May had arrived. Ubertino, who was guarding the stretch of the wall near Pegae Gate, suddenly felt an urge to go visit his teacher Georgios. This is not to say that the bombardment they had endured for twenty continuous days had somehow stopped. Beginning with Urban’s giant cannon, the shots had rung out without pause, an average of a hundred per day. Since they were not engaging the Turks in close combat, the defensive troops’ main task was to repair the daily damage done to the outer wall and the protective stockade. This had been going on for twenty days already, and so the defenders had gotten a feel for the rhythm of the attacks. When they felt it was about time for the bombardment to begin for the day, they evacuated to the safety of the inner wall. They had thus all managed to escape death, although a few had been injured by flying debris. Instead of calling the cannons “cannons,” they called them “bears.” The giant cannon was the “Papa Bear” and the smaller cannons to both sides of it were the “Cubs.” They said things like, “The Papa Bear seems to have given up the ghost—they’ve replaced it with a new one,” and “They’ve increased the number of Cubs to four today.”
Of course they knew about the disastrous battle in the Golden Horn and they had seen their own ranks dwindle right before their eyes, but human beings cannot live in a state of continuous tension. As soon as he heard it was May, the young man from northern Italy thought of the larks that chirped high above the wheat fields in his hometown. He asked for a brief break from his duties, and his commander and comrades all agreed without making a fuss.
In order to get to Georgios’s monastery from Pegae Gate in the southwest corner of the city, Ubertino would first have to travel east along an avenue until it met another that came down from the Gate of Charisius in the northwest, and from there proceed north towards the Golden Horn for quite some distance. But Ubertino, who knew the city very well, decided instead to take a bypath extending to the northeast that was a shortcut, a narrow road that had modest vegetable gardens between the houses. He didn’t hear the singing of any larks, but the grapevines already had small green bunches growing here and there. Though this was a shortcut, he still had quite a ways to travel. He was reminded again of just how large this Byzantine capital was.
When he finally arrived at the monastery, he was surprised at how quiet it was. The monks were all there of course, but the loud fervor that had dominated the place before the siege was now completely gone. The monks were quietly walking back and forth in the cloisters and plowing their vegetable gardens; Ubertino was reminded of the monasteries in Italy.
Georgios was understandably surprised to see Ubertino open the door to his cell. Yet he didn’t ask Ubertino why he was still in Constantinople; he just pushed his reading stand to one side and motioned for Ubertino to sit down. He looked closely at the young man, whom he hadn’t seen in some time: with a somewhat inscrutable expression he considered Ubertino’s face, which seemed to have aged five years in a flash. Georgios for his part didn’t look any different to Ubertino, who was relieved that the Greek monks had stopped their ranting and raving.
“Where are you?”
Ubertino replied that he was defending the Pegae Gate. The monk replied slowly, in a deep voice:
“You realize of course that the noose is tightening. Food shortages have begun. Supplies from Pera are now our last hope, but not all of the Galatians approve of such aid.”
Ubertino, as a part of the Venetian forces, had heard such reports. He silently nodded.
“The Sultan’s envoy visited this morning. He secretly docked at the port on the Marmara, so most people don’t know about it. The envoy, Ismail Bey, is a Greek convert to Islam. The Sultan’s terms of surrender call for the payment of 100,000 gold pieces and for the Emperor to step down. The Emperor refused.”
This, Ubertino did not know. The Emperor occasionally came to the wall to express his appreciation to the defenders. The Emperor was about the same age as Ubertino’s father. The young student thought of the Emperor’s regal bearing, his kind words. He could hardly begrudge him his decision.
Master and disciple didn’t talk of the fighting any more after that. They realized that they would both continue to hold the opinions they had held up until that point. So they spoke of philosophy instead. Ubertino was practically transported back in time to the days when he had first arrived in Constantinople, and he relished the feeling. The evening bell was ringing by the time he left the monastery. Ubertino made his usual cursory goodbyes; Georgios just smiled warmly and said nothing.
