The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (8 page)

Meanwhile, Mehmet launched a series of infantry assaults against the Theodosian walls. The first of them began on 7 May, ‘at the fourth hour of the night’, according to Barbaro, when a force that he estimated at 30,000 troops with battering rams attacked the stretch of walls by the Blachernae Palace, on the slope of the Sixth Hill leading down to the Golden Horn, only to be driven away by the defenders after a three-hour battle.

Five days later there was another night attack in the Blachernae area, this time by 50,000 troops, according to Barbaro, and once again the Turkish force was repelled. Mehmet then moved the cannons that he had placed on the hill above the northern shore of the Golden Horn and positioned them with the rest of his artillery park outside the Gate of St Romanus. The Turkish artillery then began a virtually continuous bombardment of the Mesoteichion, large sections of which were destroyed, with the townspeople working through the night to repair the damage.

On 16 May the main Turkish fleet in the Bosphorus sailed down to the Golden Horn, where they made a show of attacking but were stopped by the great chain. They made a similar demonstration the following day, and again on 21 May, each time with drums pounding and trumpets blaring as if to herald an attack, but each time they retired without firing a shot.

At the same time, Mehmet’s sappers had been digging tunnels in an attempt to make their way under the defence walls. After one of these mines was discovered by the defenders on 16 May outside the Gate of the Caligari in the Blachernae area, Constantine put Grand Duke Notaras in change of countermeasures.

One of Giustiniani’s officers, Johannes Grant, who had experience in mining, was assigned to work with Notaras, and during the next week they discovered four more mines outside the Gate of the Caligari, all of which they destroyed.

On 18 May Mehmet’s engineers began constructing a huge siege tower outside the walls of the Mesoteichion, along with a roadway over the fosse. During the night the defenders crept out and blew up the tower, and at the same time they destroyed the roadway and half cleared the fosse. Other attempts by the Turks to erect siege towers elsewhere along the walls were thwarted in much the same way.

On 19 May Mehmet’s engineers began building a pontoon bridge across the Golden Horn just outside the city. Floating gun platforms were attached to the pontoons, and Mehmet put cannons on them to bombard both the land and sea walls in the Blachernae area.

On 23 May a Venetian brigantine was spotted on the Sea of Marmara, and as it approached the city a squadron of Turkish warships went out to intercept it. The Venetian ship eluded them and made its way to the Golden Horn, where under the cover of night the defenders opened the chain to let it into the port. At first the defenders thought that it was the forerunner of a Christian fleet, but then they realised that it was the brigantine that had left Constantinople twenty days before to contact the Venetian flotilla bringing troops and supplies to the city. The captain reported to Constantine that he had searched in vain through the Greek archipelago, seeing no sign of the Venetian convoy nor hearing any word of its impending arrival. Constantine despaired when he heard the news, according to Barbaro, who writes that the emperor wept as he thanked the captain and his crew for their courage and devotion in returning to the doomed city, which he said could now only put its faith in Christ, the Virgin, and St Constantine the Great, founder of Constantinople.

The following day, according to Barbaro, ‘the Turks made frenzied assaults with cannon-fire and gun-fire and countless arrows’. That night there was an eclipse of the moon, and many took this as an omen of doom. The clergy led the townspeople in making a last appeal to the Mother of God, and they walked in procession behind the sacred icon of the Virgin Hodegitria, the legendary protectress of the city. But the procession had to be abandoned when a thunderstorm was followed by hail and a torrential rain, and it seemed as if even the elements had turned against the ‘God-guarded city’ that had been a bastion of Christianity for more than 1,000 years.

Doukas reports that about this time Mehmet offered terms to Constantine. He promised to lift the siege if the emperor paid an annual tribute of 100,000 gold coins, another possible option being that the Greeks could have safe conduct to abandon the city and take with them all their movable possessions. In any event, nothing came of the negotiations, and Mehmet met with his council to decide on their next move. The grand vezir Halil Pasha demanded that the siege be abandoned, since they had made no headway despite seven weeks of constant effort, and he advised Mehmet to offer Constantine suitable terms so that they could withdraw before the Christian powers came to the aid of Byzantium.

