Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 (22 page)

Unfortunately the visit also gave way to unsubstantiated rumours that the visiting Hungarians had provided valuable assistance to the Ottoman cause. One of the ambassadors at the camp watched the firing of the great cannons with interest. When he saw a shot strike the wall at a certain point and the gunners prepare a second shot at the same point, professional interest overcame him and he openly laughed at their naivety. He advised them to aim their second shot ‘about thirty to thirty-six feet from the first shot, but at the same height’ and to position a third shot between the two ‘so that the shots form a triangular shape. Then you will see that portion of wall collapse’. The immediate effect of this firing strategy was to accelerate the speed at which sections of the wall could be brought down. Very soon the ‘bear and cubs’ were working as co-ordinated teams. Smaller guns would make two outer hits, then one of Orban’s great guns completed the triangle in the now weakened central section: ‘the shot being carried by such devilish force and irresistible impetus that it caused irreparable damage’. The chroniclers attached a weird explanation for this helpful piece of advice: a Serbian prophet had declared that the misfortunes of the Christians would not come to an end until Constantinople fell to the Turks. The story of the Hungarian visit neatly wrapped up repeated preoccupations of the Christians in one narrative: the belief that the Ottomans could only prosper with the superior technological knowledge of Europeans, that the decline of Christendom was responsible for the fall, and the role of religious prophecy.

Despite the difficulties of aiming and the slow rate of fire, the bombardment continued unabated from 12 April for six days. Now the heaviest fire was concentrated on the Lycus valley and the Romanus Gate. About 120 shots a day could be launched at the city. Inexorably the wall began to crumble. Within the week a section of the outer wall had fallen and two towers and a turret on the inner wall behind. However, after their initial terror at the bombardment, the defenders regained heart under fire: ‘by experiencing the force of the sultan’s war engines daily our soldiers became accustomed to them and displayed neither fear nor cowardice’. Giustiniani worked unceasingly to repair the damage, and quickly devised an effective ad hoc solution to the collapsing outer wall. A makeshift replacement was constructed of stakes, and on this foundation the defenders dumped any material that came to hand. Stones, timber, brushwood, bushes and large quantities of earth were moved into the breach. Screens of skin and
hide were stretched over the outer wooden stockade as protection against incendiary arrows, and when the new defensive mound was of sufficient height, barrels filled with earth were placed on top at regular intervals to act as crenellated fighting positions to protect the defenders against volleys of arrows and bullets with which the Ottomans attempted to sweep clean the ramparts. Immense human labour was thrown into this effort; after dark men and women came from the city to work all night, carrying timber, stones and earth to rebuild the defences wherever they had been smashed during the day. This incessant nocturnal labour took its toll on the energy of the increasingly exhausted population, but the resulting earthworks provided a surprisingly effective solution to the devastating impact of the stone balls. Like throwing stones into mud, the balls were smothered and neutralized: they were ‘buried in the soft and yielding earth, and did not make a breach by striking against hard and unyielding materials’.

At the same time the bitter struggle continued for control of the moat. By day Ottoman troops attempted to fill it in with any material to hand: soil, timber, rubble, even – according to one account – their own tents, were dragged up into no man’s land under a protecting volley of fire, and tipped into the trench. At night the defenders mounted counter-offensives from their sally ports to clear the fosse out again and restore it to its original depth. The skirmishing in front of the walls was bitter, and at close range. Sometimes the attackers used nets to try to retrieve precious cannon balls that had rolled back into the fosse; at others soldiers would advance to test weakened sections of the wall and to ensure the overstretched defenders could never relax. With hooked sticks they attempted to drag down the earth barrels from the top.

