Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 (36 page)

It was a heady mixture but there were those in the camp, including Sheikh Akshemsettin himself, who were extremely realistic about the authentic motivation of some of the troops. ‘You well know’, he had written to Mehmet earlier in the siege, ‘that most of the soldiers have in any case been converted by force. The number of those who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the love of God is extremely small. On the other hand, if they glimpse the possibility of winning booty they will run towards certain death.’ For them too, there was encouragement in the Koran: ‘God has promised you rich booty, and has given you this with all promptness. He has stayed your enemies’ hands, so that He may make your victory a sign to true believers and guide you along a straight path.’

Mehmet embarked on a final restless tour of inspection. With a large troop of cavalry he rode to the Double Columns to give Hamza instructions for the naval assault. The fleet was to sail round the city, bringing the ships within firing range to engage the defenders in continuous battle. If possible, some of the vessels should be run aground and an attempt made to scale the sea walls, although the chances of success in the fast currents of the Marmara were not considered great. The fleet in the Horn was given similar orders. On the way back he also stopped outside the chief gate of Galata and ordered the chief magistrates of the town to present themselves to him. They were sternly warned to ensure that no help was given to the city on the following day.

In the afternoon he was again on horseback, making a tour of inspection of the whole army, riding the four miles from sea to sea, encouraging the men, addressing the individual officers by name, stirring them up for battle. The message of ‘carrot and stick’ was reiterated: both great rewards were at hand and terrible punishments for those who failed to obey. They were ordered under pain of death to follow the orders of their officers to the letter. Mehmet probably addressed his sternest words to the impressed and reluctant Christian troops under Zaganos Pasha. Satisfied with these preparations he returned to his tent to rest.

*

Within the city a set of matching preparations was underway. Somehow, against the worst fears of Constantine and the doctors, Giustiniani had survived the night. Disturbed and obsessed by the state of the outer wall, he demanded to be carried up to the ramparts to oversee the work again. The defenders set about the business of plugging the gaps once again and made good progress until they were spotted by the Ottoman gunners. At once a torrent of fire forced them to stop. Later it seems that Giustiniani was well enough to take active command of the defences of the crucial central area once more.

Elsewhere preparations for the final defence were hampered by friction between the various national and religious factions. The deep-rooted rivalries and conflicting priorities of the different interest groups, the difficulty of providing sufficient food, the exhaustion of continuous work and the shock of bombardment – after fifty-three days of siege, nerves were stretched to breaking point and disagreements flared into open conflict. As they prepared for the coming attack, Giustiniani and Lucas Notaras nearly came to blows over the deployment of their few precious cannon. Giustiniani demanded that Notaras should hand over the cannon under his control for the defence at the land walls. Notaras refused, believing that they might be required to defend the sea walls. A furious row took place. Giustiniani threatened to run Notaras through with his sword.

A further quarrel broke out about provisioning the land walls. The shattered battlements needed to be topped by effective defensive structures to provide protection against enemy missiles. The Venetians set about making mantlets – wooden hurdles – in the carpenters’ workshops of their quarter, the Plateia, down by the Horn. Seven cartloads of mantlets were collected in the square. The Venetian bailey ordered the Greeks to take them the two miles up to the walls. The Greeks refused unless they were paid. The Venetians accused them of greed; the Greeks, who had hungry families to feed and were resentful of the arrogance of the Italians, needed time or money to get food before the end of the day. The dispute rumbled on so long that the mantlets were not delivered until after nightfall, by which time it was too late to use them.

These flaring antagonisms had a deep history. Religious schism, the sacking of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, the commercial rivalry of the Genoese and the Venetians – all contributed to the accusations of greed, treachery, idleness and arrogance that were hurled back and forward in the tense final days. But beneath this surface of discord and
despair, there is evidence that all sides generally did their best for the common defence on 28 May. Constantine himself spent the day organizing, imploring, rallying the citizens and the assorted defenders – Greek, Venetian, Genoese, Turkish and Spanish – to work together for the cause. Women and children toiled throughout the day, lugging stones up to the walls to hurl down on the enemy. The Venetian bailey put out a heartfelt plea ‘that all who called themselves Venetians should go to the land walls, firstly out of love for God, then for the good of the city and for the honour of all Christendom and that they should all stand to their posts and be willing to die there with a good heart’. In the harbour the boom was checked and all the ships stood to in battle order. Across the water, the people of Galata watched the preparations for a final struggle with growing concern. It seems likely that the podesta also put out a last, clandestine appeal to the men of the town to cross the Horn in secret and join the defence. He realized that the fate of the Genoese enclave was now dependent on Constantinople’s survival.

