But the erection that gives this city perhaps its greatest interest, and it is one of the few that has escaped the hand of time or accident, is that which commemorates his conversion to Christianity. He not only placed the Christian standard on the coins of his new city, but proclaimed that the new city itself was dedicated to Christ. Among his columns was one of red porphyry, resting on a base of marble; between both he deposited what was said to be one of the nails which had fastened our Saviour to the cross, and a part of one of the miraculous loaves with which he had fed the five thousand; and he inscribed on the base an epigram in Greek, importing that he had dedicated the city to Christ, and “placed it under his protection, as the Ruler and Governor of the world.” Whenever he passed the pillar, he descended from his horse, and caused his attendants to do the same; and in such reverence did he hold it, that he ordered it, and the place in which it stood, to be called “The Sacred.” The pillar still stands. The dedication of this first Christian city took place on the 11th of May, A. D. 330.

Constantine left three sons, who succeeded him; and numerous relatives, who all, with one exception, adopted the religious opinions he had embraced. This was Julian, his nephew. He had been early instructed in the doctrines and duties of the new faith, had taken orders, and read the Scriptures publicly to the people; but meeting with the sceptic philosophers of Asia, his faith was shaken, and, when the empire descended to him, he openly abandoned it. With some estimable qualities, was joined a superstitious weakness, which would not suffer him to rest in the philosophic rejection of Christianity. He revived, in its place, all the revolting absurdities of heathenism. In the language of the historian Socrates, “He was greatly afraid of dæmons, and was continually sacrificing to their idols.” He therefore not only erased the Christian emblems from his coins, but he replaced them with Serapis, Anubis, and other deities of Egyptian superstition. He was killed on the banks of the Euphrates, in an expedition against the Persians, having, happily for mankind, reigned but one year and eight months, and established for himself the never-to-be-forgotten name of “Julian the Apostate.”

The family of Constantine ended with Julian, and, as the first had endeavoured to establish Christianity as the religion of this new capital of the world, so the last had endeavoured to eradicate it. But his successor Jovian set himself to repair the injury. He was with Julian’s army at the time of his defeat and death, and with great courage and conduct extricated it from the difficulties with which it was surrounded. He immediately proclaimed the restoration of Christianity, and, as the most decided and speedy way of circulating his opinions, he had its emblems impressed on his first coinage. He is there represented following on horseback the standard of the Cross, as Constantine had done, and so was safely led out of similar danger. He caused new temples to be raised to Christian worship, with tablets or inscriptions importing the cause of their erection, some of which still continue in their primitive state. He reigned only eight months; but even that short period was sufficient to revive a faith so connected with human happiness, and so impressed on the human heart, that little encouragement was required to call it forth every where into action.

From the time of Jovian, Christianity remained the unobstructed religion of Constantinople; but an effort was made in the reign of Theodosius to revive paganism in the old city of Rome. The senate, who had a tendency to the ancient worship, requested that the altar of Victory, which was removed, might be restored; and an attempt was made to recall the Egyptian deities. On this occasion, the emperor issued the memorable decree, that “no one should presume to worship an idol by sacrifice.” The globe had been a favourite emblem of his predecessors, surmounted with symbols of their families, some with an eagle, some with a victory, and some with a phœnix; but Theodosius removed them, and placed a cross upon it, intimating the triumph of Christianity over the whole earth; and this seems to have been the origin of the globe and cross, which many Christian monarchs, as well as our own, use at their coronations. From this time, heathen mythology sunk into general contempt, and was expelled from the city of Constantinople, where the inquisitive minds of cultivated men had detected its absurdities: it continued to linger yet a while longer, among the pagi, or villages of the country, and its professors were for that reason called pagani, or pagans, a name by which they are known at this day. The Christian city had so increased, that it was necessary to enlarge its limits. Theodosius ran a new wall outside the former, from sea to sea, which took within its extent the seventh or last hill. The whole was now enclosed by three walls, including a triangular area, of which old Byzantium was the apex. Two of its walls were washed by the waters of the Propontis and the Golden Horn, and the third separated the city from the country, the whole circuit being twelve miles. These walls, with their twenty-nine gates, opening on the land and sea, and the area they enclose, remain without augmentation or diminution, still unaltered in shape or size, under all the vicissitudes of the city, for fifteen hundred years.

When the city had thus increased in magnitude and opulence, it became the great mark for the ambition of the barbarians that surrounded it. Placed at the extremity of Europe, it was the bulwark, as it were, against Asiatic aggression, and, filled with the riches of the earth, the great object of cupidity. In the year 668, after it had stood for three centuries unmolested by strangers, the Saracens attempted to take it. They were at that time a great maritime nation, and had made immense naval preparations. They had been converted to Mohammedanism about forty years, and were under an impression that the sins of all those who formed the first expedition against this Christian town would be forgiven; and they set out with a vast fleet. They disembarked on the shores of the Sea of Marmora, and assaulted the city on the land-side along the whole extent of the wall of Theodosius. The height and solidity of it defied them. For six years they persevered in their attacks, till sickness, famine, and the sword nearly annihilated their vast army. Their attempts were renewed at several times afterwards, and defeated by the terror of the Greek fire, which was then for the first time discovered and made use of.

