The Elite

by Ranulph Fiennes

  Living in monastic conditions, the Janissaries trained under strict discipline, much like the Knights Templar and Hospitallers. Expected to remain celibate, unlike other Muslims, they were also expressly forbidden to wear beards, although a moustache was tolerated. They were also encouraged to follow the dervish saint Haji Bektash Veli, who served as a kind of chaplain. As a symbol of their devotion to the order, they wore special hats called börk. These hats had a holding place in front, called the kaşıklık, for a spoon. This symbolised the so-called ‘brotherhood of the spoon’, which reflected a sense of comradeship among the Janissaries who ate, slept, fought and died together.

  Protectors of the throne, the Janissaries were expert archers, who were also handy with the axe, club or dagger. However, it was the double-curved Turkish yataghan sword that was regarded as their signature weapon, which when slashed across an enemy could virtually cut them in two.

  Making up a tenth of the overall Ottoman army, the Janissaries saw action in all major campaigns, although they enjoyed far better support than other armies of the time. Part of a well-organised military machine, one support corps prepared the roads, while others pitched tents and baked bread. Their weapons and ammunition were also transported and resupplied by the so-called Cebeci corps. Medical teams of Muslim and Jewish surgeons also joined their campaigns, with the sick and wounded evacuated to dedicated mobile hospitals set up behind the lines. In short, their every need was catered to so that they could concentrate on their one job – protecting the sultan at all costs.

  In battle, during the strategic fake retreat of the Turkish cavalry, the Janissaries would hold the centre of the army against enemy attack. Yet it wasn’t just on the battlefield where their skills were utilised. They were also adept at breaking sieges. Between teams of explosive experts, engineers and technicians, sharpshooters and sappers, they almost always prevailed, even against the most stringent defences. However, something that made the Janissaries truly stand out as the elite force of their age was the discovery of gunpowder by the Ottomans in the fourteenth century. While other empires had also put it to good use, it was the Ottoman Janissaries who adopted it faster, and far more extensively, than any of their rivals.

  While gunpowder was invented in ninth-century China, Professor Kenneth Warren Chase, author of Firearms: A Global History to 1700, credits the Mongols with introducing it to Europe, with several sources mentioning Chinese firearms and gunpowder weapons being deployed against European forces at the Battle of Mohi in 1241. By the 1380s, the Ottomans were acquainted with gunpowder weapons, and before most others they integrated them into their standing forces. Furthermore, from the 1390s on, preceding their rivals by centuries, the Ottomans established a corps of permanent salaried troops who specialised in the manufacturing and handling of firearms. Indeed, from the fifteenth century, the Cebeci was created to look after and carry the infantry Janissaries’ weapons. The army also had its own gun carriage drivers (arabaci) whose job was to manufacture, repair and operate war wagons in campaigns.

  I recall the first time I held a gun. I was only very young and had found my father’s loaded old service pistol hidden under my mother’s pillow. One day, when my mother was out, I took the gun and threatened to shoot our cook, Christine, unless she gave me a slice of chocolate cake from the locked larder. She screamed so hard she scared me off, and told my mother of my misdemeanour, who quite rightly beat my hand with a cane.

  In any event, by the early fifteenth century, the Janissaries’ firepower overwhelmed that of most of their adversaries. However, while they were heavily armed, and well trained, in firearms, the Ottomans knew that even their skills might not be enough to breach the walls of Constantinople. To break the siege, they needed something that previous besiegers of Constantinople had lacked: cannons.

  A Hungarian engineer named Urban had first offered his cannons to the Byzantines but Emperor Constantine could not meet his asking price. As such, Urban turned to Sultan Mehmed, who, well aware of the cannon’s potential, offered him four times the price he had asked to ensure they were his. Soon Mehmed had a fearsome array of cannons that could destroy most castle walls; the largest measured 9 metres long and had a gaping mouth 1 metre across. Able to fire a ball weighing 500kg over 1.5 kilometres, it destroyed anything in its path. However, it could only be fired seven times a day, as it needed time to cool down between shots. Still, the Ottomans had plenty of smaller cannons, each capable of firing over 100 times a day, and each capable of causing extensive damage. This was a significant game-changer in siege warfare. No longer were the tricks of the likes of Harald Hardrada required. Now an army could blast their way through fortress walls.

