Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (73 page)

But he was only nineteen, and in the Western world there was a general feeling that he was still too young and immature to constitute a serious threat as his father had done - a delusion that Mehmet did everything he could to encourage. Within months of his succession he had concluded treaties with John Hunyadi of Hungary, George Brankovich of Serbia and the Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari; messages of good will had been sent to the Prince of Wallachia, the Knights of St John in Rhodes and the Genoese lords of Lesbos and Chios. To the ambassadors dispatched by Constantine Dragases to congratulate him on his accession he is said to have replied almost too fulsomely, swearing by Allah and the Prophet to live at peace with the Emperor and his people, and to maintain with him those same bonds of friendship that his father had maintained with John VIII. Perhaps it was this last promise that put Constantine on his guard; he seems at any rate to have been one of the first to sense that the young Sultan was not all he seemed, but was potentially very dangerous indeed.

Such a degree of perception was certainly not granted to the leaders of the Karamans of Asia Minor, who in the autumn of
1451
thought to take advantage of Mehmet's youth and inexperience - and of his absence in Europe - by mounting an insurrection against him to restore the local Emirates that they had enjoyed in former times. Within weeks he was in their midst with his army; and they soon had good cause to regret their temerity. For all but those directly concerned, this was a relatively unimportant interlude; but for Byzantium it had important consequences. On his return to Europe Mehmet would normally have taken ship across the Dardanelles; but when it was reported to him that an Italian squadron was patrolling the strait he crossed instead by the Bosphorus, a few miles up from Constantinople at the point where Bayezit had built his castle at Anadolu Hisar. Here the great channel was at its narrowest, and Mehmet decided to build another fortress, immediately opposite his great-grandfather's, on the European side. This would give him complete control of the Bosphorus; mor
eover it would provide a superb
base from which Constantinople could be attacked from the north-east, where the Golden Horn constituted virtually its only line of defence.

There was one small technical objection to the plan: the land on which Mehmet proposed to build his castle was theoretically Byzantine. He ignored it. All the following winter he spent collecting his workforce: a thousand professional stonemasons and as many unskilled labourers as they could employ. In the early spring all the churches and monasteries in the immediate neighbourhood were demolished to provide additional materials, and on Saturday,
15
April
1452
the building operations began.

The reaction in Constantinople can well be imagined. In vain did the Emperor send the Sultan an indignant embassy, to remind him that he was breaking a solemn treaty on which the ink was scarcely dry and to point out that, when Bayezit had wished to build his castle on the Asiatic side, he had had the courtesy to ask the permission of Manuel II even though such permission had not been strictly necessary. The imperial ambassadors were sent back to their master unheard. After a brief interval a second embassy, weighed down with presents, followed the first: would the Sultan not at least spare the neighbouring Byzantine villages? Again the envoys were dismissed without an audience. A week or two later Constantine made one last effort: would the Sultan give his word that the building of his castle did not herald an attack on Constantinople? This time Mehmet had had enough. The ambassadors were seized and executed, the Emperor left to draw his own conclusions.

The vast castle of Rumeli Hisar still stands, essentially unchanged since the day it was completed - Thursday,
31
August - a little beyond the village of Bebek on the Bosphorus shore. Even now it is difficult to believe that its building took, from start to finish, only nineteen and a half weeks. When it was ready the Sultan mounted three huge cannon on the tower neares
t the shore and issued a procla
mation that every passing ship, whatever its nationality or provenance, must stop for examination. It soon became clear that he meant what he said. Early in November two Venetian vessels coming from the Black Sea ignored the instruction. They managed to escape the consequent cannonade, but a fortnight later a third ship, laden with food and provisions for Constantinople, was less lucky. When it too failed to stop it was blasted out of the water; the crew were executed, the captain - one Antonio Rizzo - impaled on a stake and his body publicly exposed as a warning to anyone else who might think of following his example.

In the West, opinions were hastily revised. The Sultan Mehmet II, it seemed, meant business.

The Sultan's treatment of the luckless Rizzo caused consternation throughout Christendom. Pope Nicholas in particular was horrified. By now he was genuinely eager to help; but he was also powerless, and he knew it. Already the previous March he had instructed the new Western Emperor - Frederick III of Hapsburg, who had come to Rome for his imperial coronation - to send the Sultan a threatening ultimatum. No one, least of all Mehmet, had paid any attention. France was still reeling after the damage suffered in the Hundred Years' War; the crusading enthusiasm of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had been considerably dampened by the memory of how his father John the Fearless had been taken prisoner at Nicopolis; England, rudderless under the holy but half-witted Henry VI, was also recovering from the damage wrought by the conflict with France and rapidly falling into the chaos that would lead, only three years later, to the Wars of the Roses; the Kings of Portugal and Castile were engaged in Crusades
of their own; the Kings of Scotl
and and Scandinavia neither knew nor cared. That left Alfonso of Aragon, since
1443
enthroned in Naples, who asked nothing better; but as Alfonso's avowed
moti
ve was to seize the Byzantine throne he was not encouraged.

In the summer of
1452,
as the towers of Rumeli Hisar rose ever higher above the narrow strait, the former Metropolitan Isidore of Kiev, now a Roman cardinal and official Papal Legate to the court of Constantinople, sailed for his new post. He was delayed for some time at Naples, while he recruited two hundred archers at the Pope's expense, and eventually arrived with his Genoese colleague Leonard, Archbishop of Mitylene, at the end of October. His instructions were simple; to see that the union of the Eastern and Western Churches, agreed at Florence thirteen years before, was properly implemented at last. The Emperor, he knew, was in full - if cautious - agreement. Even public opinion in the capital, though still divided, seemed to Isidore more favourable than before. The anti-unionists remained strong; but the chief minister and High Admiral, the
megas dux
Lucas Notaras, was working ceaselessly to extract concessions from them and it was not impossible that a compromise might be reached. A week or two later, the Cardinal was less optimistic: the former George Scholarius - now the monk Gennadius and leader of the dissidents - published a manifesto emphasizing the folly of apostasy at a moment whe
n the Almighty alone could
save the Empire, and agreement seemed as remote as ever. But then, in the nick of time, there came the news of the sinking of the Venetian vessel and the fate of its captain; and the pendulum swung yet again.

