Constantinople- the Last Great Siege, 1453

by Roger Crowley

  Before the appalled gaze of the defenders on the wall, a tented city sprang up in the plain. According to one writer ‘his army seemed as numberless as grains of sand, spread … across the land from shore to shore’. Everything in an Ottoman campaign was conducted with a sense of order and hushed purpose that was all the more threatening for its quietness. ‘There is no prince’, conceded the Byzantine chronicler Chalcocondylas, ‘who has his armies and camps in better order, both in abundance of victuals and in the beautiful order they use in encamping without any confusion or embarrassment.’ Conical tents were ranged in ordered clusters, each unit with its officer’s tent at its centre and a distinctive banner flying from its principal pole. In the heart of the encampment, Mehmet’s richly embroidered red and gold pavilion had been erected with due ritual. The tent of the sultan was the visual symbol of his majesty – the image of his power and an echo of the khanate origins of the sultans as nomadic leaders. Each sultan had a ceremonial tent made at his accession; it expressed his particular kingship. Mehmet’s was sited beyond the outer reach of crossbow fire, and was by custom protected by a palisade, ditch and shields and surrounded in carefully formed concentric circles ‘as the halo encircles the moon’ by the protecting corps of his most loyal troops: ‘the best of the infantry, archers and support troops and the rest of his personal corps, which were the finest in the army’. Their injunction, on which the safety of the empire depended, was to guard the sultan like the apple of their eye.

  The encampment was carefully organized. Standards and ensigns fluttered from the sea of tents: the ak sancak, the supreme white and gold banner of the sultan, the red banner of his household cavalry, the banners of the Janissary infantry – green and red, red and gold – the structural emblems of power and order in a medieval army. Elsewhere the watchers on the walls could make out the brightly coloured tents of the viziers and leading commanders, and the signifying hats and clothes of the different corps: the Janissaries in the distinctive white headdresses of the Bektashi order, the azaps in red turbans, cavalrymen in pointed turban helmets and chain-mail coats, Slavs in Balkan costumes. Watching Europeans commented on the array of men and equipment. ‘A quarter of them’, declared the Florentine merchant Giacomo Tetaldi, ‘were equipped with mail coats or leather tunics, of the others many were armed in the French manner, others in the Hungarian and others still had iron helmets, Turkish bows and crossbows. The rest of the soldiers were without equipment apart from the fact that they had shields and scimitars – a type of Turkish sword.’ What further astonished the watchers on the walls were the vast numbers of animals. ‘Whilst conceding that these are found in greater numbers than men in military encampments, to carry supplies and food,’ noted Chalcocondylas, ‘only these people … not only take enough camels and mules with them to meet their needs, but also use them as a source of enjoyment, each one of them being eager to show the finest mules or horses or camels.’

  The defenders could only survey this purposeful sea of activity with trepidation. As sunset approached the call to prayer would rise in a sinuous thread of sound above the tents from dozens of points as the muezzins called the men to prayer. Camp fires would be lit for the one meal of the day – for the Ottoman army campaigned frugally – and smoke drifted in the wind. A bare 250 yards from their citadel, they could catch the purposeful sounds of camp activity: the low murmuring of voices, the hammering of mallets, the sharpening of swords, the snorting and braying of horses, mules and camels. And far worse, they could probably make out the fainter sound of Christian worship from the European wing of the army. For an empire intent on holy war, the Ottomans ruled their vassals with remarkable tolerance: ‘although they were subjects of the Sultan, he had not compelled them to resign their Christian faith, and they could worship and pray as they wished’, Tetaldi noted. The help the Ottomans received from Christian subjects, mercenaries, converts and technical experts was a theme of repeated lament for the European chroniclers. ‘I can testify’, howled Archbishop Leonard, ‘that Greeks, Latins, Germans, Hungarians, Bohemians and men from all the Christian countries were on the side of the Turks … Oh, the wickedness of denying Christ like this!’ The vituperation was not wholly justified; many of the Christian soldiers came under duress as vassals of the sultan. ‘We had to ride forward to Stambol and help the Turks,’ remembered Michael the Janissary, recording that the alternative was death. Among those brought unwillingly to the siege was a young Orthodox Russian, Nestor-Iskander. He had been captured by an Ottoman detachment near Moldavia on the fringes of southern Russia and circumcised for conversion to Islam. When his troop reached the siege he evidently escaped into the city and wrote a lively account of the events that ensued.

