Warfare is deception.
A saying attributed to the Prophet
The immediate consequences of the naval engagement in the Bosphorus were profound. A few short hours had tipped the psychological balance of the siege sharply and unexpectedly back to the defenders. The spring sea had provided a huge auditorium for the public humiliation of the Ottoman fleet, watched both by the Greek population thronging the walls and the right wing of the army with Mehmet on the shore opposite.
It was obvious to both sides that the massive new fleet, which had so stunned the Christians when it first appeared in the Straits, could not match the experience of Western seamanship. It had been thwarted by superior skill and equipment, the innate limitations of war galleys – and not a little luck. Without secure control of the sea, the struggle to subdue the city would be hard fought, whatever the sultan’s guns might achieve at the land walls.
Within the city, spirits were suddenly high again: “the ambitions of the Sultan were thrown into confusion and his reputed power diminished, because so many of his triremes couldn’t by any means capture just one ship.” The ships not only brought much needed grain, arms, and manpower, they had given the defenders precious hope. This small flotilla might be merely the precursor of a larger rescue fleet. And if four ships were able to defy the Ottoman navy, what might a dozen well-armed galleys of the Italian republics not do to decide the final outcome? “This unhoped-for result revived their hopes and brought encouragement, and filled them with very favourable hopes, not only about what had happened, but also about their expectations for the future.” In the fevered religious atmosphere of the conflict, such events were never just the practical contest of men and materials or the play of winds, they were clear evidence of the hand of God. “They prayed to their prophet Muhammad in vain,” wrote the surgeon Nicolo Barbaro, “while our Eternal God heard the prayers of us Christians, so that we were victorious in this battle.”
Medieval catapult
Sometime about now, it seems that Constantine, buoyed by this victory or the failure of the earlier Ottoman land attack, sensed that the moment was right to make a peace offer. He probably proposed a face-saving payment that would allow Mehmet to withdraw with honor, and he may have delivered it via Halil Pasha. Siege warfare involves a complex symbiosis between besieger and besieged, and he was fully aware that outside the walls the Muslim camp was plunged into a corresponding mood of crisis. For the first time since the siege began, serious doubts were voiced. Constantinople remained obdurate – a “bone in the throat of Allah” – like the crusader castles. The city was a psychological as much as a military problem for the warriors of the Faith. The technological and cultural self-confidence needed to defeat the infidel and to overturn the deep pattern of history was suddenly fragile again and the death of the Prophet’s standard-bearer Ayyub at the walls eight centuries before would have been keenly in mind. “This event,” wrote the Ottoman chronicler Tursun Bey, “caused despair and disorder in the ranks of the Muslims … the army was split into groups.”
It was a defining moment for the self-belief of the cause. In practical terms, the possibility of a long-drawn-out siege, with all its problems for logistics and morale, the likelihood of disease – the scourge of medieval besieging armies – and the chance that men might slip away, must have loomed larger on the evening of April 20. It spelled clear personal danger for Mehmet’s authority. An open revolt by the Janissaries became an idea on the fringe of possibility. Mehmet never commanded the love of his standing army as his father Murat had done. It had revolted against the petulant young sultan twice before, and this was remembered, particularly by Halil Pasha, the chief vizier.
These feelings were brought into sharp focus that evening when Mehmet received a letter from Sheik Akshemsettin, his spiritual adviser and a leading religious figure in the Ottoman camp. It presented the mood of the army and brought a warning:
This event … has caused us great pain and low morale. Not having taken this opportunity has meant that certain adverse developments have taken place: one … is that the infidels have rejoiced and held a tumultuous demonstration; a second is the assertion that your noble majesty has shown little good judgement and ability in having your orders carried out … severe punishments will be required … if this punishment is not carried out now … the troops will not give their full support when the trenches must be levelled and the order is given for the final attack.
The sheik also pointed out that the defeat threatened to undermine the religious faith of the men. “I have been accused of having failed in my prayers,” he went on, “and that my prophecies have been shown to be unfounded … you must take care of this so that in the end we shall not be obliged to withdraw in shame and disappointment.”
