Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453

by Roger Crowley

  In this fevered climate, the morale of the civilian population seemed to be disintegrating. Continuous services of intercession were held throughout the city. Day and night an endless cycle of prayer arose from the churches, with the exception of St Sophia, which remained empty and unvisited. Nestor-Iskander witnessed ‘all of the people assembled in the holy churches of God, weeping, sobbing, raising their arms to heaven, and petitioning the grace of God’. To the Orthodox, prayer was a work as essential to the survival of the city as the nightly toil of carrying stones and branches to repair the stockade. It supported the forcefield of divine protection that ringed the city. The more hopeful remembered a set of counter-prophecies: that the city was personally shielded by Mary, Mother of God, and could never be taken because it contained the relics of the True Cross; and that even if the enemy succeeded in entering the city they could only proceed as far as the column of Constantine the Great before an angel would descend from heaven with a sword and put them to flight.

  Despite this, apocalyptic anxiety had been fuelled by the disheartening news from the Venetian brig on 23 May and it reached a crescendo on the night of the full moon. This was probably the next day, 24 May, though dates are uncertain. The moon held a haunting place in the city’s psyche. Rising over the copper dome of St Sophia, shimmering on the calm waters of the Horn and over the Bosphorus, it had been the symbol of Byzantium since ancient times. Like a gold coin dug from the Asian hills night after night, its ebb and flow expressed the antiquity of the city and the endlessly repeated cycles of time through which it had lived – fluctuating, timeless and ominous. Earth’s final millennium was considered to be ruled by the moon, when ‘life will be short, fortune unstable’. By late May particular fear focused on a certain belief that the city could never be taken on a waxing moon; after the 24th the moon would start to wane again and the future would be uncertain. The prospect of this date filled the populace with dread. The whole prophetic history of the city seemed to be drawing to a point.

  It was with apprehension that the people waited for twilight on 24 May. After another day of heavy bombardment the evening suddenly gave way to silence. By all accounts it was a beautiful spring night, a time when Constantinople was at its most magical, the last light still glimmering in the west, the distant sound of water lapping the sea walls. ‘The air was clear and unclouded,’ remembered Barbaro, ‘pure as crystal.’ However as the moon rose at the first hour after sunset the watchers were met by an extraordinary sight. Where there should have been a complete circle of gold, they could see a moon ‘only three days old, with little of it visible’. For four hours it remained sickly and minimal, then agonizingly, it ‘grew little by little to its full circle, and at the sixth hour of the night, it formed the complete circle’. The partial eclipse struck the defenders with the force of prophecy. Was not the crescent moon the symbol of the Ottomans, visible on standards fluttering over Mehmet’s camp? According to Barbaro ‘the Emperor was greatly afraid of this sign, and all of his lords … but the Turks held a great celebration in their camp at the sign, because it seemed now that victory was theirs’. For Constantine, struggling to maintain the morale of the populace, it was a heavy blow.

  Seal showing the Hodegetria

  The next day a decision was taken, perhaps at the instigation of Constantine, to lift the spirits of the people by making another direct appeal to the Virgin. Huge belief was placed in the supernatural powers of the Mother of God. Her most holy icon, the Hodegetria, ‘the one who shows the way’, was a talisman credited with miraculous powers. It was believed to have been painted by St Luke the Evangelist, and had an ancient and honourable role in successful defences of the city. It had been processed along the ramparts during the Avar siege of 626. Again in 718 the Hodegetria was credited with saving Constantinople from the Arabs. Accordingly a huge crowd gathered on the morning of 25 May at the icon’s shrine, the church of St Saviour in Chora near the city walls, to seek protection from the Virgin. The Hodegetria, mounted on a wooden pallet, was lifted onto the shoulders of a team of men drawn from the confraternity of the icon, and a penitent procession set off down the steep, narrow streets in traditional order: in front a cross-bearer; behind, the black robed priests swinging their censers, then the laity, men, women and children probably walking barefoot. Cantors led the people in holy song. The haunting quartertones of the hymns, the lamentations of the people, the clouds of incense and the traditional prayers to the protecting Virgin – all rose in the morning air. Over and over the citizens repeated their powerful cry for psychic protection: ‘Do thou save thy city, as thou knowest and willest. We put thee forward as our arms, our rampart, our shield, our general: do thou fight for thy people.’ The exact route for these processions was said to be dictated by a force emanating from the icon itself, like the tug of a divining rod.

