There is no certainty of victory in war, even when the equipment and numerical strength that cause victory exist. Victory and superiority in war come from luck and chance.
Ibn Khaldun, fourteenth-century Arab historian
By nightfall on Monday, May 28, the great guns had been firing at the land walls for forty-seven days. Over time Mehmet had come to concentrate his batteries in three places: to the north between the Blachernae Palace and the Charisian Gate, in the central section around the Lycus River, and to the south toward the Marmara at the Third Military Gate. Severe damage had been inflicted at all these points, so that when he addressed his commanders before the battle he could claim, with convenient exaggeration, that “the moat has all been filled up and the land wall at three points has been so broken down that not only heavy and light infantry like yourselves, but even the horses and heavily armed cavalry can easily penetrate it.” In fact it had been clear to both sides for some time that a concerted attack would be focused on only one spot, the middle section, the Mesoteichion, the shallow valley between the gates of St. Romanus and Charisias. This was the Achilles’ heel of the defensive system, and it was here that Mehmet had expended his greatest firepower.
Ottoman military band: designed to terrify and inspire
By the eve of the total assault, there were nine substantial holes in the outer wall, some about thirty yards long and mostly in the valley, which had been replaced piecemeal by Giustiniani’s stockade. It was a ramshackle structure that patched up the defenses whenever a stretch of wall gave way. Bulks of timber lashed together provided its basic framework, along with hard core from the fallen wall augmented by any other materials readily to hand: brushwood, branches, bundles of reeds, and loose stones, all filled in with earth, which had the advantage of absorbing the shock of the cannonballs more effectively than any stone structure. In time it was evidently nearly as high as the original wall, and wide enough to provide a good fighting platform. The defenders were protected from enemy fire by barrels and wicker containers full of earth that served as battlements, and whose removal was always the initial objective of Ottoman attacks. Since April 21 the maintenance of the stockade had been the city’s highest priority. Both soldiers and civilians worked unceasingly to mend and extend it. Men, women, and children, monks and nuns had all contributed, lugging stones, timber, cartloads of earth, branches, and vine cuttings up to the front line in an exhausting and apparently unceasing cycle of destruction and repair. They had worked under cannonfire and attack, by day and by night, rain and sun, to plug gaps wherever they appeared. The stockade represented the collective energy of the population, and under Giustiniani’s direction it had repaid their efforts, repulsing every attempt on the city and demoralizing the enemy.
It was behind this stockade that the pick of the available fighting troops took up their positions late on the sunny afternoon of May 28. According to Doukas, here were “three thousand Latins and Romans” – the remainder of the 700 crack Italian troops who had come with Giustiniani, sailors from the Venetian galleys, plus the bulk of the Byzantine troops. In all probability the figure was nearer 2,000. They were well armored and helmeted in chain mail and plate, and equipped with a variety of weapons: crossbows, rifles, small cannon, long bows, swords, and maces – all the equipment for mowing down their attackers at a distance and fighting them hand to hand at the barricades. In addition a large number of rocks had been brought up to the front line by civilians, as well as inflammatory materials – barrels of Greek fire and pitchers of tar. The troops entered the enclosure through the gates in the inner wall and spread out down the length of the stockade to fill the Mesoteichion for 1,000 yards. The enclosure was only twenty yards deep, backed by the higher inner wall and a scooped-out ditch at its foot where earth had been removed to fortify the stockade. There was just room for horsemen to gallop up and down the line behind the men pressed to the stockade. In the whole stretch there were only four entry points through the inner walls: two posterns by the gates of St. Romanus and Charisias to left and right on the brow of the hills, the forbidding Fifth Military Gate that led only into the enclosure halfway up the northern slope, and another postern at an unidentified point that had been created by Giustiniani to make entry into the city more convenient. It was obvious to everyone that the battle would be won or lost at the stockade; there could be no retreat from this station. A decision was therefore taken that the posterns back into the city should be locked behind the defenders once they had entered the enclosure and the keys entrusted to their commanders. They would do or die with their backs to the inner wall and their leaders with them. As night fell they settled down to wait. A heavy shower of rain fell in the dark, but the Ottoman troops continued to advance siege equipment outside. Later on Giustiniani entered the enclosure, then Constantine and his inner retinue of nobles: the Spaniard Don Francisco of Toledo, his cousin Theophilus Palaiologos, and his faithful military companion John Dalmata. They waited on the stockade and the wall for the first signs of an attack. Though perhaps few would have shared the optimism of the Podesta of Galata who declared that “victory was assured,” they were not without confidence in their ability to weather one final storm.
