Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (76 page)

On Saturday,
26
May Mehmet II held a council of war. The siege, he told those around him, had continued long enough. His Grand Vizier, old Halil Pasha, who had never approved of the campaign - or indeed of the headstrong young Sultan himself - enthusiastically agreed, and pressed his master to retreat before the arrival of the expected relief fleet or the army of John Hunyadi - long rumoured to be on the march -made retreat impossible; but Mehmet would have none of it. The Greeks, he maintained, were half-starving and utterly demoralized. The time had come for the final assault. His younger generals agreed with him, Halil was overruled and the decision was taken. The following day would be given over to preparations, the day after that to rest and prayer. The attack would begin in the early hours of Tuesday,
29
May.

No attempt was made to conceal the plan from the defenders within the city. Some of the Christians in the Turkish camp even shot arrows over the walls informing them of the Sultan's intentions, but such measures were hardly necessary. For the next thirty-six hours the preparatory work continued without interruption - filling the ditches, positioning the cannon, drawing up the catapults and siege engines, laying in stores of arrows, gunpowder, food, bandages, water for extinguishing fires and all the other innumerable needs of a great army in action. At night huge flares were lit to help the men at their labours, while drums and trumpets encouraged them to still greater efforts. Then, at dawn on the
28th,
a sudden silence fell. Work ceased. While his men prepared themselves, physically and spiritually, for the morrow Mehmet set off on a day-long tour of inspection, returning only late in the evening to take his own rest.

Within the city, the anxiety of the past few weeks had strained tempers to breaking point. Relations between Greeks, Venetians and Genoese - never easy at the best of
times - had now reached a point
where the three communities were barely on speaking terms. Even on vital matters of defence, every order was questioned, every suggestion argued, every motive suspected. Then, it seemed from one moment to the next, on that last Monday of the Empire's history, the mood changed. As the hour approached for the final reckoning, all quarrels and differences were forgotten. Work on the walls continued as always -though the Turks might enjoy their day of rest, there could be no respite for the defenders - but elsewhere throughout the city the people of Constantinople left their houses and gathered for one last collective intercession. As the bells pealed out from the churches, the most sacred icons and the most precious of relics were carried out to join the long, spontaneous procession of Greeks and Italians, Orthodox and Catholic alike, that wound its way through the streets and along the whole length of the walls, pausing for special prayers at every point where the damage had been particularly severe, or where the Sultan's artillery might be expected to concentrate its fire on the following day.

The procession was soon joined by the Emperor himself; and when it was finished he summoned his commanders to address them for the last time. Two versions of his speech have come down to us, one by his secretary Sphrantzes and one by Archbishop Leonard of Mitylene; and though they differ in detail and phraseology they are sufficiently similar to give us the substance of Constantine's words. He spoke first to his Greek subjects, telling them that there were four great causes for which a man should be ready to die: his faith, his country, his family and his sovereign. They must now be prepared to give their lives for all four. He for his part would willingly sacrifice his own for his faith, his city and his people. They were a great and noble people, the descendants of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, and he had no doubt that they would prove themselves worthy of their forefathers in the defence of their city, in which the infidel Sultan wished to seat his false prophet on the throne of Jesus Christ. Turning to the Italians, he thanked them for all that they had done and assured them of his love and trust in the dangers that lay ahead. They and the Greeks were now one people, united in God; with His help they would be victorious. Finally he walked slowly round the room, speaking to each man in turn and begging forgiveness if he had ever caused him any offence.

Dusk was falling. From all over the city, as if by instinct, the people were making their way to the church of the Holy Wisdom. For the past five months the building had been generally avoided by the Greeks, defiled as they believed it to be by
the Latin usages that no pious
Byzantine could possibly accept. Now, for the first and last time, liturgical differences were forgotten. St Sophia was, as no other church could ever be, the spiritual centre of Byzantium. For eleven centuries, since the days of the son of Constantine the Great, the cathedral church of the city had stood on that spot; for over nine of those centuries the great gilded cross surmounting Justinian's vast dome had symbolized the faith of city and Empire. In this moment of supreme crisis, there could be nowhere else to go.

That last service of vespers ever to be held in the Great Church was also, surely, the most inspiring. Once again, the defenders on the walls were unable to desert their posts; but virtually every other able-bodied man, woman and child in the city crowded into St Sophia to take the Eucharist and to pray together, under the great golden mosaics that they knew so well, for their deliverance. The Patriarchal Chair was still vacant; but Orthodox bishops and priests, monks and nuns - many of whom had sworn never to cross the threshold of the building until it had been formally cleansed of the last traces of Roman pollution - were present in their hundreds. Present too was Cardinal Isidore, formerly Metropolitan of Kiev, long execrated as a renegade and traitor to his former faith, but now heard with a new respect as he dispensed the Holy Sacrament and intoned once again the old liturgies.

The service was still in progress when the Emperor arrived with his commanders. He first asked forgiveness of his sins from every bishop present, Catholic and Orthodox alike; then he too took communion with the rest. Much later, when all but the few permanent candles had been put out and the Great Church was in darkness, he returned alone and spent some time in prayer; then he returned to Blachernae for a last farewell to his household. Towards midnight, accompanied by George Sphrantzes, he rode for the last time the length of the Land Walls to assure himself that everything possible had been done for their defence. On their return, he took his faithful secretary to the top of a tower near the Palace of Blachernae, where for an hour they watched together and listened. Then he dismissed him. The two never met again.

