



Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)







  THE DESTRUCTION
  OF
  THE GREEK EMPIRE




  The Destruction of the Greek
  Empire and the Story of the
  Capture of Constantinople by
  the Turks


  BY

  EDWIN PEARS, LL.B.

  Knight of the Greek Order of the Saviour and Commander of
  the Bulgarian Order of Merit
  Author of ‘The Fall of Constantinople: being the
  Story of the Fourth Crusade’


  _WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS_


  LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
  39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
  NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
  1903


  All rights reserved




PREFACE


My object in writing this book is to give an account of the capture
of Constantinople and the destruction of the Greek empire. In order
to make the story intelligible and to explain its significance I
have given a summary of the history of the empire between the Latin
conquest in 1204 and the capture of the city in 1453, and have traced
the progress during the same period of the race which succeeded in
destroying the empire and in replacing the Greeks as the possessors of
New Rome.

It may be objected that the task which I have set before me has already
been accomplished by Gibbon, and that, as his chapter on the last siege
of the city is carefully compiled and written with a brilliancy of
style which he has nowhere surpassed, there is no need for any further
study of the subject. My answer is twofold: first, that an important
mass of new material is now at the disposal of any one who wishes to
retell the story, and second, that Gibbon told it with a bias which
makes it desirable that it should be retold.

The historian of the ‘Decline and Fall’ had less than half the material
before him which is now available, and the story of the siege deserves
telling with more accuracy and completeness than either the authorities
available to him or the scope of his monumental work permitted. It is
true that Professor J. B. Bury, the latest editor of Gibbon, has, by
the aid of scholarly notes and of careful research, enabled the reader
to become possessed of many of the details regarding the siege which
have recently become known, but he would be the first to admit that
there is ample room for a fuller history of the siege than that given
in the ‘Decline and Fall’ even with the aid of his valuable notes.[1]
Gibbon himself regretted the poverty of his materials and especially
that he had not been able to obtain any Turkish accounts of the
siege.[2] The only eye-witnesses whose narratives were before him were
Phrantzes, Archbishop Leonard, and Cardinal Isidore. If we add to their
narratives the accounts given by Ducas and Chalcondylas together with
what Gibbon himself calls ‘short hints of Cantemir and Leunclavius,’ we
have substantially all the sources of information which were available
when the ‘Decline and Fall’ was written.

The new sources of information regarding the siege brought to light
since Gibbon’s day enable us to gain a much more complete view of that
event and of the character of its principal actors than was possible
at the time when he wrote. Several Continental writers have taken
advantage of some at least of the new stores of information to rewrite
its story,[3] but I may be allowed to claim the good fortune of being
the first Englishman who has even attempted to write a narrative of
that event with the whole or even with any considerable portion of the
new material before him.

Before, however, proceeding to indicate what the new sources of
information are, I must say something regarding the second reason I
have assigned why those interested in the account of an event which
marks the end of an epoch of great traditions and of a civilisation on
ancient rather than on modern lines should not remain satisfied with
Gibbon’s account of it. Though he claimed to examine the authorities
before him with philosophical impartiality, the writers known to him
belonged to the Roman Church, and he was influenced unconsciously by
their representations. These writers wrote under the influence of the
most bitter theological controversies. They are imbued with a spirit
of rancour towards those Greeks (that is, towards the great majority
of the population) who had not accepted the Union with the Church of
Rome which had been decreed at Florence. Their testimony throughout
their narratives is for the most part that of violent partisans. But
even if Gibbon, when dealing