Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures

by Stefan Zweig

  Suddenly Oates gets to his feet. “I am just going outside and may be some time,” he tells his friends. The others tremble: they all know what that will mean. But no one dares say a word to stop him. No one dares to shake his hand one last time, for they all feel, with respect, that Captain Lawrence E.G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons is going to his death like a hero.

  Three weary, weakened men drag themselves through the endless, icy, iron-hard wilderness, tired and hopeless, with only the dull instinct of self-preservation stiffening their sinews to a stumbling walk. The weather gets worse and worse, a new disappointment mocks them at every depot, there is never enough oil, enough warmth. On 21st March they are only eighteen kilometres away from a depot, but the wind is blowing so murderously that they cannot leave their tent. Every evening they hope for the next morning, so as to reach their destination, for meanwhile their provisions are running out and with them their last hope. Their heating fuel is finished, and the thermometer says forty degrees below zero. Every hope is extinguished; they now have only the choice between starving or freezing to death. The three men struggle against the inevitable end for eight days in a small tent in the middle of the white wilderness world. On 29th March they know that no miracle can save them now. So they decide not to go another step towards their fate, but wait proudly for death as they have suffered every other misfortune. They crawl into their sleeping bags, and not a sigh reaches the outside world to speak of their last suffering.

  The Dying Man’s Letters

  In those moments, facing invisible but now imminent death while the blizzard attacks the thin walls of the tent like a madman, Captain Scott remembers all to whom he is close. Alone in the iciest silence, silence never broken by a human voice, he is heroically aware of his fraternal feelings for his country, for all mankind. In this white wilderness, a mirage of the mind conjures up the image of all who were ever linked to him by love, loyalty and friendship, and he addresses them. Captain Scott writes with freezing fingers, writes letters at the hour of his death to all the living men and women he loves.

  They are wonderful letters. In the mighty presence of death all that is small and petty is dismissed; the crystalline air of that empty sky seems to breathe through his words. They are meant for individuals, but speak to all mankind. They are written at a certain time, they speak for eternity.

  He writes to his wife, asking her to take good care of his son, the best legacy he can leave her, and above all, he says, “he must guard and you must guard him against indolence. Make him into a strenuous man.” Of himself he says—at the end of one of the greatest achievements in the history of the world—“I had to force myself into being strenuous, as you know—had always an inclination to be idle.” Even so close to death he does not regret but approves of his own decision to go on the expedition. “What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better it has been than lounging in too great comfort at home.”

  And he writes in loyal comradeship to the wife of one of his companions in misfortune, to the mother of another, men who will have died with him when the letters reach home, bearing witness to their heroism. Although he is dying himself, he comforts the bereaved families of the others with his strong, almost superhuman sense of the greatness of the moment and the memorable nature of their deaths.

  And he writes to his friends, speaking modestly for himself but with a fine sense of pride for the whole nation, whose worthy son he feels himself to be at this moment. “I may not have proved a great explorer,” he admits, “but I think [this diary] will show that the spirit of pluck and the power to endure has not passed out of our race.” And death now impels him to tell one friend what manly reserve and his own modesty has kept him from saying all his life. “I never met a man in my life whom I loved and admired more than you, but I never could show you how much your friendship meant to me, for you had much to give and I had nothing.”

  He writes one last letter, the finest of all, to the British nation, feeling bound to give a reckoning of what he did for the fame of the country on the expedition, blaming only misfortune for its end. He enumerates the various accidents that conspired against him, and in a voice to which the echo of death lends pathos he calls on “our countrymen to see that those who depend upon us are properly cared for”.

  His last thought is not of his own fate, but of the lives of others. “For God’s sake look after our people.” The remaining pages are blank.

  Captain Scott kept his diary until the last moment, when his fingers were so frozen that the pencil slipped out of them. Only the hope that the pages he had written would be found with his body, as a record of what he had done and of the courage of his countrymen, enabled him to make such a superhuman effort. The last thing he wrote, his frozen fingers shaking, was, “Send this diary to my wife.” But then, in cruel certainty, he crossed out the words “my wife”, and wrote over them the terrible “my widow”.

