Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures

by Stefan Zweig

  The Sultan, in magnificent robes, rides at the head of his troops to pitch his tent opposite the Lykas Gate. But before he can let the standard of his headquarters fly free in the wind, he orders a prayer mat to be unrolled on the ground. Barefoot, he steps on it, he bows three times, his face to Mecca, his forehead touching the ground, and behind him—a fine spectacle—the many thousands of his army bow in the same direction, offering the same prayer to Allah in the same rhythm, asking him to lend them strength and victory. Only then does the Sultan rise. He is no longer humble, he is challenging once more, the servant of God has become the commander and soldier, and his “tellals” or public criers hurry through the whole camp, announcing to the beating of drums and the blowing of trumpets that “The siege of the city has begun.”

  THE WALLS AND THE CANNON

  Byzantium has only one strength left: its walls. Nothing is left of its once world-embracing past but this legacy of a greater and happier time. The triangle of the city is protected by a triple shield. Lower but still-mighty stone walls divide the two flanks of the city from the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, but the defences known as the Theodosian walls and facing the open land are massive. Constantine, recognizing future danger, had already surrounded Byzantium with blocks of stone, and Justinian had further extended and fortified the walls. However, it was Theodosius who created the real bulwark with a wall seven kilometres long. Today the ivy-clad remains still bear witness to its stony force. Adorned with arrow slits and battlements, further protected by moats, guarded by mighty square towers, in double and triple parallel rows completed and renovated again and again by every emperor over 1,000 years, this majestic wall encircling the city is regarded as the emblem of impregnability of its time. Like the unbridled storm of the barbarian hordes in the past, and the warlike troops of the Turks now in the days of Mahomet, these blocks of dressed stone still mock all the engines of war so far invented; the impact of battering rams is powerless against them, and even shots from the new slings and mortars bounce off the upright wall. No city in Europe is better and more strongly defended than Constantinople by its Theodosian walls.

  Mahomet knows those walls and their strength better than anyone. A single idea has occupied his mind for months and years, on night watches and in his dreams: how to take these impregnable defences, how to wreck structures that defy ruin. Drawings are piled high on his desk, showing plans of the enemy fortifications and their extent; he knows every rise in the ground inside and outside the walls, every hollow, every watercourse, and his engineers have thought out every detail with him. But he is disappointed: they all calculate that the Theodosian walls cannot be breached by any artillery yet in use.

  Then stronger cannon must be made! Longer, with a greater range and more powerful shots than the art of war yet knows! And other projectiles of harder stone must be devised, heavier, more crushing, more destructive than the cannonballs of the present! A new artillery must be invented to batter those unapproachable walls, there is no other solution, and Mahomet declares himself determined to create this new means of attack at any price.

  At any price… such an announcement already arouses, of itself, creative driving forces. And so, soon after the declaration of war, the man regarded as the most ingenious and experienced cannon-founder in the world comes to see the Sultan, Urbas or Orbas, a Hungarian. It is true that he is a Christian, and has already offered his services to Emperor Constantine; but, rightly expecting to get better payment for his art, and bolder opportunities to try it, he says he is ready, if unlimited means are put at his disposal, to cast a cannon for Mahomet larger than any yet seen on earth. The Sultan, to whom, as to anyone possessed by a single idea, no financial price is too high, immediately gives him as many labourers as he wants, and ore is brought to Adrianople in 1,000 carts; for three months the cannon-founder, with endless care, prepares and hardens a clay mould according to secret methods, before the exciting moment when the red-hot metal is poured in. The work succeeds. The huge tube, the greatest ever seen, is struck out of the mould and cooled, but before the first trial shot is fired Mahomet sends criers all over the city to warn pregnant women. When the muzzle, with a lightning flash, spews out the mighty stone ball to a sound like thunder and wrecks the wall that is its target with a single shot, Mahomet immediately orders an entire battery of such guns to be made to the same gigantic proportions.