The attacks of the Saracens having failed, and the Asiatics having desisted from a hopeless attempt, a new enemy advanced against the devoted city, and from a very different quarter. In the year 865, in the reign of Michael, son of Theophilus, the Sarmatians, Scythians, and the barbarous people now composing the empire of Russia, collected a vast fleet of boats, formed out of the hollowed trunks of single trees, and from hence called by the Greeks monoxylon. They descended the great rivers, and, from the mouth of the Borysthenes, fearlessly pushed out into the open sea in those misshapen and unmanageable logs which are still seen in the same regions. Their vast swarms of boats, like squadrons of Indian canoes, arrived at the mouth of the Bosphorus, and darkened the waters of the strait with their countless numbers. But the rude navy of these undisciplined barbarians was either sunk by the Greek fleet, or consumed by the Greek fire. For a century they continued, with unsubdued perseverance, in their fierce attacks, fresh swarms always succeeding to those that were destroyed, till at length one great and final attempt was made to obtain the object of their cupidity.

In the year 973, a land-army was added to the fleet, and the command given to Swatislas, a savage of singular habits and ferocity. He slept in the winter in the open air, having a heap of snow for his bed, wrapped in a bear’s skin, and with no pillow but his saddle. He quaffed an acid drink, probably the quass of the modern Russians, and he dined on slices of horse-flesh, which he broiled himself on the embers with the point of his sword. He was invited by the emperor Nicephorus to repel an invasion of other barbarians, and he gladly undertook the enterprise. Having proceeded round the coast of the Euxine in his hollow trees, to the mouth of the Danube, he disembarked; and, defeating the barbarians against whom he was allied, he advanced to the Balkan mountains. Here he looked down from the heights on the fertile plains below, and at once conceived the project of making himself master of the city, and obtaining that object of ambition, which the Russians never since seem to have abandoned. To this end, he descended, and first proceeded to Adrianople. The Greeks, finding he had passed this great barrier, became dreadfully alarmed. They sent a formal demand that their ally should now evacuate their territory, as they had no longer an occasion for his services. He replied, he could not think of returning till he had seen the wonders of their great city. Swatislas, never calculating on a retreat, had neglected to secure the passes open behind him, that the forces he had left at the mouth of the Danube might follow him. These passes the Greeks now seized, and cut off the connexion between the two divisions of his army. Finding himself sorely pressed and in imminent danger, he made a precipitate retreat, and with loss and difficulty reached the sea-shore, where he again attempted to establish himself. But he was compelled to abandon this position also, and, in attempting to escape by sea, became entangled in masses of ice, and unable to reach the shore. Here the greater part of his barbarous hordes miserably perished, but the remnant that escaped brought back with them a precious benefit, which compensated for all their losses. Olga, the mother of Swatislas, had been baptized at Constantinople, some time before, by the Greek name of Helena. The first seed of the Gospel was thus sown, and the invaders, when they entered the country, were prepared to adopt the religion of the people they came amongst. They had been generally baptized there, and those who escaped brought home with them the faith of the Greeks. The Russians, thus become members of the Greek church, adopted its discipline and doctrines,—to which they still adhere.

But an invasion was now meditated from a quarter, whence, of all others, it was least expected, and the Christians of the East were attacked by their fellow Christians of the West. The Crusaders were called to arms by a warning which they deemed the voice of God, and they set out from their own homes to obey it. The sufferings they brought upon themselves by their ignorance and presumption, the ruin they inflicted upon others by their vices and passions, could not repress the ardour of these infatuated fanatics. Three times had new swarms set out from Europe, and the miserable remnants returned utterly defeated, after desolating the country of friend and foe through which they passed. The fourth expedition inflicted misery and destruction on the Christian city of Constantinople. After Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard had excited and sent forth a countless rabble to the shores of Palestine, Fulk, another illiterate preacher, issued from his cell at Neuilly, in France, and became an itinerant missionary of the Cross. He commenced, as usual, by performing miracles, and the fame of his sanctity and superhuman power gave him all the influence he could wish in a barbarous and superstitious age; so he excited a fourth crusade against the Infidels, who had, by their presence, desecrated the holy sepulchre. The former soldiers of the Cross had suffered so much by their insane expeditions by land, that they now resolved to undertake one by sea; and for that purpose despatched deputies to the Venetians and the maritime states of Italy, to supply them with a convoy: their request was granted, and a fleet accordingly prepared.

