By Jess Nevins
Stan Lee Presents : The greatest heroes of the post World War II era...Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty...The Whizzer, Fastest Man Alive...Miss America, Strong and Beautiful Heroine...Sub-Mariner, Prince of Atlantis...and the Human Torch, the fiery android...they are The All-Winners Squad!
What Has Come Before: The Future Man defeated the All-Winners Squad be sending them flying backwards in time. Captain America was sent to France in 1917; Miss America was sent to Nevada in 1882; and the Whizzer was sent to Japan in 1764. In every case the All-Winners arrived during an event which might possibly have changed history for the worse; each time the All-Winners won, and once evil was defeated, Aarkus, the Golden Age Vision, appeared and brought the heroes back to the 20th Century.
History is a subject that the younger generation isn't taught much of--at least, not nearly so much as my generation were, or preceding generations were. In part this is because the educational system has changed; there's a lot more stress put on things like critical thinking, and a corresponding de-emphasis on rote memorization and recitation. And I suppose that's a good thing. Most people these days--most younger people--may not know as many details about, say, the American Revolution or the American Civil War, as us old folks, but the younger generation does view received information, and what they're told by the media and by the government, with a much more cynical, jaundiced, and critical eye than we ever did. (At least at that age; most people of my age began to rethink the nature of America about the time Nixon resigned) I think that's a good thing, myself, although many others of my generation--my publisher, Mr. Jameson, and his editor, Mr. Robertson, to name two--disagree. I think it's a sign that people are trying to think for themselves, and judge information on its own merits, rather than thinking a fact is true just because someone in authority tells them it is.
But--and you knew there was a "but" in here somewhere--that quality of critical thinking, salutary thought it is, took the place of a certain amount of knowledge, of the possession of a body of facts. And while, for many people today, the knowledge of the past is hardly necessary to their daily functioning--at least, not as necessary as the ability to think critically (it's more important, for most people, to judge whether a movie is really any good, despite the advertising hype, than it is to know why and how Joshua Chamberlain saved the Union at Gettysburg. But there is some information that people perhaps should know; it might not be of immediate use, but it is nonetheless important to know.
Which is why I'm writing this book, obviously. And one of the things I wanted to tell people about, in this book, was parts of our past--and by "our" I mean not just the past of Americans, but of all humans--that people just didn't know about.
One of those parts is Byzantium. Most people will know nothing about it, and of the Empire which lasted for over a millennia. Those who know a little history will likely have a biased view of Byzantium, will see it as a sort of second- or third-rate Roman Empire full of twisted, decadent nobles with no sense of honor, who produced little of consequence besides some interesting art, and whose main place in history is as the predecessor to the Ottoman Empire.
Those people will be wrong. The Byzantine Empire has a long and even glorious history, filled with great betrayals and great triumphs, and any culture would be glad to claim that they are descended from them. The Byzantines helped keep much of Greek culture alive when the rest of Europe were little more than barbarians. For better or worse Byzantium was the source of a greater strength for Christianity, for many centuries, than anywhere else was. And the Byzantine military was, at its peak, as good as anyone else in the world was.
In this chapter you'll find my accounts of the Marvels of Byzantine history, those we might today call "mutants," and what they did, and how they helped expand and later maintain the Byzantine Empire. But rather than begin this chapter with accounts of their victories, or with potted biographies of men and women like the Knight of the Church Temporal, greatest of all Byzantine warriors, I thought it would be more interesting to lead the chapter with a little-known story about the end of Byzantium.
I am somewhat surprised more has not been made of this incident, frankly. It involves four very familiar faces, one of whom is a major player here, at the end of the 20th Century, and only he might explain the unresolved ending of it. But whatever his reason, the incident, so long unremarked upon (I discovered it on the island of Mt. Athos, in the Aegean Sea, in a leather-bound book, one of a series of diaries by a Marvel - surely I am not the only interested reporter to have read this?), is curious--and noteworthy....
The Diary of Lazarus
I have seen the rise and fall of great nations, and the passing of the centuries. I am old - not as old as some of my acquaintance, but old nonetheless. I remember everything. Why am I putting pen to paper, and writing a diary?
I would not be doing this - after all, with my memory, I've no need to write an account of my doings, as I recall everything with a crystalline clarity - but for a dream I had last night. I dream often, mostly of the past. I have learned to ignore them, on waking. But...this dream had the scent of prophecy, something that has happened to me, on occasion, and which I have learned (at a great cost) not to ignore. In this dream I held two babies in my arms: my son and daughter. In all my years I have never fathered a child, although I have been with many women. I had long thought that whatever had given me my...abilities...had rendered me sterile. If this is not so, however...then I should make a record of my doings, so that my children should know of my past, if I am somehow not there to tell them myself. The dawning of a new century may yet bring me some new surprise; the past few decades have held their share for me, and, who knows, perhaps this new, 20th Century will hold more?