Spurred by this, Mehmet set out early next morning, April 21, with “about ten thousand horse” and rode from his camp at Maltepe to the harbor at the Double Columns where the fleet was anchored. Baltaoglu was summoned ashore to answer for the naval debacle. The unfortunate admiral had been badly wounded in one eye from a stone hurled by one of his own men in the heat of battle; he must have presented a ghastly spectacle as he prostrated himself before his sultan. In the colorful words of a Christian chronicler, Mehmet “groaned from the depths of his heart and breathed smoke from his mouth in his rage.” Furiously he demanded to know why Baltaoglu had failed to take the ships when the sea was flat calm: “if you could not take them, how do you hope to take the fleet which is in the harbor at Constantinople?” The admiral replied that he had done everything in his power to seize the Christian ships: “You know,” he pleaded, “it was visible to all, that with the ram of my galley I never let go of the poop of the Emperor’s ship – I fought fiercely all the time – the events were plainly visible, that my men are dead and there are many dead on the other galleys too.” Mehmet was so upset and angry that he ordered his admiral to be impaled. Appalled, the council and courtiers threw themselves before Mehmet to plead for his life, arguing that he had fought bravely to the end and that the loss of his eye was visible proof of his efforts. Mehmet relented. The death sentence was commuted. In front of his fleet and the watching circle of cavalry, Baltaoglu received a hundred lashes. He was stripped of his rank and property, which was distributed among the Janissaries. Mehmet understood the negative and positive propaganda value of such actions. Baltaoglu vanished into the obscurity of history and the poisoned chalice of naval command passed back to Hamza Bey, who had been admiral under Mehmet’s father. The lessons of this episode would not have been wasted on either the watching soldiers and sailors or on the inner circle of viziers and advisers. It was a chance to observe the perils of the sultan’s displeasure firsthand.
There is another version of this episode told by the Greek chronicler Doukas, whose tale of the siege is vivid but often implausible. In this account Mehmet had Baltaoglu stretched on the ground and delivered the hundred strokes himself “with a golden rod weighing five pounds, which the tyrant had ordered to be made so that he might thrash people.” Then one of the Janissaries, keen to gain further credit from the sultan, smashed him on the head with a stone and gouged out his eye. The story is colorful and almost certainly untrue, but it reflected the popular Western view of Mehmet the Eastern tyrant, barbaric in his opulence, sadistic in his pleasures, unquestioningly served by a slave army.
Having made an example of his admiral, Mehmet called an immediate meeting of his inner council to discuss Constantine’s peace offer of the preceding day. In the speed of events, initiatives were starting to overlap each other out of any sequence. Confronted by a significant setback and the first stirrings of dissent, the question was simply whether to continue with the siege or to seek favorable terms.
There were two factions in the Ottoman high command that were engaged in their own long-running struggle for survival and power under the sultan’s volatile rule. On the one side was the chief vizier, Halil Pasha, an ethnic Turk of the old Ottoman ruling class who had been vizier under Murat, Mehmet’s father, and who had steered the young sultan through his turbulent early years. He had witnessed the crisis years of the 1440s and the Janissary revolt against Mehmet at Edirne, and he was cautious about the chances of survival for Mehmet in the case of humiliation at the Greek walls. During the whole of the siege Halil’s strategy was undermined by the taunts of his opponents, who nicknamed him “the friend of the infidel,” the lover of Greek gold.
In opposition were the new men of Ottoman power: a group of ambitious military leaders who were largely outsiders – converted renegades from the sultan’s ever-expanding empire. They had always repudiated any peace policy and encouraged Mehmet’s dreams of world conquest. They attached their fortunes to the capture of this city. Foremost among them was the second vizier Zaganos Pasha, a Greek convert, “the one who was most feared and had the most voice and authority,” and who was a leading military commander. This faction had a strong backing from religious leaders, proponents of holy war, such as the learned Islamic scholar Ulema Ahmet Gurani, Mehmet’s formidable tutor, and Sheik Akshemsettin, who represented the long-cherished Islamic fervor to take the Christian city.