The Ottoman troops were readied for battle in the small hours of the morning. In the darkness of his tent, Mehmet performed the ritual ablutions and prayers, and entreated God for the city’s fall. In all likelihood his personal preparations would have included the donning of a talismanic shirt, richly embroidered with verses from the Koran and the names of God, as a magical protection against bad luck. Turbanned and caftanned, with a sword strapped to his waist, and accompanied by his key commanders, he set out on horseback to direct the attack.
The preparations for a simultaneous assault by land and sea had been carefully made and closely followed. The ships in the Horn and Marmara were in position; troops were massed to make assaults at key locations along the land walls, with the focus being on the Lycus valley. Mehmet decided to commit large numbers of men to the stockade and to deploy his regiments in ascending order of usefulness and skill. He ordered that the first attack should be made by irregulars – the azaps and foreign auxiliaries – unskilled troops recruited for booty or impressed for the campaign under the laws of vassalage. A large number of these seem to have been “Christians, kept in his camp by force,” according to Barbaro, “Greeks, Latins, Germans, Hungarians – people from all the Christian realms” according to Leonard – an ill-assorted mix of races and creeds armed in a variety of ways; some with bows, slings, or muskets, but the majority simply with scimitars and shields. It was in no sense a disciplined fighting force, but Mehmet’s aim was to use expendable infidels to wear down the enemy before committing more valuable troops to the killing zone. These men were brought up from the north end of the wall, equipped with scaling ladders, and readied to attack along the whole front of the Mesoteichion and the stockade in particular. Thousands of them waited in the darkness for the moment to go.
At one-thirty in the morning horns, drums, and cymbals signaled the attack. The cannon opened up, and from all directions, from both land and sea, Ottoman forces moved forward. The irregulars were under strict orders to advance at a steady pace and in silence. Within range, they unleashed a volley of fire “with arrows from the archers, slingshot from the slingers and iron and lead balls from the cannon and arquebuses.” At a second command, they ran forward across the filled ditch, yelling and hurling themselves at the walls “with javelins and pikes and spears.” The defenders were well prepared. As the irregulars attempted to scale the walls, the Christians pushed their ladders away and hurled fire and hot oil down on those scrambling at the foot of the stockade. The darkness and confusion were lit only by pale handheld flares and the sound of “violent yelling and blasphemies and curses.” Giustiniani marshaled his men, and the presence of the emperor lent encouragement to the defense. Advantage lay with the defenders, who “threw big stones down on them from the battlements” and shot arrows and bullets into their close-packed ranks, “so that few escaped alive.” Those coming up behind started to waver and turn back. However, Mehmet had determined to press his irregular troops to the limit. In the rear he stationed a line of chavushes – Mehmet’s military police – as enforcers, armed with clubs and whips to turn them back; and behind them a line of Janissaries with scimitars to cut down any who broke through this cordon and ran for it. Horrible cries rose from the wretched men caught between the hail of missiles in front and the systematic pressure from behind, “so that they had a choice of dying on one side or the other.” They turned again to assault the stockade, struggling with furious desperation to raise their ladders against the steady bombardment from above – and were decimated. Despite heavy losses these expendable men served their purpose. For two hours they wore away at the energy of the enemy on the stockade until Mehmet permitted the remnant to withdraw from the slaughter and limp back behind the lines.
There was a moment of pause. It was three-thirty in the morning, still dark, the plain lit by flares. On the stockade the men drew breath; there was time to reorganize and make running repairs. Elsewhere up and down the line, the irregulars’ attack had been pressed less vigorously; the strength of the intact walls made progress difficult. It was more a diversionary tactic to ensure that men were tied down along the whole sector and could not be moved to refresh those under pressure in the Mesoteichion. The forces were stretched so thinly that the troops kept in reserve on the central ridge near the church of the Holy Apostles, a mile away, had been whittled down to a force of 300. Staring out over the plain, the men at the wall vainly hoped that the enemy might withdraw for the night, but it was not to be.
