When it marched, the air seemed like a forest because of its lances and when it stopped, the earth could not be seen for tents.
Mehmet’s chronicler, Tursun Bey, on the Ottoman army
Mehmet needed both artillery and numerical superiority to fulfill his plans. By bringing sudden and overwhelming force to bear on Constantinople, he intended to deliver a knockout blow before Christendom had time to respond. The Ottomans always knew that speed was the key to storming fortresses. It was a principle clearly understood by foreign observers such as Michael the Janissary, a prisoner of war who fought for the Ottomans at this time: “the Turkish Emperor storms and captures cities and also fortresses at great expense in order not to remain there long with the army.” Success depended on the ability to mobilize men and equipment quickly and on an impressive scale.
Accordingly, Mehmet issued the traditional call to arms at the start of the year. By ancient tribal ritual, the sultan set up his horsetail banner in the palace courtyard to announce the campaign. This triggered the dispatch of “heralds to all the provinces, ordering everyone to come for the campaign against the City.” The command structure of the two Ottoman armies – the European and the Anatolian – ensured a prompt response. An elaborate set of contractual obligations and levies enlisted men from across the empire. The provincial cavalry, the sipahis, who provided the bulk of the troops, were bound by their ties as land-holders from the sultan to come, each man with his own helmet, chain mail, and horse armor, together with the number of retainers relative to the size of his holding. Alongside these, a seasonal Muslim infantry force, the azaps, were levied “from among craftsmen and peasants” and paid for by the citizens on a pro-rata basis. These troops were the cannon fodder of the campaign: “when it comes to an engagement,” one cynical Italian commented, “they are sent ahead like pigs, without any mercy, and they die in great numbers.” Mehmet also requisitioned Christian auxiliaries from the Balkans, largely Slavs and Vlachs, obligated under the laws of vassalage, and he prepared his elite professional household regiments: the infantry – the famous Janissaries – the cavalry regiments, and all the other attendant corps of gunners, armorers, bodyguards, and military police. These crack troops, paid regularly every three months and armed at the sultan’s expense, were all Christians largely from the Balkans, taken as children and converted to Islam. They owed their total loyalty to the sultan. Although few in number – probably no more than 5,000 infantry – they comprised the durable core of the Ottoman army.
Ottoman tents and guns
The mobilization for the season’s campaign was extraordinarily efficient. Within the Muslim heartlands it was not a press gang. Men came at the call to arms with a willingness that amazed European eyewitnesses such as George of Hungary, another prisoner in the empire at this time:
Horsetail banner: symbol of Ottoman authority
When recruiting for the army is begun, they gather with such readiness and speed you might think they are invited to a wedding not a war. They gather within a month in the order they are summoned, the infantrymen separately from the cavalrymen, all of them with their appointed chiefs, in the same order which they use for encampments and when preparing for battle … with such enthusiasm that men put themselves forward in the place of their neighbors, and those left at home feel an injustice has been done to them. They claim they will be happier if they die on the battlefield among the spears and arrows of the enemy than at home … Those who die in war like this are not mourned but are hailed as saints and victors, to be set as an example and given high respect.
“Everyone who heard that the attack was to be against the City came running,” added Doukas, “both boys too young to march and old men bent double with age.” They were fired by the prospect of booty and personal advancement and holy war, themes that were woven together in the Koran: by Islamic holy law, a city taken by force could be legitimately subjected to three days of plunder. Enthusiasm was made all the keener by knowledge of the objective: the Red Apple of Constantinople was popularly, but perhaps mistakenly, held to possess fabulous hoards of gold and gems. Many came who had not been summoned: volunteers and freelance raiders, hangers-on, dervishes and holy men inspired by the old prophecies who stirred the populace with words of the Prophet and the glories of martyrdom. Anatolia was on fire with excitement and remembered that “the promise of the Prophet foretold that that vast city … would become the abode of the people of the Faith.” Men flocked from the four corners of Anatolia – ”from Tokat, Sivas, Kemach, Erzurum, Ganga, Bayburt and Trabzon” – to the collecting points at Bursa; in Europe they came to Edirne. A huge force was gathering: “cavalry and foot soldiers, heavy infantry and archers and slingers and lancers.” At the same time, the Ottoman logistical machine swung into action, collecting, repairing, and manufacturing armor, siege equipment, cannons, tents, ships, tools, weapons, and food. Camel trains crisscrossed the long plateaus. Ships were patched up at Gallipoli. Troops were ferried across the Bosphorus at the Throat Cutter. Intelligence was gathered from Venetian spies. No army in the world could match the Ottomans in the organization of a military campaign.