  In this charged atmosphere of fear and devotion, what followed was utterly devastating. The icon suddenly and inexplicably slipped from the hands of the bearers ‘without any reason or visible force and fell on the ground’. Horror-stricken, people rushed forward with wild shouts to restore the Virgin to her stand, but the icon seemed to have become fastened to the earth as if weighted with lead. It was impossible to lift. For a considerable time, the priests and bearers struggled, with shouts and prayers, to wrestle the miraculous image from the mud. Eventually it was raised again but everyone was struck with fear at this ill-omened event. And worse was soon to follow. The shakily reformed procession had hardly gone further when it was hit by a violent storm. Thunder and lightning cracked and spat across the noon sky; torrential rain and stinging hail lashed the bedraggled procession so violently that people ‘were unable either to stand up against it or move forward’. The icon came to an unsteady halt. Torrents of floodwater surged down the narrow street with ominous force, threatening to sweep children away in their path: ‘many following were in danger of being carried away and drowned by the force and terrible power of the water if some of the men had not quickly grabbed them and with difficulty hauled them out of the rushing torrent’. The procession had to be abandoned. The crowd dispersed, taking with them a clear interpretation of their plight. The Virgin had refused their prayers; the storm ‘certainly foretold the imminent destruction of everything and that, like the torrential, violent water, it would carry off and destroy everything’.

  The next morning they awoke to discover the city blanketed in thick fog. There was evidently no wind; the air was still and the fog clung to the city all day. Everything was muffled, silent, invisible. The eerie atmosphere tightened the mood of hysteria. It was as if the weather itself were undermining the will of the defenders. There could only be one possible interpretation for such unseasonable fog. It indicated the ‘departure of God and his leaving the city, forsaking and turning away from it completely. For God hides himself in cloud and so appears and again disappears.’ Towards evening the atmosphere seemed to grow even thicker and a ‘great darkness began to gather over the city’. And something even stranger was witnessed. Initially the sentries on the walls observed Constantinople to be illuminated by lights as if the enemy were burning the city. Alarmed, people ran to see what was happening and cried aloud when they looked up at the dome of St Sophia. A strange light was flickering on the roof. The excitable Nestor-Iskander described what he saw: ‘at the top of the window, a large flame of fire issuing forth; it encircled the entire neck of the church for a long time. The flame gathered into one; its flame altered, and there was an indescribable light. At once it took to the sky. Those who had seen it were benumbed; they began to wail and cry out in Greek: ‘Lord have mercy! The light itself has gone up to heaven.’ It seemed clear to the faithful that God had abandoned Constantinople. In the Ottoman camp the unnaturally heavy atmosphere and the unearthly light had a similar effect on the troops. There was uncertainty and panic at these apparitions. Within his tent, Mehmet had been unable to sleep. When he saw the glow over the city he was initially troubled and sent for his mullahs to int
erpret the portents. They came and duly proclaimed the omens favourable to the Muslim cause: ‘This is a great sign: The city is doomed.’

