SERAGLIO POINT itself, or rather the extreme end of it at least, is now open to the sea. It was not always so, and is only safe now that long-range guns have completely revolutionized the methods of defence.
Where our travellers alighted was a wall flanked by strong towers, 188 in all, says Bondelmontius; this extended all along the coast by the Sea of Marmora, until it joined the angle where the land-walls that cut right across the peninsula commence. Remains, and fine remains, of their sea-wall are still here, at one place dipping their stout foundations into the sea, at others further inland on spots which were in former times the harbour.
No doubt the first wall here was built by Byzas, but it has vanished and made room for the ramparts which Constantine the Great erected to defend his new capital. What yet remains is full of interest and has a beauty of its own.
When looking towards the city from Modar or Kadikeui on the Asiatic side, the city seems to arise from out a girdle of embattled walls, to lose itself in a forest of slender minarets. On approaching these walls their interest increases, for here are arches built up and strange inscriptions, gateways that each contribute many pages to history. Theodosius II and his prÆfect Constantius have here left records of their rule; the Emperor Theophilus is mentioned in the same manner as the restorer of the walls, and so is the share that Emperor Isaac Angelus contributed to their repair.
No doubt there was much need of walls to guard the ever-extending sea-front of the city along the shore of the Sea of Marmora; for though the Greeks, and after them the Turks, were generally able to forestall an attack by striking first, this policy in the degenerate times of the Empire was not always practicable.
Still the sea-walls were not exposed to the assaults of an enemy to such an extent as were the landward ones; their worst enemy was the sea in its destructive phases, and other elements aided in rendering insecure man’s tenure of this precious slip of land.
The traveller must remember the first sight of Constantine’s glorious city; he approached it at high noon and saw it melting in a golden haze rising out of tranquil waters, which mirrored faithfully the colour of the sky, while many other colours flamed and fleeted like sparkling diamonds. Yet as we approached Seraglio Point the strength of the current became evident, the current against which those heavy-built sailing craft, aided by their oars, battled so manfully, while it bore other small craft swiftly out into the Sea of Marmora. This current with its constant wear and tear put a severe strain on the foundations of the seaward walls upon Seraglio Point. The traveller’s first view was in the fairest of fair weather; but in the winter, when the piercing icy gale tears down through the narrow channel of the Bosphorus, ploughing up its waters to dash them against the facings of the promontory, another side of the picture is revealed, and helps to account for the constant repairs that were needed to keep the seaward ramparts in a proper state of defence. Not only those storms that scourge the racing billows to the charge, but other forces have helped to frustrate man’s efforts to shelter himself from fierce foemen and fiercer elements.
For in 447 an earthquake visited this fair spot and wreaked much havoc among the stout walls and stouter towers that Constantine constructed. Again, some three centuries later, a most severe winter held all that Eastern neighbourhood in an iron grip. According to Theophanes, the Black Sea along the northern and western shores was frozen to a distance of one hundred miles from land, and that to a depth of sixty feet. Upon this foundation a huge mass of snow some forty-five feet in height had gathered. With the softer breath of spring the ice broke up, and floating on the swift currents of the Bosphorus came the floes in such numbers that they blocked up the narrower passages and formed a floating barricade across the channel from Scutari to Galata. When this mass in its turn was loosened and drifted south, huge icebergs crashed against the bulwarks, so high that they overtopped the towers and ramparts of the sea-wall, so great that their weight and impetus crushed all that opposed their progress. And thus the walls along the apex of the promontory had to be entirely reconstructed by Michael II, who commenced the work, and his son Theophilus, who completed it.
Author and Artist have discussed most seriously how best to show the traveller these walls along the Sea of Marmora, for there is much to be seen. The Artist loves the view from across the Sea of Marmora seen at sunrise, of the city swimming in a sea of pearly grey; or at sunset, purple against a glowing mass of orange, red and green, colours which are all truthfully reflected in the placid waters. And the centre of the composition is the Seraglio lighthouse. Close behind it rise battlemented walls and towers, and then in tiers of little red roofs above the grey wooden houses, among trees of all kinds, while everywhere the immortal cypress strives after the minarets that stand as sentinels to the many mosques which crown the heights of the city.
Here, too, on that tranquil sheet of water, pages of history have been unrolled, filled up, and set aside for the guidance of future generations. For though the seaward walls were strong and bravely manned, though they were further guarded by a current which could dash an enemy’s fleet to atoms on the strong surface of the defences, or carry it harmless out to sea again, many a shipload of adventurous spirits has tried conclusions with the men who held them and the elements which guarded the approaches with equal jealousy.
