Note 93 — Chapter XI · MANUEL II TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE [1391-1453 A.D.]

[With regard to the meaning of the “fall” of Constantinople and the hope of its rise, it may be well to quote the theory of the Russophile historian, Gelzere: “The month of May, 1453, had dragged the Byzantine Empire finally to its grave. The Greek supremacy had long been a thing of the past; the hollow phantom of it was now to vanish away. But Byzantium has found a mighty heir. The czar of Russia took a princess of the house of Palæologus to wife; the crown of Constantine Monomachus was placed on the head of the autocrat of all the Russias in the Kremlin. The Russian Empire is de facto the sequel to the Byzantine. And if ever St. Sophia is to be restored to the true faith, and Asia Minor delivered from the hideous misrule of the Turk, it can only come to pass through the agency of the czar of Russia. None but the czar of Russia, ‘the defender of the orthodox faith,’ and inspired with a sense of the obligations involved in his great office, can become emperor of Constantinople.”]