Connecticut western news., 1878-02-07
CONstTANTINOPLE DEFEENCELEss.
A gQty that has been Besieged Twenty.
 three Times nnd Taken Six Times. . fl,

three Times nnd Taken Six Times. ,, ii. The .defences of Constantinople are hardly worth talking about, says letter
 from that city. There is a ridge of heights fifteen miles to the north of the
 city, that stretch over line ofiseventeen ] miles, from 8 point near the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora. T Some batteries
 and other, works have been erected on them, cannon mounted, and ditches dug. Even if they were as formidable 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 tor the helghts of, Daoud PaSha and the plateau behind Cassim Pasha. These. positions overlook all Stamboul, and from them a plunging fro could be di-, rected into it that in few hours woulds render E it untenable. The Crusaders and Mohammed II. brought the Greeks to terms by the heavy cannonede they kept up upon them from these command ing elevations. Neither of them, have any fortified lines that would give the Russians trouble. The fact that the city cannot stand a siege is doubtless the req son why an effort IS being made to bring the Russians to halt by an armistice.
 Constantinople has undergone more sieges than any other city in the world
 It has been besieged twenty three times twice by the ancient Greeks thrice by the Roman Emperors once by the La tins, the Persians, the .Avares, the, Sclaves, and. by one of it's dethroned sovereigns, Michael Paleologus; twice by the Bulgarians once by the Byzdn- tinerebels; seven. times by the Arabs,
 and three times by. the Turks. It was taken but six times :. by 'Alcibiades, the Roman Emperors .Septimus, Seyerus,. and Constantine, the Doge Dandolo and Count Baldwin, the Emperor Michael Paleologus, and Mohammed IT. 70. - r In 672, under Constantine IT., it was 'besleged for seven years by the Arabs.
 They made the surrounding country a desert, uprooting trees, levelling vii. lages and habitations, and converting the fourishing environs into waste,
 Then came the Crusaders in 1904. The devastation committed by the French and Venetian champions of the cross ex-, ceeded even that of the Arabs. ,r They burned the richest and largest quarter of the city, and inflicted such 2 blow on it that it never recovered it's former wealth and prosperity. They profaned the Cathedral of St. Sophia, broke into the tombs of the Byzantine Emperors, dragged out their skeletons, asad scat tered 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 pontifcal tiaras. 9y
 Were it not for the incompatible beauty and advantages of it's situation, Constantinople could never have risen again from its ashes and survived such terrible calamities.i &a sa .bagE .5E What now is most to be apprehended is that if the conditions of peace prove very hard, and the Sultan is obliged to cede large extent of territory to the Russians, she partisans of the deposed Murad may attempt revolution and the detironer,ent of Abdul Hamid. It is easy by methods often practiced in Otto man History to put a reigning Sultan out of the way. His own servitors may straDgle 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 successor. Not long ago thirty or moro of Murad's Lbodysservants were seized in the Palace of Tohirigan Tn the dead of night and strangled on suspicion of conspiring for h s restoration to power. 2 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 pilferred light and left, and
 obtained such complete control of the
 Sultan that his Majesty is no longer master of himself. .. .. @s.tl