Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453

by Roger Crowley

  Grant evidently knew his business. The position of the enemy mine was located by the sound of the work. A countermine was dug with speed and stealth. The defenders had the advantage of surprise. Bursting into the enemy tunnel in the dark, they fired the pit props and collapsed the tunnel on the miners, leaving them to suffocate in the dark. The danger posed by this mine banished any complacency within the city. Henceforth, full precautions were taken to watch for mining activity. Grant must have instituted the standard practices of the time. Bowls or buckets of water would be placed at regular intervals on the ground by the wall and were observed for telltale ripples on the surface that would indicate subterranean vibrations. The greater skill was to locate the direction of the mine and to intercept it quickly and stealthily. Over the following days a grim underground struggle unfolded with its own skills and disciplines that echoed the contest for the wall and the boom in the daylight world. For a few days after 16 May, Christian sappers found no sign of movement. On the 21st another mine was detected. It had again passed under the foundations with the intention of letting troops into the city. Grant’s men intercepted the tunnel but failed to surprise the Ottomans who withdrew, burning the props behind them so that it collapsed.

  Thereafter it became a game of cat and mouse fought out in the dark under horrific conditions. The following day ‘at the hour of Compline’ the defenders discovered a tunnel into the city near the Calegaria Gate, which they intercepted. They burned the miners alive with Greek fire. A few hours later telltale vibrations indicated yet another mine near by, but this one proved harder to intercept. However, the pit props collapsed of their own accord and killed all the miners inside.

  The Saxon miners were indefatigable. Not a day went by without underground warfare. Each time, Giacomo Tetaldi recalled, ‘the Christians dug counter-mines, and listened, and located them … they suffocated the Turks in their mines with smoke, or sometimes with foul and evil-smelling odours. In some places they drowned them with a flood of water, and often found themselves fighting hand to hand.’

  While the tunnelling continued, Mehmet’s engineers contrived another remarkable and totally unexpected initiative in the world above. At daybreak on the morning of 19 May, the watchers on the wall near the Charisian Gate stirring themselves for another day looked out over the distant sea of enemy tents – and were staggered by what they saw. Ten paces in front of them and positioned on the lip of the ditch was an enormous tower, ‘overtopping the walls of the barbicans’, that had somehow appeared from nowhere overnight. The defenders were amazed and mystified by how the Ottomans had managed to erect this structure so rapidly, which had been wheeled forward from the enemy lines in the dark and now overtopped the ramparts. It was built on a framework of stout beams covered with camel skins and a double layer of hurdles to protect the men inside. Its lower half had been filled with earth and embanked with earth on the outside ‘so that shots from cannon or handguns could not harm it’. Each storey inside was connected by ladders that could also be used to bridge the gap between the tower and the wall. Overnight a huge body of men had also constructed a covered causeway from it back to the Ottoman lines ‘half a mile long … and over it two layers of hurdles and on top of them camel skins, by means of which they could go from the tower to the camp under cover, in such a way that they could not be harmed by bullets or crossbow bolts or by stones from small cannon’. Armed men rushed to the wall to view the incredible sight. The siege tower was almost a throwback to the era of classical warfare, though it seemed to Archbishop Leonard to be a device ‘such as the Romans could scarcely have constructed’. It had been designed specifically to fill in the troublesome ditch in front of the wall. Inside the tower, teams of men were excavating earth and hurling it out through small openings in the protective screen into the ditch in front. They kept at it all day: while from the higher storeys archers shot a covering fire of arrows into the city, ‘it seemed, from sheer high spirits’.