  The God-protected city

  The following day, a deputation of priests and ministers went to Constantine to express their forebodings. The mysterious light was duly described and they tried to persuade the emperor to seek a safer place from which to mount effective resistance to Mehmet: ‘Emperor: weigh all of what has been said about this city. God granted the light in the time of Emperor Justinian for the preservation of the great holy church and this city. But in this night, it departed for heaven. This signifies that God’s grace and generosity have gone from us: God wishes to hand over our city to the enemy … we beseech you: Leave the city so that we will not all perish!’ From a mixture of emotion and sheer exhaustion, Constantine collapsed to the ground in a dead faint and remained unconscious for a long time. When he came round, his response was unchanged: to leave the city would be to invite immortal ridicule on his name. He would remain and die with his subjects if need be. He furthermore ordered them not to spread words of discomfort among the people: ‘do not allow them to fall into despair and weaken their effort in battle’.

  Others responded differently. On the night of 26 May, a Venetian sea captain, one Nicholas Giustiniani – unrelated to Giovanni Giustiniani, the hero of the siege – slipped the chain and sailed off under the wing of night. A few smaller boats put out from the small harbours along the Marmara sea walls, dodged the naval blockade and made for the ports of the Greek-speaking Aegean. Some of the richer citizens sought refuge on the Italian ships within the Horn, judging them to offer the best chance of escape in the event of a final catastrophe. Others began to look for safe bolt-holes within the city. Few had any illusions what defeat might bring.

  *

  Within the mystical framework of the medieval world, the astrological portents and unseasonable weather that destroyed the city’s morale were clear signs of the will of God. In fact the most likely explanation for these terrifying phenomena lay far away in the Pacific Ocean and rivalled even the most lurid vision of Armageddon. Some time around the start of 1453 the volcanic island of Kuwae, 1,200 miles east of Australia, literally blew itself up. Eight cubic miles of molten rock were blasted into the stratosphere with a force two million times that of the Hiroshima bomb. It was the Krakatoa of the Middle Ages, an event that dimmed the world’s weather. Volcanic dust was propelled across the earth on global winds, lowering temperatures and blighting harvests from China to Sweden. South of the Yangtze River, an area with a climate as mild as Florida, it snowed continuously for forty days. Contemporary tree-ring records from England show years of stunted growth. The sulphur-rich particles from Kuwae could well have been responsible for the unseasonably cool and unstable mixture of rain, hail, fog and snow that blighted the city throughout the spring. Suspended in the atmosphere they would also have created lurid sunsets and strange optical effects. It could have been volcanic particles, alone or in conjunction with the effect of St Elmo’s fire – the glow from the discharges of atmospheric electricity – that bathed the copper dome of the cathedral in ominous ribbons of fire on 26 May, and conjured for the defenders these visions of oblivion. (Lurid light effects after the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 similarly alarmed people in New York, but living in a more scientific age, they tended to assume huge fires were raging and sent for the fire brigade.)

  The febrile atmosphere of foreboding was not confined to the city. By the last week of May the Ottoman camp was also suffering a severe crisis of morale. A muffled discontent fluttered among the Islamic banners. It was now the fifth month of the Arabian lunar year; for seven weeks they had assaulted the city by land and sea. They had endured wretched spring weather and had suffered terrible casualties at the walls. Unknown numbers of trampled dead had been carried away from the choked ditches; day after day the smoke of funeral pyres rose over the plain. And yet as they looked up from the sea of ordered tents, the walls still stood; and where they had been demolished by the great guns, the long earth rampart surmounted by barrels had risen in their place as the taunt of a stubborn enemy. The double-headed eagle of the emperor still fluttered over the ramparts while the lion of St Mark over the imperial palace served as the reminder of the presence of Western aid, and the fear that reinforcements might be on their way. No armoured host could sustain a lengthy siege as effectively as the Ottomans. They understood the essential rules of camp life better than any Western army – the rapid burning of corpses, the protection of water sources and the sanitary disposal of excrement were essential disciplines in Ottoman warfare – but gradually the mathematics of the siege were stacking against them. It has been estimated that in the Middle Ages a besieging army of 25,000 men, a third the size of that at Constantinople, must transport 9,000 gallons of water and thirty tons of fodder a day to provision itself. In a sixty-day siege such an army would need to remove 1 million gallons of human and animal urine and 4,000 tons of solid biological waste. Soon the summer heat would add to the Muslims’ material discomforts and the threat of disease. The clock was ticking on Ottoman resolve.

