Suddenly, seized with a comprehension of the futility of their effort, the hordesmen turned, and rushed from the hill and the causeway.
The Christians suffered but few casualties; yet they would have gladly rested. Then, from the wall above the breach, whence he had used his bow, Count Corti descended hastily.
"Your Majesty," he said, his countenance kindled with enthusiasm, "the Janissaries are making ready."
Justiniani was prompt. "Come!" he shouted. "Come every one! We must have clear range for the guns. Down with these dead! Down with the living. No time for pity!"
Setting the example, presently the defenders were tossing the bodies of their enemies down the face of the hill.
On his horse, by the great gun, Mahommed had observed the a.s.sault, listening while the night yet lingered. Occasionally a courier rode to him with news from this Pacha or that one. He heard without excitement, and returned invariably the same reply:
"Tell him to pour the hordes in."
At last an officer came at speed.
"Oh, my Lord, I salute you. The city is won."
It was clear day then, yet a light not of the morning sparkled in Mahommed"s eyes. Stooping in his saddle, he asked: "What sayest thou?
Tell me of it, but beware--if thou speakest falsely, neither G.o.d nor Prophet shall save thee from impalement to the roots of thy tongue."
"As I have to tell my Lord what I saw with my own eyes, I am not afraid.... My Lord knows that where the palace of Blacherne begins on the south there is an angle in the wall. There, while our people were feigning an a.s.sault to amuse the Greeks, they came upon a sunken gate"--
"The Cercoporta--I have heard of it."
"My Lord has the name. Trying it, they found it unfastened and unguarded, and, pushing through a darkened pa.s.sage, discovered they were in the Palace. Mounting to the upper floor, they attacked the unbelievers. The fighting goes on. From room to room the Christians resist. They are now cut off, and in a little time the quarter will be in our possession."
Mahommed spoke to Kalil: "Take this man, and keep him safely. If he has spoken truly, great shall be his reward; if falsely, better he were not his mother"s son." Then to one of his household: "Come hither.... Go to the sunken gate Cercoporta, pa.s.s in, and find the chief now fighting in the palace of Blacherne. Tell him I, Mahommed, require that he leave the Palace to such as may follow him, and march and attack the defenders of this gate, St. Romain, in the rear. He shall not stop to plunder. I give him one hour in which to do my bidding. Ride thou now as if a falcon led thee. For Allah and life!"
Next he called his Aga of Janissaries.
"Have the hordes before this gate retired. They have served their turn; they have made the ditch pa.s.sable, and the _Gabours_ are faint with killing them. Observe, and when the road is cleared let go with the Flower of the Faithful. A province to the first through; and this the battle-cry: _Allah-il-Allah!_ They will fight under my eye. Minutes are worth kingdoms. Go thou, and let go."
Always in reserve, always the last resort in doubtful battle, always the arm with which the Sultans struck the finishing blow, the Janissaries thus summoned to take up the a.s.sault were in discipline, spirit, and splendor of appearance the _elite_ corps of the martial world.
Riding to the front, the Aga halted to communicate Mahommed"s orders.
Down the columns the speech was pa.s.sed.
The Flower of the Faithful were in three divisions dismounted. Throwing off their clumsy gowns, they stood forth in glittering mail, and shaking their bra.s.sy shields in air, shouted the old salute: "_Live the Padishah!
Live the Padishah!_"
The road to the gate was cleared; then the Aga galloped back, and when abreast of the yellow flag of the first division, he cried: "_Allah-il-Allah!_ Forward!"
And drum and trumpet breaking forth, a division moved down in column of fifties. Slowly at first, but solidly, and with a vast stateliness it moved. So at Pharsalia marched the legion Caesar loved--so in decision of heady fights strode the Old Guard of the world"s last Conqueror.
Approaching the ditch, the fresh a.s.sailants set up the appointed battle-cry, and quickening the step to double time rushed over the terrible causeway.
Mahommed then descended to the ditch, and remained there mounted, the sword of Solomon in his hand, the mace of Ilderim at his saddle bow; and though hearing him was impossible, the Faithful took fire from his fire--enough that they were under his eye.
The feat attempted by the hordes was then repeated, except now there was order in disorder. The machine, though shaken and disarranged, kept working on, working up. Somehow its weight endured. Slowly, with all its drench and c.u.mber, the hill was surmounted. Again a mound arose in front of the battery--again the sally, and the deadly ply of pikes from the top of the mound.
