The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-02-15
CONSTANTINOPLE.
A City That Has Been Besiesed Twenty
Three Times and raken stx Times.
[constantinople Cor. Philadelphia Press.l

Three Times and taken sSx Times.
| q Tconstantinopie Cor Philadelphia Press.l
The defenses of Constantinople are
hardly worth talking about. There is a
ridge of heights fifteen miles to the
north of the city, that stretch over a line
| of seventeen miles from point near the
Black sea to the Sea of Marmora. Some
| batteries and other works have been
erected on them, cannon mounted, and
bitches dug. Even if they were as for
| midable as they ought to be, we have no
army to hold them. Hasty levies of
citizens cannot be depended on.
The Russians would carry them in any
event, and would push for the heights
of Daoud Pasha and the plateau behind
Cassim Pasha. These positions over
look all STEAMBOAT, and from them q
plunging fire could be directed into it
that in few hours would render it un-
tenable. The Crusaders and Mohammed
III. brought the Greeks to terms by the
heavy cannonade they kept upon them
from there commanding elevations.
Neither of them have any fortified lines
that would give the Russians trouble.
The fact that the city cannot stand
siege is doubtless the reason why an eff
fort is being made to bring the Russians
to halt by an arm1stice. -
Constantinople has undergone more
sieges than any other city in the world.
1t has been besieged twenty three times;
twice by the ancient Greeks; thrice by
the Roman Emperors; once by the
Latins, the Persians, the Avares, the
Sclaves, and by one of the dethroned
sovereigns, Michael Paleologus twice
by the Bulgarians; once by Byzantine
rebels; seven times by the Arabs and
three times by the Turks. 1t was taken
but six times; by Alcibiades, the Roman
Emperors Septimus, Severus, and Con-
stantine, the Doge Dandolo and Count
Baldwin, the Emperor Michael Paleolo-
gus, and Mohammed III.
In 672, under Constantine H.. it was
besieged for seven years by the Arabs.
They made the surrounding country a
desert, uprooting trees, leveling villages
and habitations, and converting the
fiourishing environs into waste. Then
came the Crusaders in 1904. The de-
vastation committed by the French and
Venetian champions of the cross exceed
ed even that of the Arabs. They burned
the richest and largest quarter of the
city, and inflicted such blow on it that
it never recovered it's former wealth and
prosperity. They profaned the Cathe-
dral of st. Sophia, broke into the tcmbs
OF the Byzantine Emperors, dragged out
their skeletons, and scattered their bones
in the streets. They fired the public
libraries, ridiculed the Greek religion by
decking their horses with the vestments
OF the clergy, and their heads with the
pontihcal tiaras.
Were it not for the incompatible
beauty and advantages of its situation,
Con stantinople could never have risen
again from it's ashes and survived such
terrible calamities. HD l"
What now is most to be unprecedented
is that, if the conditions of peace prove
very hard, and the Sultan is obliged to
cede a large extent of territory to the
Russians, the partisans of the deposed
Murad may attempt revolution and the
dethronement of Abdul Hamid. 1t is
easy, by methods often practiced in OF
toman history, to put reigning Sultan
out OF the way. His own servitors may
strangle or poison him, or his guards
betray him. There has not been an
hour since the present Sultan was on
the throne that plots have not been de-
vised to open the way to a successor
Not long ago, thirty or more of Murad's
body servants were seized in the Palace
of Tchirigan, in the dead of night, and
strangled on suspicion of conspiring for
his restoration to power. The court
party is deservedly unpopular. Damat
Pasha, the brother-in-law of the Sultan,
has marred the plans of the wisest Gen
erals; has pilfered right and left, and
obtained such complete control of the
Sultan that his Majesty is no longer
master of himself.