Phrantzes had once again been entrusted by the Emperor with a most difficult task: dealing with the food shortages that were prompting louder and louder complaints from the people. It was no easy challenge to feed more than 35,000 citizens plus 3,000 foreign soldiers for a total of nearly 40,000 mouths. After the arrival of the four ships on April 20th, all aid from the outside world had come to an end. The food that had been brought by the Genoese in Pera hadn’t exactly come cheaply, either. As the Ottomans tightened their control of the area surrounding the settlement, the Galatians themselves had begun to experience difficulty receiving their own shipments from the outside. The number of sheep and cows that were kept in Constantinople was negligible. The vegetable gardens hardly yielded enough food in this season to make a difference.
Phrantzes went to the Emperor and told him that the funds of the state wouldn’t suffice; they had no choice but to appeal for contributions from churches, monasteries, and wealthy individuals, and then use that money to try to buy as much wheat as possible, which they would then distribute sparingly to each family. The Emperor approved and Phrantzes immediately went to work. The amount they were able to collect was far below what they had expected; the Emperor once again fell into a dark mood, and at this point he was no longer able to bear hearing his people’s cries for help.
The barrage continued in the meanwhile. Although the “Papa Bear” occasionally fell silent due to some malfunction or explosion, the “Baby Bears” were easy to maintain and kept roaring without missing a day. Yet since the enemy soldiers were not attacking directly, nobody was killed, and as the days passed the booming sounds of cannons created a peculiar counterpoint with the church bells tolling the hours; the people of the city had grown accustomed to this state of affairs and had almost forgotten their terror at the fact that they were under attack. The siege had now lasted a month.
On the morning of May 3rd Ambassador Minotto and Admiral Trevisan were summoned by the Emperor, who met them with only Phrantzes at his side. Constantine XI, 49 years old, occasionally stroked his progressively graying, yet still perfectly trimmed beard as he spoke to them in a grave but warm voice.
Minotto had sent an envoy to Venice on January 26th conveying the Emperor’s request for military aid. He had said that it would take two months at most for the envoy to reach Venice, but when the siege had begun in early April no reply had yet arrived. There had been reports, however, that Venice had begun assembling a fleet. The Emperor said that surely the fleet must be approaching Constantinople by now; would it be possible to send a messenger to inform the fleet of the urgency of the situation and ask them to make haste? Minotto and Trevisan readily consented to this request.
Around midnight that day a ship manned with 12 volunteers, all Venetians, snuck out of the lowered boom. It was a small boat with two masts that could also be rowed. To prepare for the possibility of being seen by the enemy, the boat was flying the Turkish flag and the crew were wearing leather outfits in the Turkish style; they capped off their disguises with turbans. They were able to sneak out without the Turks noticing and just at the opportune moment caught a strong north wind that quickly swept them southward and made them disappear from sight.
The defenders, however, confined as they were in Constantinople, didn’t know what had transpired in Venice.
Minotto’s messenger had arrived in Venice on February 18th, less than a month after departing Constantinople. The Senate met on the 19th. Foreign affairs were debated in the Senate and its decisions were final. They decided to send a fleet of fifteen galleys, the commander and vice-commander of which would be selected later. On the 25th, they sent word to the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of Naples, and the King of Hungary to the effect that they had decided to send aid in response to the Byzantine Emperor’s request. Needless to say they didn’t neglect to urge these leaders to join them in standing up against the Ottomans.
In the shipyards of Venice preparation of the fleet bound for Constantinople took place in an atmosphere close to that of wartime. An emergency expenditure of 3000 ducats paid for the work.
On April 13th, the selection of Alvise Longo as commander of the fleet was approved. Four days later, on the 17th, he was supposed to lead the fleet out of Venice. They would first sail south down the Adriatic Sea to Modone at the southern edge of the Peloponnese, where they would restock their supplies, and then proceed straight to the island of Tenedos at the mouth of the Dardanelles. They were to wait at Tenedos until May 20th for the arrival of Admiral Jacopo Loredan’s fleet from Negroponte. The two fleets, as well as a third that would arrive from Crete, would come under Loredan’s unified command. The combined fleet would then proceed to Constantinople.
In the event that Loredan didn’t arrive by the 20th, Longo’s instructions from the Senate were to sail to Constantinople alone and ascertain the enemy’s strength. After arriving at the Byzantine capital he was to report to Ambassador Minotto and Admiral Trevisan and join in the defense of the city as a part of the Emperor’s navy. Under no circumstances, however, was he to sail to Constantinople before May 20th.
