in his Historia Turco-Byzantina, records the day:
He [Mehmed] summoned one of his vile priests who ascended the pulpit to call out his foul prayer. The son of iniquity, the forerunner of Antichrist, ascending the holy altar, offered the prayer. Alas, the calamity! Alack, the horrendous deed! Woe is me! What has befallen us? Oh! Oh! What have we witnessed? An infidel Turk, standing on the holy altar in whose foundation the relics of Apostles and Martyrs have been deposited! Shudder, O sun! Where is the Lamb of God, and where is the Son and Logos of the Father Who is sacrificed thereon, and eaten, and never consumed?
Truly we have been reckoned as frauds! Our worship has been reckoned as nothing by the nations. Because of our sins the temple [Hagia Sophia] which was rebuilt in the name of the Wisdom of the Logos of God, and is called the Temple of the Holy Trinity, and Great Church and New Sion, today has become an altar of barbarians, and has been named and has become the House of Muhammad. Just is Thy judgement, O Lord.35
The same sense of violation fills the letter written by the Byzantine scholar, and later cardinal, Bessarion to the doge of Venice two months after the fall of the city.
Sacked by the most inhuman barbarians and the most savage enemies of the Christian faith, by the fiercest of wild beasts. The public treasure has been consumed, private wealth has been destroyed, the temples have been stripped of gold, silver, jewels, the relics of the saints, and other most precious ornaments. Men have been butchered like cattle, women abducted, virgins ravished, and children snatched from the arms of their parents.36
However, the abominations of the Turks had a precursor. The capture of Constantinople