and to build a road to the assault. In the attack, as
well as in the defence, ancient and modern artillery was employed.
Cannon and mechanical engines, the bullet and the battering-ram,
gunpowder and Greek fire, were engaged on both sides.

Christendom watched the struggle with coldness and apathy. Four ships,
which successfully forced an entrance into the harbour, were the limit
of their assistance. None the less, Mahomet meditated a retreat. Unless
the city could be attacked from the harbour, its reduction appeared to
be hopeless. In this perplexity the genius of Mahomet executed a plan of
a bold and marvellous cast. He transported his fleet over land for ten
miles. In the course of one night four-score light galleys and
brigantines painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and were
launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far
above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. A bridge, or
mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. The
galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible
side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive
garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert
the fate of the capital.

On Monday, May 28, preparations were made for the final assault. Mahomet
had inspired his soldiers with the hope of rewards in this world and the
next. His camp re-echoed with the shouts of "God is God; there is but
one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God"; and the sea and land, from
Galata to the Seven Towers, were illuminated with the blaze of the
Moslem fires.

Far different was the state of the Christians. On that last night of the
Roman Empire, Constantine Palaeologus, in his palace, addressed the
noblest of the Greeks and the bravest of the allies on the duties and
dangers that lay before them. It was the funeral oration of the Roman
Empire. That same night the emperor and some faithful companions entered
the Dome of St. Sofia, which, within a few hours, was to be converted
into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the
sacrament of the Holy Communion. He reposed some moments in the palace,
which resounded with cries and lamentations, solicited the pardon of all
whom he might have injured, and mounted on horseback to visit the guards
and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the last
Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity