Page:The International - Volume 3.djvu/13

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CHAPTER
3

T’he International

VeL. III

JULY 1897

No. 1

THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

A MILITARY

MONUMENT

BY EMMA PADDOCK TELFORD

['TIT the recent extraor- dinary find of French and English armor in the old walls of Constanti- nople, whose date leads back to the time of the Crusaders, renewed in- terest has been awakened in those stout de- fences which for centuries were the jealous conservators of the treasures of artand vast material resources that distinguished an- cient Byzantium and more modern Con- stantinople.

These magnificent ruins, rising wall upon wall, are the most venerable, gigantic and important military monument of the early Christian ages, while their varied historical significance renders them only second to the Parthenon and Baalbec. Left by the indolence of the Turk in nearly the same condition they were in that May morning nearly five hundred years ago, when the Turks under Mohammed II entered by the Adrianople Gate to take possession of a Christian capital in the name of Allah and his Prophet, they rise to-day against the sky, their battered profiles draped with mantling vines.

Go gle

Next to St. Sophia, these walls are the chief object of interest in Constantinople. Twelve miles in extent, provided with more than five hundred towers of all shapes and dimensions, running the whole catalogue of geometric figures, perforated by twenty- eight gates, to each of which is attached the story of the triumphal entry of some mighty general or emperor, these walls represent the history of succeeding epochs, not only in their structural form, which varies with the centuries, but in the num- berless marks of varied warfare.

Here are the small openings from which arrows, stones and Greek fire could be showered upon attacking foes; there great fissures, made, doubtless, by exploding mines. In this place the graven marks of stones hurled by powerful catapults, and blows by mighty battering rams: and yon- der great breaches torn by Hungarian Orbano’s mighty gun; until the walls are autographed by centuries in records of fire and blood.

Against these gray and serried ranks the fiercely beating waves of conquest and in- vasion dashed impotently, broke and ebbed for centuries, while at their base the hordes

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