Halil argued that the opportunity should be taken to withdraw honorably from the siege on favorable terms: that the failed naval encounter revealed the difficulty of capturing the city and the possibility of a relieving Hungarian army or Italian fleet increased as the campaign dragged on. He voiced his conviction that the apple would one day fall into the sultan’s lap, “as the ripe fruit falls from the tree,” but that this golden fruit was not ripe yet. By imposing a punitive peace settlement, that day could be hastened. He proposed the demand of a massive 70,000 ducats as a yearly tribute from the emperor to lift the siege.
The war party strenuously opposed this line. Zaganos replied that the campaign should be pursued with intensified vigor, that the arrival of the Genoese ships only underlined the need for a decisive blow. It was a key moment. The Ottoman command recognized that their fortunes had reached a critical point, but the intensity of the debate also reflected awareness among the leading viziers that they were arguing for their influence with the sultan, and ultimately their own survival. Mehmet sat on his dais above the debate while the rivals jockeyed for position, but by temperament and inclination he was always of the war party. The council decided by a clear majority to continue the campaign. An answer was sent back to Constantine that peace could only result from an immediate surrender of the city. The sultan would cede the Peloponnese to Constantine and compensate his brothers who currently held it. It was an offer designed to be refused and it duly was. Constantine had his own awareness of the obligations of history and stood in the shoes of his father. When the Ottomans were at the gates in 1397 Manuel II had been heard to murmur: “Lord Jesus Christ, let it not come to pass that the great multitude of Christian people should hear it said that it was in the days of the Emperor Manuel that the City, with all its sacred and venerable monuments of the Faith, was delivered to the infidel.” In this spirit, the emperor would fight to the last. The siege went on, while the war party, feeling the growing pressure of events, resolved to intensify the conflict.
Three miles away the assault on the city continued regardless, propelled by an integrated plan of attack that was secret to all but Mehmet and his generals. A huge bombardment of the land walls, which had commenced the day before, continued without ceasing throughout the night and into the day of the military council. The Ottoman fire was concentrated on the wall near the St. Romanus Gate in the Lycus valley, the section of the defenses that both sides knew to be most vulnerable.
Under incessant gunfire, a major tower, the Bactatinian, collapsed and several yards of outer wall fell with it. A sizeable breach had been effected, and the defenders were suddenly exposed. “This was the start of fear of those in the city and in the fleet,” recorded Nicolo Barbaro, “we did not doubt that they wanted to make an all-out attack right away; everyone generally believed that they would soon see Turkish turbans inside the city.” What demoralized the defenders was again the speed with which the Ottoman guns could demolish apparently redoubtable defenses when sufficient firepower was concentrated on a single spot. “For such a big stretch of the wall had been ruined by the bombardment that everyone thought himself lost, considering how in a few days they had destroyed so much of the wall.” It seemed obvious to the defenders looking out from the gaping hole that a concerted attack at this point “with only ten thousand men” would result in certain loss of the city. They waited for the inevitable assault, but Mehmet and all the military command were at the Double Columns, debating the future of the campaign, and no order was given. In comparison to the fragmented volunteer nature of the Christian defense that relied heavily on individual initiative, it seemed that the Ottoman troops only responded to central directives. Nothing happened to press home the advantage of the guns, and the defenders had time to regroup.
Under cover of darkness Giustiniani and his men set about making running repairs to the damaged wall. “These repairs were made with barrels filled with stones and earth, and behind them there was made a very wide ditch with a dam at the end of it, which was covered with strips of vine and other layers of branches drenched with water to make them solid, so that it was as strong as the wall had been.” This stockade of wood, earth, and stones continued to be effective, smothering the force of the giant stone balls. Somehow these ad hoc repairs were undertaken in the face of continuous fire from “their huge cannon and from their other cannon, and from very many guns, countless bows and many hand guns.” Barbaro’s account of the day closes with a final haunting image of the enemy, swarming and alien, a glimpse of horror to the ship’s doctor: the ground in front of the wall “could not be seen, because it was covered by the Turks, particularly Janissaries, who are the bravest soldiers the Great Turk has, and also many of the Sultan’s slaves, who could be recognised by their white turbans, while the ordinary Turks wore red turbans.” Still no attack came. It was apparent that good luck – and “our merciful Lord Jesus Christ, who is full of compassion” – had spared the city that day.