If everything had gone according to plan, there is a good chance that the combined Venetian fleet, with more than 30 men ’o war galleys, among other ships, would have arrived at the capital before it fell, destroyed the Turkish fleet outside of the boom, and then worked together with the Western ships inside the boom to rout the Turkish fleet in the Golden Horn. Control of the seas would have reverted to the Christian forces, the attack from sea would have collapsed, and Constantinople would have been freed from its isolation. Thus the Emperor’s hopes on May 3rd that the approaching Venetian fleet could possibly be his city’s salvation were well founded.
As it happened, however, the departure of Longo’s fleet of fifteen ships scheduled for April 17th was put off for two days. In Negroponte, Loredan didn’t receive the order to arrive in Tenedos by the deadline of May 20th until May 7th. Not only that, but he wasn’t allowed to sail directly for Tenedos—his orders from the Senate were to sail to Corfu on the other side of the Peloponnese, pick up Corfu’s governor, sail back to Negroponte, where he would await the arrival of the attack group from Crete, and only then sail to Tenedos. The ever-cautious Republic of Venice sent a supplementary order the next day saying that Loredan should be accompanied by the special envoy Bartolomeo Marcello, who was to represent the Republic to the Emperor—but Marcello hadn’t left Venice yet and Loredan couldn’t depart until he had arrived. To arrive at Tenedos by the 20th was thus a complete impossibility. As if this weren’t enough, Longo’s fleet arrived at Tenedos three days behind schedule. The fact that he had been late to arrive made Longo hesitate to take the ordered action—he decided instead to wait some days for Loredan’s fleet to arrive.
Since the Turks had completely sealed Constantinople off by both land and sea, there was no way for the people inside the city to know what was happening outside, and no way for those outside of the city to understand just how urgent the crisis facing the Byzantine capital was.
In Constantinople the people had become visibly agitated. The enemy’s cannon barrages were relentless. The cannon in Galata kept the Christian ships anchored along the boom in a state of perpetual alarm, and the cannons along the floating bridge spanning the Golden Horn daily increased the damage to the single-layered seaward wall. But the landward wall that took the brunt of the attacks was damaged beyond compare. Tedaldi, who was defending the wall along the Imperial Palace, witnessed a cannonball lop off the entire top half of one the towers when it struck a direct hit. Along the landward wall, the worst damage was around Mesoteichion and the single-layered wall adjacent to the Imperial Palace. Constantinople, the embodiment of the brilliant history of the Byzantine Empire, was being wiped away from three directions by the artillery of Anatolian mountainfolk.
In the midst of all of this, the animosity between the Venetians and the Genoese once again exploded out of control. The Venetians, already angry at the Galatians’ neutrality, were also still incensed by the debacle of the nighttime raid. They couldn’t shake off the suspicion that allies such as the Genoese would sooner or later desert them and flee. The Venetians therefore proposed that all Genoese merchant ships detach their anchors and sails and put them in the possession of the Emperor, as the Venetians had done. The Genoese took offense at this and replied, “What kind of stupidity is this? To escape would be to give up Galata, would it not? It took us two hundred years to make this city what it is: our wealth is here, our sons are here, and under no circumstances will we throw them to the wolves. This settlement is where we were born and raised. We will fight to the last drop of our blood before we give it up.”
They may have been rivals, but both Venice and Genoa were mercantile states, and they could understand one another at least on this much. The Venetians held their tongues. But a flourish of rhetoric wasn’t enough to make them forget or forgive the fact that the Genoese were in continuous contact with the Sultan. To which the Genoese replied that the Emperor was well aware of what their representatives were doing and that these representatives could be of use to him as well.
Indeed, the Byzantine side had not given up attempts to negotiate with the Turks. The Genoese magistrate Lomellino, knowing that Pera’s fate depended on some kind of settlement, did absolutely everything within his power to bring one about. Yet Mehmed’s terms were unwavering: the Byzantines must pay reparations and the Emperor must step down. If these conditions were met he would guarantee that the lives and personal property of Constantinople’s citizens would be spared. Many of the top Byzantine ministers were inclined to accept these terms. There were even a few who publicly urged the Emperor to do so. The Genoese ground commander Giustiniani was even more blunt:
“Your Majesty, it is pointless to wait for some army to come and save this unfortunate city. The enemy looks very close to launching a frontal assault. If Your Majesty would consider retiring to the Peloponnese for the time being, I can assure you that if you were to assemble an army to retake the capital, I, my galley, and my men would be at your disposal.”
