[Alkman]

Paleologos' last speech and the legent of the Marble Emperor

On Monday, 28 May, the Greeks knew that their moment of truth was upon them. There was a weird calm from the Turkish camp. The Sultan had ordered a day of rest before the final assault.
Those in the city who could be spared from manning and patching up the battered walls took to the streets in prayer. Constantine ordered that icons and relics from churches and monasteries be carried round the walls while the church bells rang. The crowd of Greeks and Italians, Orthodox and Catholic, forgot their differences as they joined in hymns and prayers. Constantine led the procession on its solemn march.

When it was over he assembled his ministers, officers and soldiers and addressed them. There are three accounts of what he said. The first and shortest of them is contained in a letter of Leonardo of Chios, the Latin Archbishop of Lesbos, addressed to Pope Nicholas V on 19 August 1453. Leonardo had been present during the last weeks of Byzantine Constantinople and he reported to the pope some six weeks after the capture of the city, while his memory was still fresh.

The two other and longer versions of Constantine's speech are mainly elaborations and extensions of Leonardo's text. One purports to be from the pen of George Sphrantzes, who must certainly have heard the speech though he makes no mention of it in his memoirs. It is to be read only in the extended version of those memoirs compiled in the sixteenth century by Makarios Melissenos. The third version is given in the Greek Chronicle of the Turkish Sultans, also of the sixteenth century.

The speech as related by Leonardo of Chios is thus the most reliable account, even though the rhetoric of it may be fanciful. It may therefore be worth giving it in full, since it was Constantine's last public speech and can serve, as Gibbon observed, as 'the funeral oration of the Roman Empire.



Gentlemen, illustrious captains of the army, and our most Christian comrades in arms: we now see the hour of battle approaching. I have therefore elected to assemble you here to make it clear that you must stand together with firmer resolution than ever. You have always fought with glory against the enemies of Christ. Now the defence of your fatherland and of the city known the world over, which the infidel and evil Turks have been besieging for two and fifty days, is committed to your lofty spirits.



Be not afraid because its walls have been worn down by the enemy's battering. For your strength lies in the protection of God and you must show it with your arms quivering and your swords brandished against the enemy. I know that this undisciplined mob will, as is their custom, rush upon you with loud cries and ceaseless volleys of arrows. These will do you no bodily harm, for I see that you are well covered in armour. They will strike the walls, our breastplates and our shiellds. So do not imitate the Romans who, when the Carthaginians went into battle against them, allowed their cavalry to be terrified by the fearsome sight and sound of elephants.



In this battle you must stand firm and have no fear, no thought of flight, but be inspired to resist with ever more herculean strength. Animals may run away from animals. But you are men, men of stout heart, and you will hold at bay these dumb brutes, thrusting your spears and swords into them, so that they will know that they are fighting not against their own kind but against the masters of animals.


You are aware that the impious and infidel enemy has disturbed the peace unjustly. He has violated the oath and treaty that he made with us; he has slaughtered our farmers at harvest time; he has erected a fortress on the Propontis as it were to devour the Christians; he has encircled Galata under a pretence of peace.


Now he threatens to capture the city of Constantine the Great, your fatherland, the place of ready refuge for all Christians, the guardian of all Greeks, and to profane its holy shrines of God by turning them into stables for fits horses. Oh my lords, my brothers, my sons, the everlasting honour of Christians is in your hands.


You men of Genoa, men of courage and famous for your infinite victories, you who have always protected this city, your mother, in many a conflict with the Turks, show now your prowess and your aggressive spirit toward them with manly vigour.


You men of Venice, most valiant heroes, whose swords have many a time made Turkish blood to flow and who in our time have sent so many ships, so many infidel souls to the depths under the command of Loredano, the most excellent captain of our fleet, you who have adorned this city as if it were your own with fine, outstanding men, lift high your spirits now for battle.


You, my comrades in arms, obey the commands of your leaders in the knowledge that this is the day of your glory -- a day on which, if you shed but a drop of blood, you will win for yourselves crowns of martyrdom and eternal fame.



Paleologos resisted calls to go into exile and died in battle. His remains were never found and myths were told about the "Marble Emperor" who allegedly was saved at the last moment by an interceding Angel. The myth states that one day the Emperor would awaken and chase the Turks back to the Red Apple Tree

Later in the nineteenth century the myth of the sleeping emperor became a theme for contemporary Greek poets. George Bizyinos (1849-96) wrote a poem entitled 'The Last Palaiologos' which concludes with the tale of the emperor being woken by the angel and, repossessed of his sword, chasing the Turks all the way to Red Apple Tree.

George Zalokostas (1805-58), in his poem 'The Sword and the Crown' first published in 1854, foretells the day when the crown of Constantine, taken away for safe keeping by the Lord of Heaven, will be restored to rest upon the head of a fairhaired emperor.

The myth was given new meaning when, for reasons best known to himself, the Danish King of the Hellenes George I (1863-1913), had his son and heir baptised as Constantine. Readers of Agathangelos and Stephanitzes were enraptured. The monks of Mount Athos were at their most prophetic. Clearly the heir to the Greek throne was in the direct line of succession from the first and the last Emperors of Byzantium, Constantine I the Great and Constantine XI Palaiologos.

We have seen how the Greeks in Constantinople presented the young Constantine with what they alleged was the sword of the last Christian ruler of their city. When he came to the throne of Greece in 1913 there were many of his subjects who hailed him as Constantine XII. His leadership in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and the eviction of the Turks from Thessaloniki fortified the fantasy that the Red Apple Tree would be his next stop. It was unfortunate that he fell foul of his prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos and had to abdicate before accomplishing what many believed to be his sacred mission."

The bubble of the Great Idea was finally pricked by the catastrophic failure of the Greek invasion of Asia Minor in 1922. In the same year Constantine of the Hellenes was forced to abdicate for a second time. The illusion of the sleeping emperor was laid to rest. But the myth itself lives on, as a harmless legend or a fairy tale. Perhaps its most poetic evocation in modern Greek literature is that by Kostis Palamas (1859-1943) in his long poem entitled 'The King's Flute' first published in 1910:


King, I shall arise from my enmarbled sleep,
And from my mystic tomb I shall come forth
To open wide the bricked-up Golden Gate;
And, victor over the Caliphs and the Tsars,
Hunting them beyond Red Apple Tree,
I shall seek rest upon my ancient bounds.



The latest version of the legend comes in a popular song of the 1970s, called simply 'The Marble Emperor':


I sent two birds to the Red Apple tree, of which the legends
speak
One was killed, the other was hurt, and they never came back to me.
Of the marble emperor there is no word, no talk.
But grandmothers sing about him to the children like a fairy tale.
I sent two birds, two house martins, to the Red Apple Tree.
But there they stayed and became a dream...