April mornings in Constantinople were often hazy. If the previous day had been clear and warm, the mist could last until the sun had risen high in the sky. This reminded Nicolo of the early mornings he went to work at the University of Padua in Venice. As his boat worked its way up the Prenta river it would pass through milky white patches of fog as thick as the clouds in the sky. On the morning of April 2, 1453 as well, the haze was so thick that one couldn’t even see the opposite shore of the Golden Horn.
That morning, Nicolo and Trevisan were standing together on the wharf of the Constantinople side of the Golden Horn, watching two small boats that had just left dock rowing slowly towards the far shore. Each of the boats, oars moving in sync, was pulling a log connected to chains woven from iron rods twice as thick as a large man’s arms. One end of the huge chain was already latched to one of the towers on the Constantinople side, and firmly secured with a leather web. The other end of the chain that the two boats were carrying across would be latched onto a tower in Galata, thereby blocking passage through the Golden Horn. The plan had been Trevisan’s and had been approved by the Emperor; anything to slow down the enemy, who would have a fleet ten times as large as theirs, would be useful even if it didn’t stop them completely. While making it difficult for the enemy to enter the Golden Horn, it would also make it difficult for them to escape: nonetheless, nobody among the Greeks or the Latins objected.
The heavy chain disappeared from view as its massive weight pulled it under the surface. All they could see were a row of wooden rafts being pulled along behind the boats. Even after the chain had been completely secured at both ends, the rafts would continue to serve the purpose of preventing the chains from sinking to the bottom. Since the purpose of the chain was to prevent ships from passing, it would be useless if it weren’t taut across the surface. This work, which demanded more skill than one would imagine, was being overseen by the Genoese Bartolomeo Soligo.
In time the two boats returned. Although the row of wooden rafts was swaying in the current, it was still floating on the surface. As the day warmed the stubborn Constantinople fog began to clear quickly. Nicolo said goodbye to Trevisan, who was awaiting Soligo’s final report, and headed to the Venetian merchant center. There he heard the news that the Ottoman advance guard was getting closer by the day.
Magistrate Lomellino was deep in gloom as he returned to his official residence after having gone to see the work being done on the boom. One end was attached to a tower on the easternmost part of Pera’s city wall. When the Emperor had implored him for at least that much help, there was no way he could refuse. This was not because he was weak-willed: after all, Constantinople had shown that it could withstand a Turkish seige the last time it happened, thirty years earlier. Even though the Genoese community intended to maintain a stance of neutrality as instructed by the home government, as the man responsible for Galata’s future he had to hedge his bets by keeping in mind that Constantinople could withstand an attack this time as well.
At the same time, it would be impossible to hide from the Sultan the fact that one end of the chain was linked to a tower in Galata. There were more than a few in the settlement who felt that they were too blatantly taking sides with the Byzantines, and were unhappy about the boom. Nonetheless, Lomellino didn’t envy Ambassador Minotto and Admiral Trevisan, who were leading a Venetian community that was firmly united in its support of the Byzantine Empire. Even if he were jealous, there would be nothing he could do about it anyway. He decided that when the Sultan’s tent had been erected he would send an envoy bearing greetings.
When Trevisan finished his work with the placement of the boom, he rushed to the Imperial Palace in the northwest corner of the city for another war council meeting. Although this meeting was no different from countless others they had held since the end of the previous year, there was an unspoken assumption among the participants that this day’s meeting would be the last before the fighting actually began. The division of defensive responsibilities that had previously been determined was quickly confirmed without any objections.
Constantinople was shaped like a triangular peninsula with rounded edges. One of the bases of that triangle, the side facing the Sea of Marmara, was directly buffeted by strong winds and fierce currents coming from the Bosphorus. For that reason, in the more than 1100-year history of the Byzantine Empire, no enemy had ever attacked from that direction. Thus they believed that a single-layered wall and a limited number of defenders would suffice to protect this sector. This responsibility was given to Cardinal Isidore and two hundred soldiers under his command. Half of these soldiers were ready to act as a reserve army to defend the landward wall if necessary. Spanish consul Pere Julia and his Catalonian regiment would be positioned south of Isidore’s troops, and to their south was the Ottoman prince-in-exile Orhan (who had lived almost his whole life in Constantinople) and his Turkish subordinates.
