The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (6 page)

Early in the spring of 1452 Mehmet left Edirne for Gallipoli, where the Ottoman fleet was based. There, according to Kritoboulos, ‘he filled thirty triremes and armed them fully as for a naval fight… He prepared other ships to carry the equipment, and sent them up from Gallipoli to the Bosphorus.’ Mehmet then crossed the Dardanelles with his troops and led them along the Asian side of the strait to the Bosphorus. There he crossed over to the European side from Anadolu Hisarı, to the place that came to be known as Rumeli Hisarı, where he had decided to build his fortress.

Construction of the fortress began on 15 April 1452. Kritoboulos writes of how Mehmet ‘marked out with stakes the location where he wished to build, planning the position and the size of the castle, the foundations, the distance between the main towers and the smaller turrets, also the bastions and breastworks and gates, and every other detail as he had carefully worked it out in his mind’.

An army of workmen conveyed building material to the site, including architectural members from ruined Byzantine monuments in the vicinity. Doukas reports that ‘as they were removing several columns from the ruins of the Church of the Archangel Michael, some of the inhabitants of the City, angered by what was happening, tried to stop the Turks, but they were all captured and put to death by the sword’.

Mehmet’s cavalrymen grazed their horses in the surrounding fields, and when the local Greek farmers tried to drive the animals away a fight broke out in which several men on both sides were killed. The following day Mehmet sent his commander Kaya Bey to punish the locals, forty of whom were killed, according to Doukas, who noted: ‘This was the beginning of the conflict that led to the destruction of the Romans.’

When news of the massacre reached Constantine he closed the gates of Constantinople and imprisoned all the Turks who were then in the city. The prisoners included some eunuchs from Edirne Sarayı who happened to be visiting the city. The eunuchs appealed to Constantine, saying that if they did not return to Edirne they would be executed, and so three days later he relented and released them along with the other prisoners. He then sent an embassy in a last attempt to come to terms with Mehmet, who imprisoned the envoys and had them beheaded, thus making a virtual declaration of war.

Mehmet had hired a Hungarian military engineer named Urban, who built for him a large cannon that he claimed could destroy the walls of Babylon. As soon as Rumeli Hisarı was finished, on 31 August 1452, the cannon was placed on one of its main towers. Mehmet then proclaimed that all ships passing on the Bosphorus had to stop for inspection by the commandant of Rumeli Hisarı, otherwise they would be fired upon. Early in November two Venetian ships, sailing from the Black Sea with supplies for Constantinople, took advantage of a favourable north wind to pass the fortress unscathed. But two weeks later another Venetian ship was sunk by the great cannon in Rumeli Hisarı. The captain, Antonio Rizzo, and his crew were captured and brought to Mehmet at Didymoteichon, south of Edirne. Mehmet had Rizzo impaled and his crew beheaded, leaving their bodies beside the road for travellers to see and carry the news to Constantinople.

Meanwhile, Constantine had been making desperate attempts to obtain help from the West. Pope Nicholas V appointed Cardinal Isidore of Kiev as papal legate to Constantinople. Isidore arrived in Constantinople on 26 October 1452, accompanied by the archbishop Leonard of Chios, along with a contingent of 200 Neapolitan archers sent by the pope. Isidore pressed Constantine to agree to a formal declaration of Union, which was read out on 12 December of that year in Haghia Sophia, the Great Church, dedicated to the Divine Wisdom. But most of the populace refused to accept the Union, and thenceforth they stayed away from Haghia Sophia, where only priests who had accepted the delaration were allowed to serve. The Megadux (Grand Duke) Loukas Notaras is supposed to have said: ‘I would rather see the Sultan’s turban amongst us than the Cardinal’s tiara.’

The opposition party was led by George Scholarios, a monk at the Pantocrator monastery in Constantinople. Scholarios retired to his cell after Constantine’s acceptance of the Pope’s demands, pinning to the door of his room a manifesto condemning the Union, quoted by Doukas: ‘Wretched Romans, how you have been deceived! Trusting in the might of the Franks you have removed yourself from the hope of God. Together with the City which will soon be destroyed, you have lost your piety… Woe unto you in the judgment.’