Perhaps the first serious attempt upon the seaward walls was made by those scourges of the Mediterranean, the Saracens. It was on this occasion that mention is first made of the use of a chain to close the entrance of a harbour against an enemy. It was stretched across the Golden Horn, from a tower near the apex of the promontory to one upon the northern bank.
Those were stirring times, when the sons of Arabia Felix, the first disciples of the Prophet, spread out over all the Mediterranean and the neighbouring countries. They conquered in breathless advance Egypt and all north of Africa, and held their own still in its most western region. They invaded Persia, they overflowed into Spain, overthrew the Gothic monarchy, and remained, despite the heroic efforts of Charlemagne and his Paladins. Syria and the Holy Places were theirs, and they snatched what was best and most worth having among the islands of the Mediterranean. What wonder, then, that they turned their eager, flashing eyes towards Constantinople? As we stand gazing at the beautiful city that rises proudly out of a tranquil sea, the waters become troubled, and dark-blue and iron-grey storm-clouds gather in the south. They race up from the Dardanelles, and hundreds of rakish-looking craft, rigged as those that the traveller may see any day off the north coast of Africa, fly before the wind. The rain falls in torrents, and then suddenly all is still again, the sea is quiet, and the rearguard of the tempest sweeps away up the Bosphorus, to leave the sun in possession of its former battlefield. Even so came the invincible navies of Egypt and Syria, carrying the swarthy sons of Arabia towards the treasures they descried within the walls of Constantine’s Imperial City. And up it comes, this storm-cloud, over a smooth sea, and borne on a gentle breeze like a moving forest overshadowing the surface of the strait. Others of their fierce race and fiercer faith were arrayed before the land-walls; and no one of the invaders doubted that any bulwarks, however strong, however well defended, could resist the tide of passionate bravery that was about to break over the devoted city.
But the time was not yet come. Leo III the Isaurian, a man risen from the people to the Imperial Purple through his ability and valour, knew how to defend his own. He had the chain that guarded the entrance to the harbour lowered, and, while the enemy hesitated as to which course to adopt, Greek fireships sailed amongst them carrying destruction as to the Armada. This, and the tempests that arose, so seriously damaged the hitherto invincible fleet that only a few galleys were spared to return to Alexandria and to relate the tale of their moving misadventures.
Though peace was never the lot of the Eastern Empire for any protracted period, it was more than a century later that an unfriendly keel furrowed the waters of the Sea of Marmora. And this time the trouble came from within. Michael II the Stammerer had gained the throne when Leo V the Armenian was slain at the foot of the altar grasping a weighty cross in his hand. Thomas contested Michael’s claim and sailed towards the city to enforce his own, but a storm arose and compelled him to withdraw. So Thomas and his galleys are wafted from the scene to be followed shortly afterwards by other hardier adventurers. They came down from the Black Sea, a black cloud their canopy, on black waters that turned to silver where the prows of their vessels cleared a path. Fierce, reckless foes these, who in 865 first made acquaintance with the Eastern Gate of Europe, a goal that for ten centuries represented the sum of their ambition. Fair men of big stature with high cheek-bones, speaking a barbarous language, they sped down on the wings of a fierce gale towards the Golden Horn. But here the tempest gained the mastery, and this the first Russian fleet to disturb the peace of Constantinople perished in the storm.
Again a visionary host crowds the further banks with their glittering arms and pennants waving overhead; all the chivalry of the West is here assembled. Their numbers are so great that the Byzantine agents gave up the task of counting them. They came from all the West: from Rome to Britain, from Poland and Bohemia and all Germany under the banner of Conrad the Kaiser. Louis of France too, and his nobles, swelled this throng, who, with the cross emblazoned on their shields and embroidered on their garments, set out upon this conquest of the Holy Land. We see them cross the waters, while hope beats high in their unconquered hearts, and would rather draw a veil over the return of the mere remnant of survivors.
