After his death, resistance and order were no more.  Two thousand Greeks were put to the sword, and more would have perished had not avarice soon prevailed over cruelty.

It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet II.  Sixty thousand Greeks were driven through the streets like cattle and sold as slaves.  The nuns were torn from the monasteries and compelled to enter the harems of their conquerors.  The churches were plundered, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments of St. Sofia were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind.

The cathedral itself, despoiled of its images and ornaments, was converted into a mosque, and Mahomet II. performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving at the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars.  The body of Constantine was discovered under a heap of slain, by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes, and after exposing the bloody trophy, Mahomet bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral.  Constantinople, desolated by bloodshed, was re-peopled and re-adorned by Mahomet.  Its churches were shared between the two religions, and the Greeks were attracted back to their ancient capital by the assurance of their lives and the free exercise of their religion.

The grief and terror of Europe when the fall of Constantinople became known revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades.  Pius II. attempted to lead Christendom against the Turks, but on the very day on which he embarked his forces drew back, and he was compelled to abandon the attempt.  The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks put an end to all thoughts of a crusade, and the general consternation was only allayed by the death of Mahomet II. in the fifty-first year of his age.

His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy; he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour, and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the New and the Ancient Rome.

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FRANCOIS GUIZOT

History of Civilisation in Europe

Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French historian and statesman, was born of Huguenot parents at Nimes on October 4, 1787.  The liberal opinions of his family did not save his father from the guillotine in 1794, and the mother fled to Geneva, where Guizot was educated.  He went to Paris in the later days of the Empire, and engaged himself at once in literature and politics.  His lectures on the History of Civilisation delivered in 1828, 1829, and 1830, during his professorship at the University of Paris, revealed him as a historian with a rare capacity for mastering the broad essential