Читать книгу Byzantine Constantinople, the walls of the city and adjoining historical sites онлайн

102 страница из 107

As the struggle proceeded two towers of the Inner Wall and a large portion of the Outer Wall were battered to pieces by the Turkish cannon. The enemy also succeeded in filling the moat at this point with earth and stones, to secure an unobstructed roadway into the city whenever a breach was effected.

On the other hand, Giustiniani repaired the breach in the Outer Wall by the erection of a palisade, covered in front with hides and strengthened on the rear by a rampart of stones, earth, branches, and herbage of every description, all welded together with mortar, and supported by an embankment of earth. Between this barricade and the Inner Wall he furthermore excavated a trench, to replace to some extent the moat which had been rendered useless; and to maintain his communications with the interior of the city he opened a postern in the great wall.

Against these extemporized defences assault after assault dashed in all its strength and fury, only to be hurled back and broken. Meanwhile, more and more of the Inner and Outer Walls fell under the Turkish fire, and the Sultan decided to make a general attack at daybreak on the 29th of May. The onset upon the Mesoteichion, directed by the Sultan in person, was, however, repeatedly repelled, and the day threatened to go against the assailants, when a Turkish missile struck Giustiniani and forced him to leave the field. His soldiers refused to continue the struggle, abandoned their post, and disheartened their Greek comrades. The Sultan, perceiving the change in the situation, roused his janissaries to make a supreme effort. They swept forward, carried the barricade, filled the trench behind it with corpses of the defenders, and passing over, poured into the doomed city through every available opening. Some made their way through the breach in the great wall, others entered by the postern which Giustiniani had opened,^[378] while others cut a path through the heap of dead bodies which blocked the Gate of Charisius. The heroic emperor refused to survive his empire, and found death near the Gate of St. Romanus.^[379] And through that gate, about midday, the Sultan entered, the master of the city of Constantine. It was the close of an epoch.