The moment had come to escalate the conflict. Mehmet rode over to the Anatolian troops on his right flank stationed just beyond the St. Romanus Gate. These men were heavy infantry, well equipped with chain armor, experienced, disciplined – and fired by a strong Muslim zeal for the cause. He addressed them in the colloquial, paternal tones a twenty-one-year-old sultan could rightly adopt with his tribe: “Advance, my friends and children! Now is the moment to prove yourselves worthy men!” They advanced down the edge of the valley, wheeled to face the stockade, and pressed forward in a tightly packed mass, calling out the name of Allah “with shouts and yells.” They came on, said Nicolo Barbaro, “like lions unchained against the walls.” The purposeful advance threw the defenders into alarm. Throughout the city, church bells clanged, summoning every man back to his post. Many of the population came running up to the walls to help. Others redoubled their cycle of prayer in the churches. Three miles away, outside St. Sophia, the clergy offered their own support; “When they heard the bells, they took the divine icons, went out before the church, stood, prayed, and blessed with crosses the entire city; in tears did they recite: ‘Bring us to life again, Lord God, and help us lest we perish in the end.’”
The Anatolians crossed the ditch at a run, moving forward in a tightly packed mass of compressed steel. They were riddled by fire from crossbows and cannon that “killed an incredible number of Turks.” Still they came on, shielding themselves from the hail of rocks and missiles, trying to force themselves up onto the stockade. “We hurled deadly missiles down on them,” said Archbishop Leonard, “and fired crossbows into their massed ranks.” By sheer force of numbers the Anatolians managed to prop ladders against the stockade. These were hurled down again, and the attackers were crushed by rocks and burned by hot pitch. For a short while the Ottomans drew back, but quickly pressed forward again. Behind the stockade the defenders were amazed and appalled by the spirit of their foe, who seemed motivated by a force beyond the limits of the human. There was evidently no need for extra motivation; this group were “all brave men,” recorded Barbaro, “they continued to raise their shouts to the skies and they unfurled their standards all the more eagerly. O you would have marvelled at these beasts! Their army was being destroyed, but with limitless bravery they kept trying to get to the fosse.” The Anatolians were hindered by their numbers and their own dead as successive waves surged forward. Men trampled and scrabbled over each other in a human pyramid as they tried to reach the top of the stockade. Some managed to get there, slashing and hacking wildly at their opponents. Hand-to-hand fighting developed on the earth platform, man pressed against man. With limited space to move, it was as much physical pressure as armed combat that determined whether the Anatolians forced their enemy backward or were hurled down onto the scrabbling, shouting, cursing pile of dead and dying men, discarded weapons, helmets, turbans, and shields.
The situation shifted from moment to moment. “Sometimes the heavy infantry clambered over the walls and stockades, pressing their way forcefully forward without wavering. At other times they were violently repulsed and driven back.” Mehmet himself galloped forward, urging them on with shouts and cries, sometimes throwing fresh waves of men into the narrow gap as those in front wavered and died. He ordered the match to be put to the big cannon. Volleys of stone shot sprayed the walls, peppering the defenders and felling the Anatolians from behind. Everything was dark and confused in the predawn of the summer morning, the extraordinary noise of the battle so deafening “that the very air seemed to split apart” with the visceral thump of the kettledrums, the braying of pipes, the crash of cymbals, the clang of church bells, the thock of arrows whipping through the night air, the amplified subterranean roar of the Ottoman cannon vibrating the ground, the flat crack of handguns. Swords clattered harshly against shields, more softly as blades severed windpipes, arrowheads puckered into chests, lead bullets shattered ribs, rocks crushed skulls – and behind these sounds the more terrible hubbub of human voices: prayers and battle cries, shouts of encouragement, curses, howls, sobs, and the softer moan of those approaching death. Smoke and dust drifted across the front line. Islamic banners were held hopefully aloft in the dark. Bearded faces, helmets, and armor were lit by smoking handheld flares; for brief seconds the gun crews became a frozen tableau backlit by the vivid flash of the cannon; smaller tongues of flame from the handguns sparked sharply in the darkness; buckets of Greek fire arced downward over the walls like golden rain.
An hour before dawn one of the big cannon landed a direct hit on the stockade and smashed a hole. Clouds of dust and cannon smoke obscured the front line, but the Anatolians, quickest to react, pressed forward into the breach. Before the defense could react, 300 had swept inside. For the first time the Ottomans had penetrated the enclosure. Chaos reigned inside. The defenders desperately regrouped and faced the Anatolians in the narrow space between the two walls. The gap was evidently not large enough to permit a larger flood of men to surge in, and the attackers soon found themselves surrounded and cornered. Systematically the Greeks and Italians hacked them to pieces. None survived. Cheered by this local victory the defenders drove the Anatolians back from the stockade. Discouraged, the Ottoman troops faltered for the first time and were pulled back. It was half past five. The defenders had been fighting, unrested, for four hours.
