Part 24

While keeping up a constant blockade, Mohammed was preparing his plans. His success, he saw, depended on siege guns, for he fully appreciated the tremendous revolution in warfare due to the use of gunpowder. From the many renegades in his camp he had heard of the remarkable effects produced by bronze cannon in battles and sieges. His adviser in preparing his siege guns was Urban, probably a Roumanian renegade, who showed great skill in perfecting the technique of projectiles at this early stage of their use. To the inventive faculty of this Christian fugitive in the Osmanli camp, the taking of the great Christian capital in the Orient was largely due. The weight of the new guns is shown by the fact that it took sixty oxen to draw the first one, which was manufactured by the end of February. Fifty similar ones were ordered to be constructed.

Troops from Asia and Slavic contingents from Europe kept gathering round the city during the winter and early spring; there was besides an Ottoman flotilla of 300 vessels. By the beginning of April, 1453, the Sultan, with his court, came to the encampment of the besieging army, and took up a position two miles and a half away from the city walls. To each portion of the fortifications a certain contingent was assigned, specific directions to proceed with the attack being given, according to the character of the ground and the defenses.

In the Sultan’s army there were probably as many men under arms as were usually taken in the Turkish military expeditions, between forty and sixty thousand, but the number is not given in the sources. The Emperor Constantine had not more than 7000 men; besides, as we have seen, the population were ill disposed to him, because of his concessions to the Latin Church, and more than once the hostile cry was heard within the walls, “better under the Turks than under the Latins.” One of Constantine’s chief officials, Lukas Notoras, had already exchanged his Christian headgear for a Turkish turban.

The Latin element in the town took the chief part in the defense; not only were one-third of the soldiers from the West, but the galleys in the harbor, the weapons used, the stores for the siege, all were from the Occident. Only one of the towers on the city walls was in charge of a Greek, and the keys of the four chief city gates were kept by the Venetians. Catalans and Genoese were also given responsible positions; even in the personal entourage of the Emperor, only a few Greek names are noted.

When the siege opened, the character of Mohammed’s strategy was soon plain. He had no intention of making a general assault of the ordinary type; instead, his cannon were directed against weak spots in the wall, and the work of destruction began. An unsuccessful attempt, however, was made to surprise the garrison on the 17th of April, and the Sultan was greatly disappointed when his fleet came out worsted from a fight with the imperial ships, which issued from the harbor to protect the entrance of three or four Genoese vessels that were bringing in stores.

While the walls on the land side were being bombarded, the part of the city touching the sea was threatened. Urban, imitating the Venetians, who had transported war galleys across the land to Lake Garda, brought some of the Turkish ships from Galata-Pera to the Golden Horn. All attempts to destroy this hostile flotilla failed; by its presence it divided the Christian forces, and kept the small army of Constantine from concentrating in any strength at a threatened point. When May came, the besieged population began to suffer from scarcity of food. The only hope of relief was to be looked for from Venice; for the other powers in the West had received Constantine’s appeals with only verbal promises, or with indifference. Yet even the Venetians proceeded with great deliberation. The twelve galleys that had been ordered to be sent to help Constantinople in February were only ready by May 7th, and the Admiral, Loredano, was given instructions to handle the Turks unaggressively. He was told not to engage in a battle with them unless forced to do so.

Slowly the various details of the siege operations were perfected by the Turks; parts of the moats before the walls were filled up; a bridge was built from Pera to Constantinople, that gave an admirable basis for cannonading the city at close quarters. On the 28th the inhabitants noted such great activity in the Ottoman camp that it was evident the final attack was close at hand. Mohammed rode from point to point giving final directions, and word was proclaimed by heralds that every member of the besieging army should be prepared. The movement in the Turkish camp began three hours before daybreak. The Christian allies and the rank and file of the Moslem soldiers were directed to place ladders at a point in the wall near the Romanos gate that had already especially suffered from artillery fire. The loss of life among the assailants, at this point, was very great, but as the élite of the army did not suffer, the Ottoman leaders were indifferent as to the cost of getting the ladders near the walls and defenses.

The next step was to bring up the Janitschars, who, under the personal direction of the Sultan and the two chief generals of his army, commenced operations near the Romanos and two other gates. Compact in their firm discipline, and protected by artillery fire, with the smoke of their guns concealing from the defenders their rapid motion, they pressed ahead. On the Greek side the Emperor kept out of the tumultuous fighting, leaving the work of active defense to the Italian Giustiniano, who made a heroic resistance in the interior defenses of the city, until, struck in the breast by a bullet, he was carried away to a ship mortally wounded. After this fatality general confusion followed; there was no one to take the commander’s place. No words of command were now heard; the Turks, who had been held back from the high walls, filled up the space between the outer lines of temporary palisades and the permanent fortifications that were being dismantled by the cannonading.

