CHAPTER IX. THE WALL OF THE EMPEROR MANUEL COMNENUS.

According to Nicetas Choniates, [467] a portion of the city fortifications was erected by the Emperor Manuel Comnenus.

Tower of the Wall of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus.

Tower of the Wall of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus.

The historian alludes to that work when describing the site upon which the Crusaders established their camp in 1203, and from his account of the matter there can be no doubt regarding the portion intended. The Latin camp, says Nicetas, [468] was pitched on the hill which faced the western front of the Palace of Blachernæ, and which was separated from the city walls by a strip of level ground, extending from the Golden Horn, on the north, to the wall built by the Emperor Manuel, on the south. This is an unmistakable description of the hill which stands to the west of the fortifications between the Golden Horn and Egri Kapou, and which is separated from those fortifications by a narrow plain, as by a trench or gorge. Consequently, the wall erected by the Emperor Manuel must be sought at the plain’s southern extremity; and there, precisely, commences a line of wall which displays, as far as the north-western corner of the court of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, a style of workmanship perfectly distinct from any found elsewhere in the bulwarks of the city.

The object of building this wall was to add to the security of the Palace of Blachernæ, which became the favourite residence of the Imperial Court in the reign of Alexius Comnenus, [469] and which Manuel himself enlarged and beautified. [470] The new wall was not only stronger than the earlier defences of the palace, but had also the advantage of removing the point of attack against this part of the city to a greater distance from the Imperial residence. At the same time, the older fortifications were allowed to remain as a second line of defence.

In construction the wall is a series of lofty arches closed on the outer face, and built of larger blocks of stone [471] than those generally employed in the Walls of Theodosius. On account of the steepness of the slope on which it, for the most part, stands, it was unprotected by a moat, but to compensate for this lack the wall was more massive, and flanked by stronger towers than other portions of the fortifications. At the summit the wall measured fifteen feet in thickness. Of its nine towers, the first six, commencing from the court of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, are alternately round and octagonal; the seventh and eighth are octagonal; the last is square.

The wall was provided with a public gate and, apparently, two posterns.

One postern, opening on the Theodosian parateicheion, was in the curtain [472] extending from the outer wall of the court of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus to the first tower of Manuel’s Wall. The other postern stood between the second and third towers, and is remarkable for being the only entrance in the city walls furnished with a drip-stone. Dr. Paspates [473] identified it with the Paraportion of St. Kallinikus; but the postern of that name is mentioned in history before the erection of Manuel’s Wall.

Between the sixth and seventh towers was the Public Gate, now styled Egri Kapou. By some authorities, as already stated, [474] it has been identified with the Porta Charisiou, but it is, beyond question, the Porta Kaligaria, so conspicuous in the last siege of the city. [475] This is clear from the following circumstances: The Porta Kaligaria pierced the wall which protected the quarter known, owing to the manufacture of military shoes (caliga) there, as the Kaligaria (ἐν τοῖς Καλιγαρίοις). That wall stood near the palace of the emperor; it was a single line of fortifications, distinguished for its strength, but without a moat. [476] It occupied, moreover, such a position that from one of its towers the Emperor Constantine Dragoses and his friend the historian Phrantzes were able to reconnoitre, early in the morning of the fatal 29th of May, the operations of the Turkish army before the Theodosian Walls, and hear the ominous sounds of the preparations for the last assault. [477] All these particulars hold true only of the wall in which Egri Kapou is situated; and hence that gate must be the Porta Kaligaria.

The only inscription found on the Wall of Manuel consists of the two words, ΥΠΕΡ ΕΥΧΗΣ, on a stone built into the left side of the entrance which leads from within the city into the square tower above mentioned.