  Sadly, my own brush with explosives ended in ignominy. Having just been accepted into the SAS, I had managed to keep some of the detonators, fuse wire and plastic explosives we had used during a demolition course. On reflection, I should have returned these items, and I certainly had no criminal motive for keeping them, but, alas, I did. A twist of fate would lead me to meet an old friend a short time later, who wanted to protest at the way 20th Century Fox was desecrating a trout stream in the beautiful village of Castle Combe in order to shoot the movie, Dr Dolittle. I thought I had just the idea.

  With my supply of explosives, I planned to use them to draw away the movie set security patrol, informing a supposedly friendly journalist of my plan to do so. Unsurprisingly, the journalist went straight to the police, who were soon lying in wait for the man the papers would come to call the ‘Baronet Bomber’. I was very fortunate to escape jail, and although my fine of £500 stung at the time, I was also expelled from the SAS. My future father-in-law also rang my mother and threatened to call the police if I was ever to contact Ginny again. While it was an idle threat, and we would of course marry in time, that probably hurt me more than anything. It was certainly a very costly error and one that caused immense regret. Thankfully for the Ottomans, they were slightly better prepared than myself, and certainly did not phone ahead with their intentions.

  As such, on 2 April 1453, over 200,000 Ottoman fighters, including the Janissaries and their firearms, surrounded Constantinople from the sea and around its landward walls. However, the Byzantines were expecting them. Having already destroyed the bridges across the moats, they had also closed the gates of the city, while a giant chain had been erected in the sea, which was designed to stop the Turkish fleet from getting too close. Upon the walls, and in the towers, were thousands of soldiers, armed with small cannons, javelins, arrows and even stones, to keep the invaders at bay.

  Mehmed was nonetheless confident that he had the tools to smash through the walls, yet he hoped not to have to damage the city he aimed to make his capital. As such, he ordered Emperor Constantine to surrender immediately. If he did so, he would spare his citizens. Yet Constantine did not reply, believing his city to be impregnable. Mehmed now looked to prove him wrong.

  With a cloud of black smoke, and a deafening roar, his cannons soon unleashed hell. Crashing giant cannonballs into the Theodosian Walls, they blasted away huge chunks, particularly at the Charisian Gate, which was severely damaged and collapsed a day later. The Byzantines desperately fired back with their own smaller cannons but soon had to stop as they found the vibrations damaged the fortifications. Just about managing to keep the Ottomans at arm’s length, they spent the night trying to repair the walls. However, the Ottomans also dug underneath them, trying to cause them to collapse. In response, the Byzantines filled these underground tunnels with smoke, foul-smelling odours, or even water, to flush them out. Unable to go under, the Ottomans looked to go above, building a bridge made of barrels. Towering over the wall, it allowed many Ottoman soldiers to scale to the top before being shot down.

  This relentless onslaught continued for the next six weeks. The Byzantine defence might have been weary, and short of men and materials, but somehow they repelled everything the Ottomans threw at them. And soon much-needed help arrived. Three Genoese ships sent by the Pope, as
well as a vessel carrying vital grain sent by Alfonso of Aragon, managed to break through the Ottoman naval blockade and reach the city.

  Infuriated by this breach, Mehmed now changed tack. He proceeded to build a railed road via which seventy of his ships, loaded onto carts pulled by oxen, could be launched into the waters of the Golden Horn. The Ottomans then built a pontoon, and fixed cannons to it, so that they could now attack any part of the city from the sea side, not just the land. This saw the Byzantines struggle to station men where they were needed, especially along the structurally weaker sea-side walls.

  Time appeared to be running out for the city but, then, another reprieve came from an unexpected quarter. Back in Asia Minor, Mehmed faced several revolts. Knowing he had to return to quash any uprising, he offered Constantine a deal: if the emperor would pay an annual tribute of 100,000 gold bezants, the Ottomans would withdraw. But the emperor refused, being unable to raise such a tribute in any event, and still confident his forces, and walls, could hold out.