Tears were flowing down the Emperor’s cheeks. “I thank you for your counsel, from the bottom of my heart. Day and night, you and other Westerners like you grind your spirits in the defense of this city that is not even your home. But how on earth am I supposed to abandon my people? No, my friends, I cannot. I would choose rather to die, together with my people, together with my city.”
The Emperor still had his hopes set on the arrival of a Venetian fleet. He and Admiral Loredan had been acquaintances for some time, and he believed that Loredan’s character and competence were a more powerful ally than ten galleys.
Giustiniani’s prediction had been correct. Four hours after sunset on May 7th, the Ottomans launched their second frontal assault.
The Sultan didn’t repeat the mistakes of the first attack. He unleashed over 30,000 troops on a two-kilometer-long stretch of the Mesoteichion section of the wall, the section most damaged by the many days of continuous bombardment. They were opposed by a thousand-man force made up of Giustiniani’s mercenaries and the Emperor’s finest troops. Even if one added Cardinal Isidore’s reserve army, the defenders numbered less than two thousand. As before, the Turkish troops were carrying hooked webbing and long ladders with which to scale the wall, in addition to spears and bows. They swarmed across the parts of the moat that had already been filled in with dirt.
There was no cannon fire to be heard, just the ringing of the alarm bells. The attackers were urged on by a wild jumble of drums, trumpets, and flutes. Mihajlovic was among the first wave of attackers, who clung to the outer stockades with their lives. This vanguard was made up primarily of irregulars, Christians just like the defenders. The Sultan’s elite Janissaries were lined up along the edge of the moat, swords drawn, to force any of the soldiers who had lost their nerve back into the fray—those who refused to return to the fighting were cut down without a moment’s hesitation. Mihajlovic could sense that his own soldiers were more afraid of the Janissaries than they were of the enemy they were fighting.
The defenders fought with savage intensity, but, in that, the attackers were not to be outdone: they had nowhere to go but forward. Those who were struck with arrows or other fire were promptly trampled underfoot. The attackers scaling the stockades were impaled with spears, while those who tried to climb up using crevices and cracks in the wall were killed too quickly by the precise jabs of the elite defenders to have time even to scream.
Yet no matter how many the brave defenders killed, there were still more behind them, and there was no way to stop fatigue from setting in. The defenders didn’t have enough men to spare to fight in shifts. They couldn’t bring in replacements from other parts of the wall. They didn’t know when Pegae Gate to the south or the area around the Imperial Palace to the north would also come under attack. Even if the Turkish troops in those areas hadn’t attacked yet, they were lined up along the wall, ready to strike as soon as the attack beacon was lit. The Turkish fleets both outside the boom and inside the Golden Horn were not attacking, but their ships were in constant motion, which made it impossible for the Christian ships to make a move.
The fighting raged for three hours. The Ottoman side suffered heavy casualties but still hadn’t been able to penetrate the outer wall. Mehmed lit the blue beacon ordering the attackers to fall back. The dead were left where they lay.
The defenders only had a moment to pause. Those who had been unfortunate enough to be killed or injured were taken into the center of the city, but the remaining defenders would have to banish any thought of rest: they had to work until sunrise replacing the stockades that had been pulled down and reinforcing the damaged parts of the outer wall with sandbags.
Over the next four days, until the 11th, the Turkish bombardment grew even more intense. The fire was concentrated on the Military Gate of Saint Romanus near the center of the Mesoteichion wall and on the section of the wall encircling the Imperial Palace and facing the Golden Horn. That part of the wall was already in a precarious condition thanks to the prior bombardment of that section from the floating bridge.