As the year 1452 drew to a close Mehmet spent all his time drawing up his plans for the coming siege of the Byzantine capital. Doukas writes: ‘Night and day the ruler’s only care and concern, whether he was lying on his bed or standing on his feet, or within his courtyard or without, was what battle plan and stratagem to employ in order to capture Constantinople.’ One night he called in Halil Pasha, whom he knew opposed his plan of attacking the city, probably because he was being bribed by the Byzantines. Halil was so terrified by the nocturnal summons that he now readily agreed with Mehmet, who then bade the grand vezir goodnight, telling him: ‘Go in peace.’

Late in January 1453 Mehmet assembled his vezirs to hear his plans for the conquest of Constantinople and to obtain their agreement. Kritoboulos records the lengthy speech that Mehmet is supposed to have made on this occasion, in which he gave ‘a recital of previous deeds of his forefathers’, ending with a stirring call to arms. ‘Let us not then delay any longer, but let us attack the City swiftly with all our powers and with this conviction: that we shall either capture it with one blow or shall never withdraw from it, even if we must die, until we become masters of it.’

Kritoboulos writes that ‘practically all of those present applauded what was said by the Sultan, praising him for his good will and knowledge, bravery and valor, and agreeing with him, and still further inciting each other to war’. He goes on to say that there were a few vezirs who ‘wanted to advise against making war’, Halil undoubtedly being one of them. ‘However, seeing the insistence and zeal of the Sultan, they were afraid, as it seems to me, and unwillingly yielded and were carried along by the majority. So the war was sanctioned by all.’

And so now, two months before his twenty-first birthday, Mehmet could at last begin to see the fulfilment of his dream of conquering Constantinople.

3

The Conquest of Constantinople

Constantinople was built on a more or less triangular peninsula that forms the south-easternmost extension of Europe. The peninsula is bounded on its south by the Sea of Marmara and on its north by the Golden Horn, a scimitar-shaped body of water that opens into the Bosphorus at the southern end of the strait. The city was protected on its landward side by its mighty defence walls, originally built in AD 447 by the emperor Theodosius II. These walls enclose seven hills, the first of which is the acropolis at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, where the original Greek colony of Byzantium was founded c. 660 BC. The first six hills are connected by a ridge that rises above the south side of the Golden Horn, while the Seventh Hill rises to two peaks above the Marmara shore of the city. The Seventh Hill is separated from the first six by the deep valley of the Lycus, a stream that flows into the city midway along the land walls and eventually empties into the Marmara. Defence walls protected the city on its seaward sides as well, extending along the shores of the Golden Horn and the Marmara to join the ends of the land walls.

The First Hill is crowned by Haghia Sophia, a magnificent domed basilica erected by the emperor Justinian in the years 532-7. On the Marmara slope of the First Hill was the Great Palace of Byzantine, first built by the emperor Constantine the Great when he established Constantinople as the capital of his empire in 330. Later emperors enlarged and embellished the Great Palace, particularly Justinian, but it was ruined during the Latin occupation of 1204-61. After the Greek recapture of Constantinople in 1261 the emperors of the Palaeologus dynasty resided in the Palace of Blachernae, built on the slope of the Sixth Hill leading down to the Golden Horn, with an annex known as the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Turkish Tekfursaray) standing further up the hill. Both palaces were built into the land walls, which would put the imperial household on the front line during the Ottoman siege of the city.

On the northern side of the lower stretch of the Golden Horn across from Constantinople was the independent city state of Galata, also known as Pera. The Genoese signed a treaty in the spring of 1261 with the emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, and after his troops recaptured Constantinople that summer Genoa was given control of Galata, governing the city through an official known as the
podesta
. The treaty did not allow the Genoese to fortify Galata, but they disregarded this and soon afterwards they began building fortifications. The bastion of the Genoese fortifications was the Tower of Christ, now known as the Galata Tower, from which defence walls ran down to both the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, with sea walls along the shore.

Genoa tried to remain neutral, while giving the
podesta
in Galata, Angelo Lomellino, a free hand. The Genoese in Galata were sympathetic to their fellow Christians in Constantinople, a number of them crossing the Horn to join in the defence of the city. Other Genoese came from Genoa to join in the defence, including Maurizio Cattaneo, the two brothers Geronimo and Leonardo di Langasco, and the three Bocchiardo brothers, Paolo, Antonio and Troilo, who brought at their own expense a small company of soldiers. There were also a few volunteers from elsewhere in Europe. These included the Catalan community in Constantinople and their consul, Péré Julia, along with some Catalan sailors; the Castilian nobleman Don Francisco de Toledo, a distant relative of Emperor Constantine; and the military engineer Johannes Grant, usually called a German, but who was probably a Scottish mercenary. Prince Orhan, the Turkish pretender, also volunteered to join in the defence of the city along with the men of his household.