  The Answer

  For weeks their companions had waited in the hut. First confidently, then with some concern, finally with growing uneasiness. Expeditions were sent out twice to help them, but the weather beat them back.

  The leaderless men spend all the long winter in the hut, at a loss, with the black shadow of the disaster falling on their hearts. Captain Robert Scott’s achievement and his fate are locked in snow and silence during those months. The ice holds him and his last companions sealed in a glass coffin; not until 29th October, in the polar spring, does an expedition set out at least to find the heroes’ bodies and the message they left. They reach the tent on 12th November, and find the bodies frozen in their sleeping bags, Scott with a fraternal arm round Wilson even in death. They also find the letters and documents, and dig the tragic heroes a grave. A plain black cross on top of a mound of snow now stands alone in the white world, hiding under it for ever the evidence of a heroic human achievement.

  Or no! The expedition’s achievements are wonderfully and unexpectedly resurrected, a miracle of our modern technological world. The dead men’s friends bring back the records of the expedition on disks and films, the images are developed in a chemical bath, and Scott can be seen again walking with his companions in the polar landscape that only the other explorer, Amundsen, has seen. The news of his words and letters leaps along the electric wire into the astonished world; the king bows his knee in memory of the heroes in a British cathedral. And so what seemed to have been in vain bears fruit again, what appeared to be left undone is applauded as mankind’s efforts to reach the unattainable. In a remarkable reversal, greater life comes from a heroic death; downfall arouses the will to rise to infinity. Chance success and easy achievement kindle only ambition, but the heart rises in response to a human being’s fight against an invincibly superior power of fate, the greatest of all tragedies, and one that sometimes inspires poets and shapes life a thousand times over.

  THE CONQUEST

  OF BYZANTIUM

  29 May 1453

  The Discovery of Danger

  On 5th February 1451, a secret messenger goes to Asia Minor to see the eldest son of Sultan Murad, the twenty-one-year-old Mahomet, bringing him the news that his father is dead. Without exchanging so much as a word with his ministers and advisers the prince, as wily as he is energetic, mounts the best of his horses and whips the magnificent pure-blooded animal the 120 miles to the Bosporus, crossing to the European bank immediately after passing Gallipoli. Only there does he disclose the news of his father’s death to his most faithful followers. He swiftly gathers together a select troop of men, bent as he is from the first on putting an end to any other claim to the throne, and leads them to Adrianople, where he is indeed recognized without demur as the master of the Ottoman Empire. His very first action shows Mahomet’s fierce determination as a ruler. As a precaution, he disposes of any rivals of his own blood in advance by having his young brother, still a minor, drowned in his bath, and immediately afterwards—once again giving evidence of his forethought and ruthlessness—sends the
murderer whom he employed to do the deed to join the murdered boy in death.

  In Byzantium, they are horrified to hear that this young and passionate prince Mahomet, who is avid for fame, has succeeded the more thoughtful Murad as Sultan of the Turks. A hundred scouts have told them that the ambitious young man has sworn to get his hands on the former capital of the world, and that in spite of his youth he spends his days and nights in strategic consideration of this, his life’s great plan. At the same time, all the reports unanimously agree on the extraordinary military and diplomatic abilities of the new Padishah. Mahomet is both devout and cruel, passionate and malicious, a scholar and a lover of art who reads his Caesar and the biographies of the ancient Romans in Latin, and at the same time a barbarian who sheds blood as freely as water. This man, with his fine, melancholy eyes and sharp nose like a parrot’s beak, proves to be a tireless worker, a bold soldier and an unscrupulous diplomat all in one, and those dangerous powers all circle around the same idea: to outdo by far with his own deeds his grandfather Bajazet and his father Murad, who first showed Europe the military superiority of the new Turkish nation. But his initial bid for more power, it is generally known, is felt, will be to take Byzantium, the last remaining jewel in the imperial crown of Constantine and Justinian.