In February, troops of the European army under its leader, Karaja Bey, started to clear the hinterland of the city. Constantinople still had some fortified outposts on the Black Sea, the north shore of the Marmara, and the Bosphorus. Greeks from the surrounding countryside retreated into the strongholds. Each was systematically encircled. Those that surrendered were allowed to go unharmed; others, such as those at a tower near Epibatos on the Marmara, resisted. It was stormed and the garrison slaughtered. Some could not be quickly taken; they were bypassed but kept under guard. News of these events filtered back to Constantinople and intensified the woe of the population, now riven by religious feuding. The city itself was already under careful observation by three regiments from Anatolia lest Constantine should sally out and disrupt preparations. Meanwhile the sapper corps was at work strengthening bridges and leveling roads for the convoys of guns and heavy equipment that started to roll across the Thracian landscape in February. By March a detachment of ships from Gallipoli sailed up past the city and proceeded to ferry the bulk of the Anatolian forces into Europe. A great force was starting to converge.
Finally on March 23 Mehmet set out from Edirne in great pomp “with all his army, cavalry and infantry, traveling across the landscape, devastating and disturbing everything, creating fear and agony and the utmost horror wherever he went.” It was a Friday, the most holy day of the Muslim week, and carefully chosen to emphasize the sacred dimension of the campaign. He was accompanied by a notable religious presence: “the ulema, the sheiks and the descendants of the Prophet … repeating prayers … moved forward with the army, and rode by the rein of the Sultan.” The cavalcade also probably included a state functionary called Tursun Bey, who was to write a rare firsthand Ottoman account of the siege. At the start of April, this formidable force converged on the city. The first of April was Easter Sunday, the most holy day in the Orthodox calendar, and it was celebrated throughout the city with a mixture of piety and apprehension. At midnight candlelight and incense proclaimed the mystery of the risen Christ in the city’s churches. The haunting and simple line of the Easter litany rose and fell over the dark city in mysterious quarter-tones. Bells were rung. Only St. Sophia itself remained silent and unvisited by the Orthodox population. In the preceding weeks people had “begged God not to let the City be attacked during Holy Week” and sought spiritual strength from their icons. The most revered of these, the Hodegetria, the miracle-working image of the Mother of God, was carried to the imperial palace at Blachernae for Easter week according to custom and tradition.
The next day Ottoman outriders were sighted beyond the walls. Constantine dispatched a sortie to confront them, and in the ensuing skirmish some of the raiders were killed. As the day wore on, however, ever increasing numbers of Ottoman troops appeared over the horizon, and Constantine made the decision to withdraw his men into the city. All the bridges over the fosse were systematically destroyed and the gates closed. The city was sealed against whatever was to come. The sultan’s army began to form up in a sequence of well-rehearsed maneuvers that combined caution with deep planning. On April 2, the main force came to a halt five miles out. It was organized into constituent units, and each regiment was assigned its position. Over the next few days it moved forward in a series of staged advances that reminded watchers of the remorseless advance of “a river that transforms itself into a huge sea” – a recurrent image in the chroniclers’ accounts of the incredible power and ceaseless motion of the army.