  It was a signature project for Mehmet – conceived in secret on a grand scale and executed, like the transportation of the ships, with extraordinary speed. Its psychological impact was profound. The resourcefulness and the resources of the besieging army must have struck the defenders like a recurring nightmare. Constantine and his commanders hurried to the battlements to confront yet another emergency, ‘and when they saw it they were all struck down with fear like dead men, and they were continuously concerned that this tower might cause them to lose the city because it overtopped the barbicans’. The threat from the tower was palpable. It was closing up the ditch in front of their eyes, and the covering fire from its archers made it difficult to mount any response. By nightfall the Ottomans had made remarkable progress. They had filled the ditch with logs, dried branches and earth. The siege tower, pushed from within, moved further forward and closer to the wall. The panicky defenders decided that immediate action was imperative – another day under the shadow of the overhanging tower could prove fatal. After dark, packed barrels of gunpowder were prepared behind the walls and rolled off the ramparts towards the tower, with fuses sputtering. There was a series of huge explosions: ‘suddenly the earth roared like great thunder and lifted up the siege turrets and the men to the clouds, like a mighty storm’. The tower cracked and exploded: ‘people and logs fell from high’. The defenders hurled barrels of burning pitch down on the wounded groaning below. Advancing out from the walls they massacred any further survivors and burned the bodies along with other siege equipment that had been drawn up nearby: ‘long battering rams and wheeled ladders, and waggons with protective turrets on them’. Mehmet observed this failure from a distance. Furious, he withdrew his men. Similar towers which had been advanced at other points along the wall were also withdrawn or burned by the defenders. The siege towers were evidently too vulnerable to fire and the experiment was not repeated.

  Underground the tunnel war intensified. On 23 May the defenders detected and entered yet another mine. As they advanced down the narrow shaft by the flickering light of flares, they found themselves suddenly face to face with the enemy. Hurling Greek fire, they brought down the roof, burying the miners, but managed to capture two officers and bring them back to the surface alive. The Greeks tortured these men until they revealed the location of all the other workings; ‘and when they had confessed, their heads were cut off, and their bodies were thrown from the walls on the side of the city where the Turkish camp was; and the Turks, when they saw their men thrown from the walls, became enraged and felt great bitterness towards the Greeks and us Italians’.

  The following day the silver miners changed their tactics. Instead of passing straight under the walls to create passageways into the city, they turned their tunnel sideways on reaching the wall to run directly under it for a distance of ten paces. The tunnel was propped on timbers and prepared for firing with the aim of collapsing a section of wall. The work was only just discovered in time; the intruders were repulsed and the wall was bricked up again underneath. It caused great disquiet in the city. On 25 May one last attempt was made to repeat this operation. The miners again managed to prop a long section of wall ready for firing before being intercepted and repulsed. In the eyes of the defenders it was the most dangerous of any of the tunnels to be found and its discovery signalled the end of the tunnel war. The Saxon miners had worked ceaselessly for ten days; they had constructed fourteen tunnels but Grant had destroyed them all. Mehmet acknowledged the failure of both towers and mines – and kept the guns firing.

  *

  Away to the west of Constantinople, far from the sound of firing and the night attacks, another small but significant drama was being played out. In one of the island harbours of the eastern Aegean a sailing ship was rocking at anchor. It was the Venetian brigantine that had slipped away from the city. During mid-May it swept the archipelago, looking for signs of a rescue fleet. The crew found nothing. They had received no positive reports from passing vessels. They now knew that there were no ships. In fact the Venetian
fleet was off the coast of Greece cautiously seeking information about Ottoman naval intentions, whilst the galleys that the Pope had ordered from Venice were still under construction. The crew fully understood the implications of their situation. On deck a heated debate was in progress about what to do next. One sailor made a strong case for sailing away from the city and back to ‘a Christian land, because I know very clearly that by this time the Turks will have taken Constantinople’. His companions turned to him and replied that the emperor had entrusted them with this task, and that it was their bounden duty to complete it: ‘and so we want to return to Constantinople, if it is in the hands of the Turks or the Christians, if it is to death or to life, let us go on our way’. The democratic decision was taken to return, whatever the consequences.