  That jewel lies exposed to a fist determined to seize it, well within reach. Today you can easily walk through the Byzantine Empire, those imperial lands of Eastern Rome that once spanned the world, stretching from Persia to the Alps and on to the deserts of Asia, and it will take you only three days, whereas in the past it took many months to travel them; sad to say, nothing is now left of that empire but a head without a body—Constantinople, the city of Constantine, old Byzantium. Furthermore, only a part of that Byzantium still belongs to the emperor, the Basileus, and that is today’s city of Istanbul, while Galata has already fallen to the Genoese and all the land beyond the city wall to the Turks. The realm of the last Roman emperor is only the size of a plate, merely a gigantic circular wall surrounding churches, the palace and a tangle of houses, all of them together known as Byzantium. Pitilessly plundered by the crusaders, depopulated by the plague, exhausted by constantly defending itself from nomadic people, torn by national and religious quarrels, the city cannot summon up men or courage to resist, of its own accord, an enemy that has been holding it clasped in its tentacles so long. The purple of the last emperor of Byzantium, Constantine Dragases, is a cloak made of wind, his crown a toy of fate. But for the very reason that it is already surrounded by the Turks, and is sacrosanct to all the lands of the western world because they have jointly shared its culture, to Europe Byzantium is a symbol of its honour. Only if united Christendom protects this last and already crumbling bulwark in the east can Hagia Sophia continue to be a basilica of the faith, the last and at the same time the loveliest cathedral of East Roman Christianity.

  Constantine realizes the danger at once. Understandably afraid, for all Mahomet’s talk of peace, he sends messenger after messenger to Italy: messengers to the Pope, messengers to Venice, to Genoa, asking for galleys and soldiers to come to his aid. But Rome hesitates, and so does Venice. The old theological rift still yawns between the faith of the east and the faith of the west. The Greek Church hates the Roman Church, and its Patriarch refuses to recognize the Pope as the greatest of God’s shepherds. It is true that at two councils, held in Ferrara and Florence some time ago, it was decided that the two Churches should be reunified in view of the Turkish threat, and with that in mind Byzantium should be assured of help against the Turks. But once the danger was no longer so acute, the Greek synods refused to enforce the agreement, and only now that Mahomet has become Sultan does necessity triumph over the obstinacy of the Orthodox Church. At the same time as sending its plea for timely help, Byzantium tells Rome that it will agree to a unified Church. Now galleys are equipped with soldiers and ammunition, and the papal legate sails on one of the ships to conduct a solemn reconciliation between the two western Churches, letting the world know that whoever attacks Byzantium is challenging the united power of Christendom.

  The Mass of Reconciliation

  It is a fine spectacle on that December day: the magnificent basilica, whose former glory of marble, mosaic and other precious, shining materials we can hardly imagine in the mosque that it has now become, as it celebrates a great festival of reconciliation. Constantine the Basileus appears with his imperial crown and surrounded by the dignitaries of his realm, to act as the highest witness and guarantor of eternal harmony. The huge cathedral is overcrowded, lit by countless candles; Isidorus, the legate of the Pope in Rome, and the Orthodox patriarch Gregorius celebrate Mass before the altar in brotherly harmony, and for the first time the name of the Pope is once again included in the prayers; for the first time devout song rises simultaneously in Latin and Greek to the vaulted roof of the everlasting cathedral, while the body of St Spiridon is carried in solemn procession by the clergy of the two Churches, now at peace with one another. East and west, the two faiths, seem to be bound for ever, and at last, after years and years of terrible hostility, the idea of Europe, the meaning behind the west, seems to be fulfilled.

  But moments of reason and reconciliation are brief and transient in history. Even as voices mingle devoutly in common prayer in the church, outside it in a monastery cell the learned monk Genadios is already denouncing Latin scholars and the betrayal of the true faith; no sooner has reason woven the bond of peace than it is torn in two again by fanaticism, and as little as the Greek clergy think of true submission do Byzantium’s friends at the other end of the Mediterranean remember the help they promised. A few galleys, a few hundred soldiers are indeed sent, but then the city is abandoned to its fate.