Then later on came others in larger vessels, from the South: Genoese, experienced travellers and determined fighters; also Venetians, the only race of sea-dogs that ever succeeded in an attempt on these sea-walls. A striking scene this. In double line the ships and lighter galleys of the Venetians bore down upon the walls. Soldiers leapt from the swifter sailing craft on to shore and planted scaling-ladders against the walls. In the meantime the heavier ships filled up the gaps with their high poop-decks and turrets, as platforms for those military engines then in use, and from them drawbridges were lowered to the summit of the wall. On the prow of his galley stood Dandolo, the venerable Doge, in full armour. He was the first warrior on the shore. The standard of St. Mark waved from the ramparts and twenty-five of the towers were speedily occupied, the Greeks being driven by fire from the adjacent quarters. But Dandolo decided to forego the advantage thus gained in order to hasten to the aid of his Latin comrades, whose small and exhausted bands were in sore straits among the superior numbers of the Greeks. Nevertheless, their firm aspect awed the coward Emperor Alexius. But he collected a treasure of 10,000 pounds of gold, and basely deserting his wife and people crept into a barque and stole through the Bosphorus and sought safety in an obscure Thracian harbour.
Two mighty heroes of history and Romance, both known as Barbarossa, add yet more colour to the vivid pageant that plays over these placid waters. For further to the south, where the Sea of Marmora narrows into the Channel of the Dardanelles, the Redbeard Frederick, Conrad’s son and successor to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, if not the greatest, at least the best known in the romantic story of the house of Hohenstauffen, crossed into Asia to find, after many deeds of derring do, his watery grave in a small Cilician torrent. There were many who believed he was not dead, but only slumbering deep among the ruins of Kyffhausen—his long red beard grown through the table on which his hand supports his head, the while he dreams even as he has dreamt through all the troublous times that visited Germany. Dreamt while the last scion of his house perished; dreamt while a war of thirty years, provoked like all the cruelest wars by religious differences, devastated the fair fields of Germany and laid waste many a walled city; dreamt while the march of the first Napoleon’s armies made Europe tremble—only to awake when all Germany arose and marched towards the Rhine and into the Empire of the third Napoleon, and returning thence to build up a new and stronger empire.
The next to bear the epithet of Barbarossa lived his eventful life when Francis I was King of France and Charles V King of Spain, Naples and the Netherlands, and by election German Emperor, ruled over many states and provinces of the old world and the new.
Solyman I the Great was Sultan and Chief, and reigned at Constantinople, extending the empire of the Crescent by land far into Western Europe, while Barbarossa carried the victorious symbol everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea. His name was Khairedden Pasha, one of four brothers who were trained to merchandise with its usual concomitant piracy, and amassed great wealth in these pursuits. Barbarossa and his brother Urudsh sailed at first under the flag of the Tunisian Sultan but paid tribute to Solyman, and eventually transferred to him their allegiance. They conquered Temnes, Algiers, and all the Barbary coast, which they held as fief of the Porte. All his ventures seemed to be successful. A strong fleet was sent against him under command of Genoa’s great admiral, Doria, by Charles V, but Barbarossa defied him. A stately pageant passed down the Sea of Marmora in 1534. Barbarossa and his fleet of eighty-four vessels, with which he scoured the Mediterranean Sea, ravaged the coasts of Italy, Minorca and Spain, and beat the combined fleets of the Emperor, the Pope, and Venice off Prevesa. After many years of successful marauding we see the Turkish fleet return, still under command of their veteran admiral, Barbarossa, whose beard was turning white. A peaceful end in Constantinople was his, and now the body that held that turbulent spirit rests worthily enshrined by the shore of the Bosphorus.
With the passing of Barbarossa a new power first makes its appearance under the walls of old Byzantium, its colours the white ensign emblazoned with St. George’s blood-red cross. Tight-built English ships, some of which may possibly have borne their brave part in the defeat of Spain’s great Armada, are next seen sailing smoothly upon the waters of the inland sea. They bring messages from Elizabeth, Queen of England, to Amurath II, Sultan and Chief.
Again, a century later, when Ibrahim, an evil ruler, reigned over the Turkish Empire, and excesses of all kinds went unpunished, some English ships lying in the Bosphorus were plundered. It was the custom then in Turkey, when any one had received an injury from a minister or official, for him to put fire on his head and run to the palace. Stout Sir Thomas Bentinck, the English Ambassador—redress for the outrage to English ships having been refused—brought them up from Galata and anchored them immediately before the windows of the Imperial Palace. Adapting the custom we have mentioned, he lighted fires on every yard-arm. No sooner was this seen on shore than the Vizier hastened to the Ambassador, paid him a large sum of money, and engaging to pay the surplus of the sum demanded, besought him to extinguish the warning blaze.