By this stage of the morning, little substantive progress had been made elsewhere by Ottoman troops. Within the Horn, Zaganos Pasha had succeeded in getting the pontoon bridge in position overnight and moving a good number of troops onto the shore near the end of the land walls. At the same time he brought the light galleys up close so that archers and musketeers could rake the walls with fire. He advanced ladders and wooden towers to these walls and tried to get his infantry to storm the ramparts. The attempt failed. Halil’s seaborne landing on the Marmara had been equally unsuccessful. The currents made steadying the ships difficult, and the dominant position of the sea walls, which looked straight over the water, provided no foreshore on which to establish a bridgehead. Although the ramparts were very lightly manned and in part were entrusted solely to monks, the intruders were easily repulsed or captured and beheaded. South of the Mesoteichion, Ishak Pasha maintained some pressure on the defenders, but his best Anatolian troops had been diverted to tackle the stockade. A more serious attempt was made by Karaja Pasha’s men in the area of the Blachernae Palace – one of the places Mehmet had targeted for easy access into the city. It was “where the city’s defenses were tottering” because of the state of the wall, but the defense was managed by the three Genoese Bocchiardi brothers, who were skillful professional soldiers. According to Archbishop Leonard, “they were frightened by nothing – neither the walls collapsing under fire nor the explosions of the cannon … day and night they showed the greatest vigilance with their crossbows and terrible guns.” At times they made sallies from the Circus Gate postern to disrupt enemy activity. Karaja’s men could make no progress. The lion of St. Mark still fluttered over the dark palace.
The failure of the irregulars and the Anatolian divisions after four hours of fierce fighting seems to have enraged Mehmet. More than that: it made him anxious. He had only one body of fresh troops left – his own palace regiments, the 5,000 crack professional troops of his own bodyguard: “men who were very well-armed, bold and courageous, who were far more experienced and brave than the others. These were the army’s crack troops: heavy infantry, archers and lancers, and with them the brigade called the Janissaries.” He decided to commit them to the battle at once before the defenders had time to regroup. Everything depended on this maneuver; if they failed to break the line within another few hours, the momentum would be lost, the exhausted troops would have to be withdrawn, and the siege effectively lifted.
Within the enclosure there was no time to pause. Casualties had been heavier during the second wave of attacks, and the tiredness of the men increased accordingly. However, the spirit of resistance remained firm; according to Kritovoulos they were deterred by nothing: “neither hunger pressing on them, nor the lack of sleep, nor unremitting and continuous fighting, nor wounds and slaughter, nor the death of their relatives in front of their eyes, nor any other frightful spectacle could make them give in or weaken their eagerness and sense of purpose.” In fact they had no option but to stand and fight; they could not be replaced – there were no other troops – but the Italians were fighting under the command of Giustiniani, and the Greeks in the presence of their emperor, figures as motivating as the sultan was to the Ottoman army.
Mehmet knew he must strike again before the attack faltered. Now, if ever, his paid soldiers needed to earn their keep. Riding forward on his horse, he urged his troops to prove themselves as heroes. Clear orders were issued, and Mehmet himself personally led the men at a steady pace to the edge of the ditch. It was still an hour to sunrise, but the stars were fading and “the blackness of night was drawing towards dawn.” They stopped at the ditch. There he ordered “the bowmen, slingers and rifle men to stand at a distance and shoot to the right at those defending the stockade and battered outer wall.” A firestorm swept toward the walls: “there were so many culverins and arrows being fired, that it was impossible to see the sky.” The defenders were forced to duck beneath the stockade under “the rain of arrows and other projectiles falling like snowflakes.” At another signal the infantry advanced “with a loud and terrifying war cry” “not like Turks but like lions.” They pressed toward the stockade propelled on a huge wall of sound, the ultimate psychological battle weapon of Ottoman armies, so loud that it could be heard on the Asian shore, five miles from their camp. The sound of drums and pipes, the shouts and exhortations of their officers, the thunderous roll of the cannon, and the piercing cries of the men themselves calculated both to liberate their own adrenaline and to shatter the nerve of the enemy – all had their desired effect. “With their great shouting they took away our courage and spread fear throughout the city,” recorded Barbaro. The attack was simultaneous along the whole four-mile front of the land wall, like the crash of a breaking wave. Again the church bells rang in warning and the non-combatants hastened to their prayers.