  The War Begins

  Despots preparing for war speak at length of peace before they are fully armed. Mahomet himself, on ascending the throne, received the envoys of Emperor Constantine with the friendliest and most reassuring of words, swearing publicly and solemnly by God and his prophets, by the angels and the Koran, that he will most faithfully observe the treaties with the Basileus. At the same time, however, the wily Sultan is concluding an agreement of mutual neutrality with the Hungarians and the Serbs for a period of three years—within which time he intends to take possession of the city at his leisure. Only then, after Mahomet has promised peace and sworn to keep it for long enough, will he provoke a war by breaking the peace.

  So far only the Asian bank of the Bosporus has belonged to the Turks, and ships have been able to pass unhindered from Byzantium through the strait to the Black Sea and the granaries that supply their grain. Now Mahomet cuts off that access (without so much as troubling to find any justification) by ordering a fortress to be built at Rumili Hisari, at the narrowest point of the strait, where the bold Xerxes crossed it in the days of the ancient Persians. Overnight thousands—no, tens of thousands—of labourers go over to the European bank, where fortifications are forbidden by treaty (but what do treaties matter to men of violence?), and to maintain themselves they not only plunder the nearby fields and tear down houses, they also demolish the famous old church of St Michael to get stone for their stronghold; the Sultan in person directs the building work, never resting by day or night, and Byzantium has to watch helplessly as its free access to the Black Sea is cut off, in defiance of law and the treaties. Already the first ships trying to pass the sea that has been free until now come under fire in the middle of peacetime, and after this first successful trial of strength any further pretence is superfluous. In August 1452 Mahomet calls together all his agas and pashas, and openly tells them of his intention to attack and take Byzantium. The announcement is soon followed by the deed itself; heralds are sent out through the whole Turkish Empire, men capable of bearing arms are summoned, and on 5th April 1453 a vast Ottoman army, like a storm tide suddenly rising, surges over the plain of Byzantium to just outside the city walls.

  The Sultan, in magnificent robes, rides at the head of his troops to pitch his tent
opposite the Lykas Gate. But before he can let the standard of his headquarters fly free in the wind, he orders a prayer mat to be unrolled on the ground. Barefoot, he steps on it, he bows three times, his face to Mecca, his forehead touching the ground, and behind him—a fine spectacle—the many thousands of his army bow in the same direction, offering the same prayer to Allah in the same rhythm, asking him to lend them strength and victory. Only then does the Sultan rise. He is no longer humble, he is challenging once more, the servant of God has become the commander and soldier, and his “tellals” or public criers hurry through the whole camp, announcing to the beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets that “The siege of the city has begun.”

  The Walls and the Cannon

  Byzantium has only one strength left: its walls. Nothing is left of its once world-embracing past but this legacy of a greater and happier time. The triangle of the city is protected by a triple shield. Lower but still-mighty stone walls divide the two flanks of the city from the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, but the defences known as the Theodosian walls and facing the open land are massive. Constantine, recognizing future danger, had already surrounded Byzantium with blocks of stone, and Justinian had further extended and fortified the walls. However, it was Theodosius who created the real bulwark with a wall seven kilometres long. Today the ivy-clad remains still bear witness to its stony force. Adorned with arrow slits and battlements, further protected by moats, guarded by mighty square towers, in double and triple parallel rows completed and renovated again and again by every emperor over 1,000 years, this majestic wall encircling the city is regarded as the emblem of impregnability of its time. Like the unbridled storm of the barbarian hordes in the past, and the warlike troops of the Turks now in the days of Mahomet, these blocks of dressed stone still mock all the engines of war so far invented; the impact of battering rams is powerless against them, and even shots from the new slings and mortars bounce off the upright wall. No city in Europe is better and more strongly defended than Constantinople by its Theodosian walls.