220

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP

LXVIII.

Death ofthe empe-ror Con-stantinePalasolo-gus.

Iiis success had proved that the achievementwaspossible: the walls and towers were instantlycovered with a swarm of Turks; and theGreeks,now driven from the vantage ground, were over-whelmed by increasing multitudes. Amidst thesemultitudes, the emperor , 0 who accomplished allthe duties of a general and a soldier, was longseen, and finally lost. The nobles, who foughtround his person, sustained, till their last breath,the honourable names of Palaeologus and Can-tacuzene: his mournful exclamation was heard,“ Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my“ head?’ 0 and his last fear was that of fallingalive into the hands of the infidels. p The pru-dent despair of Constantine cast away the pur-ple: amidst the tumult he fell by an unknownhand, and his body was buried under a moun-tain of the slain. After his death, resistance andorder were no more: the Greeks fled towardsthe city; and many were pressed and stifled inthe narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus.

» Ducas kills him with two blows of Turkish soldiers; Chalcocon-dyles wounds him in the shoulder, and then tramples him in the gate.The grief of Pliranza carrying him among the enemy, escapes fromthe precise image of his death; but we may, without flattery, applythese noble Hues of Dryden;

As to Sebastian, let them search the field jAnd where they And a mountain of the slain,

Send one to climb, and looking down beneath,

There they will find him at his manly length,

With liis face up to heaven, in that red monumentWhich his good sword had digged.

* Spondanns (a. d. 1453, No. 10), who has hopes of his salvation,wishes to absolve this demand from the guilt of suicide.

p Leona;dus Chiensis very properly observes, that the Turks, hadthey known the emperor, would have laboured to save and secure acaptive so acceptable to the sultan.