A portion of the wall facing the Golden Horn, like the wall facing the Marmara, consisted of only one layer, and this section was incomparably better protected from the Bosphorus currents and the north winds. The only time that Constantinople had been conquered—during the Fourth Crusade of 1204—it was because an attack on precisely this wall had managed to succeed. Any strategy to take Constantinople would hinge on the successful conquest of the Golden Horn. The defensive boom was meant precisely to prevent that from happening. The defense of the Golden Horn itself had been entrusted to the Venetians, so it only made sense for them to take charge of defending that portion of the wall as well. The part of the wall where most of the docks were clustered was their responsibility.
Worried that handing over the defense of such a crucial part of the wall to the Latins would be met with resistance among the Greeks, the Emperor tried to smooth things out by assigning defense of that part of the wall from the docks to the Imperial Palace to the second highest-ranking man in the Byzantine Empire after himself, the Megadux (Grand Duke) Notaras and the court nobles under his command. The Supreme Commander of the Christian fleet within the Golden Horn would be Admiral Gabriele Trevisan.
However, it was clear to one and all that the part of the wall that would bear the brunt of the attack would be that facing land. When they had attacked thirty years earlier, the Ottomans had done so by land. The majority of the defensive army would have to be placed along that part of the wall.
The single-layer stretch of the wall encircling the Imperial Palace would be defended by an army of Venetians under Ambassador Minotto. Although he was a citizen of Florence, Tedaldi, who had close ties to the Venetian merchants, was also a part of this detail. Giustiniani’s group of five hundred Genoese mercenaries would defend the portion of the wall south of the palace. The Mesoteichion section, where the wall dipped into the Lycus Valley, the emperor himself (whose original plan was to guard the palace) would defend with Greek elites. Further south, where the elevation began to rise again, groups of Greeks, Venetians, and Genoese would each defend a major gate. The student Ubertino joined a Venetian force, led by a man named Gritti, that was defending Pegae Gate.
It had been the Emperor’s idea to mix the different nationalities up in this fashion; he felt that this would not only lessen the animosities among the various groups, but also allow him to make the most of each group’s respective capabilities. The fact that the commander-in-chief was the Emperor, the commander of naval forces the Venetian Trevisan, and the commander of the army the Genoese Giustiniani reflected this intention. This composite army so far seemed to exhibit such cohesion and unity, regardless of who was leading them, and seemed to be so overflowing with the will to fight, that the Emperor’s care and foresight in this regard was probably not even necessary.
Tedaldi, who was with the Venetian detail defending the palatial wall, had just climbed to the top of one of the towers along that part of the wall together with two knights. It was their job to hoist the flags of the Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Venice from the top of this tower, which was the farthest to the northwest of any of them. The knights, one Greek and one Venetian, both experienced at this kind of work, were quickly able to hoist up the Byzantine flag, a sky-blue background with a silver-colored double-headed eagle, and the Venetian flag, red with the lion of San Marco in gold.
The two great flags could be seen fluttering together in the wind from any point in the city: from the center of Constantinople, from the defensive positions along the city wall, from the ships sailing the Golden Horn, and from the Genoese settlement in Galata. Needless to say, the Turkish army that would no doubt assemble near the landward part of the wall would see the paired flags as well, perhaps to their displeasure. Flying the flags together had been the emperor’s idea, and Ambassador Minotto had readily agreed. With this, the Venetian settlement of Constantinople would give public notice to the Sultan that they were fighting on the Byzantine side.
