It was an hour past midnight. Three flares traced long, red arcs across the sky’s darkness. That was the signal. A full-scale assault, with all 160,000 Turkish troops taking part, had begun.
War cries broke out across the advancing front line. The better part of the attack was focused on the Mesoteichion wall around the Saint Romanus Military Gate, as expected. The bells of the city churches began wildly ringing the alarm.
The attack started with the irregulars in the vanguard. 50,000 troops swarmed in towards the wall. They had a mismatched assortment of equipment and weapons, carrying little more than hooked ladders in addition to their spears and swords. They fought for their lives to climb the scaffolding and scale the wall, but they were met by an equally fierce defense that picked them off one by one. The cannon barrage continued even now, killing Western and Turkish soldiers alike. The sounds of kettledrums and trumpets filled the silence between cannon shots. The cries of women within the city wailing in prayer for God’s mercy pierced the air, as if to try to drown out the Ottoman attackers’ cacophony.
The men along the wall didn’t have time for prayer. Most of the 50,000 irregulars may have been second-rate warriors, but they knew that the fearsome Janissaries were waiting behind them, swords drawn: retreat was not an option. Despite this, the first wave of Turkish attackers suffered severe casualties and, two hours into the attack, appeared to be pulling back.
Mehmed was fully aware of the irregular troops’ shortcomings and had planned his strategy accordingly. They may have been disorganized and poor fighters, but they had served the purpose of tiring the defenders. As soon as the first wave was pulled back, the Sultan ordered the second wave to commence without giving the defenders even a moment to catch their breath.
A regiment of over fifty thousand well-trained regular troops, dressed in identical red turbans and white uniforms, marched forward in orderly ranks. Half of them pretended to be attacking the entire length of the landward wall, which kept the defenders pinned down, while the remaining half concentrated on Mesoteichion.
Even though this second wave of soldiers was made up of his fellow Turks and Muslims, Mehmed continued the cannon bombardment. When a section of scaffolding near the Saint Romanus Military Gate was blown to pieces by a direct hit, a troop of Turkish soldiers who were attempting to climb over the fence at that exact spot were blown sky high. Nothing was visible in the thick dust and smoke. A group of two hundred Turkish soldiers managed to penetrate a breach in the outer wall in the confusion. Most of them were killed by defenders, who were quick to rush to the scene, and the rest were driven back and thrown into the moat. It was the same thing over and over: when the dust kicked up by a cannonball cleared up a bit, the defenders would resume killing and repulsing new incoming troops. Yet even before they had the chance to resolve this match, the third wave quietly drew closer.
In the pale light of the clouded-over moon, the Sultan’s trusted Janissaries were approaching the wall. Wearing identical white caps and white uniforms with green belts, they crossed the moat in perfect formation. Unlike the first two regiments, the Janissaries were careful not to rush forward recklessly. When one of their number was shot down by enemy fire, they merely pushed him to the side indeed as if this had been part of the plan, and continued marching without breaking ranks. Even the tips of the scimitars they held in their right hands formed a perfect, unbroken line.
Mehmed was not content to stay in the rear watching the battle. He was at the outward edge of the moat screaming at his soldiers, exhorting and scolding them in turn. Tursun was aghast. The position where the Sultan was standing was well within range of the city wall. Although Tursun normally attended upon Mehmed kneeling on one knee, he had more important things to worry about now: he stood up to his full height and spread his arms to protect his lord. The thought never entered his mind that he was putting himself at risk.
The Janissaries responded to their Sultan’s encouragement and fought with renewed daring. These 15,000 elite troops had been committed, all of them, to the Mesoteichion wall, which was less than two kilometers long. Each division took its turn advancing toward the wall, and as they repeated these waves of attack in strict order, the number of soldiers who were able to make it to the wall increased steadily.
The defenders, who had to fight new waves of fresh enemy soldiers without any rotation of their own, held up well. In particular, the soldiers along the Mesoteichion wall had, at the suggestion of the ground commander Giustiniani, locked all of the portals leading from the outer wall to the inner wall and given the keys to the Emperor. In other words, they were determined to defend at the outer wall or die. They had ceased to be Greeks or Genoese or Venetians: they were fighting as one. Giustiniani was also fighting with impressive valor, rather surprisingly for one who was quite young and a mercenary no less. Even the Emperor had his sword drawn and was fighting the Turks at the wall.