At Saint Mary’s Church the war council discussed ways to reinforce their ground forces. Having no choice but to try to produce something from nothing, Trevisan decided to commit his sailors to the ground effort. The sailors were not happy to be abandoning their ships, but once they heard that Trevisan would be doing the same they shelved their complaints. It was also a given that nobody would object to the fact that Trevisan was handing command of the fleet over to his second-in-command, Alvise Diedo.
Diedo had no experience in naval warfare, but he had sailed the Black Sea routes so long as a merchant captain that he knew the waters of this area by heart. This, and the fact that he was cool-headed and popular with the sailors, was the reason that Trevisan recommended him. The ship’s doctor Nicolo now reported directly to Diedo. The Venetian admiral, clad in armor, his left arm in a sling, disembarked from his ship and headed for the Imperial Palace wall where he would join the defenders. Nicolo was still worried about Trevisan’s left arm, which had been broken by a falling mast during the disastrous night raid. Nicolo thought, I’ll have to visit him at least once a day during a lull at the clinic to tend to his arm.
As it turned out, the reinforcement of the defensive forces had almost come a hair’s breadth too late. That midnight the third Ottoman assault began, this time concentrating on the wall around the Imperial Palace. Fifty thousand Turkish troops swarmed in for the attack. Furthermore, these were well-rested soldiers fresh to the battle; they had been selected from the Anatolian Corps, the European Corps, and the regiment under Zaganos Pasha. Although born in different regions, they were all ethnic Turks. The soldiers from Anatolia were bold to the point of ferocity.
Facing them were under two thousand “Latin” troops, mainly Venetians, under the command of Minotto and Trevisan. There was only one layer to the wall, in height and thickness roughly equivalent to the inner wall of the triple-layered sections. Four days of continuous bombardment had badly damaged this stretch; one of the gates had even been completely destroyed and quickly replaced by a stockade, although this would not so easily be removed by the attacking forces. Though it was a simple matter to approach the wall, there were very few who dared approach the defenders atop the wall who were braced to fight back. As might be expected, the initial hand-to-hand combat started in the area around the collapsed, stockaded gate. The faces of the defenders took on a demonic cast as they carried away their fallen comrades and killed the advancing enemy.
It was a fight to the death for the Turkish soldiers as well. There was no turning back for them, no retreat—the Janissaries were waiting behind them with their swords drawn, as before. Mehmed applied the philosophy that instilling fear in your own men, even your fellow Turks, was militarily sounder than bringing fear to the enemy.
This third assault was also unable to break through the Christian defenses. After four hours of fighting, the Turkish soldiers receded like the tide. Yet the damage was severe. Twice as many defenders had died this time as the last. Looking at the Mesoteichion wall and the wall around the Imperial Palace, it was clear even to the untrained eye that these were the places where Mehmed had focused the concentrated force of his attacks. There was nothing decisive the defenders could do in response. Quite the contrary, two days later, in the morning, a sentry posted to Caligaria Gate near the Imperial Palace saw something that made every hair on his body stand on end.
The defenders had actually already considered the possibility that Mehmed would have his men dig a tunnel underneath the wall and place explosives there. Trevisan and Giustiniani in particular had mentioned that concern to the war council soon after the siege had begun. But the Byzantine side had insisted that, although the Sultan had a great many men at his disposal, he didn’t have any who had the engineering skill necessary for such a task. Voted down, the two Westerners didn’t push the subject further.
It goes without saying, however, that in the process of revolutionizing the Ottoman army Mehmed the Second most certainly considered using explosives to destroy the wall. This approach didn’t work terribly well at the beginning. Although the Turkish soldiers had experience in stonework from having built the Rumeli Hisari, they had neither the skills nor the experience to dig long, subterranean tunnels. Invariably the tunnels wound up proceeding in directions completely different from those intended and were thus useless. The Sultan ordered his generals to find soldiers with mining experience. In short order Zaganos Pasha reported that there were a number of Serbian men in his regiment who had experience in silver mines. From the next day on, the tunneling work was handed over to these specialists.
Mehmed ordered them to dig a tunnel to a point directly under the Gate of Charisius. In order not to be noticed by the defenders, the miners began digging the tunnel quite a distance away from the wall, but soon after they began they hit a dense deposit of rocks and reported that it was impossible to dig further. The Sultan ordered them to dig instead towards the Gate of the Caligaria, where the wall only had one layer.