In contrast to the silence of the Ottoman camp, Constantinople was animated by noise. All day church bells were rung and drums and wooden gongs beaten to rally the people to make final preparations. The endless cycle of prayers, services and cries of intercession had intensified after the terrible omens of the previous days. They reached a mighty crescendo on the morning of 28 May. The religious fervour within the city matched that on the plain outside. Early in the morning a great procession of priests, men, women and children formed outside St Sophia. All the most holy icons of the city were brought out from their shrines and chapels. As well as the Hodegetria whose previous procession had proved so ill-omened, they carried forth the bones of the saints, the gilded and jewelled crosses containing fragments of the True Cross itself and an array of other icons. The bishops and priests in their brocade vestments led the way. The laity walked behind, penitent and barefoot, weeping and beating their chests, asking absolution for sins and joining in the singing of the psalms. The procession went throughout the city and along the full length of the land walls. At each important position, the priests read the ancient prayers that God would protect the walls and give victory to His faithful people. The bishops raised their crosiers and blessed the defenders, sprinkling them with holy water from bunches of dried basil. For many it was a day of fasting also, broken only at sunset. It was the ultimate method of raising the defenders’ morale.

The emperor probably joined the procession himself and when it was over he called together the leading nobles and commanders from all the factions within the city to make a last appeal for unity and courage. His speech was the mirror image of Mehmet’s. It was witnessed by Archbishop Leonard and recorded in his own way. Constantine addressed each group in turn, appealing to their own interests and beliefs. First he spoke to his own people, the Greek residents of the city. He praised them for their stout defence of their home for the past fifty-three days and entreated them not to be afraid of the wild shouts of the untrained mob of ‘evil Turks’: their strength lay ‘in God’s protection’ but also in their superior armour. He reminded them of how Mehmet had started the war by breaking a treaty, building a fortress on the Bosphorus, ‘pretending peace’. In an appeal to home, religion and the future of Greece, he reminded them that Mehmet intended to capture ‘the city of Constantine the Great, your homeland, the support of Christian fugitives and the protection of all the Greeks, and to profane the sacred temples of God by turning them into stables for his horses’.

Turning first to the Genoese then the Venetians, he praised them for their courage and commitment to the city: ‘You have decorated this city with great and noble men as if it were your own. Now raise your lofty souls for this struggle.’ Finally he addressed all the fighting men as a body, begged them to be utterly obedient to orders, and concluded with an appeal for earthly or heavenly glory almost identical to that of Mehmet: ‘Know that today is your day of glory, on which, if you shed even one drop of blood, you will prepare for yourself a martyr’s crown and immortal glory.’ These sentiments had their desired effect on the audience. All present were encouraged by Constantine’s words and swore to stand firm in the face of the coming onslaught, that ‘with God’s help we may hope to gain the victory’. It seems that they all resolved to put aside their personal grievances and problems and to join together for the common cause. Then they departed to take up their posts.

In reality Constantine and Giustiniani knew how thinly their forces were now stretched. After seven weeks of attritional fighting it is likely that the original 8,000 men had dwindled to about 4,000, to guard a total perimeter of twelve miles. Mehmet was probably right when he had told his men that in places there were ‘only two or three men defending each tower, and the same number again on the ramparts between the towers’. The length of the Golden Horn, some three miles,
which might be subject to attack by the Ottoman ships at the Springs and by troops advancing over the pontoon bridge, was guarded by a detachment of 500 skilled crossbowmen and archers. Beyond the chain, right round the sea walls, another five miles, only a single skilled archer, crossbowman or gunner was assigned to each tower, backed up by an untrained band of citizens and monks. Particular parts of the sea walls were allotted to different groups – Cretan sailors held some towers, a small band of Catalans another. The Ottoman pretender Orhan, the sultan’s uncle, held a stretch of wall overlooking the Marmara. His band was certain to fight to the death if it came to a final struggle. For them, surrender would not be an option. In general however, it was reckoned that the sea wall was well protected by the Marmara currents and that all the men who could possibly be spared must be sent to the central section of the land wall. It was obvious to everyone that the most concerted assault must come in the Lycus valley, between the Romanus and the Charisian gates, where the guns had destroyed sections of the outer wall. The last day was given to making all possible repairs to the stockade and to assigning troops to its defence. Giustiniani was in charge of the central section with 400 Italians and the bulk of the Byzantine troops – some 2,000 men in all. Constantine also set up his headquarters in this section to ensure full support.