This fierce close-quarter fighting continued for over an hour. Even the Janissaries, the highly esteemed backbone of the Ottoman army, were unable in that time to score a decisive victory. Attackers and defenders swarmed together into whirling clumps of men and then broke apart again. The first light of dawn began to fill out the sky, lightly at first but steadily growing brighter. The battle had been raging for five hours.
Just as the sun was rising, an arrow fired at point blank range hit Giustiniani right above his left collarbone. As he was reeling from the shock, a second arrow struck his right thigh. Blood began pouring out of the cracks in the young commander’s silver-colored armor. Screaming from the intense pain, Giustiniani asked one of his subordinates, who had come running to his aid, to take him back to his ship. This soldier knew that the doors leading from the outer wall to the inner wall and from there to the city proper were all locked. He rushed to the Emperor to ask for the keys.
The Emperor rushed through a passageway between the outer wall and the scaffolding to come to Giustiniani’s side. He knelt down next to Giustiniani, took his hand, and asked him to reconsider his decision to leave. Yet it seems that the commander, who had just shown such valor, had suddenly been startled by the sight of his own blood back into an awareness of his youth and everything still left to live for. He paid no attention to the Emperor’s entreaties and repeated his desire to leave the front. The Emperor reluctantly handed the keys over to Giustiniani’s aides, who carried their commander away to safety.
This incident didn’t go unnoticed by the five hundred Genoese soldiers under Giustiniani’s direct command. They were, in the final analysis, mercenaries, professionals. They could fight as bravely as anybody when the battle ran in their favor, but they were also the first to flee at the signs of approaching defeat. When they saw their commander being taken away, the battle was effectively over as far as they were concerned. En masse they made a break for the door through which Giustiniani had just been carried. The Greek soldiers, the Emperor first and foremost, attempted to stop them. The Sultan, who was at the edge of the moat, noticed that some unexpected disturbance had arisen within the city walls. In a voice louder than any he had ever wrung out he bellowed: “The city is ours to take!”
The Janissaries were completely transformed. Now they rushed as one toward the city wall to attack, and no longer were they driven back. Those who made it over the scaffolding clambered up the outer wall without a moment’s rest. The defenders were finally being pushed back. Hoping to escape they jammed into the corridor between the outer and inner walls. The Turkish soldiers, who now occupied the outer wall, picked them off with their arrows, one after another.
The defenders along the Imperial Palace were by no means spared either. There were now too many Turkish soldiers pushing their way through breaches in the wall to repel. When one of the gates was demolished and the Turks started streaming in, all hope was lost. There were some Venetians who kept fighting regardless, but once they saw that the Imperial and Venetian flags flying from the tower had been taken down and replaced by the white crescent moon and star on red, they too had to concede defeat. Trevisan shouted out the order for his men to retreat to the Golden Horn.
The Emperor, too, saw the Turkish flag flying atop the tower. He mounted his white steed, and began to ride to the Military Gate of Saint Romanus. He intended to encourage his men there not to give up the fight, but the Greek soldiers had seen the red flag as well. And they were routing. Pandemonium ensued as they all scrambled in search of some means of escape. The Turkish soldiers, who had already sealed all of the outer wall’s exits, slaughtered them like wolves let loose in a flock of sheep.
The Emperor realized that the end had come. He had a mere three riders in his train: a Greek knight, a Spanish noble, and one born in Dalmatia. The four of them dismounted their horses. They intended to continue fighting on foot, but the chaos around them made even that impossible. The Greek knight, who also happened to be the Emperor’s cousin, shouted out that he would rather die than be captured and then cut his way into the fray.
The Emperor flung away his crimson cloak. He tore away his Imperial regalia. Somebody is reported to have heard him say, “Isn’t there a single Christian here who will kindly plunge a sword into my heart?”
The final Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire drew his sword and rushed into an approaching wave of Turkish soldiers, where he disappeared, never to be seen again. The two remaining knights followed him.
Beacons announcing that the wall had been breached lit up all across the Ottoman encampment. They didn’t glow as brightly in the morning sunshine as they would have at night, but the Turkish troops’ eyes were sharpened by anticipation. The entire army cheered with joy and rushed towards the city walls. The soldiers who had continued defending Pegae Gate up until this point, unaware of what had happened, couldn’t have mistaken that cheer for anything other than what it was; they too began to flee for their lives. The only means of escape were the allied vessels docked along the Golden Horn, but Pegae Gate was about as far from the Horn as it was possible to get. They rushed about, eyes blinded by fear. Turkish soldiers who had made it over the wall arrived at that moment and opened the gate from the inside; a flood of Turkish soldiers rushed through it. The Golden Gate, through which the Emperors always passed when returning from a triumphant campaign during the empire’s brighter days, was left standing practically unharmed. A swarm of Turkish troops entered unhindered through that gate as well.
