 | The siege of Constantinople. A Poem |  |
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Constantinople, according to the best historians, fell under the arms of the Turks, led by Mahomed II. in the year 1453; when the power of the Roman Empire, of which the Constantinopolitan had for a long succession of ages, been only a shadow, became utterly extinct. Mr. Gibbon, although not minute in detailing the horrors of the siege, and the terrible events which followed it; yet says sufficient to enable us to conceive what Turkish obstinacy and brutality have, when incited by promises of plunder and paradise, invariably accomplished. Mahomed, by maintaining that “the sword was the key of heaven and of hell,” more probably of the latter, so poisoned the minds of his enthusiastic followers that, “in a word, lust, arrogance, covetousness, and the most exquisite hypocrisy, complete their character.”—
Maundrell.With men of this character, rendered almost frantic, by the temporal, and spiritual, rewards held out to them, the successor of the prophet overturned the last bulwark of her, who once was Empress of the World.
| The siege of Constantinople. A Poem | |