  The Ottomans now faced a dilemma. At a war council, Halil Pasha, one of the Ottoman captains, urged Mehmed to forget the siege and return home:

  You have done your duty, you have given them a number of fierce battles, and every day great numbers of your men are killed. You see how strongly the city is defended, and how impossible it is to storm it; in fact, the more men you send to attack it, the more are left lying there, and those who manage to scale the wall are beaten back and killed. Your ancestors never got as far as this, or even expected to. It is to your great glory and honour that you have done so much, and this should satisfy you, without wishing to destroy the whole of your forces in this way.

  But another captain, Zagan Pasha, appealed to the sultan to give it one last go:

  You have proved yourself the stronger. You have razed to the ground a great part of the city walls, and we shall break down the rest. Give us the chance of making one short sharp general assault and, if we fail, we shall afterwards do whatever you think best.

  With this appeal, Mehmed vowed to launch one last assault to crush Constantinople once and for all, reminding his men of the riches the city contained and of the booty that could soon be theirs.

  In the early hours of 29 May, Mehmed unleashed his final attack. His cannons once more blasted big chunks out of the walls. This was followed by a barrage of arrows from the cavalry and then wave after wave of infantry who, screaming their battle cries, attacked the walls. In the darkness, the church bells in the city rang out the warning that an attack was underway. Every man of fighting age, as well as women and children, raced from their beds and hurried to the walls to throw whatever they had at the Ottomans, as well as repair the crumbling walls.

  Yet, after hours of fighting, Mehmed was dismayed to see that the walls had still not been breached. It was now time for him to turn to his elite troops: the Janissaries. If they failed, the conquest would be over.

  Rather than rush towards the walls, as the previous troops had done, the Janissaries kept their ranks in perfect order, unbroken by the missiles of the enemy. Charging forward, wave after wave of these stoutly armoured men rushed up to the wall with their guns. Yet, as they tore at the barrels of earth that surmounted it, hacked at its supporting beams and placed ladders to scale it, shooting at the enemy above, they still could not make any headway. As the Byzantines held back the Ottomans’ most elite troops, they now began to think that they could win. But fate was against them.

  At the corner of the Blachernae Wall, just before it joined the double Theodosian Wall, there was, half-hidden by a tower, a small sallyport known as the Kerkoporta. Unbelievably, after weeks of bitter siege warfare, and centuries of armies being unable to breach the walls, the Janissaries found that someone had left the small Kerkoporta gate in the Land Walls open! Despite being the most formidable fortress in Christendom, which had seen off any number of invaders, it was an open gate that would prove Constantinople’s downfall.

  Pouring inside the city, the Janissaries fought and shot their way to the main gate. The Byzantines did all they could to stop them, knowing that should the gate be opened they would be overrun by tens of thousands of Ottomans. However, they were no match for the firepower of the Janissaries, who proceeded to shoot anyone in their way. Soon they reached the gates and allowed their comrades to flood into the decimated city.

  With music playing and colours flying, the Ottomans stormed inside and killed anyone in their wake. Many of the city’s inhabitants preferred to commit suicide rather than be subjected to the horrors of capture and slavery. Many others sought refuge in churches, and barricaded themselves inside. But these were obvious targets for treasures. After they were looted, the buildings and their priceless icons were smashed, while the cowering captives were butchered. Soon the emperor himself was dead, although legend suggests that he had been magically encased in marble and buried beneath the city, which he would, one day, return to rule again. Another story later circulated that two Turkish soldiers who claimed to have killed Constantine brought his head to the sultan, who had it stuffed and sent it to be exhibited around the leading courts of the Islamic world. Yet the emperor’s fate was inconsequential. Constantinople was now in Ottoman hands.