Events on April 21 seemed suddenly to speed up and overlap each other, as if both sides recognized a moment of significant intensity. For the defenders it was a process of continuous reaction; without the resources to make sorties, they could only watch from within the triangle of the ancient walls, trust in the firmness of their fortifications, and wait, rushing to each particular crisis, plugging gaps – and quarreling. Blown back and forth by hope and despair, by rumors of attack and relieving armies, they worked ceaselessly to hold the line, and they looked west for the smudge of approaching sails.
Mehmet seems to have been spurred into a frenzy of activity by the events of these days. The failure of his navy, the fear of relief, the pessimism of his troops: these were the problems that occupied him on the 21st. He moved restlessly around the perimeter of the city, from the red and gold tent to the Double Columns to his troops above Galata, analyzing the problem in three dimensions, viewing the “golden fruit” from different angles, turning it over in his mind. His desire for Constantinople went back to his childhood. From his first distant views of the city as a boy to his nocturnal ramblings through the streets of Adrianople in the winter of 1452, the city was an obsession that had informed his intense preoccupation with Western treatises on siege warfare, the preliminary studies of the terrain, the detailed sketches of the walls. Mehmet was incessant in its pursuit: asking questions, garnering resources and technical skills, interrogating spies, storing information. The obsession was linked to secrecy, learned young in the dangerous world of the Ottoman court, which made him keep plans close to himself until they were ripe. On being asked once about a future campaign, Mehmet is reputed to have refused a direct answer and replied, “be certain that if I knew that one of the hairs of my beard had learned my secret, I would pull it out and consign it to the flames.” His next move was to be similarly guarded.
The problem, he reasoned, was the chain that guarded the entrance to the Horn. It barred his navy from pressuring the city from more than one side and allowed the defenders to concentrate their meager forces on defending the land walls, diminishing his huge numerical advantage. Ottoman guns had destroyed Constantine’s defensive wall across the Isthmus at Corinth in a week, but here, although the great cannon had certainly blasted holes in Theodosius’s ancient structure, progress had been slower than he had hoped. Seen from the outside, the defensive system was too complex and many layered, and the ditch too deep for quick results. Furthermore Giustiniani had proved to be a strategist of genius. His marshaling of limited manpower and materials had been highly effective: earth had succeeded where stone had failed, and the line had held – just.
Closed, the Horn provided a safe anchorage for any relieving fleet and constituted a base for naval counterattack. It also lengthened the line of communication between the different parts of Mehmet’s army and his navy, as troops were forced to make a long detour around the top of the Horn to pass from the land walls to the Double Columns. The problem of the chain had to be solved.
No one knows for certain where Mehmet came up with the idea, or how long he had been developing it, but on April 21 he accelerated an extraordinary solution to the chain. If it could not be forced, he reasoned, it must be bypassed, and this could only be done by bodily transporting his fleet over land and launching it into the Horn beyond the defensive line. Contemporary Christian chroniclers had their own ideas about the origin of this strategy. Archbishop Leonard was clear: yet again it was the know-how and advice of perfidious Europeans; Mehmet was prompted “by the recollections of a faithless Christian. I think that the man who revealed this trick to the Turks learned it from a Venetian strategy at Lake Garda.” Certainly the Venetians had carried galleys from the River Adige into Lake Garda as recently as 1439, but medieval campaigns are littered with other precedents, and Mehmet was a keen student of military history. Saladin had transported galleys from the Nile to the Red Sea in the twelfth century; in 1424 the Mamluks had taken galleys from Cairo to Suez. Whatever its origin, it is certain that the scheme was already well under way before the 21st; events merely emphasized its urgency.
