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AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)
Chapter 9
Section 5 Subsection 11
Loosing of the Fourth Angel
The conquest of Adrianople was followed in the ensuing spring, A.D. 1422, by the siege of Constantinople. The religious merit of subduing the City of the Caesars, attracted from Asia a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom. It was besieged over two months by 200,000 Turks; and "the old resources of defence," says Gibbon, "were opposed to the new engines of attack" -- "the horses in the vision." The credulity of "the worshippers of the daemonials and idols" beheld the Virgin Mary, in a violet garment walking on the rampart, and animating their courage. But their time for political death ("when Ephraim offended in Baal, he died," i.e. a political death) had not quite arrived. It was not to their Daemonial Mother of God, nor to their own courage, that they owed their deliverance, at this time; but to the recall of Amurath by a domestic revolt, which demanded the presence of his arms for its suppression. When this was extinguished, he led his janizaries to new conquests in Europe and Asia; a diversion which obtained for the Byzantine empire a servile and precarious respite of thirty years.