Birthday Greetings #2

Happy birthday to Constantine XI Palaeologus, last emperor of Byzantium. Constantine was born in 1404 in the Byzantium Despotate of the Morea and grew up as the last remnants of Byzantine power collapsed; conquered by the Ottoman Turks. The Morea itself survived largely one assumes because the Ottomans were busy elsewhere. By the time Constantine was an adult the "empire" consisted of the Morea (in the Greek Pelopponese), a few Aegean islands and the city of Constantinople, the empire's ancient capital. Constantinople was now cut off from the few remaining Byzantine territories and spent much of the first half of the fifteenth century under intermittent Ottoman siege.

Constantine's brother, emperor John VIII, died in 1449 and Constantine left Mistra, capital of the Morea, to take his place as emperor in Constantinople. Two years later the Ottoman sultan Murad II died and his nineteen year old son Mehmet II took the throne. His first act was to unroll maps of Constantinople. The Byzantine empire was a wreck and the city of Constantinople gutted and depopulated but Mehmet still considered it a danger. Despite the conquest of all its territory the city had held out, seeing more than one Ottoman army raise its siege in failure. This was an embarrassment for the all conquering Ottomans. Further, Constantinople's strategic position was superb. It stood between the European and Asian territories of the Ottoman empire. The Byzantines were weak but if they patched up their quarrels with the western Christian nations it was not impossible to imagine a fleet of Venetian galleys in the Golden Horn or detachments of Crusaders in the city. The time had come for Constantinople to fall under the banner of Islam.

There was one problem; the walls. The city itself was a mirror of the empire; ruined, bankrupt and with a shadow population of forty or fifty thousand living in an area that could accomodate half a million but the walls were superb. Built almost a thousand years ago during the reign of the emperor Theodosius II they had been the last word in defensive military engineering for over nine centuries. Even in the last stages of their decline the Byzantine emperors had spent what few pennies they could find maintaining the walls. Mehmet, however, had the answer. Some time earlier a German engineer named Urban had presented himself to Constantine and offered to build him the biggest cannons in the world, at a price. Bankrupt, Constantine had been forced to send him away empty handed and he promptly approached Mehmet with the same offer. Mehmet was only too happy to take him onto the payroll. On a personal note; if I had been Byzantine emperor I would have made damn sure Urban didn't leave my throne room alive.

In 1453 Mehmet was ready and marched on Constantinople at the head of a huge army and, for the first time in Ottoman history, navy. With the city surrounded Mehmet, as Islamic law demanded, sent a formal request for surrender coupled with a promise of good treatment. Constantine refused and Mehmet prepared his siege.

Inside the city Constantine knew he was doomed. The walls he was attempting to defend were fourteen miles long and his forces amounted to barely seven thousand men, a combination of half trained locals and Venetian & Genoese mercenaries. After taking a careful count of his fighting strength Constantine ordered the records destroyed for fear the truth would bring about a collapse in morale.

From the beginning of April until the end of May 1453 Mehmet's cannon hammered the walls, finally smashing what Mehmet considered to be a practical breach. Everybody knew what was coming. Inside the city everyone who could be spared from the walls was in church praying for the intercession of the Almighty. Constantine went about his household thanking them personally for their service and begging forgiveness for any offences he might have committed. Cardinal Isidore who had forsaken the Orthodox church for Rome nevertheless swapped back for the night and held one last service according to the old liturgies. At three in the morning on the 28th of May 1453 before the first streak of dawn came the alarm. Mehmet had launched his assault.

The first wave consisted of bashi bazouks of whom the best description is "scum of the earth; generic". Undisciplined hordes of bandits, thieves, mercenaries and anybody else who could grab a weapon and loot a farmhouse. They were invaluable to the Ottoman army; they caught arrows meant for real soldiers. The bashi bazouks charged the gaps in the walls but in ferocious fighting the defenders threw them back. Then Mehmet sent in his regular soldiers. The fighting was even harder but eventually they too were thrown back but by now the defenders were exhausted and with the first signs of dawn appearing Mehmet ordered forward his janissaries. The elite of the Ottoman army, the janissaries were Christian boys taken from their parents as infants, raised as fanatical muslims and trained in nothing but war. At this time they were possibly the best soldiers in the world. They swept over the wreckage of the first two waves and charged into the breach. For a while the defenders held them but then Giovanni Giustiniani , a Genoese mercenary who had been the heart of the defence was injured and carried, dying, back to his ship. His countrymen thinking a breakthrough had been made fled for the harbour and the janissaries carried the walls.

Constantine, seeing that the city was doomed threw aside the imperial regalia, drew his sword and charged into the fighting. Constantine was born on the 8th February 1404, both he and his empire died on May 28th 1453.