make the coveted city on the Bosphorus their own. In 1453, the
successor of Othman was in Constantinople.

The Pope, always hoping for a reconciliation, and always striving for
the headship of a united Christendom, had in 1439 made fresh overtures
to the Greek Church. The Emperor at Constantinople, three of the
Patriarchs, and seventeen of the Metropolitans--including the one at
Moscow--at last signed the Act of Union. But when the astonished
Russians heard the prayer for the Pope, and saw the Latin cross upon
their altars, their indignation knew no bounds. The Grand Prince
Vasili so overwhelmed the Metropolitan with insults that he could not
remain in Moscow, and the Union was abandoned. Its wisdom as a
political measure cannot be doubted. If the Emperor had had the
sympathy of the Pope, and the championship of Catholic Europe, the
Turks might not have entered Constantinople in 1453. But they had not
that sympathy, and the Turks did enter it; and no one event has ever
left so lasting an impress upon civilization as the overthrow of the
old Byzantine Empire, and the giving to the winds, to carry whither
they would, its hoarded treasures of ancient ideals. Byzantium had
been the heir to Greece, and now Russia claimed to be heir to
Byzantium; while the head of Russia was Moscow, and the head of Moscow
was Ivan III., who had just settled himself firmly on the seat left by
his father, "Vasili the Blind" (1462).

Christendom had never received such a blow. Where had been before a
rebellious and alienated brother, who might in time be reconciled,
there was now--and at the very Gate of Europe--the infidel Turk, the
bitterest and most dangerous foe to Christianity; bearing the same
hated emblem that Charles Martel had driven back over the Pyrenees (in
732), and which had enslaved the Spanish Peninsula for seven hundred