Constantinople: A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
CONSTANTINOPLE UNDER JUSTINIAN.
OME time In the second quarter of the first century there were born, in an obscure village—now the city of Sophia—in Bulgaria, three boys of peasant origin. They grew up to be strong, active, and well-proportioned lads, and, like many of their fellows, they became discontented with their village and its surroundings, and marched off together to Constantinople, where they were enrolled in the emperor's guard. All these rose in the service: to one of them was reserved the highest point of dignity, the imperial crown itself. This favourite of fortune, named Justin, was sixty-eight years of age and captain of the guard when the death of Anastasius left the throne vacant. An intriguing eunuch of the court, Amantius by name, proposed to effect the proclamation of a protégé of his own by bribing the guard. He made overtures to Justin, who listened, took the money, bribed the guard, and—caused his own election.
He was profoundly ignorant; he knew mankind as a soldier who has spent his whole life in camp might be expected to know his fellow-creatures; he was without any experience of finance, administration, or legal procedure. Yet he governed well, because he had prudence and exercised discretion in the appointment of his officers. His reign is chiefly remarkable because it led to the succession of his more illustrious nephew Justinian, like himself the son of a peasant.
No name in Byzantine history has acquired more general renown than that of Justinian, yet his qualities appear to have been singularly mediocre. The great things that were done for him rather than by him have illustrated his reign, and given it the splendour which belongs to that of a strong emperor. Under him Belisarius reduced the Vandals, added Africa to the empire, seized Italy, raised the siege of Rome, and rescued Constantinople from the Bulgarians. Under him Narses reduced the Goths, defeated the Franks and Alemanni, and governed Italy as exarch. Under Justinian, too, the capital was enriched by the great church of St. Sophia, not to mention five and twenty others; the Byzantine palace was repaired, that of the Heræum erected, and the long walls of Anastasius were rebuilt. And it was under Justinian that the great Corpus of Jurisprudence was arranged and published.
The first act of Justinian, in commencing his long reign of nearly thirty-nine years, was to raise to the throne beside him a woman whose character had been notorious, whose birth was humble, and whose disposition was cruel to ferocity. Theodora was the daughter of a Cyprian named Acacius, who had the charge of the bears at Constantinople. The death of the father left his three daughters destitute. Theodora, the second, became a pantomimist. What else she became may be read in the Secret History of Procopius. Suffice it to say that, unless the historian lies, no more abandoned woman ever stood among the ranks of those who live as the servants and ministers of sin. This woman, deserted by her lover at Alexandria, and reduced to the most abject distress, found her way back to her native city, and there—perhaps repentant, though that is doubtful—earned for a time, and until she attracted the attention of the Patrician Justinian, a precarious living as a sempstress. Like Madame du Barry, Madame de Pompadour, and so many other royal mistresses, she was above all a clever woman. She knew how to fix and retain the affections of her imperial lover. She made him pass a law, under the name of his uncle—for Justin was not dead—by which the old prohibition of marriage between a senator and a woman who had been dishonoured by a criminal, a servile, or a theatrical profession, was removed. And when his uncle died, the new emperor made Theodora empress of the East. In all the annals of self-made women, no parallel success is recorded. Even the Du Barry was never queen of France.
She became in power a woman as cruel as when in obscurity she had been worthless. She loved to retire to the privacy of a palace on the shores of the Propontis, where she could receive, in whatever mood was most congenial at the moment, the greatest personages of the state; where she had the satisfaction of feeling that, in the dungeons beneath her feet, languished the miserable victims of her revenge; where she could receive her spies, who brought her information of every idle word that prince or bourgeois of the capital uttered concerning herself; where she could receive her victims, gloat over their sufferings by scourge or torture, blind their children, confiscate their property, destroy their whole family; and where she could tell her executioners to do her bidding, "or, by Him who liveth for ever, your skin shall be flayed from your body."
An accursed woman. And yet a woman who did good things. While she mutilated, tortured, and imprisoned, she founded an asylum for fallen women, in which she ought herself to have been imprisoned. A brave woman, too. When her husband trembled before the rage of a mob, it was Theodora who armed him with courage. She was proud, avaricious, cruel, relentless, but she was strong.
One of the most singular stories in the chronicles of the city is that of the sedition which imperilled Justinian's throne in the fifth year of his reign.
