The army which Mahomet commanded was not merely endued with the fatalism and confidence of an ordinary army of Islam; it was engaged upon a work in which many generations of Moslems had longed to take a part. The prophet himself was represented in the Sacred Traditions as holding converse with Allah respecting the capture of New Rome, and was told that the Great Day of Judgment would not come before Constantinople had been captured by the sons of Isaac. On another occasion Mahomet declared that ‘the best prince is he who shall capture Constantinople, and his the best army.’ The inspired words had filled his immediate followers with the determination to capture the city. The Arabs attempted the task no less than seven times. At the third, in 672, they were accompanied by the aged Eyoub, who in his youth had been the standard-bearer and favourite of the Prophet. The huge army had sat down before the city during seven years, sowing the fields on the neighbouring coasts and gathering in the harvest, but determined to win the reward which Mahomet had promised to those who should capture the New Rome. Eyoub’s death before its walls and the failure in these Arab attempts of the largest and most powerful army and fleet which Islam could ever collect had not rendered the words of the Prophet void. The sacred promise still held good and served to stimulate every soldier to increased exertion. Seven centuries had passed since the long struggle against the Arabs, in which the Queen City saved European civilisation, and now, once again in the fulness of time, that which the early Moslems had desired to see was within the reach of those who fought under a leader who bore the same name as the Prophet. Among those who in the army were under the influence of religious ideas or traditions the coming attempt to capture the city was looked forward to hopefully and joyfully. To the ignorant and thoughtless among his barbarous followers the promise of unlimited plunder which Mahomet the Second held out was a stronger inducement; but to the better informed and more religious, and to some extent to all, the hope of winning paradise furnished a powerful allurement to battle or at least a compensatory consolation at the prospect of death. After this digression I return to the preparations which Mahomet was making at Adrianople for the execution of his great design, and to those which the emperor had in hand for the defence of the city. [Sidenote: Urban’s great bombard.] In the first weeks of January, the fame reached Constantinople of a monster bombard or gun which was being cast in Adrianople. Ducas gives interesting information of its history and describes it as the largest possessed by the Turks.