Ubertino, assigned to a section of the wall near the Pagae Gate, hadn’t been able to sleep at all the night before. This was not because he had been assigned sentry duty. Quite the opposite: he had been told to rest and so found a nook at the base of a tower along the inner wall against which to rest himself. No matter how hard he tried, however, he just could not fall asleep. This would be the twenty-year-old’s first battle. When the sun began to rise that morning, April 4th, he could stand it no longer, got up, and quietly left. He climbed to the top of one of the towers along the inner wall. He was now more than twenty-five meters above ground level. Below him was the outer wall stretching out as far as the eye could see, and on the other side of it the wooden protective stockade. Along the towers of the outer wall he could see the sentries who had stayed up all night.
It happened then. The far horizon, still hazy in the morning mist, began to sway back and forth. No, actually, the horizon itself seemed to be swelling forward. As the mist cleared away the moving line grew clearer, more distinct. Like a wave extending all the way across the horizon it slowly drew closer. Never in his life had Ubertino seen such a massive army. A throng of people who hadn’t been there before were now crowded behind him. Like him, they held their breath and merely watched the wave crawling closer and closer. This, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was the main Ottoman army that had reportedly left Adrianople ten days earlier.
Thirteen was not too young an age at which to serve as a page. Yet this was Tursun’s first opportunity to take part in a real battle in the service of his young lord. The wall of Constantinople, the strongest, most impregnable rampart in the whole of the Mediterranean stretched out before his eyes, filling the young boy with nothing short of awe.
“Should a wall as great as this really be destroyed?” he thought to himself, only to have his reverie broken by the seldom heard sound of his lord’s voice screaming in rage.
“What is Zaganos Pasha doing?”
Without waiting for his lord to say another word, the boy jumped on his horse and rode off to summon Zaganos.
Like Tursun, this was Mihajlovic’s first time to see the wall of Constantinople, and like him he looked on it with awe; yet his feeling of utter gloom was quite the opposite of the young page’s elation. His pride and that of the Serbian riders under him had been shattered by the order that had just arrived from the Sultan:
“We don’t need you as riders any longer. Form yourselves up as an infantry unit.”
Mehmed had even ordered them to kill their horses. The meat would not be used to feed Turkish soldiers, who only ate lamb, but instead would be wrapped in sheepskin and submerged at the landward end of the Golden Horn for later use by Christian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army. The 1,500 riders who constituted the cream of the Serbian army along with their 3,000 attendants were thus turned into an infantry regiment of 4,500 who would be held in the rear for the time, but no doubt deployed to the front line when necessary.
Tursun did not have to round the Golden Horn to get to Zaganos Pasha’s encampment on a hillside behind Galata. When he had kicked his horse twice, he spotted Zaganos Pasha rushing toward him, scattering soldiers away who were assuming their positions. Zaganos, who believed himself to be the only top minister trusted by Sultan Mehmed, threw the page a glance and did not even stop. The vizier began galloping towards the Sultan’s encampment and Tursun could only turn his own horse around and follow.
Mehmed the Second was seated on his throne with his ministers lined up to his right. They were in the center of the sultan’s exceptionally large red tent, which was embroidered with dazzling gold thread. Present were the Grand Vizier Halil Pasha, the commander of the Anatolian Corps Ishak Pasha, and the commander of the European Corps Karadja Pasha. Zaganos Pasha took his seat after arriving late and prostrating himself before the Sultan. To Mehmed’s left were his generals, admirals, and senior imams. In other words, the leading personages of the Ottoman Empire were all assembled in one place. The twenty-one-year-old ruler seemed to have no intention of asking the senior ministers who had served under his father for any opinions or advice. He merely issued a series of terse orders to each of the men and with that the strategy meeting was ended.
The Anatolian Corps under Ishak Pasha would set up camp along the landward portion of Constantinople’s wall from the southern tip to the Lycus Valley. The sultan’s encampment, as well as that of the Turkish riders under Halil Pasha and the Janissaries, would be established north of the Lycus Valley in the area focused on the Military Gate of Saint Romanus. The European Corps under Karadja Pasha would camp further north, from the Gate of Charisius to the part of the wall surrounding the Imperial Palace. The Sultan ordered furthermore that the irregular troops would set up their formations behind those of the two main armies. Zaganos Pasha’s division, made up of soldiers drawn from various different groups, were setting up formation in the hills of Galata from the north of the Golden Horn to the Bosphorus—in other words, they would encircle Galata.
