The slaughter and rapine that awaited the surviving citizens of the city need not be dwelt on at length. It was unspeakable. Children raped on Christian altars; women and elderly impaled; blood running on the streets; St. Sophia a great bloodbath, then a mosque. Legend holds that several priests vanished into the very walls of the church, to return when Constantinople is liberated from the yoke of the Mohammedan. Untold Greeks were captured and clasped in fetters, the maidens and attractive boys destined for Turkish harems, the strong boys for the barracks of the Janissaries, to repeat the conquest of other Christians in other lands; and the Orthodox Church itself was seized into a captivity under which much of it toils to this day. The slave markets of the world showed a rapid depreciation in their miserable commodity for months to come. Though he has promised three days of looting (to entice those among his army of lesser piety), the Sultan now called a halt to it after one, so terrible was the pillage; few complained. The city was vanquished and violated. He established the Greeks under the standard dhimma contract, Islam's system of official subjugation and humiliation: a kind of Jim Crow for infidels. Eventually order was restored, and before long the city was thriving again, after a fashion, under Turkish suzerainty. Human resilience is a remarkable thing. But the Roman Empire was no more. The morning of May 29, 1453, shone with the last sunrise over Greek Rome.
and the peace of islam continues to march along...
6 posted on 05/30/2007 5:53:36 PM PDT by Fred Nerks
(Fair Dinkum!)