By mid-afternoon the defenders could see the troops gathering beyond their walls. It was a fine afternoon. The sun was sinking in the west. Out on the plain the Ottoman army started to deploy into regimental formations, turning and wheeling, drawing up its battle standards, filling the horizon from coast to coast. In the vanguard, men continued to work to fill in the ditches, the cannon were advanced as close as possible, and the inexorable accumulation of scaling equipment continued unchecked. Within the Horn the eighty ships of the Ottoman fleet that had been transported overland prepared to float the pontoon bridge up close to the land walls; and beyond the chain, the larger fleet under Hamza Pasha encircled the city, sailing past the point of the Acropolis and round the Marmara shore. Each ship was loaded with soldiers, stone-throwing equipment and long ladders as high as the walls themselves. The men on the ramparts settled down to wait, for there was still time to spare.

Late in the afternoon the people of the city, seeking religious solace, converged for the first time in five months on the mother church of St
Sophia. The dark church, which had been so conspicuously boycotted by the Orthodox faithful, was filled with people, anxious, penitent and fervent, and for the first time since the summer of 1064, in the ultimate moment of need, it seems that Catholic and Orthodox worshipped together in the city, and the 400-year-old schism and the bitterness of the crusades were put aside in a final service of intercession. The huge space of Justinian’s 1,000-year-old church glittered with the mysterious light of candles, and reverberated with the rising and falling notes of the liturgy. Constantine took part in the service. He occupied the imperial chair at the right side of the altar and partook of the sacraments with great fervour, and ‘fell to the ground, and begged God’s loving kindness and forgiveness for their transgressions’. Then he took leave of the clergy and the people, bowed in all directions – and left the church. ‘Immediately’, according to the fervent Nestor-Iskander, ‘all clerics and people present cried out; the women and children wailed and moaned; their voices, I believe, reached to heaven.’ All the commanders returned to their posts. Some of the civilian population remained in the church to take part in an all night vigil. Others went to hide. People let themselves down into the echoing darkness of the great underground cisterns, to float in small boats among the columns. Above ground, Justinian still rode on his bronze horse, pointing defiantly to the east.

As evening fell, the Ottomans went to break their fast in a shared meal and to prepare themselves for the night. The pre-battle meal was a further opportunity to build group solidarity and a sense of sacrifice among the soldiers gathered around the communal cooking pots. Fires and candles were lit, if anything larger than on the previous two nights. Again the criers swept through accompanied by pipes and horns, reinforcing the twin messages of prosperous life and joyful death: ‘Children of Muhammad, be of good heart, for tomorrow we shall have so many Christians in our hands that we will sell them, two slaves for a ducat, and will have such riches that we will all be of gold, and from the beards of the Greeks we will make leads for our dogs, and their families will be our slaves. So be of good heart and be ready to die cheerfully for the love of our Muhammad.’ A mood of fervent joy passed through the camp as the excited prayers of the soldiers slowly rose to a crescendo like the breaking of a mighty wave. The lights and the rhythmical cries froze the blood of the waiting Christians. A massive bombardment
opened up in the dark, so heavy ‘that to us it seemed to be a very inferno’. And at midnight silence and darkness fell on the Ottoman camp. The men went in good order to their posts ‘with all their weapons and a great mountain of arrows’. Pumped up by the adrenalin of the coming battle, dreaming of martyrdom and gold, they waited in total silence for the final signal to attack.