Authors: David Brewer
Tags: #History / Ancient
Fourteen years earlier the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, predecessor and elder brother of Constantine, had agreed at a council in Florence to pay this price. However, many Greeks in Constantinople and elsewhere passionately rejected this agreement, while others strongly supported it, and the union had still not been formally ratified by the Orthodox Church. Constantine, tolerant or indecisive according to one’s viewpoint, was reported as saying that others could take the new way of union if they thought it better, though he himself preferred the old way.
But a decision could no longer be delayed. In November 1452, in response to Constantine’s appeal to the Pope for help, the papal emissary Cardinal Isidore of Kiev, a Greek by birth, arrived in Constantinople to seal the union of the churches. He brought with him 200 men to help in the defence of the city, a token of the aid that acceptance of the union might bring. On 12 December, in a solemn service at the great church of Ayía Sophía, Cardinal Isidore read out the promulgation of the union to a packed congregation, from which the future patriarch Yennádhios and eight other staunch anti-unionists were pointedly absent. Isidore then celebrated the union liturgy, including the name of the Pope. But this historic ceremony achieved nothing. No further help came from the Pope or the Catholic powers, and the Greeks were even more bitterly
divided. Better the Turkish turban, said entrenched opponents of union, than the cardinal’s hat.
The beleaguered city of Constantinople formed a triangular peninsula. The walls along the Golden Horn faced roughly north, the land walls at right-angles to these faced west, and a longer walled curve ran along the Sea of Marmora. The walls were pierced at intervals of a few hundred yards by strong gates. The whole perimeter was about thirteen miles long. Along the Marmora shore the walls rose almost straight out of the sea, and the Golden Horn was now closed by the boom, so the land walls were the most promising point of attack. First built by the Emperor Theodosius a thousand years before, and since reinforced and extended, they presented a formidable obstacle. Attackers, under continuous fire, would first have to cross a ditch some 60 feet wide, then get over a breastwork, cross an open space, climb the outer walls, cross another space and finally scale the inner walls, which were some 40 feet high with towers of about 60 feet. Before the invention of gunpowder these land walls were impregnable. Now they were the Sultan’s main target.
The walls of Constantinople were exceptionally strong, but the Turkish cannon were exceptionally powerful. As well as their smaller cannon – as many as 10,000 by one estimate – there were two huge ones. These had been built by a Hungarian cannon founder called Urban, who had previously offered his services to the Byzantines but they could not pay him enough. The larger of Urban’s cannon astonished all who saw it. Made of bronze and firing stone balls, its barrel was reputedly 26 feet long and its mouth over two feet across. Estimates of the weight of the balls varied wildly, from 150lb to 1,200lb, but given the size of the barrel and the density of stone a weight of around 500lb is likely. This monstrous machine was built and tested at Edirne, and then transported the 150 miles to Constantinople on 30 wagons drawn by 60 oxen and 400 men, accompanied by road-makers and bridge-builders. After a two-month journey it reached the walls of Constantinople at the end of March 1453.
The size of the Sultan’s army was as impressive as the size and destructive power of his artillery. At the lowest estimate it totalled 200,000, made up of 60,000 fighting men, plus 140,000 others described as ‘thieves, plunderers, hawkers, workmen and other camp followers’.
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A large part of them was drawn up along the land walls, and others were north of the Golden Horn behind the walled Genoese quarter of Galata, under the command of the Sultan’s second vizier Zagan. Of the fighting men, 15,000 were elite janissaries, and the rest were cavalrymen – though here they fought mostly on foot – archers with longbows or crossbows, and ordinary foot soldiers, of whom many were conscripts.
To manufacture and supply to this vast army the materials of war, let alone its food, was a triumph of logistics. It was reckoned that one Turkish battery fired, in a ten-day period, nineteen tons of stone cannon balls, and that the Turkish artillery as a whole used 1,000lb of gunpowder a day throughout the 55-day siege. Arrows were fired in great numbers: one eyewitness recorded that after the fall of the city 100 camel loads of arrows were collected from the area round the walls. A camel could easily carry 2,000 arrows, so at least 200,000 arrows would have been collected. Equipment was also needed: tools for digging mines under the walls, and scaling ladders, of which 2,000 were used in the final assault. The Sultan also had a fleet of some 250 ships, some built specifically for the attack on Constantinople, which at the beginning of the siege were assembled at an anchorage called The Columns, about two miles north of Constantinople on the European side of the Bosphorus. In short, the Turkish military organisation was highly efficient on an enormous scale, as Leonard of Chíos conceded: ‘A Scipio, a Hannibal, or any of our modern generals would have been amazed at the discipline which they showed in arranging their weapons, and the promptness and evidence of forward planning which their manoeuvres showed.’