  No one knows exactly how many men Mehmet brought to the siege. The Ottoman genius for mobilizing both regular troops and volunteers on a grand scale repeatedly stunned their opponents into the wildest projections. To the eulogizing Ottoman chroniclers they were simply ‘a river of steel’ ‘as numerous as the stars’. The European eyewitnesses were more mathematical but given to very large round numbers. Their calculations ranged from 160,000 men to upwards of 400,000. It took Michael the Janissary, who had seen Ottoman armies up close, to impose some sense of realism on such ‘facts’: ‘Know there-fore that the Turkish emperor cannot assemble such a large army for pitched battle as people tell of his great might. For some relate that they are innumerable, but it is an impossible thing, that an army could be without number, for every ruler wants to know the number of his army and to have it organised.’ The most realistic numerical guess seems to be that of Tetaldi, who soberly calculated that ‘at the siege there were altogether two hundred thousand men, of whom perhaps sixty thousand were soldiers, thirty to forty thousand of these being cavalry’. In the fifteenth century, when the French and English fought the Battle of Agincourt with a combined total of 35,000 men, this was a huge force. If Tetaldi’s estimate was anywhere close, even the number of horses that must have come to the siege was impressive. The rest of the Ottoman host were auxiliaries or hangers-on: supply teams, carpenters, gun-founders, blacksmiths, ordnance corps as well as ‘tailors, pastry-cooks, artisans, petty traders, and other men who followed the army in the hope of profit or plunder’.

  Constantine had no such difficulty estimating his army. He simply counted it. At the end of March he ordered a census of districts to record ‘how many able-bodied men there were including monks, and whatever weapons each possessed for defence’. Having collected the returns he entrusted the adding up to his faithful chancellor and lifelong friend, George Sphrantzes. As Sphrantzes recalled, ‘The Emperor summoned me and said, “This task belongs to your sphere of duties and to no-one else, because you are competent to make the necessary calculations and to observe that the proper measures are taken for the defence and that full secrecy is observed. Take these lists and study them at home. Make an accurate assessment of how many hand weapons, shields, bows and cannon we have.”’ Sphrantzes duly did the totting up. ‘I carried out the Emperor’s orders and presented to him a detailed estimate of our resources with considerable gloom.’ The reason for his mood was clear: ‘In spite of the great size of our city, our defenders amounted to 4,773 Greeks, as well as just 200 foreigners.’ In addition there were the genuine outsiders, the ‘Genoese, Venetians and those who came secretly from Galata to help the defence’, who numbered ‘hardly as many as three thousand’, amounting to something under 8,000 men in total to defend a perimeter wall of twelve miles. Even of these, ‘the greater part of the Greeks were not skilled in warfare, and fought with shields, swords, lances and bows by natural instinct rather than with any skill’. Desperately lacking were those ‘skilled in the use of the bow and cross-bow’. Nor was it certain what help the disaffected Orthodox population would give to the cause. Constantine was appalled by the possible effects of this information on morale, and determined to suppress it. ‘The true figure remained a secret known only to the emperor and myself,’ Sphrantzes recalled. It was c
lear that the siege was to be a conflict between the few and many.