The races in the circus were originally contested by rival charioteers, who wore red and white colours. To these were afterwards added blue and green. These later colours absorbed the first two in Constantinople. The people naturally took opposite sides at the circus, and then confusing their partisanship in the games with their sides in politics, gradually joined one or other of the two great factions which perpetually troubled and menaced the tranquillity of the city, the green and the blue—one hears nothing more of red and white. Differences in this city of controversy meant religious differences; and a dispute over a theological point could only be carried on by means of fights, murders, and assassinations. So that, when the greens carried their zeal to so great a height as to bring daggers into the hippodrome, and there murder 3,000 of the blues, it was felt by their own party that so strong a step was praiseworthy from a religious point of view: by the other side it was felt that this exhibition of zealous faith must be met by equal earnestness when an opportunity should come. Justinian favoured the blues. They were the orthodox party; they were stronger than their enemies. They began to parade the streets at night, plundering the houses of the greens, and murdering them wholesale. No justice could be had, and it seemed as if the cause of the greens would be extinguished by the massacre of the whole party.
On the occasion of the games held at the Ides of January, the emperor being himself present, the unfortunate greens broke out into open clamour, complaining, with some justice, that they were murdered and pillaged without power of getting redress, and calling on the emperor to grant them justice. For a long time Justinian sat in silence. Then, losing the habitual dignity of his manner, he ordered his crier to inform the greens that they were Jews, Samaritans, and Manicheans. Insulted thus as the worst of heretics, the greens burst into a tempest of rage; they renounced allegiance to Justinian; they cursed the hour of his birth; they loaded him with insults. The blues sprang to their feet; the greens remembered their own day of brief triumph, and, expectant of the daggers, fled from the circus, spreading terror through the streets, while their enemies pursued them. These threatened a massacre of the greens such as would have effaced the memory of their three thousand. It was averted by the lucky incident of the appearance of seven criminals being led to the place of execution. Four were beheaded; one was hanged; the ropes broke by which the other two were hanging, and they were carried off by monks to the sanctuary of the church. It was discovered that they belonged respectively to the blue and the green factions. Were, then, religion and the circus thus to be insulted? Both factions united to rescue the prisoners, to burn down the prefect's house, to massacre his officers, and to open the prisons. The soldiers sent to appease the multitude were fiercely assailed; the women hurled stones upon them from the housetops; the men, in self-defence, set fire to the houses, and a conflagration ensued, in which many of the finest buildings of the city, including St. Sophia, were destroyed. The peaceful inhabitants fled across the Bosporus. For five days the city was in the hands of the factions, whose watchword—which gave the sedition its name—was "Nika," conquer.
Justinian tried concession. He dismissed his principal ministers; he even went to the hippodrome to deplore publicly the errors of his government, but he was distrusted, and so great a clamour was raised that he fled hastily to the fortress of his palace. The mob, masters of the city, seized on one Hypatius, nephew of Anastasius, and, against his will, proclaimed him emperor.
The courage of Theodora saved Justinian, who proposed to fly with the imperial treasures. She found means to communicate with the leaders of the blues and to sow the seeds of jealousy, which soon revived the animosity of the factions. The blues were easily persuaded to turn their weapons against their old foes, and the greens were left deserted in the hippodrome with their unfortunate emperor. Then Justinian took his revenge in a slaughter which assured the greens that their cause was hopeless. Thirty thousand of them were murdered almost in cold blood. Hypatius, with nineteen so-called accomplices of patrician rank, was privately executed: their palaces were razed, and their fortunes were confiscated. For several years the hippodrome was closed.
The conquests and campaigns of Justinian's generals, Belisarius and Narses, cannot find any place in this volume. After the disgrace and retirement of Belisarius the emperor was forced to send for him once more, and entrust to his aged hands the defence of the city. Both emperor and general were old, the former in the thirty-second year of his reign and the seventy-fourth of his age. This time the attack was made by the Bulgarians. The winter had been exceptionally severe: the Danube was frozen, and immense multitudes of the wild tribes of the north flocked down and joined the standard of Zabergan the Bulgarian chief. In spite of Justinian's vaunted fortresses they met with nothing to oppose their southward march; they crossed the Balkans, descended into the plain, and spread in innumerable swarms over the fertile plain of Roumelia. The long wall had been partly thrown down by an earthquake, and the citizens of Constantinople awoke to their danger when they heard that the enemy was within twenty miles of the city, and when they saw the crowd of rustics who pressed in for refuge lamenting the loss of their flocks, the destruction of their homesteads, and the outrages of barbarian hordes who respected nothing—not even monks. In this densely populated city there were about five thousand soldiers in all, and these could not be relied upon. The factions of green and blue were ready enough to murder each other, but they would not go out to face the Bulgarians; and nothing was farther from the thoughts of the enervated Greeks than that they who had so often bought the service of mercenaries should fight for their own safety. Yet it seemed as if now they must either fight or else, like sheep, hold up their throats to be cut.