  The first great “stone-throwing engine”, as the Greek scribes in alarm called this cannon, had now been successfully built. But there was an even greater problem: how to drag that monster of a metal dragon through the whole of Thrace to the walls of Byzantium? An odyssey unlike any other begins. A whole nation, an entire army, spends two months hauling this rigid, long-necked artefact along. Troops of horsemen in constant patrols thunder ahead of it to protect the precious thing from any accident; behind them, hundreds or maybe thousands of labourers work with carts to remove any unevenness in the path of the immensely heavy gun, which churns up the roads behind it and leaves them in a ruinous state for months. Fifty pairs of oxen are harnessed to the convoy of wagons, and the gigantic metal tube lies on their axles with its load evenly distributed, in the same way as the obelisk was brought from Egypt to Rome in the past. Two hundred men constantly support the gun on right and left as it sways with its own weight, while at the same time fifty carters and carpenters are kept at work without a break to change and oil the wooden rollers under it, to reinforce the supports and to build bridges. All involved understand that this huge caravan can make its way forward through the steppes and the mountains only gradually, step by step, as slowly as the oxen trot. The astonished peasants come out of their villages and cross themselves at the sight of the metal monster being brought, like a god of war escorted by its servants and priests, from one land to another. But soon its metal brothers, cast like the first in an original clay mould, are dragged along after it. Once again, human will-power has made the impossible possible. The round black muzzles of twenty or thirty such monsters are already pointing, gaping wide, at Byzantium; heavy artillery has made its first appearance into the history of war, and a duel begins between the 1,000-year-old walls of the emperors of eastern Rome and the new Sultan’s new cannon.

  THE ONLY HOPE

  Slowly, laboriously, but irresistibly the mammoth cannon crush and grind the walls of Byzantium, their mouths flashing as they bite into it. At first each can fire only six or seven shots a day, but every day the Sultan brings up more of them, and with each hit another breach, accompanied by clouds of dust and rubble, is made in the stonework. It is true that by night the besieged citizens mend the gaps with increasingly makeshift wooden palisades and stop them up with bales of linen, but they are now not fighting behind the old impregnable walls, which had been hard as iron, and the 8,000 within those walls think with dread of the crucial hour when Mahomet’s 150,000 men will mount their final attack on the already impaired fortifications. It is time, high time, for Europe and Christendom to remember their promise. Throngs of women with their children are on their knees all day in front of the shrines full of relics in the churches, soldiers are on the look-out from the watchtowers day and night to see whether the promised papal and Venetian reinforcement fleet will appear at last in the Sea of Marmara, swarming now with Turkish ships.

  Finally, at three in the morning on 20th April, a signal flare goes up. Sails have been sighted in the distance—not the mighty Christian fleet that Byzantium had dreamt of, but all the same three large Genoese vessels are coming up slowly with the wind behind them. They are followed by a fourth, smaller, Byzantine grain ship that the three larger vessels have placed in their midst for protection. At once the whole of Constantinople gathers enthusiastically by the ramparts on the banks of the Bosporus to greet these reinforcements. But at the same time Mahomet flings himself on his horse and gallops as fast as he can from his crimson tent down to the harbour, where the Turkish fleet lies at anchor, and gives orders for the ships to be prevented at any cost from run
ning into the Golden Horn, the harbour of Byzantium.

  The Turkish fleet numbers 150 ships, although they are smaller vessels, and at once thousands of oars dip splashing into the sea. With grappling hooks, flamethrowers and sling-stones those 150 caravels work their way towards the four galleons, but the four mighty ships, driven on fast by the wind, overtake and pass the Turkish boats spitting out missiles and shouting at the enemy. Majestically, with round sails swelling broadly and ignoring their attackers, the four steer towards the safe harbour of the Golden Horn, where the famous chain stretched across it from Stamboul to Galata is supposed to offer long-term protection against attack. The four galleons are very close to their destination now; the thousands on the walls can make out every individual face, men and women are already throwing themselves on their knees to thank God for this glorious deliverance, the chain in the harbour falls with a clatter to let the reinforcement ships in.