The Emperor"s lance splintered; he fought with a pole-axe; still even he became sensible of a whelming pressure. In the gorge, the smoke, loaded with lime-dust, dragged rather than lifted; no man saw down it to the causeway; yet the ascending din and clamor, possessed of the smiting power of a gust of wind, told of an endless array coming.
There was not time to take account of time; but at last a Turkish shield appeared over the ghastly rampart, glimmering as the moon glimmers through thick vapor. Thrusts in scores were made at it, yet it arose; then a Janissary sprang up on the heap, singing like a muezzin, and shearing off the heads of pikes as reapers shear green rye. He was a giant in stature and strength. Both Genoese and Greeks were disposed to give him way. The Emperor rallied them. Still the Turk held his footing, and other Turks were climbing to his support. Now it looked as if the crisis were come, now as if the breach were lost.
In the last second a cry _For Christ and Irene_ rang through the melee, and Count Corti, leaping from a gun, confronted the Turk.
"Ho, Son of Ouloubad! Ha.s.san, Ha.s.san!" [Footnote: One of the Janissaries, Ha.s.san d"Ouloubad, of gigantic stature and prodigious strength, mounted to the a.s.sault under cover of his shield, his cimeter in the right hand.
He reached the rampart with thirty of his companions. Nineteen of them were cast down, and Ha.s.san himself fell struck by a stone.--VON HAMMER.]
he shouted, in the familiar tongue.
"Who calls me?" the giant asked, lowering his shield, and gazing about in surprise.
"I call you--I, Mirza the Emir. Thy time has come. _Christ and Irene.
Now!_"
With the word the Count struck the Janissary fairly on the flat cap with his axe, bringing him to his knees. Almost simultaneously a heavy stone descended upon the dazed man from a higher part of the wall, and he rolled backward down the steep.
Constantine and Justiniani, with others, joined the Count, but too late.
Of the fifty comrades composing Ha.s.san"s file, thirty mounted the rampart. Eighteen of them were slain in the bout. Corti raged like a lion; but up rushed the survivors of the next file--and the next--and the vantage-point was lost. The Genoese, seeing it, said:
"Your Majesty, let us retire."
"Is it time?"
"We must get a ditch between us and this new horde, or we are all dead men."
Then the Emperor shouted: "Back, every one! For love of Christ and Holy Church, back to the galley!"
The guns, machines, store of missiles, and s.p.a.ce occupied by the battery were at once abandoned. Constantine and Corti went last, facing the foe, who warily paused to see what they had next to encounter.
The secondary defence to which the Greeks resorted consisted of the hulk brought up, as we have seen, by Count Corti, planted on its keel squarely in rear of the breach, and filled with stones. From the hulk, on right and left, wings of uncemented masonry extended to the main wall in form thus:
[Ill.u.s.tration]
A ditch fronted the line fifteen feet in width and twelve in depth, provided with movable planks for hasty pa.s.sage. Culverins were on the hulk, with ammunition in store.
Greatly to the relief of the jaded Christians, who, it is easy believing, stood not on the order of going, they beheld the reserves, under Demetrius Palaeologus and Nicholas Giudalli, in readiness behind the refuge.
The Emperor, on the deck, raised the visor of his helmet, and looked up at an Imperial flag drooping in the stagnant air from a stump of the mast. Whatever his thought or feeling, no one could discern on his countenance an unbecoming expression. The fact, of which he must have been aware, that this stand taken ended his empire forever, had not shaken his resolution or confidence. To Demetrius Palaeologus, who had lent a hand helping him up the galley"s side, he said: "Thank you, kinsman. G.o.d may still be trusted. Open fire."
The Janissaries, astonished at the new and strange defence, would have retreated, but could not; the files ascending behind drove them forward.
At the edge of the ditch the foremost of them made a despairing effort to resist the pressure rushing them to their fate--down they went in ma.s.s, in their last service no better than the hordesmen--clods they became--clods in bright harness instead of bull-hide and s.h.a.ggy astrakhan.
From the wings, bolts and stones; from the height of the wall, bolts and stones; from the hulk, grapeshot; and the rattle upon the shields of the Faithful was as the pa.s.sing of empty chariots over a Pompeiian street.
Imprecations, prayers, yells, groans, shrieks, had lodgement only in the ear of the Most Merciful. The open maw of a ravenous monster swallowing the column fast as Mahommed down by the great moat drove it on--such was the new ditch.
Yet another, the final horror. When the ditch was partially filled, the Christians brought jugs of the inflammable liquid contributed to the defence by John Grant; and cast them down on the writhing heap.
Straightway the trench became a pocket of flame, or rather an oven from which the smell of roasting human flesh issued along with a choking cloud!