Zaganos Pasha repudiated the grand vezir’s arguments, and in the strongest terms he advised Mehmet to make an immediate attack on the city. This was exactly what Mehmet wanted to hear, and on 27 May he sent heralds around the Turkish camp to announce that a general assault on the city would be made in a few days’ time. According to Archbishop Leonard of Chios, Halil Pasha, who was probably in the pay of the Byzantines, sent a message to Constantine telling him of Mehmet’s decision, urging him to hold out for two or three days longer and ‘not to be frightened by the follies of an intoxicated youth’. At dawn on 28 May Mehmet ordered his troops to take their assigned positions for the assault the following day, and some 2,000 ladders were brought up before the walls. Mehmet then rode to Diplokionion to give orders to the new admiral, Hamza Bey. He instructed him to sail his fleet down to the Golden Horn and station some of his ships outside the chain, while the rest would form a cordon around the Marmara shore of the city, thus diverting some of the defenders to guard the sea walls there.

As Mehmet rode back to the Golden Horn he stopped outside the upper gate of Galata, where he was met by the
podesta
and other officials of what the Genoese called the Magnificent Community of Pera. Mehmet said that they should maintain their neutrality, and he warned them that if they attempted to aid the Greeks in Constantinople the following day they would pay with their lives.

Later that day Mehmet rode along the whole line of the Theodosian walls, checking the positions of his troops and talking to his officers. He then summoned his generals to his tent and reviewed their assignments, saying, according to Kritoboulos, that he himself would be directing the main attack and would see what each of them did. The Greek chronicler Melissourgos, who wrote a continuation of the work of George Sphrantzes, says that Mehmet promised his officers and men that when they conquered Constantinople they would be free to sack the city for three days, which was in any event established Muslim practice.

Following the meeting with his commanders, according to Kritoboulos, Mehmet consulted with his gunners and the cavalry and infantry units of the royal guard, after which he rode round the camp to rally all his troops before retiring.

Meanwhile, the clergy and townspeople again formed a procession, holding aloft the icon of the Virgin Hodegitria and holy relics from all their churches, singing hymns as they walked through the city and out to the Theodosian walls. Doukas writes of the repeated cries of supplication that were heard throughout the city, as the townspeople implored Christ and the Virgin to save them from the Turks: ‘Spare us, O Lord, from Thy just wrath and deliver us from the hands of the enemy!’

When the procession ended Constantine addressed his officers and the notables of the city, as well as the leaders of his Genoese and Venetian allies. Archbishop Leonard of Chios quotes Constantine’s exhortation to those who were defending the city in its most desperate hour: ‘Finally, my fellow soldiers, show obedience to your superiors in all things, and know that this is the day of your glory. If but a drop of your blood is shed, you will earn for yourselves the crown of martyrdom and everlasting renown.’

That evening everyone who was not on duty along the walls began congregating in Haghia Sophia, praying for the city’s salvation. Melissourgos, writing as if he were George Sphrantzes, describes how Constantine prayed in Haghia Sophia and then stopped at the Palace of Blachernae, where he ‘asked to be forgiven by all. Who can describe the wailing and tears that arose in the palace at that hour? No man, even if he were made of wood and stone, could have held back his tears.’

After leaving the palace, Constantine and Sphrantzes rode to the nearby Gate of the Caligaria. They dismounted there and Sphrantzes waited while Constantine ascended a tower beside the gateway, listening to the ominous sounds of the Turkish army preparing for the final assault. When Constantine returned he mounted his horse and said goodbye to Sphrantzes, who watched as the emperor rode off towards his command post on the Murus Bacchatureus, the section of the Mesoteichion by the Gate of St Romanus.

The Turkish engineering battalions had been working throughout the night filling in the fosse in front of the Theodosian walls along the Mesoteichion, where the main attack would be made. About two o’clock in the morning of Tuesday 29 May, Mehmet gave orders to begin the attack. The first assault was made by the
başıbozuks
, who charged with wild battle cries to the din of drums and the skirl of bagpipes. The watchmen on the towers of the Theodosian walls heard the noise and sounded the alarm, and soon all the church bells within the city were rung to alert the populace. Meanwhile, the
başıbozuks
had made their way across the fosse and set up scaling ladders against the outer walls, some of them ascending to the battlements before they were cut down by the defenders. After two hours of intense fighting the
başıbozuks
were withdrawn, having worn down the defenders with their unrelenting attack.