  Then, all of a sudden, a terrible thing happens. The wind suddenly drops, and as if held by a magnet the four sailing ships are suddenly becalmed in the middle of the sea, only a stone’s throw from the safety of the harbour. The entire fleet of enemy boats, their crews shouting jubilantly, fling themselves at the four crippled ships standing motionless in the water like four towers. The smaller vessels attach themselves with grappling hooks to the flanks of the large galleons, like hounds attacking a sixteen-tine deer, striking the wood of their hulls with axes to sink them, sending more and more men to climb the anchor chains, flinging torches and firebrands at the sails to set them alight. The captain of the Turkish armada drives his own flagship with determination against the transport ship of grain to ram it. Already the two ships are locked together. The Genoese sailors, higher up than the Turkish boats and protected by armoured foredecks, can fend off the climbing attackers at first, driving them away with axes and stones and Greek fire. But soon the fight must end; there are too many against too few. The Genoese ships are lost.

  It is a dreadful spectacle for the thousands on the walls. As close as they are to the bloodthirsty fighting in the hippodrome, where they go for their own pleasure, they are now painfully close to a naval battle that they can watch with the naked eye and see the apparently inevitable downfall of their own ships. Two more hours at the most, and the four ships will be defeated by the enemy pack in the arena of the sea. Their helpers have come in vain, it was all for nothing! The despairing Greeks on the walls of Constantinople, only a stone’s throw from their brothers, stand shouting, their fists clenched in helpless rage, unable to help their saviours. Many try to spur on their fighting friends with wild gestures. Others, hands raised to heaven, call on Christ and the Archangel Michael and all the saints of their churches and cloisters who have kept Byzantium safe for so many centuries, begging them to work a miracle. But the Turks on the opposite bank of Galata are themselves watching and shouting and praying just as fervently for their own people to be victorious: the sea has become a stage, the naval battle a gladiatorial contest. The Sultan himself has come up at the gallop. Surrounded by his pashas, he rides so far into the water that his coat is wet; and, shouting through his cupped hands as if to magnify his voice, he angrily orders his men to capture the Christian ships at all costs. Again and again, as a galley is driven back, he rages and threatens his admiral with his curved sword. “If you do not win this battle then don’t come back alive.”

  The four Christian ships are still holding out. But the battle is approaching its end, the slingshots with which they are driving off the Turkish ships are running out, the sailors are tiring after hours of battle against an enemy who outnumbers them fifty times over. The day is nearly over, the sun is sinking to the horizon. Another hour, and the ships, even if the Turks have not captured them with grappling hooks by then, will be carried defenceless by the current to the bank beyond Galata, which is in Turkish hands. They are lost, lost, lost.

  Then something happens that appears to the despairing, weeping, lamenting throng from Byzantium like a miracle. Suddenly a slight sound is heard, suddenly the wind is rising. And the slack sails of the four ships at once fill out, large and round. The wind that the Christians have longed and prayed for has reawakened. The bows of the galleons rise triumphantly, with a swelling thrust they overtake and outstrip their pursuers. They are free, they are safe. The first, then the second, the third, the fourth now run into the safety of the harbour to the roars of jubilation of thousands on the walls, the chain that has been lowered rises again, clinking, and behind them, scattered on the sea, the pack of smaller Turkish vessels is left powerless. Once again, the joy of hope hovers like a crimson cloud over the gloomy and desperate city.

  THE FLEET CROSSES THE MOUNTAIN

  The exuberant delight of the besieged citizens lasts for a night, and night always beguiles the senses with fantasy, confusing hope with the sweet poison of dreams. For the length of that night the besieged believe that they are secure and safe. For as those four ships have landed soldiers and provisions without mishap, more will come now, week after week, or so they dream. Europe has not forgotten them, and already, in their over-hasty expectations, they think of the siege as lifted, the enemy discouraged and conquered.