Mehmet’s plan to attack Constantinople was already evident in February 1452, when Constantine sent an ambassador to inform the Venetian Senate that the sultan was preparing to besiege the city, which he said would inevitably fall unless the Christian powers of Europe came to the aid of Byzantium.

The Venetians agreed to send supplies to Constantinople, but they held off on promising military assistance, partly because of their own war with Florence, and also to see what the other Christian powers would do to help Byzantium. The Senate appealed in the name of Byzantium to Pope Nicholas V, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, King Ferrante of Naples and John Hunyadi of Hungary, ‘informing them furthermore of the provisions that we have taken on our part, and stating that these are by no means sufficient for so great a crisis’. But all the Christian powers of Europe were too preoccupied with their own problems to send help to Byzantium. Even Constantine’s own brothers, Demetrius and Thomas Palaeologus, the Despots of the Morea, were unable to help, for they were threatened by Mehmet’s general Ömer Pasha, whose army was stationed on the isthmus of Corinth to block them from sending troops to Constantinople.

Immediately after the meeting with his vezirs, Mehmet ordered Dayı Karaca Pasha, the
beylerbey
of Rumelia, to muster an army and attack the Byzantine coastal towns in Thrace. The towns on the Black Sea coast surrendered at once, but some of those on the Marmara coast attempted to resist, most notably Selembria and Perinthus, which were quickly taken and sacked by Karaca’s troops.

At the beginning of March 1453 Mehmet began assembling a fleet at Gallipoli. Kritoboulos writes of how Mehmet ‘prepared the fleet, building some new triremes, repairing others that were damaged by time… In addition he built long ships, heavily armed and swift, with thirty to fifty rowers… Furthermore, he chose crews from all his coast-towns, Asiatic and European…for he attached greater importance…to the fleet than to the army.’ Kritoboulos says that ‘the total number of ships was said to be three hundred and fifty without counting the transports or those engaged in some other necessary services’, but modern estimates make it about one-third to one-half that number.

The fleet was commanded by the governor of Gallipoli, Süleyman Baltaoğlu, a Bulgarian convert to Islam. At the end of March the fleet left Gallipoli and made its way into the Sea of Marmara. According to Kritoboulos, ‘They set sail with great speed, and with shouts and noise and cheers, and they sang rowing chanties and urged one another to emulation by shouts. When they left the Hellespont, they created the greatest possible astonishment and fear among all who saw them. Nowhere for a very long time had such a large fleet of ships or such great preparations by sea been made.’

Meanwhile, Mehmet had been assembling his army in Thrace, where his armourers and engineers had been at work throughout the winter to prepare weapons, armour, artillery and siege machines. Contemporary Greek estimates of Mehmet’s force range as high as 300,000 or 400,000 men, but modern authorities put the number at about 80,000 troops. These included the
sipahis
, or provincial cavalry; the
akinci
, or irregular light cavalry; the janissaries, who fought as infantry, numbering about 12,000; the
azaps
, or irregular light infantry; the
başıbozuks
(literally ‘head-breakers’), irregular infantry who were used as shock troops; and a Serbian vassal contingent of 1,500 Christian cavalry, as well as the men of the artillery, engineering and auxiliary units.

Throughout the winter Constantine prepared for the coming siege by stockpiling food supplies, arms and munitions, as well as mobilising manpower to defend the city. He assigned the task of enumerating the able-bodied men of the city to his secretary George Sphrantzes, who informed him, ‘in the greatest possible sadness’, that there were only 4,983 Greeks and some 200 foreigners, the latter principally local Venetians and Genoese. Other estimates put the number of defenders in Constantinople at about 7,000. The small number of available men was an indication of how much the population of Constantinople had fallen during the first half of the fifteenth century, as the local Greeks fled from the city to take refuge in the West. The population in 1452 is estimated to have been between 40,000 and 50,000, just a tenth of what it had been in the mid-sixth century, during the reign of Justinian. George Scholarios, writing just before the siege, describes Constantinople as ‘a city of ruins, poor, and largely uninhabited’.