Constantinople had hitherto escaped these marauders; they had passed its walls without inflicting injury, but an occasion now occurred which gave them a pretext for entering it. The emperor Alexius had deposed, and put out the eyes of his brother Isaak, whom he kept in prison, and his nephew Alexius, the heir to the throne, was a fugitive in the west of Europe. He thought it a good opportunity to avail himself of foreign assistance, and he applied to the leaders of the crusade to aid his cause. They affected to say, that the recovery of the lime and stone of the holy sepulchre was too important an object to be postponed for one of justice and humanity; but, tempted by large pecuniary offers, and calculating on the pretext of taking possession of the great city, avarice and ambition soon silenced the claims of superstitious piety. Dandolo was then doge of Venice; he was totally blind, yet he embarked with the crusaders. Their immense fleets literally covered the narrow waters of the Adriatic, and they arrived in safety at Chalcedon, under the convoy of the skilful mariners that now conducted them. They mounted to the heights of Scutari, and from thence contemplated, with longing eyes, the wealth and splendour of the magnificent city on the opposite shore, spread out on the seven hills before them.

Constantinople was at this time the emporium of every thing that was grand and beautiful in the arts, science, and literature of the world. The city contained, it is said, two millions of inhabitants, and was adorned with the noblest specimens of statuary and architecture, either the productions of its own artists, or the spoils of Egypt and other lands.

The usurper, Alexius, arrogant in safety, but abject in danger, after a feeble resistance, fled from the city with such treasure as he could hastily collect, and the feeble Isaak was taken from the prison in which he had been immured. It was a singular and affecting sight, to behold the blind and venerable doge of Venice leading to the throne the equally blind and venerable emperor of Constantinople.

It was now that the real character of the crusaders developed itself. They claimed the promised reward for this act of justice and humanity; but it was in vain the young Alexius attempted to raise the sum he proposed to pay: the present state of his empire rendered it impossible; so his Christian guests were glad to avail themselves of his inability, and pay themselves. In the language of the historian, “their rude minds, insensible to the fine arts, were astonished at the magnificent scenery; and the poverty of their native towns, enhanced the splendour and richness of this great metropolis of Christendom;” they longed, therefore, for the pretext and opportunity of its pillage. A rude but vigorous Greek, named Mourzoufle, who saw their design, assisted by his countrymen, deposed the weak monarch and his son, who was now associated with him, and their deaths soon followed. With his iron mace, Mourzoufle stood the defender of Constantinople against the rapacity of the crusaders, and attempted to burn their galleys. He was, however, repulsed; and, after various struggles, the imperial city, the head of the Christian world, was taken by storm, and given up to plunder, by the pious pilgrims of the Cross, and its fierce defender was dragged to the summit of the pillar of Theodosius, and from thence cast down and dashed to pieces.

The scenes of carnage that followed are revolting to humanity. The Roman pontiff himself, who had granted a plenary indulgence to all who engaged in the expedition, was compelled to denounce their brutality. He accused them of “sparing neither age nor sex, nor religious profession, of the allies they came to assist; deeds of darkness were perpetrated in the open day; noble matrons and holy nuns suffered insult in the Catholic camp.” As an instance of individual suffering, an imperial senator, Nicetas, an eye-witness, details what he himself endured. His palace being reduced to ashes, he fled for refuge to an obscure house in the suburbs of the town. Here he concealed himself, guarded by a friendly Venetian in disguise, till an opportunity occurred of saving his own life, and the chastity of his daughter, from the ferocious crusaders who were pillaging the city. On a winter’s night, with his wife and tender child, carrying all they possessed on their shoulders, they fled for life; and, in order to disguise their rank and features, smeared their clothes and faces with mud; nor could they rest a moment, from their pursuers, till they reached a distance of forty miles from the capital. On their road, they overtook the venerable Greek patriarch, the head of the Christian church in the East, flying also for his life, mounted on an ass, and almost naked. Nicetas afterwards lived to instruct and inform the world, by his important history of these events.

Meantime the captors glutted, without restraint, every passion. They burst into the church of Santa Sophia, and other sacred edifices, which they defiled in the most wanton manner. They converted sacred chalices into drinking-cups, and trampled under foot the most venerable objects of Christian worship. In the cathedral, the veil of the sanctuary was torn to pieces for the sake of the fringe, and the finest monuments of pious art broken up for their material. It would be too revolting to detail all the particulars of these impious outrages; let one suffice. They placed on the throne of the patriarch a harlot, who sang and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Oriental Christian worship.

In those excesses it was that this noble city suffered its first dilapidation. The monuments of ancient art, collected from all parts of the world, were defaced and broken to pieces, not simply from a bigoted rage against any superstition different from their own, but from a crusade of ignorance against whatever bore the stamp of literature and science. A contemporary writer details particular specimens of art that were wantonly broken and destroyed; and the present denuded state of the city attests that the deeds of those barbarians were as destructive as those of the equally ignorant Turks. Their utter contempt for learning was displayed in various ways: in riding through the streets, they clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen, and displayed on them pens, ink, and paper, in ridicule of the people who used such worthless things. It was therefore no exaggeration when the Greeks called them Αγραμματοι και αναλφαβετοι Βαρβαροι, “Barbarians who could neither read nor write, who did not even know their alphabet.”