In the siege of 1453, this wall, on account of its proximity to the Palace of Blachernæ, was the object of special attack; but all the attempts of the Turkish gunners and miners failed to open a breach in it. [478] A battery of three cannon, one of them the huge piece cast by Orban, played against these bulwarks with such little effect that the Sultan ordered the guns to be transferred to the battery before the Gate of St. Romanus. [479] The skilled miners who were brought from the district around Novobrodo, in Servia, to undermine the wall succeeded in shaking down only part of an old tower, and all the mines they opened were countermined by John Grant, a German engineer in the service of the Greeks. [480]

The tower from which the emperor and Phrantzes reconnoitred the Turkish movements was, Dr. Paspates thinks, the noble tower which stands at the point where the wall bends to descend the slope towards the Golden Horn. [481]

The portion of the fortifications, some 453 feet in length, extending from the square tower in the wall just described to the fourth tower to the north (the tower bearing an inscription in honour of Isaac Angelus), [482] is considered by one authority to be also a part of the Wall of Manuel Comnenus. [483] If so, it must have undergone great alterations since that emperor’s time, for in its construction and general appearance it is very different from the Comnenian ramparts. It is built of smaller blocks of stone; its bricks are much slighter in make; its arches less filled with masonry; its four towers are all square, and glaringly inferior to the splendid towers in Manuel’s undoubted work; while, immediately to the south of the square tower above mentioned one can see, from within the city, a line of junction between the wall to the south and the wall to the north of that tower, indicating in the plainest possible manner the juxtaposition of two perfectly distinct structures. And in point of fact, three inscriptions recording repairs are found on the latter wall. One inscription, on the fourth tower, belongs to the reign of Isaac Angelus [484] and bears the date 1188. Another is seen among the Turkish repairs executed on the city side of the second tower of the wall, and records the date, “In the year 6824 (1317), November 4;” the year, as we have seen, in which Irene, the empress of Andronicus II., died, leaving large sums of money, which that emperor devoted, mainly, to the restoration of the bulwarks of the capital. [485] The third inscription stands on the curtain between the third and fourth towers of the wall, immediately below the parapet, and commemorates repairs executed in 1441 by John VII. Palæologus, who was concerned in the reconstruction of the Outer Theodosian Wall. It reads:

ΙΩΑΝΝΗΣ ΕΝ ΧΩ ΤΩ

ΘΩ ΠΙΣΤΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ

ΚΑΙ ΑΥΤΟΚΡΑΤΩΡ ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ

Ο ΠΑΛΑΙΟΛΟΓΟΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΗΝΑ

ΑΥΓΟΥΣΤΟΥ ΤΗ Δ

ΤΟΥ ϚϠΜΘ ΕΤΟΥΣ (6949).

“John Palæologus, faithful King and Emperor of the Romans, in Christ, God; on the second of the month of August of the year 1441.”

Palæologian Wall, North of the Wall of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus.

The Palæologian Wall, North of the Wall of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus.

To the north of the second tower in the wall before us is a gateway which answers to the description of the Gate of Gyrolimnè (πύλη τῆς Γυρολίμνης); for the Gate of Gyrolimnè, like this entrance, stood in the immediate vicinity of the Palace of Blachernæ, and was so near the hill on which the Crusaders encamped in 1203 that the Greeks stationed at the gate and the enemy on the hill were almost within speaking distance. [486]

The Gate of Gyrolimnè.

The Gate of Gyrolimnè.

The gate derived its name from a sheet of water called the Silver Lake (Ἀργυρὰ Λίμνη), at the head of the Golden Horn, and beside which was an Imperial palace. [487] The gate was at the service of the Palace of Blachernæ, a fact which, doubtless, explains the decoration of the arch of the entrance with three Imperial busts. [488]

Several historical reminiscences are attached to the gate. Through it, probably, the leaders of the Fourth Crusade went to and fro in carrying on their negotiations with Isaac Angelus. [489] By it Andronicus the Younger went forth in hunter’s garb, with his dogs and falcons, as if to follow the chase, but in reality to join his adherents and raise the standard of revolt against his grandfather. [490] Hither that prince came thrice in the course of his rebellion, and held parley with the officials of the palace, as they stood upon the walls, regarding terms of peace; [491] and here the intelligence that he had entered the city was brought by the peasants who had seen him admitted early in the morning through the Gate of St. Romanus. [492]

To this gate Cantacuzene also came at the head of his troops in 1343, to sound the disposition of the capital during his contest with Apocaucus and the Empress Anna. [493]