Once again the miners began from a point far away enough not to be noticed. But one of the sentries grew suspicious when he noticed some Turkish soldiers assiduously removing dirt from an opening in the ground. The leaders of the defense grew pale when they heard this news: they had no effective counter-strategy in place. They decided to feign ignorance of what was happening for the time being while they sought out men among them who had also tunneling experience.
To their good fortune they soon found an experienced mining engineer, a German by the name of Johannes Grant, who was a part of Giustiniani’s unit and who had been fighting as a common soldier until that time. Restored to his former profession, he quickly set about planning a countermine. Chief Minister Notaras put a group of Greek soldiers under Grant’s command to carry out the work.
Grant’s appointed task was not only to stop the enemy’s tunnel in its tracks, but also, if possible, to discourage the Turks from continuing to pursue such a strategy. He began by carefully examining the ground’s surface. Since it was too dangerous to exit the castle walls, he had to do this by eye from atop the wall. If any point on the surface looked suspicious, he would immediately try to guess what route towards the wall a possible tunnel from that point would take, then order his men to begin digging a tunnel from inside the wall to intercept that route.
On May 16th, barely a day after he was discovered, Grant’s abilities were irrefutably confirmed. His Greek soldiers ably dug their way right into the middle of the Ottoman tunnel, where they set fire to the wooden props holding the tunnel up. A number of the enemy miners were killed in the ensuing collapse. They had not yet been able to place their explosives under the city wall.
The Sultan, characteristically, was not in the least deterred. The Greek soldiers remained under Grant’s command, while the soldiers atop the wall were ordered immediately to report any unusual movements on the enemy’s part. Five days later, on the 21st, a second success further encouraged the defenders. This time the Greek diggers, intercepting a Turkish mine, used especially fumy combustibles to smoke out the Ottoman miners. Of course, the Greek soldiers also made sure to refill the tunnel they had dug out from inside the castle wall.
Their labors were made easier by the knowledge that they had succeeded. Grant and his subordinates came to believe that they could even see in the black of night. Every day for the next four days they successfully destroyed a Turkish tunnel. It appears that the Sultan gave up this strategy after six such consecutive failures since Grant, whose eyes were as keen as ever, was then relieved of his mining duties.
Yet the twenty-one-year-old Sultan had by no means stopped considering every single possibility; his mind seemed almost like a mechanical contraption that worked around the clock. On the 18th, less than two days after Grant’s men first demolished one of the Turkish tunnels, the Christian defenders along the landward wall were shocked by the sight of a new monstrosity rising before their eyes.
Ubertino saw it in front of the wall, halfway between the Golden Horn and Pegae Gate. It had clearly been constructed somewhere in the rear and then pushed in the middle of the night to the edge of the moat. It was a tower, constructed of wood, taller even than the towers along the city wall. Although the interior of the tower was hidden by a covering of cow and sheep leather, there was obviously a staircase inside leading to the top. Arrows came shooting down from the top of the tower upon the soldiers defending the protective stockades.
The defenders tried to set the wooden turret on fire by shooting flaming arrows at it, without much success. Throughout the day Turkish soldiers filled in passageways across the moat while protected by arrows from their mobile tower. The moat was twenty meters across, anywhere from a meter to a meter and a half deep, and five kilometers long. Filling it in completely would have been a nearly impossible task even for the sea of men that Mehmed had at his disposal, so the fastest, most effective way for him to get his soldiers and tower closer to the wall was to fill it in up to ground level only at selected points along its length. Although this work had begun quite a bit earlier, the protection offered by the turret allowed the work to proceed much more quickly.
More turrets were added. The Sultan’s plan was clear, and there was no way the defenders could allow him to see it to completion. During the night a group of them snuck out of the wall and dug holes in the passageway, filling them with powder. Since the explosives were placed close to the far edge of the moat, the booming explosions not only destroyed the passageways but collapsed and ignited the wooden tower as well.
Similar explosions followed one after the other near the Mesoteichion wall and the Gate of Caligaria near the Imperial Palace. The Turkish troops, taken by surprise, could be seen fleeing in the light of the flames, a sight which greatly lifted the defenders’ spirits. The next morning the only turret that had escaped the explosions was pulled back behind the front line, to the enthusiastic cheers of the defenders.