...well do I remember those final, desperate hours and days, before Mehmet's troops came howling over and through the walls of the city.
Of course, I remember everything, but that particular memory has remained close to me always. Constantinople was the first city I could truly call home for many years, both before and after. I had dwellings in Edo and Paris, of course, and other cities grew familiar and comfortable to me - but not until London, centuries later, did I find a city where I could truly relax, where I could finally let my defenses down. Something about Constantinople...perhaps it was simply my long stay there. The rulers could be as cruel, as monstrous, as any - but some, like Nicephorus Phocas, had an almost heavenly nature. I have served under many commanders, and Constantinople had its share of bad ones, but few could ever match Basil II.
Perhaps it was the people. Bound to their Christian dogma, yes; crafty, disputations, even quarrelsome, undoubtedly; and yet...and yet...they accepted me. Even those who knew of my long and ugly past did not hate or fear me. They accepted me, and made me feel welcome. And that was, and is, uncommon to me. When I was attacked, some decades previously, by those who wielded javelins and swords of flame and ice, agents of the ones who have always dogged my steps, my friends did not desert me; this was at the Hippodrome, and my enemies' sudden appearance frightened and even panicked the crowd. None (least of all me) would have blamed my friends for fleeing, for my attackers were obviously powerful. Yet my friends did not abandon me; they fought beside me, and helped me kill my enemies. True, I was the second greatest of Byzantium's heroes, then, next to the Knight of the Church Temporal; this was not long after we had crushed the Pechenegs in Bulgaria, and all within the Empire knew of my deeds there. But my friends fought with and for me because they liked me, and not simply from loyalty to the Empire.
The historians record the fall of the city as having taken place on 29 May 1453. We didn't know that date then, of course. We just knew it as a Monday, and the Feast of the Pentecost, which is why many in the city thought, even at the end, that we would be saved.
I didn't. I had resolved to fight to the end, for I did not want to lose the city I had grown to love. But I had no illusions about the final outcome.
My perspective was no more clouded then by affection than it is today by the years. Blessed Constantinople was not what it once had been. The population had shrunk to a scant fraction of what it once was; 30,000, perhaps, or more. The years of sieges and plagues and hungers had done what the armies of Prince Maslama and Khan Krum and countless rebel generals could not, and worn down the Immortal City's peoples. Though the mighty walls still stood fast against the elements and the enemies of the Emperor, the city itself was much diminished. Where once endless streets and shops and homes had stood, now were but abandoned acres of land. Nature had begun to reclaim the city; over the preceding decades hills and valleys had appeared, swallowing buildings and leaving only fields. The people of the city, ever conscious of their hunger - for the many sieges and wars we endured in the last few years were ever tightening their grip on the city - had turned these lands into cultivated fields of corn, or orchards, or vineyards, and round these fields houses clustered together, as if, in the middle of the city, there were farm villages.
Nor was it just nature that made the Eternal City seem so close to utter destruction. The accursed Venetians were forever robbing us of our trade, and forcing the emperor to devalue the coin, so that our money was increasingly worthless. Despite the fields within the city, disease and hunger were the people's constant bed mates, and most were weak and underfed, and ill-equipped to resist the many diseases which reduced the population still further. Their faces reflected this; many were clad in but rags, and showed no sign of hope for the future.
Some of these epidemics seemed Hell-sent, for they were unnaturally selective in whom they sickened, and those taken with sickness rarely, if ever, survived. We thought, then, that Satan was to blame, but in light of what came later perhaps it was not Him at all, but certain Muslim individuals who, like me, were blessed or cursed with extraordinary powers; perhaps it was they who unleashed the illnesses that sterilized all men with blond air, or slew all children beneath the age of six.
With no money and a weak people, the buildings could not be repaired. Few buildings were whole, and those that were were overcrowded to the breaking point. The great churches of the past...oh, it pains me still. Even now. St. Sophia, the Church of St. Saviour, St. Mark's Basilica - empty. Where once throngs of eager worshipers had crowded to enter, had felt privileged to be allowed to pray - abandoned. The priests performed their services for none but the rats. The Hippodrome, used as a polo ground - the Hippodrome! The palace of the Patriarch, deserted. The palace at Blachernae, crumbling. Manuel Comnenus would have wept to see such a thing.
