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AN EPOCH-MAEKING EVENT 415 force, with a different morality, and with a tendency hostile to the habits, customs, and aspirations which it encountered. The capture was the latest step in a series of successful efforts to detach a large mass of territory from the area of European civilisation. As large sections of the empire had during successive centuries been lost, Constantinople came to stand in her loneliness as the representative of European ideals of Christianity. When the city was taken, Western statesmen were compelled to recognise that the remaining European area of civilisation was face to face with an Asiatic, a non-Christian, and a necessarily hostile movement. The European peoples, for the first time during centuries, were awakened from their dream of security and saw the possibility of the advance of races professing the creed which had been held by those who in the early days of Islam had utterly rooted out the civilisation and Christianity of North Africa. The shock and alarm were universal. The military reputation of the Turk was enormously in- Alarm creased by the capture of Constantinople. Hallam justly Europ( observes that though the fate of the city had been protracted beyond all reasonable expectation, the actual intelligence operated like that of a sudden calamity. ' A sentiment of consternation, perhaps of self-reproach, thrilled to the heart of Christendom.' 1 Those who knew what the progress of the Turks had been and how numerous and mobile were the hordes at the disposal of the sultan were the most anxious regarding their further progress. The podesta of Pera, writing within a month after the capture, declares that Mahomet intended to become lord of the whole earth and that before two years were over he would go to Eome and 'By God, unless the Christians take care, or there are miracles worked, the destruction of Constantinople will be repeated in Eome.' 2 Other contemporary writers express the like dismay. Aeneas Sylvius, in the presence of the diet of Erankfort, pointed out that by the capture of Constantinople Hungary lay open to the conqueror, and 1 Hallam's Middle Ages, ch. vi. 2 Angeli Johannis Epistola, p. 62.