At close range these encounters favoured the better-armoured and protected defenders, but even the Greek and Italian eyewitnesses were impressed by their enemy’s courage under fire. ‘The Turks fought bravely at close quarters,’ remembered Leonard, ‘so they all died.’ Raked by fire from the walls from longbows, crossbows and arquebuses, the carnage was terrible. Having found their cannon unusable for firing heavy balls, the defenders had reinvented their artillery pieces as huge shotguns. A cannon would be packed with five or ten lead balls, the size of walnuts. Fired at close range the effect of these bullets was appalling: they had ‘immense power in penetrating and
perforating, so that if one hit a soldier in armour, it went straight through both his shield and body, then through another behind who was in the line of fire, and then another, until the force of the powder was dissipated. With one shot two or three men could be killed at the same time.’

Hit by this withering fire, the Ottoman casualties were terrible and their desire to retrieve their dead provided the defenders with another shooting gallery. The Venetian surgeon Nicolo Barbaro was startled by what he saw:

Despite the defenders’ best efforts, remorseless bombardment provided sufficient cover for a section of the fosse in the Lycus valley to be filled in. On April 18 Mehmet judged that the damage to the wall and attritional skirmishing had been sufficient to launch a concerted attack. It had been a fine spring day; as evening fell, the call to prayer rose with peaceful certainty over the Ottoman camp and within the walls the Orthodox retired to the churches to hold vigils, light candles and to pray to the Mother of God. Two hours after sunset, under a soft spring moon, Mehmet ordered forward a substantial detachment of his crack troops. To the rhythmic thudding of camel-skin drums, the braying of pipes and the clashing of cymbals – all the psychological warfare of the Ottoman military band – amplified by flares, shouts and battle cries, Mehmet started to roll forward ‘the heavy infantry and the bowmen and the javelin-men and all the imperial foot-guards’. He directed them at a vulnerable spot in the Lycus valley where a section of wall had collapsed. The citizens were panic-stricken, experiencing the hair-raising sound of a full-throated Ottoman assault for the first time. ‘I cannot describe the cries with which they came at the walls,’ Barbaro later recalled with a shudder.

Constantine was deeply alarmed. He feared a general assault along the whole line and knew that his men were unprepared. He ordered the church bells to be rung; terrified people ran into the streets and soldiers
scrambled back to their stations. Under a heavy covering fire of cannon, guns and bows the Ottomans crossed the fosse. Withering volleys made it impossible to stand on the improvised earth ramparts so that the Janissaries were able to reach the walls with ladders and battering rams. They worked to strip the ramparts of their protective crenellations and further expose the defenders to blanket fire. At the same time attempts were made to burn the wooden stockade, but these failed and the narrowness of the gap in the wall and the sloping terrain hampered the onrush of the attackers. In the darkness pandemonium broke out, a confused hubbub of sounds, according to Nestor-Iskander:

Slashing and hacking at each other in the narrow spaces of the defile under the bright moon, advantage rested with the defenders who were well armoured and stoutly marshalled by Giustiniani. Slowly the momentum of the attackers died: ‘slashed to pieces, they exhausted themselves on the walls’. After four hours an abrupt quietness descended on the ramparts, broken only by the moans of men dying in the ditch. The Ottomans retreated to camp, ‘without even thought for their dead’, and the defenders, after six days of continuous defence, ‘collapsed from the struggle as if dead’.

In the cool light of morning Constantine and his retinue came to inspect the aftermath. The ditch and the banks were lined with ‘completely broken corpses’. Battering rams lay abandoned before the walls and fires smouldered in the morning air. Constantine could rouse neither the army nor the exhausted citizenry to bury the Christian dead, and this work had to be assigned to the monks. As always, casualty figures varied wildly: Nestor-Iskander gave the number of Ottoman dead at 18,000; Barbaro a more realistic 200. Constantine ordered that no attempt should be made to hinder the enemy from collecting their corpses, but the battering rams were burned. Then he proceeded
to St Sophia with the clergy and nobles to give thanks to ‘the all-powerful God and to the most pure Mother of God, hoping that now the godless would retreat, having seen so many of their own fall’. It was a moment of respite for the city. Mehmet’s response was to intensify the bombardment.