Scarcely less interesting to me than the age-old remnants of the Hippodrome were the massive and crumbling walls that for a thousand years were the city’s palladium against the barbarian hordes of Asia and Europe. What visions crowd upon the memory as one stands upon this hoary rampart and surveys the scene around one! It was thanks to the impregnable walls of Constantinople no less than to the unique strategic position of the city that Roma Nova was able so long to hold her place as the home of art and letters, history and philosophy; that, in spite of desolating wars which everywhere raged in the rest of the world, and which at times carried their ravaging effects to her very gates, she continued to be the world’s one sure refuge of law, justice, and freedom; that, notwithstanding internecine strife, and changes of dynasties, her government was the one that for centuries afforded the greatest security for life and property; the one under which commerce and civilization were most fostered and most flourishing. If the walls of Constantinople could speak, what thrilling stories could they not relate of the score of sieges to which they were exposed! For vivid color and breathless interest they surpass the siege of Tyre by Alexander, the siege of Carthage by Scipio, the siege of Jerusalem by Godfrey de Bouillon as described in the glowing epic of Tasso. Unlike the last-named sieges, those directed against the city on the Bosphorus “stand out on the canvas of history by the magnitude of the issues involved to religion, to nations, to civilization.” This is particularly true of the sieges by Saracens, Turks, and Mongols, for, if these barbarians and sworn enemies of the Christian name had succeeded in piercing the walls of this greatest bulwark of civilization before the dawn of the reconstructive work of the fifteenth century, the results to learning, art, Christendom would have been disastrous beyond conception, while progress and social order would have been retarded for untold centuries. Never, probably, in the history of our race has the possession of any city led to more devastating and longer continued wars, to greater international rivalries and contentions than has the fair capital on the Golden Horn. It was in 673--but little more than a generation after Mohammed’s death--when the Moslems under the Saracen Moawiah laid siege to Constantinople, which was then the greatest and the richest city of the known world. They were defeated but not crushed. Knowing the incalculable treasures the city contained and realizing fully its supreme importance as the center of a world empire, they determined never to desist from their purpose until Constantinople was the capital and sovereign seat of Islam. Not until 1453, after eight centuries of deferred hopes, were their aspirations realized.