We had not known, then, much of Mehmet II. Many said he was the Anti-Christ, but I had never seen any truth in that; the world might be ending for the Byzantines, but I was certain even then that the sun would continue to rise and set despite the Ottomans occupying the Purple Throne. (One of the advantages of longevity is that it is possible to take the truly long view of events). I have learned more of Mehmet in the years since; a curious and complex man, Mehmet, capable, like so many Muslims of those years, of great brutality and great devotion. Like so many of his fellow Saracen leaders, Mehmet was learned; he possessed something more, though, a driving - even consuming - ambition. He was the child of a harem girl, after all, capable at 11 of strangling his elder brother Ali and of fluency in Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Persian and Hebrew at 18.
And of conquering Constantinople at 21, as well.
It really started, for those of us in the city itself, late in 1451. We heard that Mehmet was crushing a Karaman rebellion, and yet none of us thought that of much import. It was not until Mehmet made to cross the Bosphorous that we became alarmed.
No - not so. Not exactly. Now that I put my mind to it I remember Constantine voicing some distrust for the young Sultan even before that. Amazing - I had almost forgotten that. The emperor seemed to know even then that Mehmet was not the callous youth that John Hunyadi and the Prince of Wallachia and all the rest thought. For myself, I had heard rumors about the exceptional individuals who were said to accompany Mehmet - today we'd call them Marvels, but at that time that term was not in use to describe people like me or the Knight. We thought...we thought they were granted powers by the Devil. The Knight, myself, George Sphrantzes, one or two others among the Emperor's advisors and confidants - we all heard stories, or were told of stories, of strange figures who were capable of inhuman feats, or summoning storms and making the earth itself move. But such stories were in those days...not commonplace, but not unheard of. It seemed that every year or so, as the larger trade caravans or flotillas came into port, we would be told of extraordinary doings and extraordinary individuals in far-off places. We in Constantinople knew that such stories were most often the product of a wine flask, or the desire to impress those of us in the Eternal City, rather than some God- or Devil-given power.
Mehmet, returning to Europe, was put off from crossing the Dardanelles by a report of a patrolling Italian squadron. So the Sultan crossed by the Bosphorous, at Anadolu Hisar, where Bayezit, the former Sultan and Mehmet's great-grandfather, had built his castle. This was the spot where the channel was narrowest, and Mehmet, seized by what whim the Fates only know, decided to build a keep of his own, directly opposite his great-grandfather's. This would give Mehmet complete control of the Bosphorous and provide a splendid base from which to attack Constantinople, although I have never known whether that was truly Mehmet's motive in constructing the castle, or whether he meant simply to outdo Bayezit.
That this land was Byzantine mattered not at all to Mehmet. He gathered a workforce and materials - those gotten by destroying local churches and monasteries - and the following April began building his fortress.
The first round of protests from Constantine were ignored by Mehmet. As was the second. The third finally provoked a reaction from him. He had the Emperor's ambassadors executed.
The castle - Rumeli Hisar - was finished at the end of August. Mehmet immediately had cannon mounted on them and began stopping ships that meant to pass by and boarding them. Those who refused the pleasure of a visit from the Sultan's representatives had their ships sunk, their crew executed, and their captains impaled and publicly exposed.
This went on through the fall of 1452. We in Constantinople did nothing. We could do nothing, weakened as we were. (The Niger Letum, the "Black Deaths" that had so often brought glory to the Empire, were a faint memory at this point; the Knight could no longer find men to volunteer for the Deaths, and those in what was left of the Emperor's armies would not stand for the rigours of the Knight's training)
And then, in January...I did not know this at the time, but Mehmet met with his advisors and told them that Byzantium was yet dangerous, and that it must be taken. The ministers, no fools (Mehmet, for all his power, was but 20, and possessed of a fearsome temper; those who opposed his will often found themselves subject to various...unpleasantries), saw things his way, and soon the Turkish fleet and army had gathered and set sail and marched on the city. On 5 April 1453 - a Thursday - they arrived, and demanded a voluntary surrender from us - the only way, under the Sharia, the Islamic law, that the people of the city would be spared. Naturally, we refused.
Mehmet began the siege on Friday morning.
We had spent some months rebuilding and repairing the city's defenses, and laying in stores of food and arms. Weakened though we were, we were still capable of doing that, and we knew the Ottomans were coming, and that it needed doing. But when the Emperor assessed our forces he found that we were worse off than even the most gloomy among us had thought: 26 ships to the Sultan's 200, and less than 7,000 troops to defend fourteen miles of wall against Mehmet's hundred thousand.