  In reality, after seven weeks of warfare, an immense weariness was affecting both sides. There was recognition that a final outcome could not long be postponed. Nerves were strained to breaking point. In this climate the struggle for Constantinople had become a personal contest between Mehmet and Constantine for the morale of their men. While Constantine watched confidence disintegrate inside the city, an identical affliction mysteriously struck the rank and file of the Ottoman army. The exact sequence and dating of events remains uncertain. The arrival of the Venetian brigantine on 23 May, bringing news that that there was no relieving fleet, was perhaps perceived by the Ottomans as the outrider of that fleet. The next day word spread quickly among the tents that a powerful fleet was approaching the Dardanelles while a Hungarian crusader army under John Hunyadi, ‘the redoubtable white knight’, had already crossed the Danube and was marching on Edirne. The most likely explanation is that Constantine had allowed this message to seep out in a last attempt to undermine Ottoman morale. It was immediately successful. Uncertainty and alarm rippled across the plain. The men remembered, in the words of the chronicler, that ‘many kings and sultans had aspired … and had assembled and equipped large armies, but no one had reached the foot of the fortress. They had withdrawn in pain, wounded and disillusioned.’ A mood of despondency gripped the camp, and if Leonard of Chios is to be believed, ‘the Turks began to shout against their Sultan’. For the second time doubt and a sense of danger gripped the Ottoman high command and the old divisions over the conduct of the siege started to resurface.

  For Mehmet it was the moment of crisis. Failure to take the city might prove fatal to his reputation but time and the patience of his army were running out. He needed to regain the confidence of his men and to act decisively. The night of the eclipse provided a lucky moment to bolster flagging morale. The religious zeal of the mullahs and dervishes who had come to the siege ensured that a favourable interpretation of the lunar eclipse was spread throughout the camp, but the decision to continue with the siege remained uncertain. With a characteristic mixture of shrewdness and cunning, he decided to make one more attempt to persuade Constantine to surrender peacefully.

  Probably around 25 May he sent an emissary to the city, Ismail, a renegade Greek nobleman, to confront the Byzantines with their probable fate. He appealed to the hopelessness of their situation: ‘Men of Greece, your fate is indeed balanced on a razor’s edge. Why then do you not send an ambassador to discuss peace with the Sultan? If you will entrust this matter to me, I shall arrange for him to offer you terms. Otherwise, your city will be enslaved, your wives and your children will be sent into slavery, and you yourselves will utterly perish.’ Cautiously they decided to investigate the proposition, but resolved to hedge their bets by sending a man ‘not of high rank’, rather than risk the life of one of the leaders of the city. This unfortunate individual
was brought to the red and gold tent to prostrate himself before the sultan. Mehmet tersely offered two choices: the city could either offer a huge annual tribute of 100,000 bezants, or the whole population could abandon the city, ‘taking their possessions with them, and go wherever each one of them wished’. The offer was relayed to the emperor and his council. Paying the tribute was clearly beyond the means of the poverty-stricken city, and the notion of sailing away and abandoning Constantinople remained inconceivable to Constantine. His reply was to the effect that he would surrender all that he had, with the exception of the city. Mehmet retorted that the only choices left were surrender of the city, death by the sword or conversion to Islam. Perhaps underlying this, there was a feeling in the city that Mehmet’s offer had not been sincere, that he had sent Ismail ‘as a means of testing the state of mind of the Greeks … to find out what the Greeks thought of their situation, and how secure their position was’. For Mehmet, however, voluntary surrender was still the preferred option. It would preserve the fabric of a city that he intended for his capital; under the laws of Islam, he would be compelled to allow his troops three days of pillage if it had to be taken by force.