At the place where Giustiniano had been shot some ladders were set up, and at the same time a small gate, used by the Genoese soldiers to pass out of the city to protect the outer ring of the defensive works, was occupied. By this way a considerable number of the Janitschars penetrated into the interior of the city. But their entrance was not noticed by the defenders on the walls, who, in the conflict, had no time to leave their posts. The sailors of the fleet now landed, ready to take their part of the spoil. The squadrons of Janitschars rode without resistance through the narrow streets flanked with wooden houses, searching for the first of the booty. Every corner was searched for wealthy citizens, who would be likely to pay large ransoms, and for valuable slaves. Adult men, actually with weapons in their hands, were killed, and, of course, no Franks were spared, nor any of the imperial troops. Small children, too, old men, and invalids, who came in the way of the Ottoman soldiers, were mercilessly slaughtered; they had no marketable value. Whole groups of citizens were dragged off, and then a systematic plundering of churches and private houses began; carpets, stuffs, precious stones and metals, books, whose binding attracted notice, all were carried off. (May 29, 1453.)

In the sacking of the city the Emperor Constantine perished. When he saw destruction going on all about him, he is said to have asked, “Is there no Christian here to cut my head off?” His fate must have come later, for his body was found on a heap of corpses near the gate that had first been entered. His head was set the same day on a column of the Augusteion, a sign to the Greeks that they had no other emperor now but the Sultan. Then it was placed in a precious casket and despatched from one Moslem ruler to another as the convincing proof of the prowess of their Moslem overlord.

Three days had been allowed for the sack; after this period the troops returned to their camp. Some of the streets were then cleaned, and the Sultan made his solemn entry into the deserted city to the Church of St. Sophia, which he transformed into a mosque. The Podestà and a few of the Italians from Pera, who had not actually been under arms, were protected by a guarantee from the Sultan’s own hand. But the walls of the suburb were destroyed, all weapons had to be given up, and a slave succeeded the Genoese Podestà as the supreme authority in the colony.

Most of the fleet, taking advantage of the confusion during the capture of the city, succeeded in getting away, taking with them some fugitives who escaped by disguising themselves in a Turkish garb. The head of the Venetian colony and the Catalan Consul were beheaded as disturbers of the peace, and even Lukas Notoras, the chief Greek noble, did not escape, although he had led the opposition against Constantine. The Greek clergy, on the other hand, were treated with great clemency; they had been trained by centuries into habits of servile obedience to secular rulers, and, therefore, they could be turned into useful instruments for ruling the subject Christian population.

With shrewd understanding of the religious situation, Mohammed now appointed as Patriarch in place of the Latin ecclesiastic, who had escaped from the city, the leader of the clerical opposition, Gennadios Scholarios. The new Patriarch dined with the new Emperor, and received rich presents and most courteous attention, befitting his exalted dignity as a churchman. In place of Santa Sophia, he was given as his metropolitan church the building known as the Church of the Holy Apostles. As a new Patriarch, created by favor of the Moslem Emperor, he kept his rights of jurisdiction over the Emperor’s Christian subjects.

A Moslem governor was placed in the city to order the administration, with instructions to induce those who had fled from the town to return, and to arrange for the colonization of the Moslem newcomers. Only a small garrison was left; and the Sultan took his road to Adrianople on 18th of June. While the Moslem ruler and his successors spared the population, and left to their Greek subjects a kind of spiritual empire, the conquest of Constantinople proved fatal to the many treasures of ancient art that had survived the Latin conquest of the city in 1204. The bronze statues of the Emperors were made into cannon, the bronze inscriptions on arches and obelisks were coined into money, and the marble statues of pagan divinities were turned into lime. Valuable antique columns were sawn to make baths, or were transformed into cannon balls.

The Basilica, in which the bodies of the Emperors were buried, became a mosque; the bones were scattered and the sarcophagi turned to the basest uses. Forty-two other churches became mosques, or were secularized; one, St. Irenæus, was employed as an arsenal. Some of the splendid mosaics in Santa Sophia were hidden by whitewash, because of their Christian symbolism; near the structure was built a minaret, and Mohammed’s successors added three more. As time went on, new mosques were constructed; also hospitals, schools, and palaces, the Sultan being a great builder. The new population was cosmopolitan, for many Greek, Servian, and Roumanian towns were drawn upon for their several contingents, as the Turkish conquests continued.