We prayed, then. More, even, than we had before.
Friday morning we were all on the walls. Most of us were with the Emperor, along the walls that crossed over the river Lycus, on northwestern end of the city; we knew that that was where Mehmet planned to focus his attack. Mehmet pounded the Land Walls with cannon...endless shots, the like of which none of us had ever seen or heard of (remember that cannon were not exactly new, but they had not been used en masse, not like this, and never to the degree that we endured then; too, the cannon Mehmet brought to bear against us were far, far larger than any yet seen - it was said that the barrel of the largest was thirty feet long and a yard in diameter at the front end). Part of the wall, the section near the Charisius Gate, was reduced to rubble, and the Sultan's troops came at that section, again and again, but they were thrown back under countless waves of arrows and javelins.
By the next morning the wall had been rebuilt - oh, the exertions the people made. Men and women, even children, laboring to pile rock on rock, working through hunger and broken blisters...worse was still to come, but that night was something to make every Byzantine proud.
Mehmet saw that he could not pierce the walls that way, not without still more cannon...something vital went out of war when the black powder arrived, some essential part of the act of battle, that could never be replaced. I know I sound like one of those hide-bound reactionaries I have grown over the centuries to despise, but perhaps they had a point. Sieges should not be conducted in that manner, with dozens dying through no acts of valor or daring, but simply from explosions.
Mehmet knew he needed more than simply those cannon, so he set about destroying two smaller fortresses outside the Land Walls, so that he could put further cannon in place. The garrisons of both fought with great bravery, but they were finally forced to surrender, and for their sins were impaled. (Those of us along the Land Walls could see the impalings; all but the most jaded and hardened of us shuddered at the sight, but it succeeded in toughening our resolve - if that was what awaited us when we surrendered, twere better we fought to the death, then) The Princes' Islands were likewise attacked, and the largest, Prinkipo, was the only one to resist (the weak of will and faith drawing the lesson from Mehmet's acts that he had intended, and surrendering to the Ottomans). The Sultan put Prinkipo to the torch, executing those who escaped the burning, and selling all civilians into slavery.
The following Wednesday Mehmet had further cannon in place, and resumed his bombardment. Mehmet kept up the fire for the next seven weeks. The outer well across the Lycus went down in a week's time, and though we worked feverishly to replace it we could not repair everything. On the 18th we beat off a night attack; they thought to surprise us, but I had taken a sortie beyond the walls earlier in the evening and heard the Sultan's troops speak of the attack, and so we had our archers ready. We slew near 200 of them, without losing any of ours. That did much to sustain our spirits. Too, we heard that when the Turks attacked the chain across the waters, the Knight personally led the attack on the Sultan's ships, and bloodied their noses (and more).
Such good fortune could not last, and though many on the walls (and even in the Emperor's chambers) spoke of God yet granting us victory, I and some others knew this to be a whimsy and a delusion.
On the 20th - a Friday - three galleys, sent by the Pope Himself, arrived off the Hellespont. Those of us in the city were much cheered, for food was even then growing scarce. But Mehmet, too, saw the ships, and he ordered them captured or sunk. The Turkish admiral sent his biremes and triremes against them, but the wind was much larger than the Ottoman ships, and could rain arrows, javelins, and other such down on the nearly-defenseless Turkish ships.
Then the wind ran out, and the galleys lost their momentum - this was after they had reached the entrance of the Golden Horn - and were swept towards the shore. The Turkish admiral stepped up the fire on the ships, but the cannonballs fell short, and few of their flaming missiles landed on the galley's decks. Finally the Turks rammed the galleys. The Genoese were outnumbered forty to one, but the Turks were forced to throw grapples onto the galleys - no easy task, with the galleys standing far taller than the Turkish biremes and triremes - and then climb up the ropes, in the face of a deluge of arrows, and then onto the decks themselves.
The lead galley, the one containing the Papal representative, was in trouble, and could not shake itself free of the Turkish ships, so the other galleys manoevered themselves alongside the lead galley and lashed themselves together. They fought with great valor - most unusual, for Genoese - but looked to go down under the sheer weight of the enemy numbers...until the wind returned, and blew the ships back to the Golden Horn, and away from the Turks. There was much rejoicing in the city, and the Sultan, infuriated, put the admiral to the bastinado and then banished him; the poor man deserved better.
