RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/when_islam_came_the_rape_of_constantinople.html

Last Friday, May 29, was the 567th anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople, one of ancient Christianity’s greatest capitals that for the previous seven centuries had, as Europe’s easternmost bulwark, withstood Islam.  Lesser known is what immediately transpired — which Turkey is immensely proud of — on the taking of “New Rome,” as described in what follows (note: all quotes were derived from contemporary sources, mostly eyewitnesses).

Once inside the city on that fateful May 29, the “enraged Turkish soldiers … gave no quarter,” wrote an eyewitness:

When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions[.] … There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury[.] … [The Turks] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages[.] … Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers’ breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened[.]

Because thousands of citizens had fled to and were holed up in Hagia Sophia, the ancient basilica offered an excellent harvest of slaves — once its doors were axed down.  “One Turk would look for the captive who seemed the wealthiest, a second would prefer a pretty face among the nuns[.] … Each rapacious Turk was eager to lead his captive to a safe place, and then return to secure a second and a third prize. … Then long chains of captives could be seen leaving the church and its shrines, being herded along like cattle or flocks of sheep.”

EXCERPT

“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/04/80-years-ago-miracle-dunkirk-gave-hope-free-world/

In the dark days of WWII, heroic sacrifice, the leadership of Winston Churchill, and good fortune ensured the survival of the Allied resistance to Hitler.

Eighty years ago, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the successful completion of the largest amphibious military evacuation of all time. Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, more than 338,000 Belgian, British, and French troops fled from Dunkirk, France across the stormy seas of the English Channel to safety, narrowly escaping annihilation at the hand of the Nazis.

Call it chance, destiny, luck, or Providence, the “miracle of the little ships” kept hope alive for the fledging Allied resistance to Adolf Hitler. But it was no sure thing.

At the start of “Operation Dynamo”—the codename for the Dunkirk evacuations—Churchill had been Prime Minister for a mere 16 days. Few Britons wanted the job. Prominent men like Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax were ready to negotiate peace with Hitler.

Yet Churchill never wavered. He assumed the mantle of the British Empire’s protector as if it were made for him. As he went to bed at 3 a.m. on May 11, Churchill later recalled, “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

‘Be Ye Men of Valour’

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/today_in_history_sword_of_islam_conquers_ancient_christian_capital.html

Today in history, on May 29, 1453, the sword of Islam conquered Constantinople.  Of all Islam’s conquests of Christian territory, this was by far the most symbolically significant.  Not only was Constantinople a living and direct extension of the old Roman Empire and contemporary capital of the Christian Roman Empire (or Byzantium), but its cyclopean walls had prevented Islam from entering Europe through its eastern doorway for the previous seven centuries, beginning with the First Arab Siege of Constantinople (674–678).  Indeed, as Byzantine historian John Julius Norwich puts it, “[h]ad the Saracens captured Constantinople in the seventh century rather than the fifteenth, all Europe — and America — might be Muslim today.”

When Muslim forces failed again in the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717–718), conquering the ancient Christian capital became something of an obsession for a succession of caliphates and sultanates.  However, it was only with the rise of the Ottoman sultanate — so named after its eponymous Turkic founder, Osman (b. 1258) — that conquering the city, which was arguably better fortified than any other in the world, became a possibility, not least thanks to the concomitant spread of gunpowder and cannons from China to Eurasia.  By 1400, his descendants had managed to invade and conquer a significant portion of the southern Balkans — thereby isolating and essentially turning Constantinople into a Christian island in an Islamic sea.