A Janissary
The preparatory work progressed with great speed. Sappers began cutting down the orchards and vineyards outside the walls to create a clean field of fire for the guns. A ditch was dug the length of the land wall and 250 yards from it, with an earth rampart in front as a protection for the guns. Latticework wooden screens were placed on top as a further shield. Behind this protective line, Mehmet moved the main army into its final position about a quarter of a mile from the land walls: “According to custom, the day that camp was to be made near Istanbul the army was ordered by regiment into rows. He ranged at the centre of the army around his person the white-capped Janissary archers, the Turkish and European crossbowmen, and the musketeers and cannonneers. The red-capped azaps were placed on his right and left, joined at the rear by the cavalry. Thus organised, the army marched in formation on Istanbul.” Each regiment had its allotted place: the Anatolian troops on the right, in the position of honor, under their Turkish commander Ishak Pasha, assisted by Mahmut Pasha, another Christian renegade; the Christian, Balkan troops on the left under Karaja Pasha. A further large detachment under the Greek convert Zaganos Pasha was sent to build a roadway over the marshy ground at the top of the Horn and to cover the hills down to the Bosphorus, watching the activities of the Genoese settlement at Galata in the process. On the evening of April 6, another Friday, Mehmet arrived to take up his carefully chosen position on the prominent hillock of Maltepe at the center of his troops and opposite the portion of the walls that he considered to be the most vulnerable to attack. It was from here that his father Murat had conducted the siege of 1422.
Before the appalled gaze of the defenders on the wall, a tented city sprang up in the plain. According to one writer, “his army seemed as numberless as grains of sand, spread … across the land from shore to shore.” Everything in an Ottoman campaign was conducted with a sense of order and hushed purpose that was all the more threatening for its quietness. “There is no prince,” conceded the Byzantine chronicler Chalcocondylas, “who has his armies and camps in better order, both in abundance of victuals and in the beautiful order they use in encamping without any confusion or embarrassment.” Conical tents were ranged in ordered clusters, each unit with its officer’s tent at its center and a distinctive banner flying from its principal pole. In the heart of the encampment, Mehmet’s richly embroidered red and gold pavilion had been erected with due ritual. The tent of the sultan was the visual symbol of his majesty – the image of his power and an echo of the khanate origins of the sultans as nomadic leaders. Each sultan had a ceremonial tent made at his accession; it expressed his particular kingship. Mehmet’s was sited beyond the outer reach of crossbow fire and was by custom protected by a palisade, ditch, and shields and surrounded in carefully formed concentric circles “as the halo encircles the moon” by the protecting corps of his most loyal troops: “the best of the infantry, archers and support troops and the rest of his personal corps, which were the finest in the army.” Their injunction, on which the safety of the empire depended, was to guard the sultan like the apple of their eye.
The encampment was carefully organized. Standards and ensigns fluttered from the sea of tents: the ak sancak, the supreme white and gold banner of the sultan, the red banner of his household cavalry, the banners of the Janissary infantry – green and red, red and gold – the structural emblems of power and order in a medieval army. Elsewhere the watchers on the walls could make out the brightly colored tents of the viziers and leading commanders, and the signifying hats and clothes of the different corps: the Janissaries in the distinctive white headdresses of the Bektashi order, theazaps in red turbans, cavalry men in pointed turban helmets and chain mail coats, Slavs in Balkan costumes. Watching Europeans commented on the array of men and equipment. “A quarter of them,” declared the Florentine merchant Giacomo Tetaldi, “were equipped with mail coats or leather tunics, of the others many were armed in the French manner, others in the Hungarian and others still had iron helmets, Turkish bows and crossbows. The rest of the soldiers were without equipment apart from the fact that they had shields and scimitars – a type of Turkish sword.” What further astonished the watchers on the walls were the vast numbers of animals. “While conceding that these are found in greater numbers than men in military encampments, to carry supplies and food” noted Chalcocondylas, “only these people … not only take enough camels and mules with them to meet their needs, but also use them as a source of enjoyment, each one of them being eager to show the finest mules or horses or camels.”