These orders were merely the final confirmation of instructions that had previously been handed down, and the ministers merely bowed their heads in acknowledgment. They could only stare at Mehmed in utter disbelief, however, when he uttered the following words:
“Tomorrow morning, the entire army will advance to a line 1.6 kilometers from the wall.”
That same day the entire army had just finished setting up camp along a line four kilometers away from the wall. Now he was telling them to break down camp and set it up again the next day 1.6 kilometers away from the wall. Yet none of the senior ministers, including the most senior of them all, Halil Pasha, dared question the young ruler’s orders. The next day, after having finally completed the troublesome task of re-erecting all of their tents 1.6 kilometers away from the wall, they received a second order from the sultan:
“Tomorrow morning, the entire army will advance to a point 400 meters away from the wall.”
The reason for all this wasn’t clear even to the Grand Vizier himself, but Tursun, who never left his lord’s side even for a moment, understood.
During the first day of the encampment, when only the Sultan’s tent was standing and the others hadn’t been completed yet, a group of Genoese representatives led by the Magistrate Lomellino had come to pay a visit. While the Sultan granted them an audience, his attention was focused on one of the men in particular for some reason, whom he asked to remain even when the others had left. This man, perhaps because he had been put off guard by the sultan’s unexpected politeness, or perhaps driven to extremes by his worry over the fate of the Genoese settlement, freely and honestly answered all of the Sultan’s questions. Mehmed learned in the course of this questioning that, although the Byzantine army also possessed a number of cannons, more often than not, when the fuse was lit, not only would the stone cannonball not fire, but the cannon itself would explode and destroy the portion of the wall on which it was housed. This report concurred with a similar assessment made by the Italian scholar of antiquity Ciriaco d’Ancona, who was very familiar with the situation in Constantinople and whom the Sultan had received recently as an honored guest.
Since the fact that the enemy’s cannons presented no threat was the only reason for drawing the encampments closer, it would of course have been easier on the troops simply to move them to the 400 meter line the first time around instead of making them move twice. Even Tursun couldn’t imagine why the Sultan had done so. It was clear, however, that the atmosphere pervading the imperial court was completely different from that of the previous Sultan. Tursun knew that his lord was more feared than loved by his ministers and retainers. The truly mysterious thing was that everybody, from the ministers to the lowliest foot soldiers, all moved as if they were no more than the limbs of Mehmed’s own body; an army of over 150,000 men set up camp three times in quick succession without trouble or complaint.
As they approached the 400 meter line, they felt an almost physical sense of oppression from the sheer size of the city wall. On the morning of April 7th, Tursun was accompanying the Sultan as he inspected the full army after they had completed their final encampment. Tursun noticed a group of generals staring down at them from the top of the outer wall near the Military Gate of Saint Romanus. In the center was a man astride a white horse, his crimson mantle flapping in the wind: the Emperor, no doubt. It seemed that Mehmed had noticed them as well. He boldly turned his black horse towards the wall and his young page had no choice but to follow.
Mehmed the Second may have had a youthful audacity, but he also wasn’t a man to forget to take precautions: he did not ride close enough to the wall to be within the enemy’s range. After staring at the men atop the wall for a time, he turned back around. Tursun, who had to turn his horse around again to follow him back, heard the Sultan mutter to himself, “It seems an imperial ruler can go nowhere without a white steed.”
The heavy silence that reigned over the citizens and defenders of Constantinople continued unabated for a long time after the enemy’s arrival. The bells of the churches were silent at Mass time. Even the people on the streets seemed to be walking as quietly as possible. All that could be heard were the sounds of the enemy’s army advancing forward outside of the city walls, a mass of indistinct sounds like that of the wind.
Nicolo looked down with bated breath from a gap in Charisius Gate at the Turkish soldiers spreading like floodwater across the plain below. Like everybody else, including the Western military leadership, he could not figure out why the Turks had moved forward twice in such quick succession.
