1453 by Roger Crowley

Author:Roger Crowley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2015-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

11 Terrible Engines APRIL 25–MAY 28, 1453

There is a need for machines for conducting a siege: different types and forms of tortoises … portable wooden towers … different forms of ladders … different tools for digging through different types of walls … machines for mounting walls without ladders.

Tenth-century manual on siege craft

“Alas, most blessed Father, what a terrible disaster, that Neptune’s fury should drown them in one blow!” Recriminations for the failure of the night attack were bitter and immediate. The Venetians had lost eighty or ninety of their close companions in the disaster and they knew whom they held responsible: “this betrayal was committed by the cursed Genoese of Pera, rebels against the Christian faith,” declared Nicolo Barbaro, “to show themselves friendly to the Turkish Sultan.” The Venetians claimed that someone from Galata had gone to the sultan’s camp with news of the plan. They named names: it was the Podesta himself who had sent men to the sultan, or it was a man called Faiuzo. The Genoese replied that the Venetians had been entirely responsible for the debacle; Coco was “so greedy for honour and glory” that he had ignored instructions and brought disaster on the whole expedition. Furthermore they accused the Venetian sailors of secretly loading their ships and making ready to escape from the city.

A furious row broke out, “each side accusing the other of intending to escape.” All the deeper enmities between the Italians bubbled to the surface. The Venetians declared that they had unloaded their ships again at the command of the emperor and suggested that the Genoese should likewise “put the rudders and sails from your ships in a safe place in Constantinople.” The Genoese retorted that they had no intention of abandoning the city; unlike the Venetians, they had wives, families, and property in Galata “which we are preparing to defend to the last drop of our blood” and refused to put “our noble city, an ornament to Genoa, into your power.” The deep ambiguity of the position of the Genoese at Galata laid them open to charges of deception and treachery from every direction. They traded with both sides yet their natural sympathies lay with their fellow Christians, and they had compromised their overt neutrality by allowing the chain to be fixed within their walls.

A siege tower attacks a castle

It is probable that Constantine had to intervene personally in the quarrel among the suspicious Italians, but the Horn itself remained a zone of unresolved tension. Haunted by the fear of night attacks or a pincer movement between the two arms of the Ottoman fleet, the one inside the Horn at the Springs and the other outside at the Columns, it was impossible for the Christian fleet to relax. Day and night they stood to arms, straining their senses for the sound of approaching fire ships. At the Springs the Ottoman guns remained primed against a second assault, but their ships did not move. The Venetians reorganized themselves after the loss of Coco.

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