Although the Marmara wall hadn’t come into play at all during the weeks of the siege, it did see action on that morning of May 29th. When the signal came that the wall had been breached, the Turkish fleet wasted no time in sailing south and dropping anchor at two small docks facing the Sea of Marmara. The residents near the docks, perhaps realizing that resistance was futile, quickly opened the gate for the disembarking Turkish sailors and prostrated themselves. Within minutes a swarm of Turkish soldiers had surrounded the Ottoman pretender Prince Orhan and his men. Knowing the fate that awaited them if they were captured and brought before the Sultan, Orhan and his men boldly engaged a contingent many times their own size. The Prince then mounted his horse and impaled himself on a sword that one of his men had thrust out for him.
The Spanish consul Pere Julia and his Catalonian soldiers also put up tenacious resistance, fighting until the last man had either been killed or captured. For Cardinal Isidore, who was defending the stretch of the wall just north of Julia’s, things were not so simple. Since it was felt from the beginning of the siege that the enemy wouldn’t focus on this section of the wall, he had sent most of his men to help defend the landward stretch and had almost no men left to defend and fight alongside him. Furthermore, Isidore was not only the Patriarch of Constantinople but also the Papal Envoy. He would no doubt be the second most wanted man in the city after the Emperor. If he were captured and his identity became known, it would be as if the Pope himself, God’s earthly agent and representative of all Catholic believers, had been taken prisoner by a Muslim lord. As these unpleasant thoughts were running through his mind, Isidore noticed a beggar stumbling by.
News of the rout didn’t become known to everybody in the vast city right away. The first to know were those who saw defenders fleeing from the Turkish soldiers bearing down upon them. Knowing that all was lost, a few people ran in the direction of the Golden Horn, but the Greeks for the most part escaped to Hagia Sophia at the eastern edge of the city. Legend had it that if the city ever fell, the archangel Michael would descend to the top of the Hagia Sophia’s dome and sweep the invaders away to the eastern shore of the Bosphorus. The rotunda of the gigantic Hagia Sophia was soon filled with refugees. They closed and locked the church’s bronze doors, and knelt down to pray.
When the Christian fleet anchored in the Golden Horn saw the Turkish flag unfurled atop the Imperial Palace’s tower and heard the numerous signals, they knew that the walls had been breached. Bracing for an attack from the enemy ships both within the Golden Horn and outside the boom, the ships sailed into a defensive formation. But sailors in the Ottoman fleet had other things on their mind than attacking the Christian fleet: namely, they were worried that the Turkish ground forces would get all of the spoils by sacking the city before they would have a chance at them. This was why the Ottoman ships outside the boom had rushed to the docks along the Marmara without paying the Christian fleet any attention at all. The Turkish ships inside of the Golden Horn rushed towards the gate near the Imperial Palace, where Zaganos Pasha’s troops had already started pouring into the city, and joined the pillage.
For the Christian fleet this was like a gift of good fortune from the heavens above. Diedo, who had taken over as naval commander in Trevisan’s absence, ordered his ships to dock along the city wall, bows pointed outward to facilitate a quick escape, and pick up as many refugees as possible. Once that was well underway, he and another captain and Nicolo boarded a small boat and began rowing across to Galata.
Magistrate Lomellino was waiting for them on the other side. Diedo spoke first: “I’d like to ask what the Galatians’ intentions are now. Do you all intend to stay and fight, or do you intend to escape? If you are willing to fight, we promise to fight by your side.”
Lomellino seemed at a loss. Right before the final assault one of the Sultan’s emissaries had come to reconfirm Galata’s neutrality. But who could say if that was a guarantee of anything?
“Could you give us a little time?” Lomellino finally said, making no effort to hide his consternation. “I would like to send a messenger to the Sultan to see if he would be willing to extend his peace terms not only to the Genoese but to the Venetians as well.”
Diedo felt that such a thing was an absolute impossibility this late in the game, but all he could do was look at Lomellino with barely suppressed disdain and remain silent.
When the three turned around to board their boat and return to the Constantinople side, they discovered that all the gates to the settlement had been locked shut behind them. Yet, not all of the Genoese in Pera who saw what was happening across the Golden Horn could remain so callous. After some of these Genoese opened one of the gates for them, the three stepped out onto the dock to see that there were many Genoese and their families who didn’t trust the Sultan’s word and were boarding ships to escape.