The Sultan had, on that same day, brought down a huge tower, above the Lycus valley, but the Byzantine engineers rebuilt it overnight, and that seemed to focus Mehmet on gaining control of the Golden Horn itself. So he gave orders that his ships should--
Perhaps I should describe our reactions, instead. It was Sunday morning, two days later. We had been enduring the usual bombardment and harassing attacks, but the Sultan had done nothing more...until that morning. Galata, you understand, was the land on the other side of the Golden Horn, where the Genoese colony sat. Cutting off the Horn was, of course, the chain, the legendary chain, each link thicker through than an elephant was long, and never broken or severed. It had so far repulsed all of Mehmet's attacks, as it had done with so many others over the centuries.
What Mehmet did was, I knew even then, a brilliant tactical stroke, an example of lateral thinking. He did not futilely spend still further of his men and ships on attacking the chain, although he had a plentitude of both. What he did was order his engineers to make wheels and tracks and cradles, and he had seventy of his ships hauled, by oxen and slave (and one inhumanly strong soldier, a Marvel, who carried an entire ship by himself), over the two-hundred-foot hill of the Galata, and lowered into the Horn - behind the chain.
We were...displeased. Frightened. Panicked, even. The harbor was no longer secure, we had over three more miles of wall to defend - and one section of those three miles had been breached centuries before and never fully repaired. A week later we attacked the ships by night, attempting with our ships to sink theirs, but a traitor among the Genoese betrayed us to the Turks, and they were waiting for us. I was there, and the Knight, and we were perhaps the only ones who survived that trap; our best sailors were lost, and the three dozen or so who escaped the ships and swam ashore were killed by the Turks on the spot, within sight of the city. The Byzantines then brought out several score Turkish prisoners and beheaded them, within sight of the Sultan's men. After that no mercy was given by either side.
Then Mehmet had a pontoon bridge built, linking Galata with us, and emptying out less than a half mile beyond the city walls. We were then truly cut off; they began bringing cannon across and bombarding the sea walls, which hitherto had not been in real danger.
At the start of May we were near giving up hope. Food was short, fishing having proved impossible with the arrival of the Turks in the Horn; most of us on the walls were taking time off to find food for our families (I, of course, had no one else to scavenge for, and so took on others' duties when I could, so that they might be free to find food). Word spread (on orders from the Emperor, who was doing all he could to keep our spirits up) that an appeal to Venice would be made, and that Venice had even previously vowed that they would send vessels to us with food and troops, and a brigantine was sent early in May, but it returned three weeks later with the news that the promised Venetian relief fleet was nowhere to be found.
The people were downcast over this news, and there was much consternation along the walls and in the gathering places. ("Much consternation" is perhaps an overstatement; lack of food and lack of sleep had given the people of the city a haunted, lifeless look, and all that truly roused them was the sight of the Turks on the attack) I, however, was in the Emperor's chambers when the crew of the brigantine gave their report to Constantine. I knew what the crew had done, which was something the people of Constantinople could not or would not appreciate.
The crew had voted on whether to keep on to Venice, as Constantinople would inevitably fall to the Turks, or to return to the city and make their report to the Emperor, as was their sworn duty. One sailor voted for Venice; he was shouted down. The rest voted to return, to what was for them a certain death. They knew what they were coming back to, and what they would face because of it, and they did so anyhow. Constantine himself, on hearing their report, descended from the throne and thanked each member of the crew personally, crying as he kissed their cheeks.
Such bravery, such selfless regard for duty over personal needs, was not uncommon in the city in those final days. We were bombarded not just with cannonshot but with omens: a lunar eclipse on May 22; the fact, as someone pointed out, that the first Emperor of Byzantium was a Constantine born of a Helena, as the last emperor was; the icon of the Virgin, most holy and precious, slipping to the ground as it was carried through the streets, and then being drenched in a sudden and unnaturally violent thunderstorm; a thick fog enshrouding the city on the morning of the 25th - something unknown in Constantinople at that time of the year. And, finally, strange happenings in St. Sophia: odd sounds and strange colors emanating from the dome of the church for over an hour. I, taking my morning constitutional and attempting to rally the flagging spirits of those still manning the walls, encountered a child, running from St. Sophia; she told me of what she'd seen and heard there, and I, fearing that the accurs‚d Muslims had somehow found a way into the city, hurried to the church, only to see two beings emerge from the holy site. One, but a child, was dressed in a strange blue and red costume, and wore a small black mask around his eyes. He was carried by another being, stranger still, one who seemed not a man, but a creature of fire. The being of fire - I thought it a spirit or demon - had human hands, with which it carried its companion, but the rest of his body was all of flame, of such heat that I had to fall back and cover my eyes. The heat receded, and I looked up, and except for the wavering of the air, as one sometimes gets in the heat of the summer, the two were gone. I thought it only a vision, and could not figure what it might signify, so I rushed to the Emperor to tell him of it. He and his counsellors were most interested in what I had to say.