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The defenders of Constantinople were at a disadvantage in almost every way. Their fighting force was made up of about 6,000 Byzantine Greeks and 3,000 Italians, so 9,000 troops faced at least 60,000 attackers. Those in the city believed they were outnumbered by as much as twenty to one: as one of them said, ‘We are the ant in the mouth of the bear.’
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Most of the Greeks were ordinary citizens, given spears, bows, swords and shields to use as best they could. The leading Greek commanders were Loukás Notarás, who was the Emperor’s commander-in-chief, known as the
mégas dhoúkas
, three members of the Kantakuzenos family that had provided the Emperor John VI a century ago, and two of the present ruling Palaiologos family. The most prominent of the Italians was Giovanni Giustiniani, a captain of Genoese soldiers who reached Constantinople in January 1453 with 400 men, entered the service of the Emperor, and was appointed commander of all the land walls. Also in Constantinople at the beginning of the year were five Venetian galleys, whose captains were persuaded, with some difficulty, to stay and help the defence of the city. Other Italian defenders came from Galata, the walled Genoese commercial quarter on the north shore of the Golden Horn, though many Genoese in Galata were thought to favour the Turks as their probable future masters. There were also contingents of Catalans and, surprisingly, of Turks under the exiled Turkish Prince Orhan. These foreign troops, from Italy and elsewhere, were in effect mercenaries
and the Emperor now had to pay them – a further drain on his meagre resources.
The defenders were outclassed in weapons as well as in numbers. Their cannon could not be fired often because powder and shot were short. Of the two largest, one burst when it was first fired and the other could not be used because its vibration damaged the walls on which it stood. Another Byzantine weapon was so-called Greek fire, probably a substance like petrol expelled from a siphon and ignited, similar to today’s napalm, but this was too complicated and risky to be used often or to great effect. Otherwise the defence relied on their guns and the arrows from longbows and crossbows, and there were not enough even of these. In the final assault the besieged could repel the enemy scaling the walls only by rolling heavy stones down on them.
On 7 April Mehmed moved the bulk of his army to within a quarter of a mile of the land walls, spreading his troops along their whole six-mile length. The rest of his army was north of the Golden Horn, and his ships were at The Columns, two miles north of the city. The siege now began in earnest. We are fortunate to have a number of accounts of it by eyewitnesses or by contemporaries. One of the eyewitness accounts is by the Greek Georgios Sphrantzís, the
protovestiários
or grand chamberlain to Constantine, and his personal friend. Other accounts are by Venetian, Genoese or Florentine participants. Each has, of course, his own agenda. Some oppose the union of the Churches, others support it and ascribe Constantinople’s troubles to its failure to accept the union genuinely and totally. Venetians and Genoese distrust each other, and the Italians tend to belittle the Greeks. One of the most useful eyewitnesses is Nicolo Barbaro, ship’s doctor on one of the Venetian galleys that stayed to help the defence. His account is in the form of a diary with dates, and gives us the exact sequence of events.
With the start of the Turkish bombardment Constantine completed the disposition of the defenders. On the land walls Constantine with the best Greek troops and Giustiniani with his Genoese soldiers defended the vulnerable Gate of St Romanus in the centre, with other Greek contingents at the northern and southern ends of these walls. Constantine’s senior commander, Loukás Notarás, was an abrasive character who quarrelled both with his compatriot Sphrantzís and with his Genoese colleague Giustiniani. Notarás was stationed at the western end of the walls along the Golden Horn. The Pope’s emissary Cardinal Isidore, the Catalans and the Turks were placed along the Sea of Marmora. Otherwise the defence was in the hands of a dozen Italian commanders, Venetian or Genoese, and their men. The Greeks were full of animosity towards the Latins,
according to Leonard of Chíos, because the glory of saving the city had been given to them. Both the Sultan and the Emperor believed that the defence of Constantinople depended on the Latins, not the Greeks.
