Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 (28 page)

In the darkness the vessels following were unable to see what had happened and pressed forward. More guns opened up at close range. ‘There was so much smoke from the cannon and from the handguns that one could not see anything, and there were furious shouts from one side or the other.’ As the ships moved up, Trevisano’s larger galley came into the line of fire and was immediately hit by two cannon balls that passed straight through the hull. Water started to pour into the vessel but two wounded men lying below decks acted with great presence of mind to prevent it sinking. Plugging the holes with a store of cloaks they managed to staunch the inrush of water. The crippled galley, though half submerged, somehow stayed afloat and was rowed back to safety with great difficulty. The other ships tried to press home the attack but the intensity of the barrage of rocks, cannonballs and other missiles, and the sight of the damaged galley, induced them to withdraw.

Dawn was starting to break but in the confusion the two large merchant ships remained anchored in a defensive position according to the plan, unaware of the retreat of the remaining force. Seeing these
ships unexpectedly isolated, the Ottoman fleet put out from its anchorage to surround and take them. ‘A terrible and ferocious battle took place … it seemed truly to be like hell itself; there were bullets and arrows without number, and frequent cannon shots and gunfire.’ The Muslim sailors shouted out the name of Allah as their seventy smaller ships swarmed forward to grapple with the enemy, but the two padded transports with their higher sides and skilled crews were able to hold them at bay. Fighting at close quarters continued fiercely for an hour and a half without either side being able to gain an advantage, until eventually they disengaged and returned to their anchorages. The Ottomans had lost one
fusta
but it was clear which side had won the day. ‘Throughout the Turkish camp there were great celebrations because they had sent the
fusta
of master Giacomo Coco to the bottom’, recalled Barbaro, ‘and we were weeping with fear, lest the Turks should snatch victory against us with their fleet.’ The Italians counted their losses: one
fusta
sunk with her crew and more men besides – some ninety skilled sailors and soldiers in all – one galley seriously damaged, the notion of Italian naval supremacy undermined. The roll call of the individual dead was long and the names well known to their comrades: ‘Giacomo Coco, master; Antonio de Corfu, partner; Andrea Steco, mate; Zuan Marangon, crossbowman; Troilo de Grezi, crossbowman …’ and so it went on. ‘All these went down with the
fusta
and were all drowned, may God have mercy on them.’

As the morning of 29 April wore on, however, the nature of the loss was to assume a more ghastly shape. It transpired that not all the missing men had drowned. Some forty had swum free of their sinking craft, and in the darkness and the confusion of battle they made for the enemy shore and were captured. Mehmet now ordered them to be impaled in full view of the city as a punishment and a warning. In horror the survivors watched the preparations from the walls. What they would have seen has been graphically recorded by Jacopo de Campi, a Genoese merchant who spent twenty-five years trading in the Ottoman Empire at this time:

So ‘the stakes were planted, and they were left to die in full view of the guards on the walls’.

European writers of the time made great play of the barbarity of this method of execution and took it to be particularly Turkish. Impalement, especially as a means of demoralizing besieged cities, was a widely practised shock tactic that the Ottomans had learned in the Christian Balkans. They themselves later suffered one of the most infamous atrocities of history in this manner: reportedly 25,000 of them died on the stakes of Vlad Dracul on the Danubian plains in 1461. Even Mehmet would be appalled and haunted by the accounts brought back by eyewitnesses of ‘countless stakes planted in the ground, laden not with fruit but with corpses’ and in the centre of this arrangement on a taller stake to mark his status, the body of his onetime admiral Hamza Bey, still wearing his red and purple robes of office.

On the afternoon of 28 April the bodies of the Italian sailors staked in full view of the walls had their desired effect: ‘the lamentation in the city for these young men was incalculable,’ reported Melissenos, but grief swiftly turned to fury and in an attempt to assuage their loss and their frustration at the failure of the attack they responded with an atrocity of their own. Since the start of the siege the city had been holding about 260 Ottoman prisoners. The following day, presumably on the orders of Constantine, the defenders retaliated in kind. ‘Our men were enraged, and savagely slaughtered the Turks they were holding prisoner on the walls, in full view of their comrades.’ One by one they were brought up to the ramparts and hung ‘in circles’ in front of the watching Ottoman army. ‘In this way’, lamented Archbishop Leonard, ‘by a combination of impiety and cruelty, the war became more brutal.’

The dangling prisoners and the staked sailors mocked each other over the front line, but in the aftermath of this cycle of violence it was clear that the initiative had shifted back to the besieging force. The inner Ottoman fleet still floated and it was obvious to the defenders that crucial control of the Horn had been lost. The bungled night attack had severely tipped the scales against the city. As they reflected on this, reasons for failure were sought and blame was attributed, particularly amongst the Italians themselves. It was clear that the delay in Coco’s attack had proved fatal. Somehow the enemy had got to know of their plans and were lying in wait: Mehmet had moved more guns
up to the inner harbour ready for the raiding party, the light from the Galata Tower had been a signal from someone within the Genoese colony. The recriminations between the Italian factions were about to develop a logic of their own.

‘Alas, most blessed Father, what a terrible disaster, that Neptune’s fury should drown them in one blow!’ Recriminations for the failure of the night attack were bitter and immediate. The Venetians had lost eighty or ninety of their close companions in the disaster and they knew whom they held responsible: ‘This betrayal was committed by the cursed Genoese of Pera, rebels against the Christian faith,’ declared Nicolo Barbaro, ‘to show themselves friendly to the Turkish Sultan.’ The Venetians claimed that someone from Galata had gone to the sultan’s camp with news of the plan. They named names: it was the podesta himself who had sent men to the sultan, or it was a man called Faiuzo. The Genoese replied that the Venetians had been entirely responsible for the debacle; Coco was ‘so greedy for honour and glory’ that he had ignored instructions and brought disaster on the whole expedition. Furthermore they accused the Venetian sailors of secretly loading their ships and making ready to escape from the city.