  But Mahomet too is a dreamer, if a dreamer of that other and much rarer kind, one who knows how to transform dreams into reality. And even as the Genoese, in their delusions, think that they and their galleons are safe in the harbour of the Golden Horn, he is drafting a plan of such fantastic audacity that in all honesty it can be set beside the boldest deeds of Hannibal and Napoleon in the history of warfare. Byzantium lies before him like a golden fruit, but he cannot pluck it. The main reason is the Golden Horn, that inlet of the sea cutting deep into the land, a long bay that secures one flank of Constantinople. To penetrate that bay is in practice impossible, for the Genoese city of Galata, to which Mahomet has pledged neutrality, lies at the entrance, and from there the chain is stretched across to the enemy city. So his fleet cannot get into the bay by thrusting forward, and the Christian fleet could be attacked only from the inner basin, where Genoese territory ends. But how can he get a fleet into that inner bay? One could be built, but that would take months and months, and the Sultan is too impatient to wait so long.

  It was then that Mahomet made the brilliant plan of transporting his fleet from the outer sea, where it is useless to him, across the tongue of land and into the inner harbour of the Golden Horn. The breathtakingly bold idea of crossing a mountainous strip of land with hundreds of ships looks at first sight so absurd and impracticable that the Byzantines and the Genoese of Galata take as little account of it in their strategic calculations as the Romans before them and the Austrians after them did of the swift crossing of the Alps by Hannibal and Napoleon. All worldly experience tells us that ships can travel only by water, and a fleet of them can never cross a mountain. But it is always the true sign of a daemonic will that it can turn the impossible into reality, and in warfare military genius scorns the rules of war, and at a given moment turns to creative improvisation rather than the old tried and trusted methods. A vast operation begins, one almost without an equal in the annals of history. In secrecy, Mahomet has countless wooden rollers brought and fixed to sleighs by carpenters. The ships are drawn up out of the sea and fixed to the sleighs as if on a movable dry dock. At the same time thousands of labourers are at work levelling out the narrow mule-track going up the hill of Pera and then down again, to make it as even as possible for traffic. To conceal from the enemy the sudden presence of so many workmen, the Sultan has a terrifying cannonade of mortars opened up over the neutral city of Galata every day and night; it is pointless in itself, and its only purpose is to distract attention and cover the movement of ships over the mountains and valleys from one body of water to another. While the enemy is occupied, suspecting no attack except from the land, the countless round wooden rollers, well treated with oil and grease, begin to move, and now ship after ship is hauled over the mountain on those rollers, drawn in its sleigh-like run
ners by countless pairs of oxen and with the help of the sailors pushing from behind. As soon as night hides the sight, this miraculous journey begins. Silent as all that is great, well thought out as all that is clever, the miracle of miracles is performed: an entire fleet crosses the mountain.

  The crucial element in all great military operations is always the moment of surprise. And here Mahomet’s particular genius proves its worth magnificently. No one has any idea what he plans—“if a hair in my beard knew my thoughts I would pluck it out,” that brilliantly wily man once said of himself—and in perfect order, while the cannon ostentatiously thunder against the walls, his commands are carried out. Seventy ships are moved over mountain and valley, through vineyards and fields and woods, from one sea to another on that single night of 22nd April. Next morning the citizens of Byzantium think they are dreaming: an enemy fleet brought here as if by a ghostly hand, sailing with pennants hoisted and fully manned, in the heart of their supposedly unapproachable bay. They are still rubbing their eyes, at a loss to imagine how this miracle was worked, when fanfares and cymbals and drums are already playing jubilant music right under the wall of their flank, hitherto protected by the harbour. As a result of this brilliant coup, the whole Golden Horn except for the neutral space occupied by Galata, where the Christian fleet is boxed in, belongs to the Sultan and his army. Unobstructed, he can now lead his troops over a pontoon bridge against the weaker wall. The weaker flank of the city is thus under threat, and the ranks of the defenders, sparse enough anyway, have to stretch over yet more space. An iron fist has closed more and more tightly round the victim’s throat.