Mehmet had one further reason for attempting this maneuver. He felt it was important to pressure the Genoese colony on the other side of the Horn at Galata, whose ambiguous neutrality in the conflict was the source of complaints by both sides. Galata traded profitably with both city and besiegers. In the process it acted as a membrane through which materials and intelligence passed to and fro. There were rumors that the citizens of Galata circulated openly in the Ottoman camp by day, supplying oil to cool the great guns and whatever else could be sold, then slipped across the Horn at night to take their place on the walls. The boom was secured within the walls of Galata and could not be tackled directly, as Mehmet was anxious not to seek open warfare with the Genoese. He was aware that direct hostilities could risk the dispatch of a powerful fleet from the mother city. At the same time he recognized that the natural sympathies of the citizens of Galata were with their fellow Christians; Giustiniani himself was Genoese. The arrival of the relieving Genoese ships had also probably tipped the balance of sympathy, as Leonard of Chios recognized: “The people of Galata had been acting very cautiously … but now they were anxious to provide both weapons and men, but only in secret, lest the enemy, who was just feigning peace towards them, should find out.” The double life of the Genoese community meant, however, that information could pass both ways, and this was soon to have tragic consequences.
All the land behind Galata, which had originally been covered with vineyards and rough scrub, was in Ottoman hands under the command of Zaganos Pasha. It is probable that early in the siege a decision was taken to construct a road from the Bosphorus at a point close to the Double Columns up a steep valley to a ridge behind Galata and then down another valley to the Golden Horn beyond the Genoese settlement at a place called the Valley of the Springs, where there was a Genoese graveyard outside the walls. Mehmet decided that this should be the route for the venture. At its greatest height this road rose to about 200 feet above sea level and would have presented a tough challenge for anyone attempting to haul ships overland. However, the one thing that Mehmet never lacked was human labor. With his usual secrecy and forethought, he had gathered the materials for this attempt: timber for making a primitive trackway, rollers and cradles to carry the ships, barrels of lard, teams of oxen and men. The ground was cleared of brushwood and leveled as effectively as possible. On April 21 the work on this project was accelerated. Teams of laborers laid the wooden track up the valley from the Bosphorus, rollers were prepared and greased with animal fat, cradles constructed to lift the ships from the water. To deflect interest from these preparations, Mehmet brought a battery of guns up onto a hill just north of the Galata settlement and ordered Zaganos to bombard the ships defending the Horn.
It is still puzzling to understand how the Christians failed to hear of such a substantial piece of engineering through the intelligence portal of Galata or via Christian soldiers in the Ottoman camp. In the early days, the Genoese probably saw the preparatory groundworks as a straightforward road-building project. Later they were either deterred from watching too closely by the artillery bombardment behind them, or they were guilty of collusion in the project, as the Venetians believed. It is probable too that Mehmet ensured that none of his Christian troops were employed in the project. Whatever the truth, no hint reached the city of what was about to ensue.
Early on the morning of Sunday, April 22, while this gunfire continued and the Christians who were able made their way to church, the first cradle was lowered into the water of the Bosphorus. A small fusta was floated into it, then eased onto the greased wooden rollers on the trackway by means of pulleys. The ever-present sultan was there to witness and encourage the attempt. “And having girdled them well with ropes, he attached long cables to the corners and assigned them to the soldiers to drag, some by hand, others with certain winches and capstans.” The ship was pulled up the slope by teams of oxen and men and supported on either side by further gangs of workmen and soldiers. As it moved up the track further rollers were laid in its path; with the huge resources of animals and manpower organized for the attempt, the vessel inched slowly up the steep slope toward the ridge 200 feet above.
A favorable morning breeze was blowing off the sea, and in an inspired moment Mehmet ordered a skeleton crew to take their places at the oars. “Some raised the sails with great shouts as if they were setting sail, and the wind caught the sails and swelled them. Others seated themselves on the rowing benches, took the oars in their hands and moved them back and forward as if they were actually rowing. And the commanders, running about by the mast holders, with whistles and shouts and whips lashing those on the benches, ordered them to row.” The ships were decked out with colored pennants, drums were beaten, and small bands of musicians played trumpets from the prows. It was a surreal moment of improvised carnival: the flags fluttering, the band playing, the oars moving, the sails billowing in the early morning breeze, the oxen straining and bellowing – a brilliant psychological gesture in the middle of war that was to become a potent ingredient in the Conqueror myth for the Turkish people. “It was an extraordinary sight to behold,” recorded Kritovoulos, “and unbelievable to relate apart from to those who saw it with their own eyes, the ships being carried over the dry land as if sailing on the sea, with their crews and sails and all their equipment.” From the plateau nearby Zaganos Pasha continued to bombard the harbor below and two miles farther off the great cannons pummeled the land walls at the St. Romanus Gate.