Consta
ntine Dragases can have had littl
e sleep that night, for Mehmet did not wait till dawn to launch his assault. At half-past one in the morning he gave the signal. Suddenly, the silence of the night was shattered - the blasts of trumpets and the hammering of drums combining with the blood-curdling Turkish war-cries to produce a clamour fit to waken the dead. At once the church bel
ls began to peal, a sign to the
whole city that the final battle had begun. The old people and children flocked to their local churches, or down to the Golden Horn where the church of St Theodosia,
1
decked with roses, was celebrating its patron's feast-day; the men - those who were not already there - and many of the women sped to the walls, where there was work to be done.

The Sultan never underestimated his opponents. He knew that if he were to take the city he must first wear down its defenders, attacking in wave after wave, allowing them no rest. He first sent forward the
bashi-bazo
uks,
Christian and Muslim alike, from every corner of Europe and western Asia. His army included many thousands of these irregulars. Largely untrained and armed with whatever weapons they happened to possess, they had little staying power, but their initial onslaught could be terrifying indeed. To Mehmet they also possessed a further advantage: they were expendable, ideal for demoralizing the enemy and making it an easy victim for the more sophisticated regiments that he would send in after them. For two hours they hurled themselves against the walls, and particularly against the most strategic section across the Lycus valley; yet somehow, thanks in large measure to the heroic efforts of Giovanni Giustiniani Longo and his men, the great bastion held firm. Shortly before four in the morning, the Sultan called them back. They had failed to breach the walls, but they had served their purpose well, keeping the defenders busy and draining them of energy.

The second wave of the attack followed hot on the first. It was provided by several regiments of Anatolian Turks, all - unlike the irregulars - fully trained and superbly disciplined. Pious Muslims to a man, each was determined to win eternal rewards in Paradise by being the first to enter the greatest city of Christendom. They fought with outstanding courage and on one occasion - after one of the largest cannon had pulverized a great stretch of the wall - came within an ace of forcing an entry; but the Christians, led by the Emperor himself, closed round them, killed as many as they could and drove the rest back across the ditch. When he heard the news, the Sultan flew into his usual rage; but he was not unduly disturbed. Fine soldiers as they were, he would not have wished the laurels of battle won by the Anatolians. That honour must be kept for his own favourite regiment of Janissaries; and it was these whom he now threw into the fray.

1
Under its Turkish name of Gu
l Camii, the Mosque of the Roses, the curiously tall church of St Theodosia - now islamicized and to some extent reconstructed - still stands today. There is a legend that it was the last resting-place of Constantine XI

The Christians had no time to regroup or recover themselves before this third attack began. It opened with a hail of missiles — arrows, javelins, stones, even the occasional bullet — and hardly had this ceased when, in that steady, remorseless rhythm that had long struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it, the crack troops of the Ottoman army advanced across the plain at the double, their ranks unbroken and dead straight despite all the missiles that the defenders could hurl against them. The military music that kept them in perfect step was almost a weapon in itself, so deafening that it could be heard at the furthest end of the city and even across the Bosphorus. In wave after wave they came, flinging themselves furiously against the stockades, hacking away at the supports, throwing up scaling-ladders wherever the opportunity arose and then, at a given command, making way without fuss for the following wave, while they themselves waited and rested until their turn came round again. But for the Christians on the walls there could be no such alternation. The fighting had already lasted for well over five hours, and was now frequently hand-to-hand; and although they had so far been remarkably successful in keeping the besiegers at bay they knew that they could not last much longer.

Then disaster struck. Soon after dawn a bolt from a culverin struck Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, pierced his breastplate and smashed through his chest. The wound was not mortal, but Giustiniani — who had been holding the line where the pressure was at its greatest since the fighting began — was already exhausted and unable to continue. Collapsing on the ground and obviously in excruciating pain, he refused all the Emperor's entreaties to stay at his post and insisted on being carried down to a Genoese ship lying in the harbour. Constantine's attitude to a gravely wounded man may sound unreasonable; but he was well aware of the effect that Giustiniani's departure would have on his compatriots. Before the gate leading from the walls out into the city could be relocked, the Genoese streamed through it.

The Sultan, watching closely from across the ditch, may or may not have seen Giustiniani fall; but he knew at once that something was amiss, and immediately launched yet another wave of Janissaries. They were headed by a giant named Hassan, who smashed his way through to the broken stockade and was over it before the defenders could stop him. He was killed a moment later; but by now more and more of his companions were following where he had led, and soon the Greeks were retreating back to the inner wall.
Caught between the two rows of
fortifications, they were easy prey to the advancing Turks and many of them were slaughtered where they stood.

At this point those Janissaries who, having reached the inner wall, were congratulating themselves on being the first into the city, saw to their astonishment a Turkish flag flying from a tower a short distance away to the north. An hour or so before, a group of about fifty Turkish irregulars on patrol had found a small door in the wall, half-hidden at the foot of the tower and insecurely bolted. It was in fact a sally-port known as the Kerkoporta, through which the commanders of that particular stretch of the wall - three Genoese brothers called Bocchiardi - had organized several effective raids on the Turkish camp. The
bashi-baz
ouks
had managed to force the door open, and had made their way up a narrow stair to the top of the tower. Such an action, with no army to give them support, was virtually suicidal; but in the confusion after the wounding of Giustiniani they encountered no resistance and were able soon afterwards to hoist a Turkish standard, leaving the door open for others to follow. It was almost certainly they, and not the Janissaries, who were the first of the besiegers to enter the city.

By now, however, the Turks were pouring through the open breaches. Constantine himself, having seen that the situation at the Kerkoporta was hopeless, had returned to his old post above the Lycus valley. There, with Don Francisco de Toledo - who, despite his age, had shown superb gallantry throughout the campaign - h
is cousin The
ophilus Palaeologus and his friend John Dalmata, he fought desperately for as long as he could to hold the gate through which Giustiniani had been carried. Finally, seeing that all was lost, he flung off his imperial regalia and, still accompanied by his friends, plunged into the fray where the fighting was thickest. He was never seen again.