  Constantine kept this knowledge to himself and set about making final preparations. On 2 April, the day that the gates were closed for the last time, he ordered the boom to be hauled across the Golden Horn by ship, from Eugenius the gate near to the Acropolis Point in the city, to a tower within the sea walls of Galata. The work was undertaken by a Genoese engineer, Bartolamio Soligo, chosen probably for his ability to persuade his fellow Genoese at Galata to let the chain be fixed to their walls. This was a contentious matter. By permitting it, the citizens could be said to be compromising their strict neutrality. It was certain to invoke Mehmet’s ire if the siege went badly, but they agreed. For Constantine it meant that the four-mile stretch of shoreline along the Horn could be left virtually unguarded as long as sufficient naval resources were deployed to protect the boom itself.

  As Mehmet spread his army out around the city, Constantine called a council of war with Giustiniani and his other commanders to deploy his small force along the twelve-mile front. He knew that the Horn was secure as long as the boom was held; the other sea walls were also not cause for major concern. The Bosphorus currents were too strong to permit an easy assault by landing craft round the point of the city; the Marmara walls were similarly unpromising for concerted attack because of currents and the pattern of shoals off the shore. It was the land walls, despite their apparent strength, that needed the most detailed attention.

  Both sides were well aware of the two weak spots. The first was the central section of wall, called by the Greeks the Mesoteichion, the ‘middle wall’ that lay between two strategic gates, the St Romanus and the Charisian, on ridges either side. Between the gates the land sloped down about a hundred feet to the Lycus valley, where the small stream was culverted under the wall and into the city. This section had been the focus of the Ottoman siege of 1422 and Mehmet set up his headquarters on the hill of Maltepe opposite as a clear signal of intent. The second vulnerable zone was the short length of single wall near the Golden Horn that was unmoated, particularly the point where the two walls met at right angles. In late March Constantine had persuaded the Venetian galley crews hurriedly to dig out a ditch along part of this stretch, but it remained a cause for concern.

  Constantine set about organizing his forces accordingly. He divided the fourteen zones of the city into twelve military divisions and allocated his resources. He decided to establish his headquarters in the Lycus valley, so that emperor and sultan almost confronted each other across the walls. Here he stationed the bulk of his best troops, about 2,000 in all. Giustiniani was originally positioned at the Charisian Gate on the ridge above, but subsequently moved his Genoese soldiers to join the emperor in the central section and to take effective day-to-day command of this critical sector.

  Sections of the land wall were then parcelled out for defence under the command of ‘the principal persons of Constantinople’. On the emperor’s right the Charisian Gate was probably commanded by Theodore of Karystes, ‘an old but sturdy Greek, highly skilful with the bow’. The next section of the wall north, up to the right-angle turn, was entrusted to the Genoese Bocchiardi brothers who had come ‘at their own expense and providing their own equipment’, which included handguns and powerful frame-mounted crossbows, and the vulnerable section of single wall that ran round the Blachernae Palace was also largely entrusted to Italians. The Venetian bailey, Minotto, took up residence in the palace itself; the flag of St Mark flew from its tower beside that of the emperor. One of its gates, the Caligaria, was commanded by ‘John from Germany’, a professional soldier and ‘an able military engineer’ who was actually Scottish. He was also given the task of managing the city’s supply of Greek fire.

  Constantine’s force was truly multi-national but was similarly divided along the fault lines of religion, nationality and commercial rivalry. In order to minimize potential friction between Genoese and Venetian, Orthodox and Catholic, Greek and Italian, he seems to have made it a deliberate policy to intermix the forces in the hope of increasing their interdependence. On his immediate left a section of wall was commanded by his kinsman, ‘the Greek Theophilus, a noble from the house of Palaiologos, highly erudite in Greek literature and an expert geometrician’ – a man who probably knew more about the Iliad than actually defending Troy’s walls. Towards the Golden Gate, the wall was supervised by a succession of Greek, Venetian and Genoese soldiers, with a noble of the great Byzantine family of Cantacuzenos, Demetrios, at the corner point where the land wall meets the sea wall at the Marmara shore.

