Note 221 — PART II. (continued 2)

The assault of the city took place at daybreak, and the Turks were strictly enjoined to advance in silence, which had also been commanded, on pain of death, during the preceding night. This circumstance is finely alluded to by Miss Baillie, in her tragedy of Constantine Palæologus:—

“Silent shall be the march; nor drum, nor trump, Nor clash of arms, shall to the watchful foe Our near approach betray: silent and soft As the pard’s velvet foot on Libya’s sands, Slow stealing with crouch’d shoulders on her prey.” Constantine Palæologus, act iv.

“The march and labour of thousands” must, however, as Gibbon observes, “have inevitably produced a strange confusion of discordant clamours, which reached the ears of the watchmen on the towers.”