Although he had seen Turkish soldiers before, he couldn’t help but be surprised at how meager the equipment of their commanders was: not a single one of them was dressed in armor, and surely it couldn’t have been better for the common soldiers.
In contrast, the defenders’ armor was of such high quality that it could have been put on display as representative of Western armor technology at its finest. Shining so brightly it could have been silver, the steel armor worn by the soldiers arrayed along the top of the wall created a magnificent spectacle; it was clear at a glance that this was Milanese armor of the highest quality, although the ones wearing it were not so much the Venetians and the Genoese, but rather the Byzantines. The armor had been imported to Constantinople from Milan, which was famous for producing the finest armor in the West by Venetian and Genoese merchants.
As might be expected from a highly educated doctor, however, Nicolo did not allow the magnificence of the defender’s equipment to give him false comfort. The poorly equipped Turkish soldiers below, seemingly as tiny as ants, enjoyed an overwhelming numerical superiority. He tried to estimate their numbers by counting the number of soldiers in the nearest encampment and then extrapolating from there. Guessing that the troops on the Galatian side that he could not see amounted to a quarter of the army, he could safely estimate that the entire Ottoman force was around 160,000.
Although Ambassador Minotto and Admiral Trevisan agreed with Nicolo’s estimate, others held different opinions. The Florentine merchant Tedaldi believed them to number 200,000 and the emperor’s confidant Phrantzes insisted on roughly the same number. In general the estimates made by the Greeks were high: Cardinal Isidore thought there were 300,000, and there were even those who believed the Turks had 400,000 soldiers. Nicolo thought to himself with some sarcasm that this was yet another example of the Byzantines’ flights of fancy, and so didn’t press his opinion on them.
Once the Ottomans had completed their encampments, the leaders of the defense were able to come up with a strategy. Anybody could guess from the location of the Sultan’s tent that the main thrust of the attack would be directed at the lowest point of the Lycus Valley—in other words, the Military Gate of Saint Romanus. Giustiniani and the five hundred mercenaries under his command moved south from their previously assigned location to join forces with the elite Greek troops under the Emperor in order to help defend this most problematic sector. The gap left by the Genoese mercenaries’ departure was filled by a Venetian regiment. Tedaldi thought, however, that this would cause the number of defenders, already small to begin with, to be scattered even more thinly.
The next day, April 8th, a gentle rain was falling. Although they believed it unlikely that the attack would commence in the rain, the defensive forces were on guard at their respective positions. The surprise that befell them that day didn’t take the form of arrows and bullets, however—it took the form of the great cannon being dragged into position by a massive team of men and oxen. Even from a great distance, Nicolo could tell that the work of positioning the cannon, with the men helping the oxen along, was exceedingly difficult. First they had to build a foundation of large stones, then cover that with a platform of thick planks, and then somehow slide the cannon atop those planks. The cannon was so heavy, however, that even in such a light rain it kept sliding and tumbling back. When this happened a scream rang out and those men who weren’t working hard enough were violently pulled out of the way and another attempt was made. It struck Nicolo that the oxen were treated better than the men, and the cannon was treated better than the oxen.
The defenders didn’t just idly stand by while this work continued for the next three days. As soon as they thought of countermeasures against the cannon, they immediately went to work. They fortified the protective fence that rose ten meters away from the outer wall. In front of this third wall they lined up bags filled with leather and wool to soften the impact of incoming cannonballs. On top of the fence they lined up barrels filled with dirt, which made it somewhat taller. Not only the male soldiers but also the women of the city took part in this labor.
They couldn’t simply worry about defending themselves on the landward side, however. Reports were coming in that the Turkish fleet was making its way north up the Sea of Marmara. The Christian naval forces immediately went on full alert.
On April 9th, a fleet of ten ships—five large Genoese sailing vessels, three Cretan ships, one Anconian ship, and one Byzantine ship—took up their positions inside the boom. An additional reserve fleet made up of two Venetian naval galleys, three large Venetian merchant galleys, five Byzantine galleys, and six other ships was waiting in harbor. Six smaller boats, which could serve no defensive capacity by themselves, were also waiting at dock. The galleys were held in reserve because they had greater maneuverability than the sailboats.