Justinian ordered the removal of all the gold and silver vessels from the churches in the suburbs of the city, and then sent for Belisarius. Not even the immediate proximity of the danger would induce this most unwarlike of emperors to take the command himself. Some sovereigns, like Louis XIV., love to assume the credit of others' ability; some even venture their own reputation on a campaign; others, like Justinian, openly make use of the best officers and repay them with ingratitude. Belisarius came, and speedily sallied forth with such troops as he could get together. He could reckon on a small body of 300 veterans: the rest had seen no service and had small stomach for the fight. He took with him a body of peasants, whom he set to dig a ditch and throw up a hasty rampart, and at nightfall he lit innumerable fires, to convey the impression of superior numbers. In the morning the cavalry of the Bulgarians advanced to the attack. Belisarius, knowing the weakness of his civic troops, placed them in ambuscade on either flank, while with the guards he received the charge of the enemy. But when the Bulgarians dashed headlong upon the assault, they were met in front by a compact body of disciplined soldiers, through whose lines they could not break, and were assailed on either flank by showers of arrows from the troops in ambush. They turned and fled. The chief withdrew his army. The Bulgarians wasted the summer in the plains of Thrace, but with the autumn they returned with their Slavonian allies, who went back across the Danube.
The people, whose lives had been saved by the skill and prudence of the veteran, surrounded him on his return with acclamations of gratitude. The worthless emperor, whose throne he had preserved after augmenting its splendour by substantial accession and dignity, received him in thankless silence. Belisarius retired to his own palace. Two years afterwards a conspiracy against the life of the aged emperor was discovered. Two of those implicated, forced probably by torture, declared that they had acted by orders of the great general. Belisarius refused to fly while there was yet time, and indignantly appeared before his judges. The case was prejudged; and though the life of the so-called criminal was spared, his fortune was confiscated, and he himself was kept a prisoner in his own house for eight months. His innocence was at length acknowledged, but the course of the old soldier was run. It was not he, as has often been explained, but another and a later general, who in his old age was blinded and set before the imperial palace with a plate in his hand to ask alms.
Justinian died at the advanced age of eighty-three. He was not a great emperor, but he had the sagacity to select the best officers. He was a prodigy of industry; in an age of curiously active intellectual energy, he was philosopher, poet, musician, architect, lawyer, and theologian.
It was in all a most remarkable and illustrious reign—one in which many great questions seemed settled decisively, though none were. Vandals, Goths, Persians, Bulgarians, all were driven back before the "Roman" arms, and nature herself added phenomena to mark the epoch. Comets blazed in the sky, an omen of disaster to some. One earthquake swallowed up a quarter of a million of people at Antioch; another destroyed Beyrout; a third filled up the harbour of Botrys; a fourth was felt in Constantinople for forty days incessantly. War, earthquakes, famine the follower of war—were not these scourges enough for the human race? Yet there was pestilence as well. The spotted typhus, the real plague of the East, that described by Thucydides and Defoe, fell upon the Eastern world. Who can tell how many perished? As in the black plague of Edward III., thousands died daily, but no one counted their number; cities were cleared of their inhabitants, who either fled or died of the disease; harvests were left standing; the grapes rotted on the vines, the fruits upon the trees. When one considers the ruined cities of the East, the roofless temples and churches of Asia Minor, the hundreds of cities in the Hauran, who shall say how much of their desolation is due to the long wars with Persians and Moslems, and how much is due to the great plague of Justinian?
The reigns of Justinian's successors present little of importance to chronicle in the capital itself. Justin II., more vigorous than Justinian his uncle, was afflicted with temporary fits of insanity, which necessitated the nomination of a successor. He passed over his own relations and named Tiberius, his most successful general. Tiberius II. died after a short reign of four years, leaving behind him the reputation of having been the best sovereign who ever ruled the Eastern Empire. His son-in-law, Maurice, with every virtue except that quality, invaluable in a prince, which commands success—an honourable man, a sincere Christian, and full of humanity, has left behind him the record of a brilliant failure. His attempts to reform the army led to a mutiny in which one Phocas, at the time a mere centurion, but popular among the soldiers for his courage, was raised to the chief command. Phocas led his army to the capital, where he found a strong body of discontents ready to receive him. Maurice, deserted by all his followers, fled with his children. He was captured, and after witnessing the execution of his boys, was himself beheaded. It is related of him that when the child of a nurse was substituted for his own he revealed the deceit, choosing rather that his own son should die than that an innocent person, or rather a child innocent of being his offspring, should suffer.