The heavy infantry and Janissaries were “eager and fresh for battle.” They were fighting in the presence of their sultan both for honor and for the prize of being first onto the ramparts. They advanced on the stockade without any wavering or hesitancy, “like men intent on entering the city” who knew their business. They ripped down the barrels and wooden turrets with hooked sticks, tore at the framework of the stockade, propped ladders against the rampart, and raising their shields over their heads, attempted to force their way up beneath a withering bombardment of rocks and missiles. Their officers stood behind, yelling instructions, and the sultan himself wheeled back and forth on his horse shouting and encouraging.
From the opposite side the weary Greeks and Italians joined battle. Giustiniani and his men, and Constantine, accompanied by “all his nobles and his principal knights and his bravest men,” pressed forward to the barricades with “javelins, pikes, long spears and other fighting weapons.” The first wave of palace troops “fell, struck by stones, so that many died,” but others stepped up to replace them. There was no wavering. It was soon a hand-to-hand, face-to-face struggle for control of the rampart with each side fighting with total belief – for honor, God, and great rewards on one side, for God and survival on the other. In the pressed close-up combat it was the terrible sound of shouting voices that filled the air – “taunts, those stabbing with their spears, others being stabbed at, killers and being killed, those doing all kinds of terrible things in anger and fury.” Behind, the cannon fired their huge shot and smoke drifted across the battlefield, alternately concealing and revealing the combatants to one another. “It seemed,” said Barbaro, “like something from another world.”
For an hour the fighting continued, with the palace regiments making little headway. The defenders never stepped back. “We repelled them vigorously,” reported Leonard, “but many of our men were now wounded and pulled back from fighting. However, Giustiniani our commander still stood firm and the other captains remained in their fighting positions.” There came a moment, imperceptibly at first, when those inside the stockade felt the pressure from the Ottomans ease a fraction. It was the pivotal moment, the instant when a battle turns. Constantine noticed it and urged the defenders on. According to Leonard he called out to his men: “brave soldiers, the enemy’s army is weakening, the crown of victory is ours. God is on our side – keep fighting!” The Ottomans faltered. The weary defenders found new strength.
And then two strange moments of fortune swung the battle away from them. Half a mile up the line toward the Blachernae Palace, the Bocchiardi brothers had been successful in repulsing the troops of Karaja Pasha, occasionally making sorties from the Circus Gate, the postern hidden in an angle of the walls. This gate was now to live up to ancient prophecy. Returning from a raid, one of the Italian soldiers failed to close the postern behind him. In the growing light, some of Karaja’s men spotted the open door and burst in. Fifty managed to get access via a flight of stairs up to the wall and to surprise the soldiers on top. Some were cut down, others preferred to jump to their deaths. Exactly what happened next is unclear; it appears that the intruders were successfully isolated and surrounded before too much further damage could be done, but they managed to tear down the flag of St. Mark and the emperor’s standard from some towers and replace them with Ottoman standards.
Down the line at the stockade Constantine and Giustiniani were unaware of these developments. They were confidently holding the line, when bad luck dealt a more serious blow. Giustiniani was wounded. To some it was the God of the Christians or the Muslims answering or refusing prayers who created this moment. To bookish Greeks it was a moment straight from Homer: a sudden reversal in battle, caused, according to Kritovoulos, by “wicked and merciless fortune,” the instant when a serene and merciless goddess, surveying the battle with Olympian detachment, decides to tilt the outcome – and swipes the hero to the dust and turns his heart to jelly.
There is no clear agreement on what happened, but everyone knew its significance: it caused immediate consternation among his Genoese troops. In the light of subsequent events, the accounts become fragmentary and quarrelsome: Giustiniani, “dressed in the armour of Achilles,” falls to the ground in a dozen ways. He is hit on the right leg by an arrow; he is struck in the chest by a crossbow bolt; he is stabbed from below in the belly while struggling on the ramparts; a lead shot passes through the back of his arm and penetrates his breastplate; he is struck in the shoulder by a culverin; he is hit from behind by one of his own side by accident – or on purpose. The most probable versions suggest that his upper body armor was punctured by lead shot, a small hole concealing grave internal damage.
