THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

4 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
confusion of troubled centuries,
have become intermingled
with them.
The capture of Constantinople, in 1453, by Mahomed
the Second would indeed seem to have crushed
the last remnant of Greek nationality.
Already the
barbarian invasions had, for centuries, been gradually
driving what survived of Hellenic culture within the
walls of the capital. But now the collapse of the last
bulwark of the ancient civilisation produced a result
far other than had been expected; for it was the dispersal
of the Greek scholars, which followed the fall
of Constantinople, that led directly to the great revival
of Hellenism which is known to us as the Renaissance:
a movement itself destined, in modern times, to react,
through their literary leaders, on the Hellenes.
For the time indeed, among the Greeks themselves,
the last frayed
cord that bound them to the classical
tradition was snapped. They survived as a people:
but the tie which united them was not the memory of
and more effective
their ancient greatness, but that of their common religion,
an influence all the stronger
because their conquerors were of an alien faith. In
most of the other parts of Europe the barbarian invaders
had been converted to the faith of the nations
they conquered, and had gradually intermingled with
the subject populations to produce nationalities of an