The defenders could only survey this purposeful sea of activity with trepidation. As sunset approached, the call to prayer would rise in a sinuous thread of sound above the tents from dozens of points as the muezzins called the men to prayer. Campflres would be lit for the one meal of the day – for the Ottoman army campaigned frugally – and smoke drifted in the wind. A bare 250 yards from their citadel, they could catch the purposeful sounds of camp activity: the low murmuring of voices, the hammering of mallets, the sharpening of swords, the snorting and braying of horses, mules, and camels. And far worse, they could probably make out the fainter sound of Christian worship from the European wing of the army. For an empire intent on holy war, the Ottomans ruled their vassals with remarkable tolerance: “although they were subjects of the Sultan, he had not compelled them to resign their Christian faith, and they could worship and pray as they wished,” Tetaldi noted. The help the Ottomans received from Christian subjects, mercenaries, converts, and technical experts was a theme of repeated lament for the European chroniclers. “I can testify,” howled Archbishop Leonard, “that Greeks, Latins, Germans, Hungarians, Bohemians and men from all the Christian countries were on the side of the Turks … Oh, the wickedness of denying Christ like this!” The vituperation was not wholly justified; many of the Christian soldiers came under duress as vassals of the sultan. “We had to ride forward to Stambol and help the Turks,” remembered Michael the Janissary, recording that the alternative was death. Among those brought unwillingly to the siege was a young Orthodox Russian, Nestor-Iskander. He had been captured by an Ottoman detachment near Moldavia on the fringes of southern Russia and circumcised for conversion to Islam. When his troop reached the siege he evidently escaped into the city and wrote a lively account of the events that ensued.
No one knows exactly how many men Mehmet brought to the siege. The Ottoman genius for mobilizing both regular troops and volunteers on a grand scale repeatedly stunned their opponents into the wildest projections. To the eulogizing Ottoman chroniclers they were simply “a river of steel” “as numerous as the stars.” The European eyewitnesses were more mathematical but given to very large round numbers. Their calculations ranged from 160,000 men to upward of 400,000. It took Michael the Janissary, who had seen Ottoman armies up close, to impose some sense of realism on such “facts”: “know therefore that the Turkish emperor cannot assemble such a large army for pitched battle as people tell of his great might. For some relate that they are innumerable, but it is an impossible thing, that an army could be without number, for every ruler wants to know the number of his army and to have it organised.” The most realistic numerical guess seems to be that of Tetaldi, who soberly calculated that “at the siege there were altogether two hundred thousand men, of whom perhaps sixty thousand were soldiers, thirty to forty thousand of these being cavalry.” In the fifteenth century, when the French and English fought the Battle of Agincourt with a combined total of 3 5,000 men, this was a huge force. If Tetaldi’s estimate was anywhere close, even the number of horses that must have come to the siege was impressive. The rest of the Ottoman host were auxiliaries or hangers-on: supply teams, carpenters, gun-founders, blacksmiths, ordnance corps, as well as “tailors, pastry-cooks, artisans, petty traders, and other men who followed the army in the hope of profit or plunder.”
Constantine had no such difficulty estimating his army. He simply counted it. At the end of March he ordered a census of districts to record “how many able-bodied men there were including monks, and whatever weapons each possessed for defense.” Having collected the returns he entrusted the adding up to his faithful chancellor and lifelong friend, George Sphrantzes. As Sphrantzes recalled, “the Emperor summoned me and said, ‘This task belongs to your sphere of duties and to no-one else, because you are competent to make the necessary calculations and to observe that the proper measures are taken for the defense and that full secrecy is observed. Take these lists and study them at home. Make an accurate assessment of how many hand weapons, shields, bows and cannon we have.’” Sphrantzes duly did the toting up. “I carried out the Emperor’s orders and presented to him a detailed estimate of our resources with considerable gloom.” The reason for his mood was clear: “in spite of the great size of our city, our defenders amounted to 4,773 Greeks, as well as just 200 foreigners.” In addition there were the genuine outsiders, the “Genoese, Venetians and those who came secretly from Galata to help the defense,” who numbered “hardly as many as three thousand,” amounting to something under 8,000 men in total to defend a perimeter wall of twelve miles. Even of these, “the greater part of the Greeks were not skilled in warfare, and fought with shields, swords, lances and bows by natural instinct rather than with any skill.” Desperately lacking were those “skilled in the use of the bow and cross-bow.” Nor was it certain what help the disaffected Orthodox population would give to the cause. Constantine was appalled by the possible effects of this information on morale and determined to suppress it. “The true figure remained a secret known only to the emperor and myself,” Sphrantzes recalled. It was clear that the siege was to be a conflict between the few and many.