All of these, put together, led Constantine's advisors to urge him to abandon the city and lead a government, and eventually an army, from exile, as the great Michael Palaeologus had done decades previous. Constantine, exhausted to the core, fainted, but on being revived he declined, saying that his people needed him, and that he would not desert them. I have known many kings and emperors in my life; few had the bravery of Constantine.
The 25th was a Friday. The constant bombardment continued all day. I, as one of the Emperor's familiars, was not required to be on the walls, either in defense or in repairing them, and so, after determining that the Turks were continuing to only fire upon us, rather than charging the wall, decided to take one last stroll about the city I had grown to love, and which I was sure would not last to see the new month. I visited my friends and their families, bringing them what little food I had left and telling them that I loved them and that I would see them in Heaven. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say, but they knew as well as I that the end was nigh. And they, in return, told me the same things.
They also told me of the strange rumors running on quick feet through the city. Oh, in those final months there were many such stories, outlandish even by the standards of Byzantium. But these stories I heard...they spoke of two strange children, wearing costumes unfamiliar and bizarre to the eye, who spoke no language anyone recognised and would respond to no calls, but would run. And when cornered - and this is what caught my attention - one would burst into flame and carry the other away, over the rooftops and to safety.
My friends told me of these stories and asked what these visions might possibly mean. I told them that I did not know, and made my leave of them as quickly as I could. For I was gripped of a sudden by the conviction that those two were not visions or messages sent to us by the Almighty, but instead beings, like myself and like the Knight of the Church Temporal, who possessed God- or Devil-given powers, and that they might, perchance, aid my beloved Byzantium against the Turks.
So out I went, in search of the two. That day I did not find them, thought I looked in as many remote and unwatched places as I could. And at nightfall I returned to my quarters, frustrated and mystified, and wondering if my notion was incorrect, that the two were after all only visions granted by the Almighty.
On Saturday the Turks began telling us that Tuesday would be the day of the final assault. For thirty-six hours straight the Turks taunted us as they worked - filling in ditches and moats, laying in stores of arms and materiel and food - doing all the things a great army needs to do to be effective. And we...we could do nothing. We no longer had the men or the energy for harassing sorties. We could but simply watch as we worked on the walls - that, of all things, never stopped, for we knew that they were essential to us. We skipped meals - many meals - and skipped masses, but never the repair work.
At dawn on Monday a great silence fell across the Turkish camps. They rested and enjoyed pre-attack feasts and visited their imams. We continued work on the walls, but all knew that the end was only a few hours away, and we all set about making our peace with each other. Greeks, Venetians, Genoese - all had been at each other's throats by the end of the siege, but this day all sins were forgiven. The churches rang their bells, sacred icons and relics were taken from safety, and all joined together in a spontaneous procession across the city and along the length of the walls. Greeks, Italians, Orthodox, Catholics - all joined together. Such an event was without precedent in my memory. From across the city everyone made their way to the Church of the Holy Wisdom. It had been avoided for many months, due to the schism (a subject far too tangled to go into here). But now all spiritual differences were set aside, and the citizens of the city - all but those on the walls themselves - sat to vespers.
The Emperor arrived while the service was still in progress. He asked forgiveness of both Catholics and Orthodox, and then took communion with the citizens. The service ended at about nine, I remember, and then we dispersed and returned to our positions on the walls. The attack came at half-past one. We'd heard the noises before - the trumpets and horns, the drums, the howls of the Turks as they attacked - but they sounded particularly ominous and frightening just then. The churches of the city rang their bells in response, to let us all know that the final battle had begun. The very old and very young and the infirm and wounded fled to the churches, for sanctuary, and those men and women who were not already on the walls ran to them.
The Sultan first sent forward his bashi-bazouks. I hope you will never know what it is to face something like that. They...I have lived long and traveled widely, as you will know if you have read this far, but I have only rarely found troops so barbaric, so fearsome, so...beast-like. The Cossacks, of course, and the viking reavers - especially that band led by Brak Bearskin - but none other that I can easily recall. The bashi-bazouks were not skilled at arms, and did not possess armor or weapons of any quality, and they were a motley, ragged lot of Christians and Muslims from every part of the Earth, but they made up for all of that with their sheer ferocity and their willingness to commit any depravity and barbarism. The only rule, the only moral, that the bashi-bazouks obeyed and respected was force of arms; ethics and the laws of God were entirely alien to them. They were not men; they were beasts in the forms of men.