  The brigantine swept back up the Dardanelles on the south wind, reassumed its Turkish disguise and approached the city shortly before daybreak on 23 May. This time the Ottoman fleet was not deceived. They had been patrolling attentively, fearing the arrival of Venetian galleys, and took the small sailing boat for their outrider. They rowed forward to intercept but the brigantine outstripped them and the boom opened to let it back in. That day the crew went to make their report to the emperor that they had found no fleet. Constantine thanked them for returning to the city and ‘began to weep bitterly for grief’. The final realization that Christendom would send no ships snuffed out any hopes of rescue; ‘and seeing this the Emperor decided to put himself in the hands of our most merciful Lord Jesus Christ and of his Mother Madonna Saint Mary, and of Saint Constantine, Defender of his City, that they might guard it’. It was the forty-eighth day of the siege.

  Source Notes

  11 Terrible Engines

  1 ‘There is a need …’, Siegecraft: Two Tenth-century Instructional Manuals by Heron of Byzantium, ed. D. F. Sullivan, Washington DC, 2000, p. 29

  2 ‘Alas, most blessed Father …’, Leonard, p. 36

  3 ‘This betrayal was committed …’, Pertusi, La Caduta, vol. 1, p. 20

  4 ‘so greedy for …’, ibid., p. 142

  5 ‘each side accusing …’, ibid., p. 142

  6 ‘put the rudders and sails … into your power’, ibid., p. 23

  7 ‘many of their men … half a mile’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 34

  8 ‘that could fire the stone …’, Kritovoulos, Critobuli, pp. 51–2

  9 ‘came from the top …’, Leonard, p. 32

  10 ‘of three hundred botte …’, Barbaro, Giornale, pp. 35–6

  11 ‘some shots killing …’, ibid., p. 36

  12 ‘a woman of excellent reputation …’, Leonard, p. 32

  13 ‘whatever they were owed …’, Doukas, Fragmenta, p. 279

  14 ‘With this act of…’, ibid., p. 278

  15 ‘two hundred and twelve …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 39

  16 ‘because in that place …’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 43

  17 ‘clatter and flashing …’, ibid., p. 45

  18 ‘as if on the steppes … filled with blood’, ibid., p. 45

  19 ‘What is the defence …’, Leonard, p. 44

  20 ‘were full of hatred …’, ibid., p. 46

  21 ‘what certain people …’, ibid., p. 44

  22 ‘The Emperor lacked severity …’, Pertusi, La Caduta, vol. 1, p. 152

  23 ‘The forces defending …’, Tursun Beg, p. 36

  24 ‘fell silent for a long time …’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 49

  25 ‘he ordered all …’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 53

  26 ‘cries and the banging …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 36

  27 ‘bared his sword …’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 55

  28 ‘but they were unable …’, ibid., p. 57

  29 ‘there was great mourning …’, ibid., p. 57

  30 ‘On the eleventh … the unfortunate walls’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 39

  31 ‘the blood remained …’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 47

  32 ‘Thus one could see …’, ibid., p. 47

  33 ‘In the jihad against …’, quoted Wintle, p. 245

  34 ‘let us see who …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 37

  35 ‘believed that night …’, ibid., p. 39

  36 ‘if it continues …’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 57

  37 ‘the Turks were already …’, ibid., p. 59

  38 ‘the Emperor arrived …’, ibid., p. 61

  39 ‘but the nobles of the imperial …’, quoted Mijatovich, p. 181

  40 ‘Day and night these cannon …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 40

  41 ‘good cannon and …’, ibid., p. 40

  42 ‘and we Christians …’, ibid., p. 40

  43 ‘they hurriedly started rowing …’, ibid., p. 41

  44 ‘more than seventy shots …’, ibid., p. 41

  45 ‘with a great sounding …’, ibid., p. 44

  46 ‘two hours after sunrise …’, Barbaro, Diary, p. 55

  47 ‘if the bridge …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 43

  48 ‘masters in the art …’, Pertusi, La Caduta, vol. 2, p. 262

  49 ‘John Grant, a German …’, ibid., vol. 1, p. 134

  50 ‘at the hour of Compline’, Barbaro, Diary, p. 55

  51 ‘the Christians dug counter-mines …’, Melville Jones, p. 5

  52 ‘overtopping the walls …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 42

