ABSTRACT
In general, the first half of the quattrocento demonstrated a weakness in the Ottoman war machine: the inferior sea skills of Turkish sailors in a century when the Europeans were making important advances in the creation of a viable navy. By far, European skills and technology were well ahead of the Ottomans at this time. It should be recalled that during the prolonged blockade of Constantinople at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, the Greek capital survived precisely because the sea-lanes were open and the west could bring supplies and regiments from France and elsewhere almost at will. Again during the siege of 1422 Murad II had a navy of no account and even as late as the battle of Varna he had been forced to pay high prices to Genoese ship captains in order to transfer his troops from Asia to Europe, as Bayezid I had also done before the battle of Nicopolis. By 1453 the situation had improved, but not much. The Ottomans still lacked the type of heavy vessel that was becoming increasingly common among Europeans. Mehmed II’s fleet, although numerous, consisted of inferior ships, as events in the siege of 1453 were to demonstrate. Nevertheless, Mehmed must have realized that his siege of Constantinople had to include a naval component to ensure success. And if the outcome of the engagement of April 20, to be discussed presently, is an indication, he seems to have concluded that his armada’s role was an obstacle to any western relief for the beleaguered city and not an offensive weapon against Venice’s war galleys in the harbor and the Golden Horn. In the sea battle of April 20 against three or four western ships that brought supplies to the besieged city, Mehmed was able to deploy sixteen “triremes” (galleys, as the term seems to be implicit in Sansovino’s translation of Leonardo’s usage), seventy “biremes,” and an unspecified number of ships with one bank of oars, in addition to light vessels; elsewhere Leonardo mentions about two hundred “triremes” and “biremes.”1 The Turkish armada 1 Leonardo, PG 159: 930 (CC 1: 136): …ducentarum et quinquaginta fustarum ex diversis… litoribus…classis venit, inter quas triremes sex et decem, biremes septuaginta, reliquae fustae unius banchoremis; cymbae etiam barculaeque sagittariis ad ostentationem plenae vehebantur. Elsewhere, he presents a summary, PG 159: 931 (CC 1: 140), of the ships that attacked the four Christian vessels that had come to the relief of Constantinople: erant quae invaserant naves, inter triremes et biremes, circiter ducentae. As usual, Leonardo is followed by Languschi-Dolfin fol. 315 (12): …erano trireme 16. fuste bireme 70., el resto fuste, cimbe e barchette, anno per bancho…. Surprisingly, the Anonymous Barberini departs from Leonardo’s text and presents different numbers and generalities, 16: ta;kavterga ta;touvrkika…kai;fou`steı kala;ajrmatwmevna, …kavterga kai;fou`steı e{wı eJkato;n ei[kosi…kai;polle;ı bavrkeı kai;a[lla pleouvmena.