The people of Constantinople soon found that they would have acted more wisely in retaining an emperor who might be wrongheaded, but who was honest and humane. And if Maurice was a bad military emperor, this soldier of fortune was worse. Everywhere the empire was laid waste and devastated by the Persians in the east and the Avars in the north and west. And meantime the tyranny of Phocas exceeded anything ever before experienced or recorded. Two or more successive seditions were repressed and punished with every kind of cruelty. The third, which was successful, was rather a general revolt than a sedition. It was carefully and deliberately planned by Heraclius, exarch of Africa, in conjunction with the leading men of Constantinople, who implored him to save the empire from ruin. He sent his nephew with an army to occupy Egypt and Syria, and his son Heraclius with a fleet to attack the city. Phocas hazarded and lost a single naval battle, fought within sight of the palace. They took him prisoner, stripped him of his imperial robes, tied his hands behind him, and threw a coarse black cloak over him. In this guise they brought him before the conqueror, who reproached him with the manner in which he had governed the empire. To each reproach Phocas answered, "Wilt thou govern better?" One feels a touch of pity for this rude and brutal soldier, thrust for his sins upon a throne, and told to undertake a task for which he had no kind of capacity or understanding. Would any one, he thought, govern better? To govern, to be emperor, what could it mean but the gratification of every desire, and the punishment of your enemies? Would Heraclius govern better?
At least Heraclius understood something of the duties and responsibilities of an absolute monarch. Of all the emperors he was the one most loved by the people of Constantinople. And it seems hardly credible that he should have retained their affections during the calamities and disasters of the first eight years of his reign. Rather may we believe that he was employing those years in preparing for the stupendous effort which he made at the end of that period. The difficulties before him were very great. The treasury was empty, the civil administration disorganized, the agricultural classes ruined, the soldiers actually deserting their standards to become monks, and the citizens of his capital more and more averse to the dangers and hardships of military life. There was but one flourishing portion of the vast empire, the province of Africa. And so greatly did Heraclius feel the danger of Constantinople, that he proposed to transfer the seat of government to Carthage. The patriarch and the people, however, assembled in the church of St. Sophia, and forced him to swear that he would abandon the idea. What would have become of Constantinople had the project been carried into effect? The immediate result would have been the dispersion of the thousands of idle dependants of the court, and recipients of the daily dole of imperial bread. The magnificence of the city, the splendour of the hippodrome, would have vanished at once. But another kind of greatness might have arisen for Constantinople, such a greatness as, we believe, may await her yet, when she shall become a free and independent city, the emporium of the Eastern trade.
The story of Heraclius—how, like a chivalrous knight, he met the victorious Persian, fought and defeated him; how he restored the Holy Cross to Jerusalem; how he carried the war into the enemy's own provinces, and how he returned in triumph to Constantinople—cannot here be told. He ended his reign in his capital, endeavouring to effect a hopeless task, that of recreating the national spirit by means of a common creed. And with this view he occupied the last years of his life in interminable discussions about the heresies of his time. His Ecthesis, which was designed to answer all religious difficulties and impose a creed upon all alike, only gave rise to new disputes.
Constantine III. and Heracleonas were speedily followed by Constans II., a sovereign of ability and energy. He inherited the dream of his grandfather Heraclius, and endeavoured to secure complete control over the Church. Controversy he silenced, not before it was time. Henceforth, he ordered, let no man argue on any previous theological quarrels. Were all old theological quarrels to be forgotten, it would, he probably thought, be difficult to revive new. In his reign Moawiyah commenced his preparations for the great siege of Constantinople, which he meditated continually. The capital became hateful to the emperor after the death of his brother Theodosius, whom he murdered for some unknown cause. Theodosius was in priest's orders. Constans had frequently received the sacrament from him. In visions of the night he saw the spectre of his brother offering him the chalice of human blood, with the invitation, "Drink, my brother." He was himself murdered at Syracuse.
The reign of Constantine IV., who succeeded Constans, was commenced by a very remarkable mutiny. The troops of Asia Minor demanded that the emperor should associate with himself his two brothers, so that in the government of the empire there might be seen a resemblance to the government of the universe. Constantine fought the mutineers with their own weapons. He sent a minister whom he could trust, with instructions to temporize and talk. The emperor, his ambassador was to say, was anxious to meet the views of his faithful soldiers; in fact, he had already intended to make the pious arrangement proposed, but it was necessary to wait for the consent of the senate. Until that could be obtained, nothing could be done. The soldiers appeased, the minister invited the principal mutineers to accompany him to the imperial city. They did so, and were hanged upon the sea shore in full view of their companions.