At the time of his great achievement, Mohammed was only twenty-five years old. He publicly announced that he had reached maturity by decapitating the Grand Vizier Khalil, the tutor set over him by his father, who was suspected of treasonable communications with the Greeks during the siege. He made it plain, also, that there was to be no repose from war after the taking of the capital, the Servians being the first to experience his heavy hand. Brankovitch’s fidelity as a vassal proved no protection to him; for Mohammed wrote claiming his kingdom. In terror the Servian prince fled to Hungary to secure the aid of Hunyadi. The war that followed was hotly contested, with the result that in 1454 the Sultan agreed, on the basis of the large tribute of 30,000 ducats, to recognize Brankovitch.

But this peace was not observed, for the conqueror appeared the next year and took Novoberda. Hunyadi, against whom bitter foes were working at the court of the King of Hungary, had only the support of the Wallachian princely house. When Belgrade was attacked by Mohammed, in May, 1456, only 3000 Christian soldiers were ready to oppose him. When the siege really began, however, 200 boats appeared before the city, containing many thousand men of various nationalities, whom the Franciscan monk, John of Capistrano, had drawn to the crusading cause by his protracted and widely extended journeys in Western Europe. Though over seventy years old, he had displayed remarkable energy, and he was honored by the defenders of Belgrade as a holy apostle.

On July 15 the two welcome allies took possession of the castle, as the city had not yet been cut off from the outside. The first stage of the defense was the defeat of the Turkish flotilla on the Danube; some vessels were sunk and others were captured, so that entrance into the town by water was made safe. In the attempt to storm the defenses made by the Janitschars, who advanced in small divisions, hardly 600 survived; three times Hunyadi, sallying from the castles, forced back the assailants. Capistrano’s crusaders proved too much for the Sultan’s trained troops; marching right up to the guns and careless of the havoc caused by the cannon fire, those who took part in the sortie cut down the Turks and threw the cannon into the water and ditches. If the crusaders had not stopped on the way to plunder, they would have broken through the Sultan’s own bodyguard. As it was the Ottomans were able to withdraw safely from their camp; but they lost some of their best captains, among them Aga, who was killed while protecting the Sultan, who escaped with an arrow wound.

No serious attempt was made to follow up this victory, though Hunyadi boasted that it was now possible “to take possession of the whole kingdom of Turkey.” Anarchy prevailed in the motley crowd gathered in the crusading camps along the river; worse still, owing to the unhealthful surroundings in the low lands, a plague began, to which the great Hungarian champion soon fell a victim; not long after Capistrano also died.

Soon after the death of Hunyadi the long career of the Servian Prince Brankovitch came to an end, and with it closed the history of Servia as a vassal state, for his death was followed by long and bloody quarrels over the succession. Finally, the claim of Brankovitch’s daughter-in-law, Helena, the widow of his son Lazaras, was acknowledged. Her accession gave Mohammed an excuse for appearing as the champion of an Ottoman pretender. The Sultan’s influence over the Servian nobility was increased by the fact that Helena was favorable to the Latin Church; she placed Servia under the protection of the Pope, and married her daughter to the heir of the Bosnian kingdom. But this foreign help availed nothing. Many of the strong places in Servia were captured, including the city of Semandria (1459). The Servian “woiwodes,” who preferred the domination of the Sultan to the acceptance of the religion of Rome, showed themselves disloyal to Helena the younger, who was obliged to withdraw, to Hungary first, and then to Rome, where she died as a nun in 1474.

After the destruction of Servia, and its absorption by the Ottomans, came the turn of Bosnia, like Servia disturbed by disputes between vassal princes, which were taken advantage of by Mohammed. King Stephen’s pro-Roman policy made him unpopular among his nobles; therefore, when the Turk’s army appeared, there was no great difficulty in overrunning the country. The King retired in a panic from his strongly fortified capital, and while in flight was captured and afterwards executed (1464). Herzegovina, which still remained in Christian hands, could not resist the successful aggression of the Turks, and its occupation took place three years after the annexation of Bosnia. As Bosnia was a vassal state of Hungary, its King, Matthias, found himself obliged to look to the safety of his territories. Scanderbeg, who was alarmed at the taking of Herzegovina, and Venice, as the mistress of all the cities in the Morea, had just begun to realize the need of common action to protect their interests.