There was another excellent reason to use the large Genoese sailing vessels as the first line of defense. Two of them were in the 1500-ton class, with one ship each in the 700-ton, 400-ton, and 300-ton classes. This reflected the fact that Genoa was a deep-water harbor that could accommodate such large boats. More importantly, these ships rose to an imposing height above water level, which made them appear from shore almost like a wall stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn. Even a complete novice could see that they were more appropriate as a first line of defense than the 200-ton class Venetian men-’o-war. But this arrangement also symbolized the different temperaments of the two city-states: while the motto of the Venetian art of commerce was accuracy, cooperation, and continuity, the Genoese were individualists who preferred one-shot gambits.
On the 11th of April, the citizens of Constantinople seemed to shift their attention away from the cannons and towards the approaching Turkish fleet. They could only gasp in surprise as they watched the fleet pass. Led by the Ottoman Admiral Baltaoglu, it was so large that it took over half a day for all of the ships to pass by. By Nicolo’s count, they had twenty galleys, seventy to eighty large vessels, twenty to twenty-five transport ships, and some smaller boats for a total of 145 vessels. Tedaldi’s guess was a smaller number, but in this case, as in others, the guesses hazarded by the Greeks were markedly larger than those of the Westerners. Phrantzes guessed that they had 400 ships, and although that was a minority opinion, most guesses were still in the range of 300 ships or more.
“You can’t trust what a Greek says, when you’re fighting a war.” This had become Trevisan’s stock phrase, one he uttered whenever a strategy meeting ended.
The newly-arrived Turkish fleet dropped anchor near the mouth of the Bosphorus, at a point the Greeks called the “Double Columns” which was protected from the strong currents and north winds. They would use that part of the sea as a forward base from which to begin immediate attempts at breaking through the boom, an inevitability for which the defenders would have to be prepared.
As anxieties about the threat from the sea began to peak, the landward defenders were finishing their final preparations; the atmosphere was pervaded by the quiet that precedes battle. The Turks had their large cannons in place: two aimed at the Golden Gate, three at the Pegae Gate, four aimed squarely at the Military Gate of Saint Romanus, and three aimed at the Gate of Caligaria in front of the Imperial Palace, for a total of twelve cannons. The pale moonlight made the dew-covered barrels of the cannon seem almost to levitate off the ground. The nightly north winds the last few days had been unseasonably cold. Ubertino was on sentry duty, pacing back and forth along his portion of the wall, trying to keep himself warm, but it seemed as if the black barrels of the three cannons were following him as he walked back and forth. The enemy camp had turned ominously silent.
On the morning of April 12th, as if to herald the warmth radiating from the rising sun, the Turkish cannons began firing, one after the other. The massive stone cannonballs screamed across the sky. All the defenders could do was to try to evade the stones raining down upon them. The enemy seemed to lack the ability to hit specific targets with precision, but that didn’t matter: their only target was the long, high city wall. Anywhere would do. When the cannonballs struck the defensive railings or outer walls, they heaved up an enveloping cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, it revealed the pitiful sight of crushed railings and gutted walls: the bags filled with leather and wool had done absolutely nothing to protect them.
This was not to say that everything was going well for the artillerymen. Perhaps because the mountings were not adequately secured, the cannons swayed violently from side to side whenever they were fired. A few of them even slipped off of their mountings. The Great Cannon was all the more difficult to handle—even when treated with the greatest care, it could only manage seven shots in one day. Nonetheless, those seven shots alone inflicted more damage than all of the other cannons put together. Nobody in the Byzantine Court had known about this cannon built by the Hungarian whom they had once laughed out of their city. And none of them imagined that these cringe-inducing explosions would continue unabated for the next seven weeks, perhaps because none of them had the time to indulge in worry: from this day onward, they would spend their nights trying to repair the damage done by the cannons during the day.