For two hours they came howling at the walls, and somehow we threw them back. Around four in the morning Mehmet called them off; their losses were in the hundreds, but Mehmet had thousands more just like them, and repulsing their attack drained us of much energy.
We had but a minute or two to rest and catch our breath before the next wave of Turks came. These were Anatolians, some of Mehmet's best troops, and all set upon being the first to enter the Eternal City (Mehmet and his imams had let them know that the first pious Muslim to win entrance to Constantinople by force of arms would gain eternal glory in Heaven). We feared the bashi-bazouks, for the tales of their evil were endless; we respected and feared the Anatolians, because they were skilled warriors.
We threw them back, too. They fought valiantly, doing no small honor to their Sultan, but we showed great courage as well, and when they were swarming over a section of the Wall that had been reduced almost to fist-sized rocks the Emperor himself led the charge that stopped them. Constantine showed much skill at arms - he had never been the doughtiest of warriors, but he surpassed himself that day - and his loyal bodyguard the Knight was there beside him, as was I. We stopped them, killing some dozens of them, and throwing them back.
They retreated, and for a minute nothing happened, and Constantine began issuing orders (faintly, for his voice, much taxed in those final days, was beginning at last to falter) for reinforcements to be brought up. Then the Janissaries arrived. These were a hand-picked group, the favorites of Mehmet, and it was they whom the Sultan wished to gain the glory of first entry into the city.
Their attack was preceded by a rain of arrows, javelins, stones, and bullets, and when that stopped we heard a sound all within the city knew - if not personally, then by reputation. A sound known, and feared: the double-time drumbeat of the Janissaries. The drivers and officers of the Janissaries made a sound they desired Allah Himself to hear, and the drums and trumpets were heard even across the Bosphorous, so loud was it. The Janissaries quick-marched across the plain in front of the city, perfectly in step, their ranks neither breaking nor wavering no matter how many arrows and javelins we poured into them. They fell upon the Wall as a tidal wave on a cliff, hacking away at our stockades, throwing countless scaling ladders up, and shifting backwards at regular intervals so that the next rank of Janissaries could hurl themselves forward.
The fighting was hand-to-hand now, and had any of us had a moment to think or breathe, we would have known the end was nigh, but I was too preoccupied just then with three mustachioed swordsmen to think. Then the leader of the Genoese forces in the city took a bolt in his chest, and he was taken away by his men, which prompted an exodus of the Genoese from the walls down to their ships. It was a loss we could ill-afford, for while most of the Genoese were cowardly scum not fit to clear the Emperor's path with their tongues, their leader, a man named Giustiniani, had great valour and had oft been where the fighting was thickest, inspiring many others by his example.
Mehmet must have known that something was wrong; he may not have known what, exactly, and given the press of bodies around Giustiniani, it was likely impossible that Mehmet saw the man fall, but something must have clued him in, for he immediately sent another wave of Janissaries at us, this time accompanied by those we now call Marvels. This group we could not stop, and a great giant of a man, by the name of Hassan, came over the stockade before any of us could stop him. He was immediately struck down, but others came pouring through, and all too soon we were retreating to the inner walls. Unfortunately, for all too many of us there was nowhere to retreat to, and most of the defenders were caught up against the walls by the Turks and slaughtered.
I had previously laid out paths to withdraw along, should the Turks gain entrance, and I used one, falling back to the Emperor's post, over the Lycus river. There the Emperor and the Knight still stood, surrounded by a few faithful companions. We stood, fending off the infidels for almost a half-hour, but finally the Emperor saw that it was truly the end. He took off the imperial purple, waved his sword high in the air, and dove from the gate into a mass of Turks. The Knight, ever the loyal bodyguard, plunged after him, and they were immediately set upon by the Turks. I never saw either of them again, and it is my belief that the Knight of the Church Temporal, my friend and boon companion of so many decades and centuries, was right when he said that as long as the Immortal City lived, so would he. And when it was taken and died, so must he have perished.
And me? I was immediately surrounded by a crowd of scimitar-wielding Ottomans, all eager to be the one to slay me, for I had acquired some notoriety in the wars against them. I fought my way free, taking a great wound in the side, and fled down back-alleys and side-streets to the Forum of Bovis, and thence to the Forum Tauri. I had a sloop anchored in the Harbour of Hormisdas, near the Churches of St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, as was my privilege; at the battle of Ostrovo I had personally run through the rebel general George Maniakes, that most magnificent ogre of the Byzantine military, and Emperor Constantine Monomachus, decadent and incompetent fop that he was, had given me a triumph, and after that I was granted the high privilege of a personal slip in the harbor. And it was for there that I ran, pursued by the howling band of Ottomans, each intent on having the great honor of separating my head from my shoulders. Luckily for my neck, my knowledge of Byzantium's back-alleys was far the superior of theirs, and I quickly lost them.