  In the afternoon, after allowing his men to loot and pillage, Mehmed finally entered the city himself, escorted by his finest Janissary guards. Calling an end to the pillaging, he declared that the Hagia Sophia church be immediately converted into a mosque. The city’s role as a bastion of Christianity for twelve centuries was now over. Soon after, following the conquest of Mistra in 1460 and Trebizond in 1461, what was left of the old Byzantine Empire was absorbed into Ottoman territory.

  Following such an historic outcome, the Ottomans manufactured gunpowder in Constantinople, as well as in the empire’s provincial centres, shipping it all over their territory and allowing the Janissaries to continue to conquer new lands and empires. And soon they were casting their eyes at the Mamluk Empire.

  While the Mamluks held the monopoly of the world’s spice trade, and also ruled over Islam’s holy lands, by 1516, they had failed to keep up with the change in technology. Predominantly relying on tactics and equipment perfected in the thirteenth century, their highly trained, horse-mounted archers at the core of their army were no match for the Janissaries’ arquebuses. With their guns, the Janissaries made quick work of the Mamluks, killing the sultan and kidnapping the caliph, who was shipped back to Constantinople as a prisoner. As the Mamluk Empire fell, the Ottoman Turks held sway over almost all the Arab world. The conquest of Constantinople had transformed an essentially European power into a great Islamic-Mediterranean empire.

  The advent of gunpowder had revolutionised European warfare, but it was those elite forces that not only adopted this new technology, but coupled it with ground-breaking tactics, who really reaped the rewards . . .

  12

  THE LANDSKNECHTS

  AD 1474

  When the Burgundian Wars erupted in 1474, the Duke of Burgundy, known as Charles the Bold, had every right to believe his forces would prevail against the Old Swiss Confederacy and its allies. Fresh from its victory over the French, the Burgundian compagnie was considered one of the most feared, and most effective, ground forces in fifteenth-century Europe.

  While its soldiers were instilled with rigid discipline, Charles had supplemented his forces with the best foreign mercenaries money could buy, including English bowmen, Italian heavy cavalry and German swordsmen. But, to the surprise of most, it was no match for the Swiss. In a series of upsets, Charles’s forces were routed, most notably at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, where the Swiss destroyed Charles’s armoured cavalry force and killed him in the process. The Swiss success seems to have been down to one factor – their proficiency with the pike, along with their infamous pike block formation.

  While the use of pikes to fend off cavalry was common throughout the Middle Ages, such barricades were usually fixed in a defensive position. The Swiss pikemen changed thi
s by introducing an offensive element to pike warfare. With the men in the front of the formation kneeling to allow the men in the centre or back to point their pikes over their heads, the well-drilled square could change direction very quickly, making it difficult to outmanoeuvre the block on horseback. It was also able to charge against the enemy, with levelled pikes and a co-ordinated battle cry. This was a game-changer for the military fields of Europe and such was their prowess that Swiss mercenaries, known as the Reisläufer, soon became sought-after soldiers for hire.

  With Charles’s death, his successor, Maximilian I, heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, soon faced a challenge from France’s King Louis XI and his successor Charles VIII, who each laid claim to the Burgundian legacy. In 1494, one year after Maximilian became ruler of the empire, Charles VIII commenced a series of attempts to invade Italy and take Naples and Milan. Aiding him in this venture was his very expensive army of mercenary Swiss pikemen. It was clear to Maximilian that, if he was going to protect his inheritance, he had to fight fire with fire.

  The Burgundian Wars had shown that cavalry was virtually helpless against well-drilled pike formations. It was therefore pointless to expect the old, failed methods to prevail. Maximilian needed to somehow replicate the success of the infamous Swiss pikemen, and then beat them at their own game. To do so, he set up a mercenary army that sought to copy the Swiss in almost every way, which in time would be known as the ‘Landsknechts’.

  Fanatically studying how the Swiss recruited their troops, Maximilian contracted so-called ‘gentlemen of war’ to build a mercenary army on his behalf. Having accepted the appointment, and secured the means of finance, the colonel, or Obrist, would then send out his drummers to the lands of southern Germany, as well as the Helvetic Confederation, to beat for recruits.