Constantine kept this knowledge to himself and set about making final preparations. On April 2, the day that the gates were closed for the last time, he ordered the boom to be hauled across the Golden Horn by ship, from Eugenius, the gate near to the Acropolis Point in the city, to a tower within the sea walls of Galata. The work was undertaken by a Genoese engineer, Bartolamio Soligo, chosen probably for his ability to persuade his fellow Genoese at Galata to let the chain be fixed to their walls. This was a contentious matter. By permitting it, the citizens could be said to be compromising their strict neutrality. It was certain to invoke Mehmet’s ire if the siege went badly, but they agreed. For Constantine it meant that the four-mile stretch of shoreline along the Horn could be left virtually unguarded as long as sufficient naval resources were deployed to protect the boom itself.
As Mehmet spread his army out around the city, Constantine called a council of war with Giustiniani and his other commanders to deploy his small force along the twelve-mile front. He knew that the Horn was secure as long as the boom was held; the other sea walls were also not cause for major concern. The Bosphorus currents were too strong to permit an easy assault by landing craft around the point of the city; the Marmara walls were similarly unpromising for concerted attack because of currents and the pattern of shoals off the shore. It was the land walls, despite their apparent strength, that needed the most detailed attention.
Both sides were well aware of the two weak spots. The first was the central section of wall, called by the Greeks the Mesoteichion, the “middle wall,” which lay between two strategic gates, the St. Romanus and the Charisian, on ridges either side. Between the gates the land sloped down about a hundred feet to the Lycus valley, where the small stream was culverted under the wall and into the city. This section had been the focus of the Ottoman siege of 1422, and Mehmet set up his headquarters on the hill of Maltepe opposite as a clear signal of intent. The second vulnerable zone was the short length of single wall near the Golden Horn that was unmoated, particularly the point where the two walls met at right angles. In late March, Constantine had persuaded the Venetian galley crews to dig out a ditch hurriedly along part of this stretch, but it remained a cause for concern.
Constantine set about organizing his forces accordingly. He divided the fourteen zones of the city into twelve military divisions and allocated his resources. He decided to establish his headquarters in the Lycus valley, so that emperor and sultan almost confronted each other across the walls. Here he stationed the bulk of his best troops, about 2,000 in all. Giustiniani was originally positioned at the Charisian Gate on the ridge above, but subsequently moved his Genoese soldiers to join the emperor in the central section and to take effective day-today command of this critical sector.
Sections of the land wall were then parceled out for defense under the command of “the principal persons of Constantinople.” On the emperor’s right, the Charisian Gate was probably commanded by Theodore of Karystes, “an old but sturdy Greek, highly skillful with the bow.” The next section of the wall north, up to the right-angle turn, was entrusted to the Genoese Bocchiardi brothers who had come “at their own expense and providing their own equipment,” which included handguns and powerful frame-mounted crossbows, and the vulnerable section of single wall that ran around the Blachernae Palace was also largely entrusted to Italians. The Venetian bailey, Minotto, took up residence in the palace itself; the flag of St. Mark flew from its tower beside that of the emperor. One of its gates, the Caligaria, was commanded by “John from Germany,” a professional soldier and “an able military engineer” who was actually Scottish. He was also given the task of managing the city’s supply of Greek fire.
Constantine’s force was truly multinational but was similarly divided along the fault lines of religion, nationality, and commercial rivalry. In order to minimize potential friction between Genoese and Venetian, Orthodox and Catholic, Greek and Italian, he seems to have made it a deliberate policy to intermix the forces in the hope of increasing their interdependence. On his immediate left a section of wall was commanded by his kinsman, “the Greek Theophilus, a noble from the house of Palaiologos, highly erudite in Greek literature and an expert geometrician” – a man who probably knew more about the Iliad than actually defending Troy’s walls. Toward the Golden Gate, the wall was supervised by a succession of Greek, Venetian, and Genoese soldiers, with a noble of the great Byzantine family of Cantacuzenos, Demetrios, at the corner point where the land wall met the sea wall at the Marmara shore.