  The defences along the Marmara shore were even more mixed. Another Venetian – Jacopo Contarini – was stationed at the village of Studion, while Orthodox monks watched an adjacent section where little attack was expected. Constantine had then placed his renegade Turkish contingent under the pretender Prince Orhan at the harbour of Eleutherii – well away from the land walls, though their loyalty was hardly to be questioned given their certain fate should the city fall. Towards the apex of the city, the seashore was manned by a Catalan contingent and the Acropolis point itself was entrusted to Cardinal Isidore and a force of 200. It says much about the fighting skills of the men on these sections, that despite the natural protection afforded by the sea Constantine decided to supply each tower with two skilled marksmen – one archer plus a crossbowman or handgunner. The Golden Horn itself was guarded by Genoese and Venetian sailors under the command of the Venetian sea captain Trevisano, while the crews of two Cretan ships in the harbour manned a gate near the boom, the Horaia. Protection of the boom itself and the ships in the harbour was in the charge of Aluvixe Diedo.

  In order to provide further support for his overstretched ‘army’, Constantine decided to keep a rapid-reaction force in reserve. Two troops were kept in readiness back from the walls. One, under the Grand Duke Lucas Notaras, a skilled soldier and ‘the most important man in Constantinople apart from the emperor’, was stationed in the Petra quarter with a hundred horses and some mobile guns; another under Nicephorus Palaiologos was placed on the central ridge near the ruined church of the Holy Apostles. These reserves comprised about a thousand men.

  Constantine brought a lifetime’s experience of warfare and troop management to these arrangements, but he probably had little idea how well this democracy of competing contingents would function together in days ahead. Many of the crucial positions had been given to foreigners because he was uncertain where his own position on church union placed him with the Orthodox faithful of the city. He entrusted keys to four of the principal city gates to leading Venetians and ensured that the Greek commanders on the walls were unionist in their religious leanings. Lucas Notaras, who was probably against union, had been pointedly kept away from having to co-operate with Catholics at the defence of the walls.

  As Constantine sought to match his scanty resources to the four-mile extent of the land wall, there was one further crucial decision to take. The triple wall had been designed for defence by a far larger contingent, which could man it in depth – at both the high inner wall and the lower outer one. He lacked the resources adequately to defend both layers, so he was forced to choose where to make a stand. The wall had been bombarded in the 1422 siege, and whereas the outer one had been substantially repaired, the inner had not. Defenders at the previous siege had faced the same choice and had opted – successfully – for a defence of the outer wall. Constantine and his siege expert, Giustiniani, adopted the same strategy. In some quarters it was a controversial decision. ‘This was always against my advice’, wrote the ever-critical Archbishop Leonard, ‘I urged us not to desert the protection of our high inner walls’, but this was probably the counsel of perfection.

  The emperor resolved to do all he could for the morale of his troops, and knowing that Mehmet feared the possibility of Catholic aid arriving for the Orthodox city, decided on his own small show of force. At his request on 6 April the men of the Venetian galleys disembarked and paraded the length of the land w
alls in their distinctive European armour ‘with their banners in front … to give great comfort to the people of the city’, as a highly visible statement that there were Franks at the siege. On the same day the galleys themselves were put on a war footing.

  Mehmet for his part sent a small detachment of cavalry up to the city gates, pennants fluttering in the wind, indicating that they had come to parley. They brought with them the traditional invitation to surrender required under Koranic law: ‘Nor do We punish’, says the Koran, ‘until We have sent forth a messenger. When We resolve to raise a city, We first give warning to those its people who live in comfort. If they persist in sin, judgement is irrevocably passed, and We destroy it utterly.’ Under this formula the Christian defenders could convert to Islam, surrender and pay the poll tax, or hold out and anticipate three days of plunder, should their city be stormed. The Byzantines had first heard this formula as long ago as 674, and several times since. The response had always been the same: ‘We accept neither the tax, nor Islam, nor the capitulation of our fortress.’ With this denial, the Ottomans could feel that the siege had been sanctioned by Holy Law and heralds moved among the camp formally proclaiming the start of the siege. Mehmet proceeded to wheel up his guns.