On the naval front, however, it was the Christian forces who had the upper hand. On the same day that the cannon barrage began, the Turkish navy set out from its base hoping to break through the defensive chain and enter the Golden Horn. The defensive fleet under the command of Admiral Trevisan, arrayed along the boom, braced themselves for the assault. The archers aboard the Ottoman boats released a torrent of arrows. A Turkish cannon set up just outside the east end of Galata began to fire. Closing in on the Christian ships, the Turkish vessels hurled burning logs at the enemy’s boats, while sailors tried to latch hooked nets to pull them closer and forcibly board them.
All of these efforts ended in failure. The cannons were too far away, and their volleys merely landed with a splash in the sea or else struck, and sank, their own vessels. The fires started by the burning logs were quickly put out by deckhands, who were well accustomed to such emergencies, and the arrows hardly had any effect whatsoever. The large Western ships were a great deal taller than the Turkish boats, and arrows fired from the Christians’ towering masts had a decisively higher kill ratio than those fired willy-nilly by the Ottoman forces. When it came to naval combat, the Venetian and Genoese forces were so far ahead of their Turkish enemies in both experience and skill that the Ottoman fleet was effectively neutralized as a threat. Indeed, when Trevisan’s fleet had the boom unlatched so that they could move out of the Horn to launch a counterattack, the Turks quickly turned back to base for fear that they would be encircled and completely obliterated.
This outcome grievously injured Mehmed’s pride, but he also realized that no matter how harshly he berated Admiral Baltaoglu it wouldn’t improve his sailors’ competence. The young Sultan instead ordered the cannon positioned outside Galata to be modified. It was Urban’s duty to recalculate the cannon’s trajectory, and after a few days he had adjusted the cannon to meet specifications. It was placed in the same position as before, and this time, on the second volley it struck one of the merchant ships cruising outside the boom. From that point on the Christian fleet would no longer be free to leave and re-enter the Golden Horn at will.
Whatever the happenings at sea, it was clear to all concerned that the assault on Constantinople was a battle that would be decided on land. On April 18th, fifteen days after first surrounding the city on April 4th, Mehmed the Second ordered the first full-frontal assault. The preparations had been completed.
The week-long barrage of cannon fire, despite the late-night repair work carried out by the defenders, had left many parts of the wall bare, and the protective stockades had only been patched up with barrels filled with dirt. The damage along the Mesoteichion section of the wall was especially severe. Mehmed, who didn’t like to leave any of his soldiers idle, ordered those not involved in the artillery work to fill in the twenty-meter-wide moat that surrounded the wall; after days of continuous labor with cannon volleys flying overhead, they had completely filled in the dry moat at a number of points.
The full-scale assault began two hours after sunset. The main thrust of the attack, as predicted, was centered on Mesoteichion. A flame rose up toward the dim sky from near the Sultan’s red tent, which shone lit up by torches. That was the signal. The sound of drums drifted on the wind across the plain, while trumpet bursts loudly pierced the air. The collective battle cry of a hundred thousand Ottoman troops seemed enough to make the very ground quake beneath them. The alarm bells in the city broke out in a frenzy of hollow peals.
Despite all of this Giustiniani kept his composure; his troops, although outnumbered, had been placed according to his precise instructions in the most strategically advantageous locations, and were free to move at will.
The defenders had their good fortune bolstered by a serious mistake on the Sultan’s part: he sent in too many soldiers to attack at one time, which greatly hindered their mobility. While the Turkish soldiers jostled with one another for space, the defenders, whose equipment was adequate and whose morale was high, were able steadily and consistently to pick them off. After four hours of fighting, the Turks had to call a retreat. Their dead, including those who had been trampled by their comrades, numbered over two hundred. The defenders had suffered a few light casualties that were readily treated by the chief medic, Nicolo. They had no fatalities.
The Christian soldiers who were resting along the city wall were dead tired, but their faces were aglow. They had brilliantly repulsed a full-out assault which they had considered the beginning of the end. This, combined with their successes at sea, gave rise to the hope that perhaps they would be able to defend the city to the end.
In just a few hours, the church bells would toll serenly to announce the first Mass of the morning. A day later, an event would occur that would bolster their confidence even further.