After the sultan Mehmed captured Constantinople, he reputedly had sexual designs on Loukas’s two young sons, but the family refused his attempts, for which they were all executed. The last Byzantine emperor, who died in battle in the streets of Constantinople, was Constantine XI, whose mother was the Serbian princess Helena Dragaš, and from her the emperor took his name of Constantine Dragases Palaiologos.Īnother of the novel’s heroes is Captain Luc Notaras, whose name precisely echoes Loukas Notaras, the last “prime minister” of the Byzantine state, and the last commander of its navy. Such is his courageous French officer Colonel Constantine Dragasès, whose name requires a little elucidation. His fictional heroes, who resist the tidal wave of Third World immigration, bear the names of the last warriors who stubbornly defended Constantinople in its dying days.

You have to know something about Byzantine history to appreciate just how thoroughly that past informs and guides Raspail’s imaginary future. Particularly to blame for Western collapse are toxically progressive Christian leaders such as the (future) Pope and the World Council of Churches. In The Camp of the Saints, civilization falls not because of the might of the invader but rather through the weakness and self-hatred of the old elites. Raspail’s book closes with the imminent conquest of Switzerland, the last haven of White Christian civilization in Europe, by the South Asian hordes, and it is at that moment that the narrator harks back to Fall of Constantinople.įor Raspail and his devotees, the Fall of 1453 is understood as the failure of a once mighty civilization to defend itself against the barbarous followers of alien and fanatical cultures, especially in matters of religion.

The camp of the saints by jean raspail