On Tuesday,
12
December
1452
the Emperor and his entire court, accompanied by Cardinal Isidore and the Archbishop of Chios, attended high mass in St Sophia. The
Laetentur Coeli
was formally read out, just as it had been at Florence; the Pope and the absent Patriarch Gregory were properly commemorated; and, in theory at any rate, the union was complete. And yet for Isidore, Leonard and their friends it was an empty victory. The service, despite the cardinal's somewhat overdone assurances to the contrary, had been poorly attended; according to Leonard -who was apparently a good deal readier to face facts - even the Emperor had seemed half-hearted and listless, while Notaras had been actively hostile. Afterwards there was no rejoicing; the dissidents too held their peace. Not a word was heard from Gennadius, back in his monastic cell. It was noticed, however, that the churches whose priests had espoused the union - including of course St Sophia itself - were henceforth almost empty; the people might have accepted the inevitable, but they worshipped only where the old liturgy remained unchanged, that the God of the Orthodox Church might still hear their prayers.

In January
1453
Mehmet II summoned his ministers to his presence in Adrianople. Byzantium, he told them, was still dangerous. Weak it might be, but its people were natural intriguers who could yet do the House of Othman much harm if they chose. Moreover they had potential allies far more formidable than they; if they decided that they were no longer capable of defending Constantinople, what was to prevent their entrusting it to the Italians or the Franks, who would do so for them? His own Empire, in short, could never be safe while the city remained in Christian hands, nor in such circumstances would he himself wish to be its Sultan. It must consequently be taken; and now - while its inhabitants were deeply demoralized and hopelessly divided among themselves - was the time to take it. Admittedly it was well defended; but it was by no means impregnable, and previous attempts had failed largely because its besiegers had been unable to prevent the arrival of food and supplies by sea. Now, for the first time, the Turks had naval superiority. If Constantinople could not be taken by storm, it could - and must - be starved into submission.

Mehmet spoke no more than the truth. Byzantine estimates of enemy forces are notoriously untrustworthy; but from the evidence of the

Italian sailors present in Constantinople over the weeks that followed, the Turkish fleet seems to have comprised not less than six triremes
1
and ten biremes, fifteen oared galleys, some seventy-five fast longboats, twenty heavy sailing-barges for transport and a number of light sloops and cutters. Even many of the Sultan's closest advisers were astonished at the size of this vast armada, which assembled off Gallipoli in March
1453;
but their reactions can have been as nothing compared with those of the Byzantines, when they saw it a week or two later, making its way slowly across the Marmara, to drop anchor beneath the walls of their city.

The Ottoman army, meanwhile, was gathering in Thrace. As with the navy, Mehmet had given it his personal attention throughout the previous winter, making sure that it was properly equipped with armour, weapons and siege engines. He had mobilized every regiment, stopped all leave and recruited hordes of irregulars and mercenaries, making exceptions only for the garrisons needed for the protection of the frontiers and the policing of the larger towns. Once again, it is impossible to give more than approximations of their numbers; the Greek estimate of three to four hundred thousand is plainly ridiculous. Our Turkish sources - presumably fairly reliable - suggest some eighty thousand regular troops and up to twenty thousand irregulars, or
bashi-baz
uks.
Included in the former category were about twelve thousand Janissaries. These elite troops of the Sultan had been recruited as children from Christian families, forcibly converted to Islam and subjected for many years to rigorous military and religious training; some had been additionally trained as sappers and engineers. Legally they were slaves, in that they enjoyed no personal rights outside their regimental life; but they received regular salaries and were anything but servile: as recently as
1451
they had staged a near-mutiny for higher pay, and Janissary revolts were to be a regular feature of Ottoman history until well into the nineteenth century.

Mehmet was proud of his army, and prouder still of his navy; but he took the greatest pride of all in his cannon. These weapons, in a very primitive form, had already been in use for well over a hundred years: Edward III had employed one at the siege of Calais in
1347,
and they had been known in North Italy for a good quarter-century before that.

1
Unlike the ancient vessels of the same
name, Turkish triremes and bire
mes possessed a single bank of oars only. In the triremes there were three rowers to each oar, in the biremes they sat in pairs.

But although useful against light barricades they were in those days powerless against solid masonry. By
1446
- a whole century later - they were effective enough, as we have seen, to demolish the Hexamilion; but it was not until
1452
that a German engineer named Urban presented himself before the Sultan and offered to construct for him a cannon that would blast the walls of Babylon itself.
1
This was precisely what Mehmet had been waiting for. He gave Urban everything he needed - together with four times his requested salary - and was rewarded only three months later by the fearsome weapon which, installed at Rumeli Hisar, sank Antonio Rizzo's ship. He then demanded another, twice the size of the first. This was completed in January
1453
.
It
is
sa
id
to
have been nearly twenty-seven feet long, with a barrel two and a half feet in diameter at the front end. The bronze was eight inches thick. When it was tested, a ball weighing some
1,340
pounds hurtled through the air for well over a mile before burying itself six feet deep in the ground. Two hundred men were sent out to prepare for the journey to Constantinople of this fearsome machine, smoothing the road and reinforcing the bridges; and at the beginning of March it set off, drawn by thirty pairs of oxen, with another two hundred men to hold it steady.