



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 with the disputes between the great
historical Churches, had been in possession of statements of the
Greek case, his contempt for both Churches was too great to allow him
to do justice to the questions which divided them, questions which
nevertheless, as they prevented the united action of Europe to resist
the Turkish invasion, were among the most important of the time. His
habit of thought as an eighteenth century theist did not allow him to
attach sufficient weight to the theological aspect of the struggle
between the East and the West. Everything that smelt of the cloister
was hateful. The theological questions themselves were not worth
discussion. The disputants were in his view narrow-minded, ignorant,
and superstitious. The refinements of the definitions of the Double
Procession were useless, trivial, or ridiculous. Religious zeal or
enthusiasm was a thing to be condemned--was the mark of fanaticism and
always mischievous. In this attitude of mind Gibbon was neither better
nor worse than the majority of his philosophical contemporaries. He
differed from them in being able to bequeath to future generations a
work of monumental learning, in which his and their reading of the
progress of Christianity in the Eastern empire was destined to have
a long and deservedly great reputation. His research and eloquence,
his keen sarcasm, his judicial manner, and the powerful influence of
the ‘Decline and Fall’ were employed to discredit Christianity rather
than to try to discover amid the fierce wranglings of theologians over
insoluble problems what was their signification for the history of the
time of which he was treating and in the development of the human mind.
He began with a period in which the emperor is worshipped as Divinity
and traced the establishment of Christianity as a national faith among
Pagan subjects until in a diversified form it became accepted by all;
but he did this without affording us any help to see how the human mind
could accept the first position or what were the movements of thought
which led to the evolution of the questions which agitated men’s minds
in the later period.

The century in which he and his contemporaries lived was for them
one of hostility to Christianity rather than of investigation, the
period of Voltaire, who could only see in Byzantine history ‘a
worthless repertory of declamation and miracles, disgraceful to
the human mind’ rather than of the Continental and English writers
of the modern historical school. Happily, in the twentieth century
those who look upon Christianity with an independence as complete
as that of Gibbon recognise that insight can only be obtained by
sympathetic investigation, that for the right understanding of history
it is essential to put oneself in the place of men who have attached
importance to a religious controversy, to consider their environment
and examine their conduct and motives from their point of view, if we
would comprehend either the causes which have led such controversy
to be regarded as important or the conduct of the controversialists
themselves. The absence in Gibbon of any sympathetic attempt to
understand the controversies which play so large a part in his great
drama of human history renders him as unsatisfactory a guide in regard
to them as a writer of English history during the period of Charles
the First would be who should merely treat with contempt the half
religious, half political questions which divided Englishmen. While the
objection I have suggested to Gibbon’s attitude would apply generally
to his treatment of religious questions, I have only to deal with it in
reference to the period of which I am treating. When writing of this
period Gibbon did not realise that the religious question was nearly
always a political one, and that union with Rome meant subjection
to Rome. But unless it be realised how completely the citizens of
Constantinople and the other great cities of the empire were engrossed
with semi-religious and semi-political questions, no true conception
of the life of the empire can be formed; for these questions were of
interest not merely to Churchmen but to all.

Among the documents brought to light during the last fifty or sixty
years which have contributed to our better knowledge of the siege the
most important are the ‘Diary’ of Nicolo Barbaro and the ‘Life of
Mahomet’ by Critobulus.

Barbaro belonged to a noble Venetian family. He was present in
Constantinople throughout the siege, kept a journal[4] of what he saw
and heard, and, though full of prejudices against Genoese, Greeks, and
Turks, contrives to tell his story in a manner which carries conviction
of its truthfulness. His narrative conveys the impression of an
independent observer who had no object in writing except to relate what
he knew about the siege. While probably written from day to day, the
diary bears internal evidence of having been revised after he had left
the city. Its language is old-fashioned colloquial Venetian and has
often puzzled Italians whom I have called in to my aid.

The original manuscript of the diary was preserved in Venice by members
of the Barbaro family until 1829. After various adventures it came in
1837 into the possession of the Imperial and Royal Marciana Library in
Venice. In 1854 it was entrusted to Enrico Cornet, and was published by
him for the first time in 1856.

Critobulus, the author of the ‘Life of Mahomet the Second,’ was a man
of a different type. Nothing is known of him beyond what is contained
in his Life of Mahomet.[5] He describes himself as ‘Critobulus the
Islander.’ After the capture of Constantinople, when the archons of
Imbros, Lemnos, and Thasos feared that the Turkish admiral would
shortly approach to annex these islands, messengers were sent to
the admiral and succeeded, by offering voluntary submission and by
paying him a large bribe, in avoiding the general pillage which
usually followed a Turkish conquest. Shortly