Giustiniani had been fighting continuously since the start of the siege and was undoubtedly exhausted beyond endurance. He had been wounded the day before, and this second wound seems to have broken his spirit. Unable to stand and more seriously injured than any bystander could see, he ordered his men to carry him back to his ship to seek medical attention. They went to the emperor to ask for the key to one of the gates. Constantine was appalled by the danger presented by the withdrawal of his principal commander and begged Giustiniani and his officers to stay until the danger was over, but they would not. Giustiniani entrusted command of the troops to two officers and promised to return after attending to his wound. Reluctantly Constantine handed over the key. The gate was opened and his bodyguard carried him away down to his galley at the Horn. It was a catastrophic decision. The temptation of the open gate was too much for the other Genoese; seeing their commander departing, they streamed through the gate after him.
Desperately Constantine and his entourage attempted to stem the tide. They forbade any of the Greeks to follow the Italians out of the enclosure, and ordered them to close ranks and step up to fill the empty spaces in the front line. Mehmet seems to have perceived that the defense was slackening, and rallied his troops for another assault. “Friends, we have the city!” he called out. “With just a little more effort the city is taken!”
A group of Janissaries under the command of one of Mehmet’s favorite officers, Cafer Bey, ran forward shouting “Allahu Akbar – God is great.” With the cry of the sultan ringing in their ears – “Go on my falcons, march on my lions!” – and remembering the promised reward for raising the flag on the walls, they surged toward the stockade. At the front, carrying the Ottoman flag, was a giant of a man, Hasan of Ulubat, accompanied by thirty companions. Covering his head with his shield, he managed to storm the rampart, throwing back the wavering defenders, and establishing himself on top. For a short while he was able to maintain his position, flag in hand, inspiring the onrush of the Janissary corps. It was a defining and thrilling image of Ottoman courage – the Janissary giant finally planting the flag of Islam on the walls of the Christian city – and destined to pass into the nation-making mythology. Before long, however, the defenders regrouped and retaliated with a barrage of rocks, arrows, and spears. They threw back some of the thirty and then cornered Hasan, finally battering him to his knees and hacking him to pieces – but all around more and more Janissaries were able to establish themselves on the ramparts and to penetrate gaps in the stockade. Like a flood breaching coastal defenses, thousands of men started to pour into the enclosure, remorselessly pushing back the defenders by weight of numbers. In a short time they were hemmed in toward the inner wall, in front of which a ditch had been excavated to provide earth for the stockade. Some were pushed into it and were trapped. Unable to clamber out, they were massacred.
Ottoman troops were pouring into the enclosure along a broadening front; many were killed by the defenders bombarding them from the stockade, but the flood was now unstoppable; according to Barbaro there were 30,000 inside within fifteen minutes, uttering “such cries that it seemed to be hell itself.” At the same time the flags planted by the few enemy intruders on towers near the Circus Gate were spotted and the cry went up “the city is taken!” Blind panic seized the defenders. They turned and ran, seeking a way to escape the locked enclosure back into the city. At the same time, Mehmet’s men were starting to climb the inner wall as well and were firing down on them from above.
There was only one possible exit route – the small postern through which Giustiniani had been carried away. All the other gates were locked. A struggling mass of men converged on the gateway, trampling one another in their attempts to get out, “so that they made a great mound of living men by the gate which prevented anyone from having passage.” Some fell underfoot and were crushed to death; others were slaughtered by the Ottoman heavy infantry now sweeping down the stockade in orderly formation. The mound of bodies grew and choked off any further chance of escape. All the surviving defenders in the stockade perished in the slaughter. By each of the other gateways – the Charisian, the Fifth Military Gate – lay a similar pile of corpses, the men who had fled there unable to get out of the locked enclosure. And somewhere in this choking, panicking, struggling melee, Constantine was glimpsed for the last time, surrounded by his most faithful retinue – Theophilus Palaiologos, John Dalmata, Don Francisco of Toledo – his last moments reported by unreliable witnesses who were almost certainly not present, struggling, resisting defiantly, falling, crushed underfoot, until he vanished from history into the afterlife of legend.
A posse of Janissaries clambered over the dead bodies and forced open the Fifth Military Gate. Making their way up the inside of the city walls, some turned left toward the Charisian gate and opened it from the inside; others going right opened the gate of St. Romanus. From tower after tower Ottoman flags fluttered in the wind. “Then all the rest of the army burst violently into the city … and the Sultan stood before the mighty walls, where the great standard was and the horsetail banners, and watched the events.” It was dawn. The sun was rising. Ottoman soldiers moved among the fallen, beheading the dead and dying. Large birds of prey circled overhead. The defense had collapsed in less than five hours.