Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1877 — Turkish Capture of Constantinople. [ARTICLE]

Turkish Capture of Constantinople.

For nearly 425 years Constantinople has remained undisturbed in the possession of the Turks. On May 29, 1458 the city was then the capital of the Byzantine Empire —it was stormed by the Turks, the first Byzantine Emperor, Constantine 111., losing his life in the defense. The taking of the city is thus powerfully described by Richard Knowles in his history of the Turks, published in 1603, and a second edition in 1610: A little before day the Turks approached the walls and began the assault, where shot and stones were delivered upon them from the walls as thick as hail, whereof little fell in vain, by reason of the multitude of the Turks, who, pressing fast unto the walls, could not see in the dark how to defend them-, selves, but were, without number, wounded or plain; but these were of the common or worse soldiers, of whom the Turkish King made no more reckoning than to abate the first force of the defendants. Upon the first appearance of ihe day Mohammed gave the sign appointed for the general assault, whereupon the city was in a moment and at one instant, on every side, most furiously assaulted by the Turks; for Mohammed, the more to distress the defendants, and the better to see the forwardness of the soldiers, had before appointed which part of tlie city every Colonel with his regiment should assail, which they valiantly performed, delivering their arrows and shot upon the defendants so thick that the light of day was therewith darkened; others, in the meantime, courageously mounting the scaling-ladders ana coming even to handistrokes with the defendants upon the wall, where the foremost were for the most part violently borne forward bv them which followed after. On the other side, die Christians, with no less courage, withstood the Turkish fury, beating them down with great stones and weighty pieces of timber, and so overwhelmed them with shot, darts and arrows, and other hurtful devices from above, that the Turke, dismayed with the terror thereof, were ready to retire. Mohammed, seeing the great slaughter and discomfiture of bis men, sent in fresh supplies of his janissaries and best men of war, whom he lad for that purpose reserved as his last hope and refuge; by whose coming on his fainting soldiers were again encoiiraged, and the terrible assault began afresh. At which time the barbarous King ceased not to use all possible means to maintain the assault; by name calling upon this and that Captain, promising unto some whom he saw forward golden mountains, and unto others in whom he saw any sign of cowardice threatening most terrible death; by which means the assault became most dreadful death there raging in the midst of many thousands. And albeit that the Turks lay dead by heaps upon the around, yet other fresh men pressed on still in their places over the.r dead bodies, and with diverse event either slew or were slain by theii enemies. In this so terrible a conflict it chanced Justin ianus, the General, to be wounded in the arm, who, losing much blood, cowardly withdrew himseif from the place of hia charge, not leaving any to supply his room, and so got into the city by the gate called Ro nana, which he had cairned to be opened in the inner wall; pretending the cause of his departure to be for the binding up of his wound, but being, indeed, a man now altogether discouraged. The soldiers there present, dismayed with the departure of their General, and sure charged by the janissaries, forsook their stations and in haste fled to the same gate whereby Justinian us was entered; with the sight whereof the other soldiers, dismayed, ran thither by heaps also. But, whilst they violently strive together to get in st once, they eo wedged one another in the entranee of the gate that few of so great * multitude get In; in which so great a press and confoaion of minds 800 persona were there by them that followed trodden under foot or thrust to death.

The Emperor himself, for safeguard of hb life, flying with the rest io that pre.*, as a man not regarded, miserably ended hb days, together with the Greek Empire. Hb dead, body, was shortly after found by the Tuiks among the tdifn, and the Turkish tyrant,’ by whose commandment it was afterward thrust upon the point of a lance, and, in great derision, the city. The Turks, encouraged with the fight wall, crying “Victory;” and by tho breach entered as if it had been a great flood, which, having once found a breach in the bank, overflows, and beareth down all before it; so the Turks, when they had won the outer waft, entered the city by the same gate that was opened for Jmtinianus, and by a breach which they had before made with their great artillery, and without mercy cutting in pieces ail that came in their way, without further resistance became lorus of that 'most famous and imperial city. la thb fury of the barbarians perished many thousands of men, women and children, without respect of age, sex or condition. Many, lor safeguard of their Hves, fled into the Temple of Sophia, where they were all, without pity, slain. The rich and beautiful ornamentsand jewels of that most sumptuous and magnificent church—the stately building of Constantine, the Emperor—were, in the turning of a hand, plucked down and carried away by the Turks; and the church itself, built for God to bo honored in, for the present converted into a stable for their hones; the image of the crucifix was also by them* taken down, and a Turk’s cap put upon the head thereof, and so set up ana shot at with their arrows, and afterward, in great derision carried about in ff.eir camp, as it had been in procession, *ith drums playing before it, railing and spitting at it, ana calling it the God of the Christian, which I note not so much done in contempt of the image as in despite of Christ and the Christian religion.— N. F. Graphic.