From the ridge the trial ship made its ponderous descent down into the Valley of the Springs. With meticulous attention to detail, Mehmet had moved a second battery of guns down to the shoreline to prevent any attack on the boats as they were launched. Well before noon this first ship splashed its way into the still waters of the Horn with its crew ready to repel any surprise attack, to be followed in rapid succession by others. In the course of the day about seventy boats were lowered one by one into the water at the Valley of the Springs. These boats were fustae – smaller fast biremes and triremes that were “of fifteen banks of oars up to twenty and even twenty-two banks” and probably up to about seventy feet in length. The larger Ottoman galleys remained in the outer harbor at the Double Columns.
All the fine details of this operation – the timing, the route, the technology employed – remain deeply mysterious. In practice it is highly unlikely that it could have been completed in twenty-four hours. The ergonomics involved – hauling seventy ships a minimum of one and a quarter miles up an eight-degree slope and then managing a controlled descent, even with the aid of large numbers of men and animals and the use of winches – suggest a far longer time span. It is possible that the larger ships had been disassembled and rebuilt close to the Horn shore well before April 22, and that transportation of others had also been under way for some time. It is typical of Mehmet’s secretiveness and deep planning that truth will never be known, but all the chroniclers are in agreement that suddenly, on the morning of April 22, the ships rolled one by one into the Galata basin. The whole operation was a strategic and psychological masterstroke, brilliantly conceived and executed. Even later Greek chroniclers gave it begrudging praise. “It was a marvellous achievement and a superb stratagem of naval tactics,” recorded Melissenos. It was to have appalling consequences for the defenders.
Galata (Pera) and the Golden Horn: the Double Columns are at the top right, the Valley of the Springs is below the windmill on the left
Because of its protected position within the boom and the immense pressure being applied at the land wall, the sea wall along the Horn was barely guarded at all. There would have been few soldiers about to see the first ship breast the brow of the opposing hill and begin its descent into the water. When they did, panic spread quickly. People ran down the steep streets and watched in horror from the ramparts as one after another the Ottoman fleet slipped into the Horn. It was an extraordinary strategic and psychological riposte to the triumph of the fight in the Bosphorus.
Constantine immediately recognized the implications for his hard-pressed troops: “now that the wall along the Horn was opened up to warfare, they were compelled to guard it and were forced to strip other defended sectors and to send men there. It was an obvious danger to take front-rank soldiers from the rest of the walls, while those who were left were too few to defend it adequately.” The Venetians, as commanders of naval operations, were also deeply disturbed. The Ottoman fleet was less than a mile away in a closed strait only a few hundred yards wide; the Horn, which had been a sanctuary against attack, was now transformed into a claustrophobic cockpit where there was no room to breathe.
When those in our fleet saw the fustae, they were undoubtedly very frightened, because they were certain that one night they would attack our fleet, together with their fleet which was at the Columns. Our fleet was inside the chain, the Turkish fleet was both inside and outside the chain, and from this description it can be grasped how great the danger was. And we were also very concerned about fire, that they might come to burn the ships lying at the chain, and we were perforce compelled to stand to arms at sea, night and day, with great fear of the Turks.
It was obvious to the defenders that an attempt to destroy the inner fleet was essential and urgent. The following day a council of war gathered in the Venetian church of St. Mary, called by the Venetian bailey and the emperor with the express aim “to burn the enemy fleet.” Only twelve men were present, and they met in secret. Apart from Constantine, the majority were the Venetian commanders and sea captains. There was just one outsider to affairs the Venetians considered their own: Giovanni Giustiniani the Genoese, “a man reliable in all matters,” whose opinion commanded universal respect. A long and heated debate followed in which rival ideas were ardently promoted. Some wanted to make a full-scale attack in broad daylight with the whole fleet, involving the cooperation of the Genoese ships. This was rejected on the grounds that negotiations with Galata would be complex and speed was of the essence. Others wanted to deploy a land force to destroy the guns protecting the enemy fleet and then burn the ships; this was considered too risky given the small numbers of soldiers available. Lastly Giacomo Coco, the master of a galley that had come from Trebizond, “a man of action, not words,” spoke strongly in favor of a third option: mount a small naval expedition at night to attempt to catch and burn the Turkish fleet by surprise, prepare it in strict secrecy without consulting the Genoese, and execute it without delay – time was everything. He offered to lead the attempt himself. This strategy was put to the vote and won the day.