The flood of escapees was reaching its peak back on the Constantinople side when they arrived there. The dock was overflowing with refugees, so much so that some people actually fell into the water. Even then the Venetian sailors never lost their nerve as they continued pulling people one by one aboard ship.
The sun approached its zenith. The number of people jamming onto the dock began to decrease. Although he should have been tending to the wounded, Nicolo was standing at the ship’s stern, looking around. Trevisan was nowhere to be found. Ambassador Minotto and the other Venetian notables were not among the refugees, nor could they be seen on any of the other ships.
Diedo decided that it was too dangerous to stay in port any longer, and ordered his galley’s anchor raised. He sent a signal to the other ships to do the same and follow his ship’s lead out of the Golden Horn.
Yet there were still people left on the dock. Seeing that the rescuers were leaving, they began jumping into the water and swimming for the ships, which were leaving dock much slower than usual, as if reluctant to do so. Those who managed to make it to the ships were lifted to safety. Nicolo’s ship rescued one poor fellow who had jumped into the water, unable to swim yet thrashing about for dear life until the rope to survival, and escape, was lowered to him. It was the Florentine merchant Tedaldi. Among the refugees huddled like corpses aboard the ships, the figure of the young student from Brescia was nowhere to be seen. And Admiral Trevisan, whose very presence was enough to put those around him at ease, never did make it to the dock.
Diedo’s lead galley approached the boom, still stretched taut across the Golden Horn. Two soldiers got in a rowboat and rowed to the Constantinople side, where they cut the leather strap latching the boom to the tower. The boom slowly drifted away.
The galleys slipped through the opening. Seven Genoese boats fleeing Galata followed in their wake, which were in turn followed by a Venetian naval galley under Captain Morosini and a Venetian merchant galley. The movements of this last ship were rather hesitant: over a hundred and fifty of its crew, who had been fighting as part of the defense, hadn’t returned. That ship was followed by Trevisan’s galley, which, while not as understaffed as the ship ahead of it, was missing its captain. Then came two more Genoese vessels, and finally four Cretan ships filled with many Greek refugees.
Still in the Golden Horn were at least ten Byzantine ships, a few Genoese ships, and perhaps twenty other vessels including Venetian freighters. Diedo decided he would wait at the mouth of the Bosphorus for an hour in case any of these ships made it out with more escapees. In the end, none did.
Diedo also couldn’t neglect his main duty, which was to be prepared for an Ottoman attack. A strong wind was blowing from the north-northwest, but it could change direction at any moment. He had to give the order to flee before this wind let up or changed direction—there might not be a second chance. When he conveyed his thoughts to the captain of one of the Genose vessels, the captain replied, “We have large sails; as long as the wind is favorable we can move very fast. We can wait for the time being, say, until sunset.”
Diedo knew that the seven large Genoese galleys were well fortified and that he thus had no reason to worry. He ordered all but these Genoese boats to set off.
It was a little past 2 p.m. The four Venetian ships and the four Cretan galleys caught the strong north wind and began sailing south down the Sea of Marmara. Ahead of them was Negroponte, which, now that Constantinople had been lost, was the front line facing the Ottomans. As the boats sailed away, all on board stared back blankly at the city of Constantinople. Even the battle-tested sailors aboard the Venetian naval galleys couldn’t tear their eyes away from the city slowly receding on the horizon, “The City of Romans at one with Christ.”
There was no military discipline among the 160,000 Ottoman soldiers who had swarmed into the city, only the sheer intoxication of pillage. Each man was allowed to keep whatever he could carry over the next three days. The Greeks quickly caught on to the fact that their lives would be spared as long as they didn’t resist.
In fact, those killed numbered less than 4,000. Within the context of the conquest of a city of 40,000, that number was not considered particularly high at the time. Most of those who were killed died right after the Ottomans breached the wall: refusing to believe that the defending combatants could have numbered less than 8,000, the Turkish soldiers were goaded mainly by fear to kill everybody they encountered. This was also the reason why most of the defenders along the wall were also killed. The blood of the dead flowed through the streets near the wall like water after a heavy rain.