But now, at the bidding of the Author, we move landwards again. As we approach, bearing somewhat to the south of the Seraglio lighthouse, the buildings above us stand out more clearly. Constantine’s Church, now Mosque of St. Sophia, looms over all the attendant minarets, relieving the imposing mass of masonry of its too heavy aspect. Near by the Mosque of St. Irene, also of Constantine’s building. In this mosque is still kept the chain that barred the Golden Horn to the Turks during the last siege. A long yellow building stands out near St. Sophia, and shows a pillared front to the smooth waters of the Marmora. This is now the Turkish Parliament, though in a short time that young and vigorous assembly is to transfer its deliberations to one of the more gorgeous palaces of the Bosphorus. Fittingly enough it stands almost on the site of the Senate of Roman, Grecian and Byzantine empire. Here centred much of the life of the old City of Constantine, hard by is the Hippodrome which that emperor laid out. It was here that the city’s pleasure-seeking denizens met to enjoy the games, the chariot-races, and other pastimes peculiar to that age. What fortunes must have been wagered or dissipated by a single crashing blow of the cÆstus, or by one slip of the runner as he left the starting-line! How many a delicate girl must have held her hands in horror to her eyes, when under the brazen tripod fell the charioteer who had swerved too closely to the corner, and drawn down the other competitors with him in his ruin. Here, also, in later times of trouble or internal strife the citizens would meet and clamour to be taken to the palace, there to acclaim a heroic emperor, or abuse an unpopular leader. How fickle and ill-balanced that turbulent cosmopolitan crowd must have been, we realize from the curious history of Justinian.
Justinian, bearing the name of a triumphant lawgiver, entered into the heritage of the Roman world in 685. He was a lad of strong passions and feeble intellect. He ruled with a cruelty gross even for that age and place, through the hands of his favourite ministers, a eunuch and a monk, by whose aid he succeeded for ten years in braving the growing hatred of his subjects. A sudden freak, rather than any sense of the justice he habitually outraged, induced the emperor to liberate Leontius, a general of high repute, who, with some of the city’s noblest and most deserving men, had suffered imprisonment for above three years. Leontius was promoted to be Governor of Greece. A successful conspiracy was headed by him, the prisons were forced open, and an excited populace swarmed to the Church of St. Sophia, where the Patriarch, taking as text for his sermon, “This is the day of the Lord,” influenced the passions of the multitude. They crowded into the Hippodrome, Justinian was dragged before the insurgent judges, who clamoured for his immediate death. But Leontius, already clothed in the Purple, was merciful, and spared the life of his benefactor’s son, the scion of so many emperors, and, slightly mutilated about the face, the deposed sovereign was banished to the Crimea. Here he abode, and watched events of which the news trickled through but sparingly. News of another revolution arrived, in which Leontius fell from power a mutilated victim, to make room for Apsimar, who henceforth called himself Tiberius. Meanwhile Justinian had contracted an alliance with the Khan of the Chazars by marrying that chief’s sister, Theodora. But the Khan proved venal, and bribed by the gold of Constantinople sought to bring about Justinian’s death. In vain, for Theodora’s conjugal love frustrated this design, and Justinian with his own hands strangled the two emissaries of the Khan. He then sent Theodora back to her brother. Thereupon Justinian sailed away, and with the aid of the Bulgarians laid siege to his own city, which having tired of their present ruler admitted him to the throne again.
So we find Justinian in the Hippodrome surrounded by his people. The two usurpers, Leontius and Apsimar, were dragged one from his prison, the other from his palace, and cast prostrate and in fetters before the throne, where Justinian sat and watched the chariot-race, a foot on the neck of each vanquished rival. The fickle people meanwhile shouted in the words of the psalmist, “Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion and the dragon shalt thou set thy foot.” Even in those early days the use of a well-known text, taken conveniently apart from its context, was a political weapon not to be despised.
When the games were over Leontius and Apsimar were taken down to the Kynegion, the place of execution near the Church of St. George of Mangana, and there Justinian requited the ill-judged clemency of his former conqueror. But his own capricious cruelty so disgusted the troops he had dispatched to carry out the sentence of those on whom the Emperor had sworn to be avenged, that they revolted, and invested Bardanes with the Imperial Purple. Destitute of friends, and deserted by his Barbarian guard, there was none to ward off the stroke of the assassin, and by it Justinian, along with his innocent son, Tiberius, perished, and thus ended the line of Heraclius.
The Palace of Hormisdas or Justinian. This place is full of the memories of dark and strange events, it is the Palace of Justinian.
The Palace of Hormisdas or Justinian.
This place is full of the memories of dark and strange events, it is the Palace of Justinian.