Mehmet then launched the second wave, the regular Anatolian infantry under the command of Ishak Pasha and Mahmut Pasha, their charge accompanied by a heavy bombardment from the Turkish artillery. An hour before dawn a huge cannon ball fired by Urban made a direct hit on the outer wall of the Mesoteichion, creating a breach through which some of the Turkish infantry tried to make their way into the city. But they were quickly surrounded and slaughtered by the defenders, led by the emperor himself. This broke the brunt of the assault, forcing Ishak Pasha to withdraw his infantry.

Mehmet then brought on the janissaries, leading them himself as far as the fosse. There, according to Kritoboulos, he stood aside to urge them forward, shouting: ‘Friends, we have the City! We have it! They are already fleeing from us! The wall is bare of defenders! It needs just a little more effort and the City is taken! Don’t weaken, but on with the work with all your might, and be men and I am with you!’

The defenders fought with desperation, holding back the janissaries for an hour. But then, at daybreak, about 300 janissaries forced their way through the breach that Urban had made in the outer wall near the Gate of St Romanus, where both Constantine and Giustiniani had their command posts.

The janissaries had still not penetrated the inner wall, but then the tide of battle turned when Giustiniani suffered a severe wound and, despite Constantine’s pleas that he remain at his post, he allowed himself to be carried to a Genoese ship in the harbour. Constantine tried to stem the tide as the janissaries now penetrated the inner wall, and when last seen he was at his command post on the Murus Bacchatureus, fighting valiantly alongside his faithful comrade John Dalmata and his kinsmen Theophilus Palaeologus and Don Francisco of Toledo.

The Turkish star and crescent was soon waving from the towers of the Theodosian walls and the Palace of Blachernae, as the Turkish troops now made their way through the inner wall, killing or capturing the defenders on the Theodosian walls and then fanning out through the city. The last pockets of resistance were mopped up before the morning was over, with many of the surviving Italians escaping aboard Venetian ships, leaving the Greeks to face their fate. Mehmet then turned loose his troops to sack the city for three days, as he had promised them. The Greek and Italian chroniclers write of how the Turkish soldiers killed those they did not enslave, and stripped Haghia Sophia and the other churches of their sacred relics and treasures, plundering the imperial palace and the houses of the rich. Kritoboulos says that nearly 4,000 were slain in the siege and its aftermath, and that more than 50,000 were enslaved, virtually the entire population of the city, which was stripped bare of everything that could be carried away by the looters.

Mehmet had given his soldiers permission to sack the city on condition that they did not destroy its public buildings, which now belonged to him. But from contemporary accounts it would appear that the Turkish forces did considerable damage to the city during their orgy of looting, enslavement, rape and massacre. Kritoboulos writes of Mehmet’s reaction to the death and destruction he saw when he first entered the city he had conquered.

After this the Sultan entered the City and looked about to see its great size, its situation, its grandeur and beauty, its teeming population, its loveliness, and the costliness of its churches and public buildings. When he saw what a large number had been killed, and the wreckage of the buildings, and the wholesale ruin and desolation of the City, he was filled with compassion and repented not a little at the destruction and plundering. Tears fell from his eyes as he groaned deeply and passionately: ‘What a city have we given over to plunder and destruction.’

4

Istanbul, Capital of the Ottoman Empire

Sultan Mehmet II made his triumphal entry into the city late in the afternoon of the day he captured it, Tuesday 29 May 1453, passing through the Adrianople Gate, now known as Edirne Kapı. As he passed through the gate he was acclaimed by his troops as Fatih, or the Conqueror, the name by which he would thenceforth be known to the Turks. The city that he had conquered had been known to the Turks as Kostantiniye, but after the Conquest its name in common Turkish usage became Istanbul, a corruption of the Greek ‘
eis tin polin
’, meaning ‘in the city’ or ‘to the city’.