My intent was to cast off from Byzantium and break through Mehmet's ships; though they barricaded Byzantium with soaring towers, and all previous attempts to break through had been brought down with clouds of flame and lightning (more of the Ottomans' Marvels, or perhaps just their sorcerers) and with hails of arrows, I was certain that my seamanship, and the size and speed of my boat, would allow me to break through where larger ships had failed. I had spare clothes and food on the sloop, and a small amount of gold, enough to enable me to resettle elsewhere - Venice or Genoa, perhaps. I had done it dozens of times before, over the millennia, and I could do it again.
But as I passed near the Palace Bucoleon, I had strange shouts and saw strange lights, from its tallest tower. Now, poor Byzantium was full of shouts (the cries of the dying and the triumphant howls of the accurs‚d Turks) and lights (the buildings of the Eternal City, being put to the torch, one by one) and that moment - the city fair echoed them from every wall - but these were strange even by the standards of that frenzied moment. I should, perhaps, have continued to my boat, but my curiosity, as ever, mastered me, and I ran into the Palace at top speed, and from there up the many steps to the tower. What I saw at the top, in the room, brought me up short.
Four figures stood, glaring at each other. Two stood together - the two children I had sought the preceding Friday. Now that I was close to them, I could see that they were flesh and blood, as I, and no vision. The flaming child was Marvel, indeed, but nothing more. They stood together, staring at the other two. One was a tall figure in a green cloak, beneath which was black armor; the armor covered his entire body, so that no flesh was visible, and over his face was a mask of a frightening visage. His voice, speaking the same gabble that the two children and the other figure spoke, echoed weirdly, as if spoken from the bottom of a deep well. The other figure was much in his likeness - a cloak and costume that covered all flesh, and a mask over his face - but in red and blue, rather than green and black.
Between them sat two large, stone tablets, with strange writings engraved deeply on them. I had never seen them before, but their edges, worn smooth, bespoke great antiquity. And though I knew not what they were saying, the two figures in armor seemed to be disputing ownership of the tablets. Their voices were angry, and their stances disputatious. The two children seemed confused, their faces displaying puzzlement. None of the four paid me any mind; it was as if I was somehow beneath their attention.
I was wondering what to do when I heard shouts from far below me; the Turks had entered the tower and were making their way up the long, winding staircase. I leapt forward, grabbed the tablets, and jumped with all my might from the tower to the water of the harbor, which lay close to the tower. I had made such a jump before, to win bets or satisfy the curiosities of various Emperors, who wanted to be sure I was worthy of being a member of their personal guards.
The four strange figures uttered cries of surprise and shock, and I felt heat touch the edges of my body, but my speed had caught them off-guard, and I made it to the harbor's waters before any of their powers could reach me. Still holding the tablets, I swam to my sloop, occasionally glancing upwards; I saw further strange lights, but there was no pursuit.
Unfortunately, the Turks were better than I had anticipated at sea battles, and they sank my boat, and the stone tablets with it, and I was forced to swim to the Genoese colony of Galata for safety.
And that is my memory of the fall of Constantinople, the Eternal City.
Author's Notes:
I am indebted for much of my information & knowledge about the fall of Byzantium to John Julius Norwich's magnificent trilogy on Byzantium, especially Byzantium: The Decline And Fall. Excellent historical writing and exceedingly readable.
The strange omens, by the way, actually happened, although what was seen coming from St. Sophia was just a "strange red glow." But, with the exception of those things involving Lazarus and the other superheroes & villains, the events presented here happened as I've described.
This story was originally written for another fanfic project, and I decided to convert it to use here, since my original idea was boring me - just the thought of writing it was filling me with tedium. So I converted this other story. Which is cheating, sort of, but it was that or not write the story at all.
The plot, by the way, was this: Bucky and Toro appear in Constantinople, and after wandering around the city discover that Dr. Doom (who they don't know) and Kang (who they do know) are haring around the city, looking for something. They follow the two bad guys, and catch up with them at the final confrontation. It turns out that the two baddies were looking for the stone tablets - remember them, from Spider-Man #68 or so? The "stone tablets of youth?" Well, Bucky and Toro delay the two villains from getting the tablets for long enough for Lazarus to show up, grab the tablets, and escape. Right after that Kang and Dr. Doom return home and Aarkus shows up to bring Bucky and Toro back.
Next issue: Thera