The defenses along the Marmara shore were even more mixed. Another Contarini – Jacopo – was stationed at the village of Studion, while Orthodox monks watched an adjacent section where little attack was expected. Constantine had then placed his renegade Turkish contingent under the pretender Prince Orhan at the harbor of Eleutherii – well away from the land walls, though their loyalty was hardly to be questioned, given their certain fate should the city fall. Toward the apex of the city, the seashore was manned by a Catalan contingent, and the Acropolis point itself was entrusted to Cardinal Isidore and a force of 200. It says much about the fighting skills of the men on these sections that despite the natural protection afforded by the sea, Constantine decided to supply each tower with two skilled marksmen – one archer plus a crossbowman or handgunner. The Golden Horn itself was guarded by Genoese and Venetian sailors under the command of the Venetian sea captain Trevisano, while the crews of two Cretan ships in the harbor manned a gate near the boom, the Horaia. Protection of the boom itself and the ships in the harbor was in the charge of Aluvixe Diedo.
In order to provide further support for his overstretched “army,” Constantine decided to keep a rapid-reaction force in reserve. Two troops were kept in readiness back from the walls. One, under the grand duke Lucas Notaras, a skilled soldier and “the most important man in Constantinople apart from the emperor,” was stationed in the Petra quarter with a hundred horses and some mobile guns; another under Nicephorus Palaiologos was placed on the central ridge near the ruined church of the Holy Apostles. These reserves comprised about a thousand men.
Constantine brought a lifetime’s experience of warfare and troop management to these arrangements, but he probably had little idea how well this democracy of competing contingents would function together in days ahead. Many of the crucial positions had been given to foreigners because he was uncertain where his own position on church union placed him with the Orthodox faithful of the city. He entrusted keys to four of the principal city gates to leading Venetians and ensured that the Greek commanders on the walls were unionist in their religious leanings. Lucas Notaras, who was probably against union, had been pointedly kept away from having to cooperate with Catholics at the defense of the walls.
As Constantine sought to match his scanty resources to the four-mile extent of the land wall, there was one further crucial decision to make. The triple wall had been designed for defense by a far larger contingent, which could man it in depth – at both the high inner wall and the lower outer one. He lacked the resources adequately to defend both layers, so he was forced to choose where to make a stand. The wall had been bombarded in the 1422 siege, and whereas the outer one had been substantially repaired, the inner had not. Defenders at the previous siege had faced the same choice and had opted – successfully – for a defense of the outer wall. Constantine and his siege expert, Giustiniani, adopted the same strategy. In some quarters it was a controversial decision. “This was always against my advice,” wrote the ever-critical Archbishop Leonard, “I urged us not to desert the protection of our high inner walls,” but this was probably the counsel of perfection.
The emperor resolved to do all he could for the morale of his troops, and knowing that Mehmet feared the possibility of Catholic aid arriving for the Orthodox city, decided on his own small show of force. At his request on April 6 the men of the Venetian galleys disembarked and paraded the length of the land walls in their distinctive European armor “with their banners in front … to give great comfort to the people of the city,” as a highly visible statement that there were Franks at the siege. On the same day the galleys themselves were put on a war footing.
Mehmet for his part sent a small detachment of cavalry up to the city gates, pennants fluttering in the wind, indicating that they had come to parley. They brought with them the traditional invitation to surrender required under Koranic law; “Nor do We punish,” says the Koran, “until We have sent forth a messenger. When We resolve to raze a city, We first give warning to those its people who live in comfort. If they persist in sin, judgement is irrevocably passed, and We destroy it utterly.” Under this formula the Christian defenders could convert to Islam, surrender, and pay the poll tax, or hold out and anticipate three days of plunder, should their city be stormed. The Byzantines had first heard this formula as long ago as 674, and several times since. The response had always been the same: “we accept neither the tax, nor Islam, nor the capitulation of our fortress.” With this denial, the Ottomans could feel that the siege had been sanctioned by Holy Law, and heralds moved among the camp formally proclaiming the start of the siege. Mehmet proceeded to wheel up his guns.