On April 24 Coco set to work to implement this plan. He chose two sturdy high-sided merchant ships and packed wadded sacks of wool and cotton over the sides to protect them against stone cannon-balls from Ottoman guns. Two large galleys were to accompany the merchantmen and repel any counterattacks, while the actual damage was to be inflicted by a pair of light, fast fustae manned by seventy-two oarsmen each. These were filled with Greek fire and other combustible materials to burn the enemy fleet. Each ship was to be accompanied by a smaller boat with further materials. The plan was simple: the “armored” sailing vessels would protect the faster boats from gunfire until they were close up to the enemy, then these would dash out from the protective screen and attempt to fire the close-packed Ottoman ships. The vessels were to assemble one hour after sunset and the attack would set off at midnight. Everything was prepared; the commanders gathered on the galley of Aluvixe Diedo, the captain of the harbor, for a final briefing when the plan was unexpectedly stalled. The Genoese in the city had somehow got wind of it and wanted a role in the attack. They pressed hard for a delay to prepare their ships. Reluctantly the Venetians consented. The attack was postponed.
Four days passed while the Genoese readied their ships. Bombardment of the land walls continued unabated. The Venetians kicked their heels. “From the twenty-fourth to the twenty-eighth of this month we waited,” recorded Barbaro. “On the twenty-eighth of April, in the name of our Master Jesus Christ, it was decided to make an attempt to burn the fleet of the perfidious Turks.” The attack fleet had been slightly modified to accommodate the touchy sensibilities of the Genoese: the Venetians and the Genoese provided one padded merchantman each; there were two Venetian galleys, commanded by Gabriel Trevisano and Zacaria Grioni, three of the faster fustae with the combustible material led by Coco and a number of smaller boats with further supplies of pitch, brushwood, and gunpowder.
Two hours before dawn on April 28 the attack force pulled silently out from under the lea of Galata’s sea walls on the northeast side of the Horn and around the curve of the darkened shore toward the Valley of the Springs, a distance of less than a mile. The merchantmen, with Giustiniani aboard the Genoese vessel, led the way. The attack ships following in their lea. Nothing moved on the calm water. The only sign of life was a light flaring briefly from the top of the Genoese Galata Tower. No sounds could be heard as they pulled toward the Ottoman fleet.
The larger sailing ships could only move slowly under oars compared to the swift many-oared fustae they were designed to protect, and whether it was the silence and suspense of the slow approach, a pent-up frustration at the delay of the attack, or a desire “to win honour in the world,” is not clear, but Giacomo Coco suddenly abandoned the carefully worked-out plan. On his own initiative he pulled his vessel ahead of the convoy and began to row at full speed at the anchored fleet to launch the attack. For a moment there was silence. Then out of the darkness a volley of cannon fire opened up at the unprotected vessel. A first shot fell near but missed. A second hit the fusta amidships and went straight through it. “And this fusta could not have stayed afloat for as long as it took to say ten Our Fathers,” recorded Barbaro. In a flash the armored soldiers and the rowers were pitched into the night sea and vanished.
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 stanch 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 90 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 April 29 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:
The Grand Turk [makes] the man he wishes to punish lie down on the ground; a sharp long pole is placed in the rectum; with a big mallet held in both hands the executioner strikes it with all his might, so that the pole, known as a palo, enters the human body, and according to its path, the unfortunate lingers on or dies at once; then he raises the pole and plants it in the ground; thus the unfortunate is left in extremis; he does not live long.
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 practiced 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 center 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 April 28 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 among 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 harbor 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.