It was said among the Greeks that even a Turk who has killed his own parents would rather sell you into slavery and make some money; as long as you didn’t resist they would spare your life and just take you prisoner. Thus most of the citizens who couldn’t escape were taken captive. The people hiding in Hagia Sophia also didn’t resist and simply let themselves be tethered together by the Turkish soldiers wielding curved swords. The Ottoman soldiers made no special allowances for the many monasteries and nunneries in the city. Although there were a few nuns who chose death by throwing themselves into wells instead of falling into the hands of the heathens, most of the ecclesiastics were admirably loyal to their oaths and quietly submitted themselves as their superiors had told them to. Those who were killed despite the fact that they didn’t resist included the elderly, who were considered worthless as slaves, and infants.
The captives, regardless of status or gender, were lined up in two rows. They were forced to march back to the Ottoman camp tied together with bits of rope and common silk scarves. Screams could be heard when a beautiful woman or youth was dragged out of the line to be raped by a Turkish soldier. Other than that, the captives walked along as meekly as a flock of sheep, their eyes empty of all hope.
It goes without saying that the Imperial Palace and churches were thoroughly looted, but then so were people’s homes. The Turkish soldiers fought with one another for the richest spoils, and anything they didn’t want was destroyed or burned on the spot. Many icons were split in two and burned. Crucifixes were discarded once their jeweled ornaments were hammered off and taken away.
Mehmed spent the morning meeting with Galatian emissaries and with Byzantine nobles who had been captured and brought before him. His main interest was the Emperor’s whereabouts.
The Byzantine nobles said that all they had heard was that the Emperor had disappeared in the fighting. Two Turkish soldiers appeared, saying that the Emperor had been beheaded, and placed the severed head in front of the nobles for confirmation. The nobles all agreed, without exception, that it was in fact the Emperor. Mehmed ordered the head displayed on a column near the great hall of Hagia Sophia. The two soldiers added that the corpse was wearing stockings embroidered with eagles: this was proof enough for Mehmed that the Emperor was in fact dead.
After the audience concluded, the young victor retired to his private partition to prepare himself for his triumphant entrance into the city. He tied the green belt to his white robe, and put on his white damask cloak and white turban with a glittering green emerald in the center. The scimitar hanging from his belt was made from a gold so bright it was almost painful to behold.
Once his dress was completed, he ordered Tursun to bring his white horse to the front of the tent. Tursun doubted his ears for moment; he had thought that the Sultan would enter the city on the black horse that had served him during the fifty-six days of the siege. But he soon understood his lord’s wishes. He bowed politely, and left to tell the head groom to prepare a white steed.
At two p.m., the twenty-one-year-old Sultan, followed by his ministers, his generals, his imams, and guarded by his elite Janissaries, entered Constantinople through the Gate of Charisius. As if wishing to savor his new possession as deeply as possible, he reined his horse to a slow trot as the procession moved along the main thoroughfare. He didn’t so much as glance at the soldiers busy in their pillaging, or at the citizens silent in their captivity.
When he arrived at the entrance to the Hagia Sophia, Mehmed the Second dismounted his horse. He bowed down, took a handful of dirt, and slowly let it fall upon his white turban. Tursun and the rest assembled all understood that, with this gesture, the usually haughty lord was humbling himself before Allah.
The Sultan stood up and walked into the Hagia Sophia. The Greeks who had been hiding there had almost all been taken away; all that remained were a handful of old monks huddled in a corner. The Sultan noticed a Turkish soldier trying to pry free a marble stone from the floor, and for the first time since entering the city he became angry. The soldiers had only been given permission to enslave the people and take their possessions; it had been declared that the city, and all of the buildings in it, belonged to the Sultan and him alone. The soldier was driven out of the building. The Sultan then turned to the huddled monks, anger now gone from his voice, and told them simply to return to their monasteries.
The Sultan walked further into the rotunda, and stared, almost admiringly, at the deluge of colors afforded by the mosaics along the walls. But in due course he turned to his ministers and told them that the church must immediately be converted into a mosque. The first step would be to scrub the mosaics clean.
One of the imams mounted the pulpit, and began to chant: There is no God but Allah…Mehmed ascended to the altar, pressed his forehead to the ground, and gave his prayers of thanks to the God who had bestowed him with victory.
After the prayers were finished, the Sultan and his retinue visited the dilapidated Old Imperial Palace nearby. They then proceeded to the ancient Coliseum, also long neglected. After that they followed another wide boulevard to the Pegae Gate, from whence they exited and returned to their encampment. In all that time, no shots were fired, and nobody among the conquered dared to block the Sultan’s way. The city of Constantinople had completely submitted to Mehmed the Second.
The Byzantine Empire had been wiped from the face of the earth. The Turkish Empire appeared in its place.