An “exciting discovery” has been made at a Greek monastery: a portrait of Constantine XI Palaiologos—“believed to be the only portrait of the last emperor of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire”—was uncovered.
This is noteworthy, indeed. Like so many other Christian leaders, Constantine XI (1404-1453) is a forgotten and unsung hero in the West’s long war with Islam, not least due to his inspiring—though ultimately tragic—defense of Constantinople against the Muslim Turks. That moving story is retold below.
On becoming Ottoman sultan in 1451, Muhammad II (1432-1481) “swore by the god of their false prophet, by the prophet whose name he bore,” a bitter contemporary chronicler retrospectively wrote, that “he was their [Constantinople’s] friend, and would remain for the whole of his life a friend and ally of the City and its ruler Constantine [XI].” Although the Christians believed him, Muhammad was taking advantage of the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit afforded by Islam. “Peace,” as Edward Gibbon observed, “was on his lips while war was in his heart.”
What was in his heart became apparent a year later. In early 1452, Muhammad blockaded Constantinople and began to destroy churches and monasteries. Emperor Constantine sent him messengers inquiring about their peace treaty; they were beheaded or impaled.
Seeing that Muhammad was clearly preparing to besiege Constantinople, Constantine sent a final message: “As it is clear that you desire war more than peace … so let it be according to your desire. I turn now and look to God alone … However I release you from all your oaths and treaties with me, and, closing the gates of my capital, I will defend my people to the last drop of my blood.”
The defenders were, however, totally outnumbered by the Muslims; and although Constantine beseeched the West for aid, few came. Worse, “there were also some worthless, cowardly noblemen and inhabitants of the City who fled with their households, as they feared war and our adversaries,” writes George Sphrantzes, a court historian and confidant of Constantine. “When this was reported to the emperor, he took no action against them, but sighed deeply.”
During the siege, which began in April 1453, many implored Constantine to quit the city; he could fight the Ottomans more effectively without than within his walls, they argued, and possibly get aid. “I thank all for the advice which you have given me,” responded Constantine, but “how could I leave the churches of our Lord, and His servants the clergy, and the throne, and my people in such a plight? What would the world say about me? I pray you, my friends, in future do not say to me anything else but ‘Nay, Sire, do not leave us!’ Never, never will I leave you! I am resolved to die here with you!”
“And saying this,” the eyewitness adds, “the Emperor turned his head aside, because tears filled his eyes; and with him wept the Patriarch and all who were there.”
A few days before the Muslims launched their final assault, when all seemed lost, his leading men again implored Constantine to quit the city; the exhausted emperor collapsed during their harangue. “Remember the words I said earlier!” he cried out on reviving: “Do not try to protect me! I want to die with you!” to which they replied, “All of us will die for God’s church, and for you!”
On May 27—as Constantinople was being “engulfed by a great darkness” that “hovered above the city” and “shocked and horrified” the people—Constantine learned that, contrary to recent promises of outside aid, no relief forces were coming. He leaned against a wall and “began to weep bitterly for grief.”
On May 28—even as the Ottoman camp was being whipped into a jihadist frenzy—large-scale Christian religious processions were ordered within the city: all churches were packed with petitioners; barefoot and weeping, carrying crosses and icons and chanting Kyrie eleison—“Lord have mercy”—clergy led women and children along the walls, “begging God not to deliver us” to this “most wicked of all” enemies.
The spent emperor delivered a defiant speech before his assembled officials, lay and clergy: “You know well the hour has come: the enemy of our faith wishes to oppress us … with the entire strength of his siege force, as a snake about to spew its venom … For this reason I am imploring you to fight like men with brave souls, as you have from the beginning unto this day, against the enemies of our faith.”
“This wretch of a sultan,” Constantine continued, sought to transform their churches “into shrines of his blasphemy, shrines of the mad and false prophet, Muhammad, as well as into stables for his horses and camels.”
The emperor then went into Hagia Sophia “and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the sacrament of the holy communion.” He proceeded to the palace, begged pardon of any he might have offended during his life, bid his wife farewell (he had no children) and returned to defend the wall.
Finally, on May 29, around 2 a.m., Muhammad shattered the quiet of night by unleashing all hell on Constantinople. By sunrise, thousands of Muslim invaders flooded in and slaughtered the outnumbered defenders; others were trampled underfoot and “crushed to death” in the press.
Crying “the City is lost, but I live,” Constantine stripped and flung off his royal regalia and “spurred on his horse and reached the spot where the Turks were coming in large numbers.” With his steed he “knocked the impious from the walls” and with “his drawn sword in his right hand, he killed many opponents, while blood was streaming from his legs and arms.”
Inspired by their lord, men shouting “Better to die!” rushed into and were consumed by the oncoming throng. “The Emperor was caught up among these, fell and rose again, then fell once more,” never to rise again.
Thus, concludes a chronicler, “he died by the gate with many of his men, like any commoner, after having reigned for three years and three months.”
And on that May 29, 1453, the 2,206-year-old Roman state died with him, and “the saying,” observed another contemporary, “was fulfilled: ‘It started with Constantine [the Great] and it ended with Constantine [XI].’”
In the ensuing orgiastic bloodbath that consumed Constantinople for days—and which saw thousands of Christians massacred, raped, and enslaved, and churches desecrated and torched—only one thing remained to make Muhammad’s triumph complete: the head of his archenemy, Constantine XI. So a noggin claimed to be that of the fallen emperor was rushed to him and nailed onto a column.
Standing before it, the sultan exulted: “Fellow soldiers, this one thing was lacking to make the glory of such a victory complete. Now, at this happy and joyful moment of time, we have the riches of the Greeks, we have won their empire, and their religion is completely extinguished. Our ancestors eagerly desired to achieve this; rejoice now since it is your bravery which has won this kingdom for us.”
Muhammad then ordered the severed head skinned, stuffed with bran, and “sent as a symbol of victory to the governors of Persia and Arabia”—a reminder to the two older Muslim peoples that it was a Turk who did what for centuries they had tried but could not.
Whether that was Constantine’s head or no, we now know what that brave defender of the faith looked like—and his face is every bit as noble as he was in life.
All quotations in the above account were excerpted from and documented in the author’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.