On the part of the Hungarians war was waged on a small scale, but the Venetians employed a celebrated condottiere, Bertoldo d’Este, to head an expedition of thirty-two galleys and other ships armed by many thousand warriors. After some initial successes, the aim of the expedition failed, because of the death of Bertoldo while he was besieging the Turkish garrison at Corinth. Hitherto the steady advance of the Turks towards the south had been furthered by the anarchy and divisions of the rival races, among which the Albanians and the Greeks showed the most vitality. In Athens the ducal Florentine line brought notoriety to its closing days by the romantic record of its last duchess, the wife of Nerio II, who, when left a widow with the guardianship of her young son, fell in love with Contarini, a Venetian officer in Naples. She promised to marry him if he would get rid of his wife. The condition was accepted, and the young officer, by marrying the duchess, became master of Athens. Those who had acknowledged the old duke as their overlord, resented the introduction of Venetian rule, and appealed to Mohammed to interfere. He bestowed the duchy on a member of the reigning Florentine house, Franco, who caused his aunt, the scandal-making duchess, to be imprisoned and afterwards murdered. The commission of this crime produced discontent, and the Sultan gave orders to one of his captains to take possession of Athens.

Mohammed himself took personal charge of the expedition of 1458, which was conducted with great cruelty. The Albanians were especially singled out for savage reprisals. When Tarsos fell, the Albanian soldiers taken captive were horribly tortured, and at the capitulation of Corinth the leader of the Albanian contingent was sawn asunder. A short respite was at first granted to the Greek princes, members of the house of Paleologi, who were closely allied with the last Emperor of Constantinople, but they were finally dispossessed, and by the year 1460 nothing of Greece was left in the hands of the Christian powers except four Venetian strongholds. But these were not to be spared longer.

In 1463 the Morea was ravaged by the Turkish army, and five hundred Venetian soldiers met death by being sawn apart. In 1467 the island of Eubœa was attacked by both Ottoman fleet and land forces simultaneously. Great preparation was made for the defense of the Venetian citadel, but the plans were spoiled by the incapacity of the commander of the Venetian fleet to defend the approach to the island from the sea. The besieged garrison showed great heroism, and even when they discovered that their leaders were preparing to betray them, they stoutly held out and inflicted severe losses on the Ottomans. For reasons which are inexplicable, the Venetian fleet made no attempt to break down the bridge which connected the island with the continent; the occupation of this passageway finally enabled the Janitschars to enter the city. Its heroic defender, Paolo Erizzo, met the fate of being sawn asunder, because, as a chronicle states, the Turks had promised to save his head but not his thighs.

This heavy blow to Venice stirred the republic to a series of energetic reprisals. With her allies, the Neapolitans and the Knights of Rhodes, and aided by the Pope, she carried the war into Asia Minor. The town of Smyrna was occupied by the Venetian fleet, and the Seldjouk emirates, always ready to rebel against the Ottomans, were encouraged to revolt. When Lepanto was successfully protected by the Venetian fleet, it was felt that Mohammed had at last encountered a power that was ready to contest the imperial ambitions of Ottoman rule. But that there was no sufficient ground for over-confidence appeared when a Turkish general, Omar-beg, invaded Friuli, and began to ravage territories in the immediate neighborhood of Venice. A Venetian general fell fighting the Turks on the banks of the Isonzo, and the citizens of the republic could see with their own eyes the work of the Turks, as they burnt the villages that lie between the Isonzo and the Taghliamento. Scutari, however, withstood two Turkish sieges, though Mohammed himself took part in the operations. Finally, in 1479, Venice, deserted by her allies, was willing to arrange terms of peace. These involved the cession of Lemnos and certain possessions in Albania; but more significant of her humiliation was the payment of a war indemnity of 100,000 ducats, and the agreement to give an annual tribute of 110,000, in return for which sacrifices certain commercial advantages were conceded by the Turks.

Interpreting the treaty in its strictest sense, Mohammed, after arranging a peace with Venice, occupied the Ionian Islands, and soon afterwards showed his contempt for the military powers of Western Europe by sending a fleet of 150 ships to Otranto in Apulia, a province of the kingdom of Naples. The town, entirely unprepared for such a raid, was taken in 1480; the garrison and the archbishop were put to death, and the neighboring country was organized as a Turkish province with its capital at Otranto, where a garrison of 5000 Turkish soldiers was left behind.

The alarm created by this feat of arms was instantaneous. The Italian cities united and soon expelled the Turks from the peninsula, rivaling their enemies in Asiatic deeds of cruelty. Mohammed could not prosecute the conquest of Italy, because his attention was necessarily divided by the troubled state of Turkish rule in Asia, where the Seldjouk principalities still claimed an autonomy which, on crucial matters, made them independent of the Sultan.