With the exception of this and Grant’s countermine successes, however, there wasn’t a single bright spot for the defenders. Given the repeated battles at land and sea and the uninterrupted bombardment, the number of fatalities they had suffered was surprisingly low, but the number of injured was increasing at a faster pace with each passing day. There was no hiding from anybody that their ammunition reserves had almost reached bottom and that food was scarce. Even the women of the city were saying among themselves that the arrival of outside help was the city’s last hope.
It was May 23rd, in the afternoon. A sentry on the Sea of Marmara wall saw a small ship sailing north toward the city. The Turkish fleet outside the boom also saw the approaching craft and immediately sent out a number of interdiction craft. The small boat skillfully evaded them and continued north. Since no wind was blowing it depended entirely on its oarsmen. The rowers of the pursuing Turkish ships did their best, but were no match for the superior helmsmanship and rowing of the fleeing boat. By the time that the sailors aboard the anchored Turkish fleet realized that this small boat was nothing to be trifled with and sent out another wave of interceptors, it was too late. The boat slipped in through a well-timed and very brief lowering of the boom. The news that the boat that had been sent out in search of the Venetian fleet had returned quickly spread from the dock to every corner of the city. Everybody, down to every last soldier defending the wall, was filled with the hope that they would soon hear a second report that this boat had sped ahead of the approaching fleet to inform them of its impending arrival.
Minotto and Trevisan, who hadn’t even had time to change out of his filthy battle garb, quickly accompanied the captain of the scout vessel to deliver his report to the Emperor. When that report was finally delivered, not only the Emperor, but all of the members of the assembled war council were left ashen.
After the small Venetian fusta had safely escaped, it had proceeded south through the Sea of Marmara and then the Dardanelles, searching for the Venetian fleet. After having traversed the Dardanelles it searched each of the surrounding isles. Yet the fleet was nowhere to be seen, and the inhabitants of the islands hadn’t heard even the faintest rumors concerning its arrival. When they had been searching for around two weeks, the captain of the ship realized that any further efforts would be futile and assembled the other eleven members of the crew. He told them his opinion and then said that he would leave it up to them what to do next.
One of the sailors spoke: “Brothers, when we left Constantinople the city was daily blanketed in the fear that the enemy could launch a full assault at any moment. Perhaps we didn’t say so, but I’m sure all of us felt that the Byzantine capital would certainly be destroyed by that inhuman Sultan. And this, after all, would be the result of the Greeks’ own incompetence.
“Thus, having fulfilled our duty, I believe we must return to our homeland. The city has probably already fallen into the Turks’ hands by now.”
Another sailor asked for permission to speak. “Brothers, the Emperor asked us to seek out the fleet. We did as we were asked, though unfortunately the results of that search were not favorable. But that does not mean that our duty ends here. We are still obligated to report the results to the Emperor. I believe we must return to Constantinople. It doesn’t matter whether the Turks have taken the city or it is still in Christian hands—we must return. We don’t know if what awaits us there is life or death, but we do know that our duty is to turn north.”
The other ten sailors, which included the captain, agreed. The one sailor who had been opposed didn’t object once the matter had been decided. The small Venetian fusta returned to Constantinople. What the twelve sailors didn’t know, however, was that Longo’s fleet would arrive in Tenedos six days later.
The Emperor thanked each of the twelve men in turn, tears streaming down his cheeks. A deep gloom enveloped the chamber as all of the men present let the realization settle that no further help from the outside could be expected.
All the while, the enemy’s bombardment continued with undiminished ferocity. The area around the Military Gate of Saint Romanus in particular was taking such an extensive battering that, despite the desperate attempts of the defenders to repair it, the outer wall would soon be breached. Although they did everything possible to try to repair the craters left by the “Baby Bears,” the 500 kilogram projectiles of the “Papa Bear” erased any trace of their labors. Only the inner wall retained its grandeur. But the defenders didn’t have the men necessary to fall back and adequately defend the inner wall. They were also too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to stage such a last-ditch defense. The tolling of the evening bell that day sounded to the people of the city like a dirge.
The fiftieth day of the siege was coming to end.