.

When the besieged Christians heard the Turks outside their walls chanting
their prayers, they knew that the city would be assaulted the next day,
and late at night Constantine called his friends together, and said,
"Though my heart is full, I can speak to you no longer. There is the
crown which I hold from God. I place it in your hands; I entrust it to
you. I fight to deserve it still, or to die in defending it." They wept
and wailed so that he had to wait to be heard again, and then he said,
"Comrades, this is our fairest day;" after which they all went to the
Cathedral of St. Sophia, and received the Holy Communion together. There
was a crowd around as he came out, and he stood before them, begging them
to pardon him for not having been able to make them happier. They
answered with sobs and tears, and then he mounted his horse and rode
round the defences.

[Picture: Cathedral of St. Sophia]

The Turks began the attack in the early morning, and the fight raged all
day; but they were the most numerous, and kept thronging into the breach,
so that, though Constantine fought like a lion at bay, he could not save
the place, and the last time his voice was heard it was crying out, "Is
there no Christian who will cut off my head?" The Turks pressed in on
all sides, cut down the Christians, won street after street, house after
house; and when at last Mahommed rode up to the palace where Roman
emperors had reigned for 1100 years, he was so much struck with the
desolation that he repeated a verse of Persian poetry--

"The spider hath woven her web in the palace of kings,
The owl hath sung her watch-song in the towers of Afrasiab."

Search was made for the body of Constantine, and it was found under a
heap of slain, sword in hand, and so much disfigured that it was only
known by the golden eagles worked on his buskins. The whole city fell
under the Turks, and the nobles and princes in the mountains of the Morea
likewise owned Mahommed as their sovereign. Only Albania held out as
long as the brave Skanderbeg lived to guard it; but at last, in 1466, he
fell ill of a fever, and finding that he should not live, he called his
friends and took leave of them, talking over the toils they had shared.
In the midst there was an alarm that the Turks were making an inroad, and
the smoke of the burning villages could be seen. George called for his
armour, and tried to rise, but he was too weak, so h