In the year 672 news arrived that the Saracens were beginning to make preparations on a scale so gigantic that it was impossible to doubt their aim. They collected together an enormous fleet—one always wonders in what dockyards the perpetual construction of fleets numbering hundreds of vessels went on. For what purpose was this fleet got together, save for an attack upon the imperial city? There were signs in heaven, which meant, no doubt, disaster. A rainbow appeared for several days together in March; that was not without meaning. And there was an epidemic in Egypt which meant misfortune, at least to those who caught it. Had the Saracens been as prompt to execute as to conceive their design, there can be little doubt that Constantinople would have fallen, and the history of the East been anticipated by nearly six hundred years.
But one thing, besides this delay, saved the city. A Syrian, named Callinicus, escaped from the Saracenic rule, made his way to Constantinople, and imparted to the emperor a discovery which would multiply tenfold his powers of offence and defence, at least by sea. He had invented a projectile which could be used from ships or from walls—a projectile more destructive, more terrifying, less to be guarded against, than anything yet discovered by the brain of man. It was a fire of so subtle and dangerous a nature, that it would burn on the surface of water, under water, on the stones of walls, and the iron armour of men. It could not be extinguished: neither water, nor sand, nor earth, would put out this terrible fire. It could be projected at short distances through metal tubes, or even in little glass vessels, which could be used as hand-grenades; or it could be thrown by catapults and arbalists, a hissing mass of inextinguishable fire. The secret of this fire was well kept by the emperors, one after the other confiding it to a single engineer at a time, not even the worst being so foolish or so treacherous as to let the secret escape.
In the spring of 673 the Saracenic fleet set sail for the Dardanelles, and passing without opposition through these straits, found themselves before Constantinople. They were strong enough entirely to surround the three sides of the city which face the sea. With the fleet was Caleon, bravest of the Saracens, and Yezid, son of the caliph. But courage was a thing cheaply valued by the fanatic Moslems. What gave them hopes was the presence among them of three old men, the last surviving companions of the Prophet, who had gone safely through all the fighting, and were now among the faithful to animate them, to promise them the joys of heaven, and to recall to their minds a prophecy that whoever was happy enough to fall in the taking of Constantinople, to that sinner should be remitted in full the whole sum of his sins, however many. No doubt there were many among these warriors who felt that, what with the plunder of towns and the madness of victory, the sum of sins to be remitted was sufficiently great. One of them, Abu Eyub, died during the siege, and was buried near the walls: his tomb is still an object of veneration to the Moslems.
The first year's attack lasted for five months. The Saracens lost a large number of ships and men by the Greek fire, which astonished them beyond measure. By means of its use they were probably prevented from coming to close quarters in such numbers as could have made an attack effectual. No doubt, too, their ships were small and light. When the summer was over, and they were no nearer their object, they retired to Cyzicus, which they captured, and made it their winter quarters. Year after year they returned to the attack; year after year they met with the same obstinate resistance, the same calamities from the accursed fire; year after year they had to begin again their military engines. Yet it was not until the seventh year that they finally retired, and then only because a pestilence broke out among them. As the Greek fire had destroyed so many of their ships, they could not embark all their men in their vessels. It is not stated how many were able to crowd on the ships, but the whole number were cast away in a great tempest and destroyed. Nor was the land army more fortunate. The emperor sent after it all the troops he had in the city. The Greeks came up with the Saracens at Cibyrra. The unfortunate Moslems, covered with wounds, starving, lame, and crippled, could make little resistance. It was like the slaughter of sheep.
Thus ended the first Mohammedan siege of Constantinople. Many generations were to elapse before the infidels were to win their prize.
The only other event of the reign of Constantine was of a theological character. The sixth general council was held in the city in the year 680. In this the Monothelists were condemned, and a peace was patched up with the pope.
Justinian, who succeeded in 685, was dethroned, and had his nose cut off. After ten years of struggle he came back again. Mean time there had been two other emperors, both of whom he murdered. Finally he was murdered himself, with his son Tiberius. In him, therefore, the Heraclian dynasty expired. Philippicus, Anastasius II., and Theodosius III. rapidly followed. Their reigns were very brief, and ended with the year 717. The first established the Monothelite doctrines in the Church; the second re-established orthodoxy; and the third is only remarkable for having advanced the fortunes of Leo the Isaurian, and rendered it possible for him to be proclaimed emperor.