By the middle of April the Turks had begun bombarding the city’s land walls, and continued every day for the next seven weeks. A Hungarian advised them on technique. ‘If you really want to knock the walls down easily,’ he said, ‘aim to hit another part of the wall five or six fathoms [ten or twelve yards] away from your first shot, and then fire at this in the same way. When you have hit the two outer points fair and square, then fire a third shot so that the three points of impact form a triangle, and then you will see a wall like this one come tumbling down.’
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But, as sections of wall were brought down, the defenders repaired them with earth and brushwood, some loose and some in barrels. These makeshift repairs in one way strengthened the walls because impact was now absorbed rather than spread. Turkish sorties against damaged parts of the walls were repulsed.
Mehmed now looked for a way to bring his ships into play. The first use of them had been a total failure. On 20 April four Genoese galleys sailed up the Sea of Marmora bringing help to Constantinople, but before they reached the city the wind dropped and they were becalmed. They were then attacked by 145 smaller Turkish ships from The Columns, and as Barbaro recorded, ‘the Dardanelles were covered with armed boats, and the water could hardly be seen.’
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At the end of a two- to three-hour battle the Turks had failed to board or sink any of the Genoese galleys, but had lost many of their own ships with 115 men killed. By next morning, 21 April, the Genoese ships were safely inside the Golden Horn.
On the very next day, 22 April, the Sultan struck back. It was characteristic of him to try to expunge the humiliation of a defeat at once. Since the boom and the ships stationed along it prevented his ships from getting into the Golden Horn from the sea, Mehmed brought them in by the fantastic expedient of dragging them overland. The route ran some three miles from their anchorage at The Columns, over a 200-foot ridge, behind the walls of Genoese Galata and into the sea a mile inside the boom. The ships were hauled onto greased rollers, then dragged by teams of men and oxen, with sails unfurled to gain some extra momentum from the prevailing northerly wind. By the end of the day 70 or 80 Turkish ships were afloat on the waters of the Golden Horn. ‘A marvellous achievement,’ thought Constantine’s friend Sphrantzís, ‘and a superb stratagem of naval tactics’.
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The defending fleet now planned an immediate response of its own, an attack on these Turkish ships on the night of 24 April. But according
to Barbaro the Genoese in Galata treacherously persuaded the Venetian captain of the enterprise to wait, offering their help if he would delay, meanwhile sending an emissary to warn the Sultan. When the attack was finally made on 28 April the Turks had positioned cannon beside their fleet, and with their second shot sank the leading Venetian galley. It went down, says Barbaro, in less time than it takes to say ten paternosters, with the loss of the captain, three mates, eleven crossbowmen and all seventy-two oarsmen. The attack was soon abandoned.
Thereafter the Turkish ships stayed in the western part of the Golden Horn while the defenders guarded the boom at the eastern end. The Turkish ships from The Columns made three attempts to break through the boom, all failures. In fact the Turkish ships dragged overland with such effort are barely mentioned again. The exercise of transporting them had been spectacular, but ultimately pointless. It was some years yet before Turkish skill at deploying land forces would be matched by the same skill at sea.
By the beginning of May the defenders of Constantinople had suffered three weeks of constant cannon fire, and were running short of food. Their only hope was help from abroad. In the autumn of 1452 Constantine had begun his appeals for help, to the Pope, Venice and Genoa, who were the most likely sources of aid, but also to Hungary, Russia and Serbia. The only hopeful response was from Venice but the ships she sent, after months of debate, were too late to save the city. ‘The whole of Christendom’, said Constantine, ‘has been unwilling to help me against this faithless Turk, the enemy of Christendom.’
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The failure of Constantine’s appeals perhaps reflects the divisions in Christendom caused by the question of the union of the Churches, the Pope for instance being disturbed by Greek opposition to union and the Orthodox Russians angered by its formal acceptance. Perhaps it also reflects the assumption that in the face of these odds Constantinople was already doomed.