  53 ‘so that shots from …’, ibid., p. 43

  54 ‘half a mile long …’, ibid., p. 43

  55 ‘such as the Romans …’, Leonard, p. 22

  56 ‘it seemed, from sheer high spirits’, Barbaro, Diary, p. 53

  57 ‘and when they saw it …’, Barbaro, Giornale, p. 42

  58 ‘suddenly the earth roared … from high’, Nestor-Iskander, p. 51

  59 ‘long battering rams …’, Leonard, p. 22

  60 ‘and when they had confessed …’, Barbaro, Giornale, pp. 46–7

  61 ‘a Christian land …’, Pertusi, La Caduta, vol. 1, p. 26

  62 ‘and so we want to return …’, ibid., pp. 26–7

  63 ‘began to weep … that they might guard it’, Barbaro, Giornale , p. 35

  12 Omens and Portents

  24–26 MAY 1453

  We see auguries in the replies and salutations of men. We note the cries of domestic

  birds, the flight of crows and we draw omens from them. We take note of

  dreams and believe that they foretell the future … it is these sins and others like

  them that make us worthy of the punishments with which God visits us.

  Joseph Bryennios, fourteenth-century Byzantine writer

  Prophecy, apocalypse, sin: as the siege entered the final weeks of May deepening religious dread gripped the people of the city. A belief in portents had always been a feature of the life of Byzantium. Constantinople itself had been founded as the result of a mystical sign – the vision of a cross that had appeared to Constantine the Great before the crucial battle at the Milvian Bridge twelve hundred and forty years earlier – and omens were eagerly sought and interpreted. With the inexorable decline of the empire, these became increasingly linked to a profound pessimism. There was a widely held belief that the Byzantine Empire was to be the last empire on earth, whose final century had started around 1394. People remembered the ancient prophetic books from the time of the earlier Arab sieges; their gnomic, oracular verses were widely recited: ‘misfortune to you, city of seven hills, when the twentieth letter is proclaimed on your ramparts. Then the fall will be near and the destruction of your sovereigns.’ The Turks, in their turn, were seen as an apocalyptic people signifying the last judgement, a scourge sent by God as a punishment for Christian sin.

  In this climate people unceasingly scrutinized signs that might foretell the end of empire – or of the world itself: epidemics, natural phenomena, angelic apparitions. The city itself, old beyond the comprehension of its inhabitants, had become enshrouded in legend, ancient prophecy and supernatural meanings. Its 1,000-year-old monuments, whose original purpose had been lost, were said to be magical cryptogram
s in which the future might be read: the sculpted frieze on the base of the statue in the Forum of the Bull contained an encoded prophecy of the city’s end, and the great equestrian statue of Justinian pointing east no longer expressed confident dominion over the Persians. It foretold the direction from which the final destroyers of the city would come.

  Against this background, presentiments of the last judgement gained an incremental force as the siege wore on. The unseasonable weather and the terror of unceasing artillery bombardment convinced the Orthodox faithful that the end was drawing nigh in explosions and black smoke. The Antichrist, in the shape of Mehmet, was at the gate. Prophetic dreams and portents were widely circulated: how a child had seen the angel who guarded the city walls abandon his post; how oysters had been gathered that dripped blood; how a great serpent was drawing near, devastating the land; how the earth tremors and hailstorms that struck the city made it clear ‘that universal ruin was approaching’. Everything pointed to a belief that time was nearly completed. In the monastery of St George there was an oracular document, divided into squares, showing the succession of emperors, one emperor to each square: ‘in time the squares were all filled, and they say that only one last square was still empty’ – the square to be occupied by Constantine XI. Byzantine notions that time was circular and symmetrical were further confirmed by a second imperial prophecy: that the city would be both founded and lost by an Emperor Constantine whose mother was called Helen. Both Constantine I and Constantine XI had mothers of that name.