Constantine decided on a policy of maximum visibility. His headquarters was a large tent behind the St. Romanus gate, from which he rode out on his small Arab mare each day with George Sphrantzes and the Spaniard Don Francisco of Toledo, “encouraging the soldiers, inspecting the watches, and searching for those missing from their posts.” He heard mass in whatever church was closest at the time and ensured that a group of monks and priests was attached to each body of men to hear confession and deliver the last rites in battle. Orders were also issued to conduct services day and night for the salvation of the city, and morning liturgies were concluded by procession of the icons through the streets and along the walls to cheer the troops. The watching Muslims could make out the long beards of the Christians and catch the sound of hymns in the spring air.
The morale of the defenders was not improved by the weather. There was a series of minor earthquakes and torrential rain. In the heightened atmosphere, portents were seen and old prophecies remembered. “Icons sweated in the churches, and the pillars and statues of saints,” recalled the chronicler Kritovoulos. “Men and women were possessed and inspired by visions that did not bode well, and soothsayers foretold many misfortunes.” Constantine himself was probably more perturbed by the arrival of the guns. He must have known what to expect from his previous experience of Ottoman artillery fire at the Hexamilion in 1446 when his carefully built wall collapsed in five days and a massacre ensued.
With his logistical skill in coordinating equipment, materials, and huge numbers of men, Mehmet was now ready to act. His supplies of cannonballs and saltpeter, mining equipment, siege engines, and food were collected, counted, and ordered; weapons were cleaned, cannon were hauled into position, and the men – cavalry and infantry, archers and lancers, armorers, gunners, raiders, and miners – had been assembled and brought to a pitch of expectation. The Ottoman sultans were close enough to a shared tribal past to understand the motivations of men and how to work their enthusiasm into a common purpose. Mehmet knew well how to whip up fervor for holy war. The ulema went among the corps, reciting the old prophecies from the Hadith about the city’s fall and its meaning to Islam. Daily Mehmet prayed in public on a carpet in front of the red and gold tent turned east toward Mecca – and also toward St. Sophia. This went hand in hand with the promise of limitless booty if the city had to be taken by force. The lure of the Red Apple was dangled before the expectant gaze of the faithful. It was on these dual promises, so attractive to the tribal raider, of taking plunder while fulfilling the will of God, that Mehmet prepared his strike.
He knew, and his old vizier Halil Pasha knew even better, that speed was now essential. Capturing cities required human sacrifice. The enthusiasm and expectation whipped up for the assault – and the willingness to fill up ditches with trampled corpses – had a limited time frame. Unexpected setbacks could quickly tip morale; among such a condensed body of men, rumor, dissent, and disaffection could ripple through the tents like wind over the grasslands, and even the well-organized camps of the Ottomans were prey to typhus if they tarried too late in the summer. There was clearly danger for Mehmet in this venture. He was aware, through his network of Venetian spies, that help from the West would eventually come by land or sea no matter how quarrelsome and divided the Christian powers might be. As he gazed up from the hill at Maltepe at the rise and fall of the land walls with their close-packed towers, their triple defensive system, and their history of stubborn resistance, he might have expressed public faith in the valor of his troops, but his ultimate confidence was probably in the potential of the guns.
Time was the prime coordinate for Constantine too. The calculation for the defenders was depressingly simple. There was no possibility of lifting the siege by counterattack. Their only hope lay in holding on long enough for some relieving force from the West to muscle its way through the blockade. They had resisted the Arabs in 678. They must hold out now.
If Constantine possessed one trump card it lay in the person of Giovanni Giustiniani. The Genoese had come to the city with a reputation that preceded him as a “man experienced in war.” He understood how to appraise and rectify obvious weaknesses in the fortifications, the best use of defensive weapons such as catapults and handguns, and deployment of the limited numbers of men to greatest advantage. He drilled the defenders in effective techniques of siege fighting and contemplated the opportunities for counterattack from the city’s sally ports. The vicious wars among Italian city-states bred generations of such talented specialists, technical mercenaries who studied city defense as both a science and an art. However, Giustiniani could never have encountered massive artillery bombardment before. The events about to unfold would test his skill to the limit.